“How did he manage that?”
“He protected his sources pretty well, but I’d say most likely through a rental agency or an estate agent. He had his contacts. Vic Greaves doesn’t go to extraordinary lengths to stay anonymous, he’s just a recluse and he doesn’t advertise his presence. I mean, he’s been found before. The problem is that no one can ever get much out of him so they give up, except maybe some of the weirdos who see him as a sort of cult figure, which is why he guards his privacy to the extent that he does, or Chris Adams does. Anyway, however Nick did it, you can guarantee it wouldn’t be through Adams, the manager.”
“Why not?”
“Adams is very protective of Greaves. Has been ever since the breakdown. They’re old friends, apparently, go back to school days.”
“Where did Nick find Greaves?”
“In North Yorkshire. The Hatters always had a strong connection with Yorkshire through Lord Jessop and Swainsview Lodge. Besides, Vic and Reg Cooper, the lead guitarist, were both local lads. Met the others at the University of Leeds.”
“North Yorkshire? How long has he been living there?”
“Dunno,” said Butler. “Nick didn’t say.”
So the object of Nick Barber’s pilgrimage had been right under his nose all the time, and he had never guessed. Well, why would he? If you wanted to live as a hermit in the Dales, it could be done. Now Banks had a glimmer of a memory. Something that he might have guessed brought Nick Barber to Swainsdale. “Help me here,” he said. “I didn’t grow up in the area, and I wasn’t there at the time, but as far as I can remember, there was some other connection with the group, wasn’t there?”
“Robin Merchant, the bass player.”
“He drowned, didn’t he?”
“Indeed he did. Drowned in a swimming pool about a year after Brian Jones did exactly the same thing. June 1970. Tragic business.”
“And that swimming pool was at Swainsview Lodge,” said Banks. “Now I remember.” He was surprised at himself for not getting the connection earlier, but when it came down to it, although he knew that Brian Jones had also died in a swimming pool, he didn’t know where that pool was, either. To him, a swimming pool was a swimming pool. But Nick Barber would know things like that, just the way sports fans knew their team’s scores, statistics and greatest players going back years.
“Swainsview Lodge has been empty for a few years now,” Banks said. “Ever since Lord Jessop died of AIDS in 1997. There were no heirs.” And nobody wanted the old pile of stone, Banks remembered. It cost too much to keep up, for a start, and it needed a lot of work. A couple of hotel chains had shown a brief interest, but the foot-and- mouth business had soon scared them off, and there was at one time talk of the lodge being converted into a convention center, but nothing had come of it. “Tell me more about Nick Barber,” he said.
“Not much to tell, really,” said Butler.
“How did he get into the business? According to his parents, he had no training in journalism.”
“This might sound a bit odd to you, but journalistic training is rarely encouraged in this line of work. Too many bad habits. Naturally, we require writing ability, but we judge that for ourselves. What counts most is love of the music.”
That would suit Banks right down to the ground, he thought, if only he could write. “And Nick Barber had that?”
“In spades. And he had in-depth knowledge on all sorts of genres, too, including jazz and some classical. Like I said, a remarkable mind, and a tragic loss.”
“How long had he been writing for you?”
“About seven or eight years, on and off.”
“And his interest in the Mad Hatters?”
“The last five years or so.”
“He seemed to live quite frugally, from what I’ve seen.”
“Nobody said music journalism pays well, but there are a lot of fringe benefits.”
“Drugs?”
“I didn’t mean that. Backstage passes to concerts, rubbing shoulders with the rock aristocracy, a bit of cachet with the girls, that sort of thing.”
“I think I’d rather have an extra hundred quid a week,” said Banks.
“Well, I suppose that’s one reason why this business isn’t for you.”
“Fair enough. Why didn’t he have a job on staff?”
“Didn’t want one. We’d have taken him on like a shot, as would the competition, but Nick wanted to keep his independence. He
Banks understood what Butler was talking about. Wasn’t that pretty much what Detective Superintendent Gervaise had said about him that very morning? Stay out of the office, but bring me results.
“How did he get the assignment?”
“He pitched for it. Funnily enough, we’d just had our monthly meeting and decided we wanted to do something on the Hatters. Anniversaries, reunion tours and things like that are usually a good excuse for a reappraisal, or a new revelation.”
“So he rang you?”
“Yes. Just when we were about to ring him. He’d written about them before, only brief pieces and reviews, but insightful. Look, I can give you a few back copies, if you’d like, so you can see the kind of thing he did.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Banks, who knew that he had probably read some of Barber’s pieces in the past. But he didn’t keep his back issues of
“We had a couple of meetings to sharpen things up and came up with a tight brief, a focus for the piece.”
“Which was to be Vic Greaves?”
“Yes. He’s always been the key figure, the mystery man. Troubled genius and all that. And the timing of his leaving couldn’t have been worse for the band. Robin Merchant had just drowned, and they were falling apart. If it hadn’t been for Chris Adams, they might have done. Nick was hoping to get an exclusive interview. That would have been a real scoop, if he could have got Greaves to talk. He also wanted to do something on their early gigs, before Merchant died and Greaves left, contrast their style with the later works.”
“How long would it take Barber to write a feature like that?”
“Anything from two to five months. There’s a lot of background research, for a start, a lot of history to sift through, a lot of people to talk to, and it’s not always easy. You also have to sort out the truth from the apocrypha, and that can be really difficult. You know what they say about the sixties and memory? What they don’t say is that if people can’t remember it, they make it up. But Nick was nothing if not thorough. He was a fine writer. He checked all his facts and his sources. Twice. There’s not a Mad Hatters gig he’d leave unexamined, not a university newspaper review he wouldn’t dig up, not an obscure B-side he wouldn’t listen to a hundred times.”
“How far had he got?”
“Hardly begun. He’d spent a week or two driving around, making phone calls, checking out old venues, that sort of thing. I mean, a lot of the places the original Hatters played don’t even exist anymore. And he might have done a bit of general background, you know, browsed over a few old reviews in the newspaper archives at the British Library. But he planned to get started on the main story up in Yorkshire. He’d only been there a week when… well, you know what happened.”
“Had he sent in any reports?”
“No. I’d spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, that’s all. Apparently he had to go into a public telephone box over the road to ring when he was in Yorkshire. He didn’t have any mobile signal up there.”
“I know,” said Banks. “How did he sound?”
“He was excited, but he was also very cagey. A story like this – I mean if Nick could really get Vic Greaves to open up about the past – well, if someone else got wind of it… you can imagine what that would mean. Ours can be a bit of a cutthroat business.”
