Piece Of My Heart

“No. Mostly he was coordinating with the performers and roadies, making sure the equipment got set up right and everything went smoothly. There were a few problems with the PA system and so on that he also had to deal with. And he acted as MC, introducing the bands. He was really pretty busy all the time. I don’t think he’d have had a chance to slip away even if he’d wanted to.”

“So he was always in sight?”

“Pretty much. Not always, but most of the time you’d see him out the corner of your eye here and there, running around. There was always somebody wanting him for something.”

“Where was he while Linda was in the woods?”

“I don’t know. Like I told you, I went round to the front to get a good view.”

“Was he there?”

“No. He introduced the band, then he left the stage.”

“Did you see him after that?”

“Come to think of it, no. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he could have had anything to do with what happened.”

“Probably not,” said Chadwick, standing to leave. “It just pays to cover all the angles, that’s all.” He lingered at the door. “Before I leave, tell me how Linda was behaving these past few weeks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did anything out of the ordinary happen?”

“No.”

“Was she upset, depressed or worried about anything?”

“No, she was her usual self. She was saving up to go to India. She was really excited about that.”

Chadwick, who had spent time in India before seeing action in Burma during the war, didn’t understand what there was to get excited about. As far as he was concerned, the place was filthy, hot and unsanitary. Still, it explained the reason for the ?123 13s 5d in her post office account. “Is that all?”

“As far as I know.”

“Had she fought or argued with anyone recently?”

“Not that I know. I doubt it, anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“Linda didn’t like scenes or arguments. She was a peaceful person, easygoing.”

“Did anyone threaten her in any way?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“Was anybody bothering her?”

“No. The only thing that was at all upsetting her was Vic Greaves. They weren’t close or anything, but they were family, and on the two or three occasions we saw the Mad Hatters, he seemed to be getting worse. She thought he ought to be getting treatment, but whenever she mentioned it to Chris, he just said shrinks were government brainwashers and mental hospitals were prisons for the true visionaries. I suppose he had a point.”

“Did either you or Linda try to do anything about Greaves?”

“What do you mean?”

“Persuade him to get treatment.”

“Linda did once, but he refused point-blank.”

“Did you try to change Chris Adams’s mind?”

“It wasn’t his decision,” Tania said. “Look, nobody was going to be party to getting Vic Greaves certified. Simple as that.”

“I see,” said Chadwick. The decision didn’t surprise him after the time he had spent with the Mad Hatters. He would be talking to them again soon anyway. He opened the door and went into the hall. “Many thanks, Miss Hutchison.”

“No problem.”

“I must say you seem to be one of the most sensible people I’ve talked to since all this began.”

Tania gave him an enigmatic smile. “Don’t count on it,” she said. “Appearances can be deceptive.”

Thursday, 18th September, 1969

Perhaps it was the spices he had smelled in Portobello Road that sparked it – they say smell is closest to memory – or maybe it was even going to see The Battle of Britain after his visit to Tania Hutchison that brought it all back, but Chadwick awoke in his hotel bed at 3:00 a.m. in a cold sweat. He couldn’t say that it was a dream, because it had actually happened, but he had buried it so deeply in his subconscious that when it rose up, as it did from time to time, it did so in a jumble of images so vivid they were almost surreal.

Buried under two bodies, mouth and nose full of sand on Gold Beach, the air all smoke and fire, bullets cracking and thudding into the sand nearby, blood seeping through his uniform, the man on top of him whimpering as he died, crying for his mother. Charging the bunkers with Taffy in Burma. Taffy wounded, his guts poking out, stumbling forward into the gunfire, diving into the bunker of Japanese soldiers, knowing he was going to die and pulling the pin on his hand grenade. Bits of people raining down on Chadwick: an eyeball, pieces of brain, blood and tissue.

And so it went on, a series of fragmented nightmare images from the Burmese jungle and the Normandy beaches. He not only saw and heard but smelled it all again in his dream – the gunfire, smoke, heat – tasted the sand in his mouth.

He feared that there would be no more sleep tonight, so he sat up, took the glass of water he had left on his bedside table and drank it down, then went to refill it. Still hours to go until dawn. And these were the worst hours, the hours when his fears got the better of him. The only solution was to get up and do something to take his mind off it all. He wasn’t going to go walking around King’s Cross at this hour in the morning, so he turned on the bedside light, took Alistair MacLean’s Force Ten from Navarone out of his overnight bag and settled back on the pillows to read. By the time the pale glow of sunrise started spreading over the city from the east, his book had fallen on his chest and he was snoring quietly in a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In a village like Lyndgarth, Banks knew, the best way to find out about any resident was to ask at the local pub or at the post office. In the case of Vic Greaves, it was Jean Murray, in the post office-cum-newsagent’s, who directed him toward the last cottage on the left on Darlington Road, telling him that “Mr. Jones” had been there for a few years now, was definitely a bit strange, not quite right in the head, but that he seemed harmless enough, and he always paid his newspaper bill on time. He was a bit of a recluse, she added, and he didn’t like visitors. She had no idea what he did with his time, but there had been no complaints about him. Her daughter, Susan, added that he had few visitors, but she had seen a couple of cars come and go. She couldn’t describe them.

Banks left his car parked on the cobbles by the village green. It was another miserable day, with wind and rain from the east, for a change, and the flagstone roofs of the houses looked as dark green as moss pools. Bare tree branches waved beyond the TV aerials, and beyond them lay the washed-out backdrop of a dishwater-gray sky.

At the top right of the village green, between the old Burgundy Hotel and the dark, squat Methodist chapel, a narrow lane led down toward a wooded beck. On each side was a terrace of small, one-up-one-down limestone cottages, once used to house farm laborers. Banks stood for a moment in front of the end one on the left and listened. He could hear no signs of life, see no lights. The downstairs curtains were closed, but the upstairs ones were open, as were the windows.

Finally, he knocked on the door.

Nothing happened, so he knocked again, harder this time.

When it seemed that no one was going to answer, the door opened and a figure stood there, looking anxious. It was hard to say whether it was Vic Greaves or not, as Banks only had the old group photographs to go by, when Greaves had been a promising twenty-something rock star. Now he must be in his late fifties, Banks thought, but he