looked much older. Round-shouldered with a sagging stomach the size of a football, he wore a black T-shirt with a silver Harley Davidson on the front, baggy jeans and no shoes or socks. His eyes were bruised and hollow, his dry skin pale and lined. He was either bald or shaved his head regularly, and that accentuated the boniness of his cheeks and the hollowness of his eyes. He looked ill to Banks, and light-years from the pretty young boy all the girls adored, who had set the career of the Mad Hatters in motion.
“I’m looking for Vic Greaves,” Banks said.
“He’s not here today,” the man said, his expression unchanging.
“Are you sure?” Banks asked.
This seemed to puzzle the man and cause him some distress. “He might have been. He might have been, if he hadn’t been trying to go home. But his car’s broken down. The wheels won’t work.”
“Pardon?”
Suddenly, the man smiled, revealing a mouthful of stained and crooked teeth, with the odd gap here and there, and said, “He’s nothing to do with me.” Then he turned and walked back inside the house, leaving the door wide open. Puzzled, Banks followed him. The door led straight into the front room, the same as it did in Banks’s own cottage. Because the curtains were closed, the downstairs was in semidarkness, but even in the poor light Banks could see that the room was cluttered with piles of books, newspapers and magazines. There was a slight odor of sour milk about the place, and of cheese that had been left out of the fridge too long, but a better smell mingled with it: olive oil, garlic and herbs.
Banks followed the man through to the back, which was the kitchen, where a bit more light filtered in through the grimy windows and past half-open floral curtains. Inside, the place was spotlessly clean and neat, all the pots and pans gleaming on their wall hooks, dishes and cups sparkling in their glass-fronted cupboards. Whatever Greaves’s problem was – and Banks believed he was Greaves – it didn’t stop him from taking care of his home better than most bachelors Banks had known. The man stood with his back to Banks, stirring a pot on the gas range.
“Are you Vic Greaves?” Banks asked.
No answer.
“Look,” said Banks, “I’m a police officer. DCI Banks. Alan, my name is Alan. I need to talk to you. Are you Vic Greaves?”
The man half turned. “Alan?” he said, peering curiously at Banks. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know any Alans. I
“I just told you. I’m a police officer. No, you don’t know me.”
“They weren’t really meant to grow so high, you know,” the man said, turning back to his pot. “Sometimes the rain does good things.”
“What?”
“The hillsides drink it.”
Banks tried to position himself so that he could see the man’s face. When the man half turned again and saw him, he looked surprised. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he had genuinely forgotten Banks’s presence.
“I told you. I’m a policeman. I want to ask you some questions about Nick Barber. He did come and talk to you, didn’t he? Do you remember?”
The man shook his head, and his face turned sad for a moment. “Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” he said.
“Vic Greaves is in the woods?” Banks asked. “Who are you?”
“No,” he said. “He had to get some stuff, you know, he needed it for the stew.”
“You went to the woods earlier?”
“He sometimes walks there on nice days. It’s peaceful. He likes to listen to the birds and look at the leaves and the mushrooms.”
“Do you live here alone?”
He sighed. “I’m just passing through.”
“Tell me about Nick Barber.”
He stopped stirring and faced Banks, his expression still blank, unreadable. “Someone came here.”
“That’s right. His name was Nick Barber. When did he come? Do you remember?”
The man said nothing, just stared at Banks in a disturbing way. Banks was beginning to feel thoroughly unnerved by the entire experience. Was Greaves off his face on drugs or something? Was he likely to turn violent at any moment? If so, there was a handy rack of kitchen knives within his reach. “Look,” he said, “Nick Barber is dead. Somebody killed him. Can you remember anything about what he said?”
“Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” the man said again.
“Yes, but this man, Nick Barber. What did he ask you about? Was it about Robin Merchant’s death? Was it about Swainsview Lodge?”
The man put his hands over his ears and hung his head. “Vic can’t hear this,” he said. “Vic
“Think. Surely you can remember? Do you remember Swainsview Lodge?”
But Greaves was just counting now. “One, two, three, four, five…”
Banks tried to talk, but the counting got louder. In the end, he gave up, turned away and left. He would have to come back. There had to be a way of getting some answers from Vic Greaves.
On his way out of the village, Banks passed a sleek silver Merc, but thought nothing of it. All the way back to the station he thought about the strange experience he had just had, and even Pink Floyd’s “I Remember a Day” on the stereo could not dispel his gloom.
“Kev. What have you dug up?” Annie Cabbot asked, when a dusty and clearly disgruntled DS Templeton trudged over to her desk and flopped down on the visitor’s chair early that afternoon.
Templeton sighed. “We ought to do something about that basement,” he said. “It’s a bloody health hazard.” He brushed some dust off his sixty quid Topman distressed jeans and plonked a collection of files on the desk. “It’s all here, ma’am,” he said. “What there is of it, anyway.”
“Kev, I’ve told you before not to call me ma’am. I know that Detective Superintendent Gervaise insists on it, but that’s her prerogative. A simple ‘guv’ will suffice, if you must.”
“Right, Guv.”
“Give me a quick run-down.”
“Top and bottom of it is,” said Templeton, “that there was no full investigation, as such. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, and that was the end of it.”
“No reservations?”
“Not so far as I can tell, Guv.”
“Who was in the house at the time?”
“It’s all in that file, there.” Templeton tapped a thick buff folder. “For what it’s worth. Statements and everything. Basically, there were the band members, their manager, Lord Jessop, and various assorted girlfriends, groupies and hangers-on. They’re all named on the list, and they were all questioned.”
Annie scanned the list quickly and put it aside. Nothing, or no one, she hadn’t expected, though most of the names meant nothing to her.
“It happened after a private party to celebrate the success of their second album, which was called – get this –
“That’s Blake,” Annie said. “William Blake. My dad used to quote him all the time.”
“Sounds like a right load of bollocks to me,” Templeton said. “Anyway, the album was recorded at Swainsview Lodge over the winter of 1969-1970. Lord Jessop had let them convert an old banquet room he didn’t use first into a rehearsal space and then into a private recording studio. Quite a lot of bands used it over the next few years.”
“So what happened on the night of the party?”
“Everybody swore Merchant was fine when things wound up around two or three o’clock, but the next morning the gardener found him floating on his back, naked, in the pool. The postmortem found a drug called Mandrax in his system.”
“What’s that?”
