Piece Of My Heart

“This is the drug addict who fell into the swimming pool thirty-five years ago?”

“Yes, ma’am, though I’m not certain that he was actually an addict. Not technically speaking.”

Superintendent Gervaise sighed theatrically, ran her hand over her layered blond hair, then looked at Banks. “Very well, DCI Banks. I see you’re hell-bent and determined on following this up, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll bear with you for the moment and assume there might be something in it. But DI Cabbot sticks with the Soameses. Okay?”

“Fine,” said Banks. He turned to Templeton. “Well, then, Kev. Where is he?”

Templeton glanced at Superintendent Gervaise again before answering. “Er… he’s in Whitby, sir.”

“That’s nice and handy, then, isn’t it?” Banks said. “I quite fancy a day at the seaside.”

The sun was out again when Banks began his descent from the North York Moors down into Whitby. It was a sight that always stirred him, even in the most gloomy weather, but today the sky was milky blue, and the sun shone on the ruined abbey high on the hill and sparkled like diamonds on the North Sea beyond the dark pincers of the harbor walls.

Retired Detective Inspector Keith Enderby lived in West Cliff, where the houses straggled off the A174 toward Sandsend. At least his fifties pebbledash semi had a sea view, even if it was only a few square feet between the houses opposite. Other than that, it was an unremarkable house on an unremarkable estate, Banks thought, as he pulled up behind the gray Mondeo parked at the front. “Mondeo Man.” A journalistically contrived representative of a certain kind of middle-class Briton. Was that what Enderby had become?

On the phone, Enderby had indicated that he was keen enough to talk about the Robin Merchant case, and in person he welcomed Banks into his home with a smile and handshake, introduced his wife, Rita, a small, quiet woman with a halo of pinkish-gray hair. Rita offered tea or coffee and Banks went for tea. It came with the requisite plate of chocolate digestives, arrowroots and Kit Kats, from which Banks was urged to help himself. He did. After a few pleasantries, at a nod from her husband, Rita made herself scarce, muttering something about errands in town, and drove off in the gray Mondeo. “Mondeo Woman,” then, Banks thought. Enderby said something about what a wonderful woman she was. Banks agreed. It seemed the polite thing to do.

“Nice place to retire to,” Banks said. “How long have you been here?”

“Going on for ten years now,” Enderby said. “I put in my twenty-five years and a few more besides. Finished up as a DI in South Yorkshire Police, Doncaster. But Rita always dreamed of living by the seaside and we used to come here for our holidays.”

“And you?”

“Well, the Costa del Sol would have suited me just fine, but we couldn’t afford it. Besides, Rita won’t leave the country. Foreigners begin at Calais and all that. She doesn’t even have a passport. Can you believe it?”

“You probably wouldn’t have liked it there,” Banks said. “Too many villains.”

“Whitby’s all right,” said Enderby, “and not short of a villain or two, either. I could do without all those bloody Goths, mind you.”

Banks knew that Whitby’s close association with Bram Stoker’s Dracula made the place a point of pilgrimage for Goths, but as far as he knew they were harmless enough kids, caused no trouble, and if they wanted to wear black all the time and drink a little of one another’s blood now and then, it was fine with him. The sun flashed on the square of sea through the houses opposite. “I appreciate your agreeing to talk to me,” Banks said.

“No problem. I just don’t know that I can add much you don’t already know. It was all in the case files.”

“If you’re anything like me,” Banks said, “you often have a feeling, call it a gut instinct or whatever, that you don’t think belongs in the files. Or a personal impression, something interesting but that seems irrelevant to the actual case itself.”

“It was a long time ago,” Enderby said. “I probably wouldn’t remember anything like that now.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Banks. “It was a high-profile case, I should imagine. Interesting times back then, too. Rubbing shoulders with rock stars and aristos and all that.”

“Oh, it was interesting, all right. Pink Floyd. The Who. I met them all. More tea?”

Banks held out his cup while Enderby poured. His gold wedding band was embedded deeply in his pudgy finger, surrounded by a tuft of hair. “You’d have been how old then?” Banks asked.

“In 1970? Just turned thirty that May.”

That would be about right, Banks guessed. Enderby looked to be in his mid-sixties now, with the comfortable paunch of a man who enjoys his inactivity and a head bereft of even a hint of a hair. He made up for the lack with a gray scrubbing-brush mustache. A delicate pink pattern of broken blood vessels mapped his cheeks and nose, but Banks put it down to blood pressure rather than drink. Enderby didn’t talk or act like a boozer, and his breath didn’t smell of Trebor Extra-Strong mints.

“So what was it like working on that case?” Banks asked. “What do you remember most about the Robin Merchant investigation?”

Enderby screwed up his eyes and gazed out of the window. “It must have been about ten o’clock by the time we got to the scene,” he said. “It was a beautiful morning, I do remember that. Clear. Warm. Birds singing. And there he was, floating in the pool.”

“What was your first impression?”

Enderby thought for a moment, then he gave a brief, barking laugh and put his cup down on the saucer. “Do you know what it was?” he said. “You’ll never believe this. He was on his back, naked, you know, and I remember thinking he’d got such a little prick for a famous rock star. You know, all the stuff we heard back then about groupies and orgies. The News of the World and all that. We assumed they were all hung like horses. It just seemed so incongruous, him floating there all shriveled, like a shrimp or a seahorse or something. It was the water, of course. No matter how warm the day was, the water was still cold.”

“That’ll do it every time. Were the others up and around when you arrived?”

“You must be joking. The uniforms were just rousing them. If it hadn’t been for Merchant’s drowning and our arrival, they’d probably have slept until well into the afternoon. They looked in pretty bad shape, too, some of them. Hungover and worse.”

“So who phoned it in?”

“The gardener, when he arrived for work.”

“Was he a suspect?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Many hangers-on and groupies around?”

“It’s hard to say. According to their statements, everyone was a close friend of the band. I mean, no one actually admitted to being a groupie or a hanger-on. Most of the guys in the band were just with their regular girlfriends.”

“What about Robin Merchant? Was he with anyone that night?”

“There was a girl asleep in his bed,” said Enderby.

“Girlfriend?”

“Groupie.”

“According to what I’ve read,” Banks said, “the thinking at the time was that Merchant had taken some Mandrax and was wandering around the pool naked when he fell in at the shallow end, hit his head on the bottom and drowned. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Enderby. “That was what it looked like, and that’s what the pathologist confirmed. There was also a broken glass on the edge of the pool with Merchant’s fingerprints on it. He’d been drinking. Vodka.”

“Did you consider other possible scenarios?”

“Such as?”

“That it wasn’t accidental.”

“You mean somebody pushed him?”

“It would be a natural assumption. You know what suspicious minds we coppers have.”

“True enough,” Enderby agreed. “I must admit, it crossed my mind, but I soon ruled it out.”

“Why?”

“Nobody had any motive.”

“Not according to what they told you.”