Piece Of My Heart

look through the old MOJO magazines that John Butler had given to him in London.

It didn’t take him very long to figure out that Nick Barber knew his stuff. In addition to pieces on the Mad Hatters from time to time, there were also articles on Shelagh MacDonald, JoAnn Kelly, Comus and Bridget St. John. His interest in the Hatters seemed to have started, as Banks had been told, about five years ago, well after his original interest in music, which he seemed to have had since he was a teenager.

Childhood. Now Banks remembered the little frisson of possibility he had experienced when Simon Bradley had talked about Linda Lofthouse’s unwanted pregnancy.

It shouldn’t be too hard to find out whether he was right, he decided, picking up the phone and looking up the Barbers’ number in the case file.

When he got Louise Barber on the phone, Banks told her who he was and said, “I know this is probably an odd question, and it’s not meant to be in any way disturbing or upsetting, but was Nick adopted?”

There was a short pause, followed by a sob. “Yes,” she said. “We adopted him when he was only days old. We raised him as if he were our own and that’s how we always think of him.”

“I’m sure you did,” said Banks. “Believe me, there’s no hint of criticism here. I wouldn’t expect it to enter your head at such a time, and from all I’ve found out, Nick led a healthy and happy life with many advantages he probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s just that… well, did he know? Did you tell him?”

“Yes,” said Louise Barber. “We told him a long time ago, as soon as we thought he would be able to absorb it.”

“And what did he do?”

“Then? Nothing. He said that as far as he was concerned, we were his parents and that was all there was to it.”

“Did he ever get curious about his birth mother?”

“It’s funny, but he did, yes.”

“When was this?”

“About five or six years ago.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He told us he didn’t want us to think there was a problem, or that it was anything to do with us, but a friend of his who was also adopted told him it was important to find out. He said something about it making him whole, complete.”

“Did he find her?”

“He didn’t really talk to us about it much after that. You have to understand, we found it all a bit upsetting, and Nicholas was careful not to hurt us. He told us he found out who she was, but we have no idea if he traced her or met her.”

“Do you remember her name? Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. Linda Lofthouse. But that’s all I know. We asked him not to talk to us about her again.”

“The name is enough,” said Banks. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Barber, and I do apologize for bringing up difficult memories.”

“I suppose it can’t be helped. Surely this can’t have anything to do with… with what happened to Nicholas?”

“We don’t know. Right now, it’s just another piece of information to add to the puzzle. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Banks hung up and thought. So Nick Barber was Linda Lofthouse’s son. He must have found out that his mother had been murdered only a couple of years after he was born, and that she was Vic Greaves’s cousin, which no doubt fueled his interest in the Mad Hatters, already present to some extent because of his interest in the music of the period.

But the knowledge raised a number of new questions for Banks. Had Barber accepted the standard version of her murder? Did he believe that Patrick McGarrity had killed his mother? Or had he found out something else? If he had stumbled across something that indicated McGarrity was innocent, or had not acted alone, then he might easily have blundered into a situation without knowing how dangerous it was. But it all depended on whether or not Chadwick had been right about McGarrity. It was time to head for Leeds and have a chat with Ken Blackstone.

Banks made it to Leeds in little over an hour, coming off New York Road at Eastgate and heading for Millgarth, the Leeds Police Headquarters at about half past three on Thursday afternoon. Like many things, he supposed, this business could have been conducted over the telephone, but he preferred personal contact, if possible. Somehow, little nuances and vague impressions didn’t quite make it over the phone lines.

Ken Blackstone was waiting in his office, a tiny space partitioned at the end of a room full of busy detectives, nattily dressed as ever in his best Next pinstripe, dazzling white shirt and maroon-and-gray-striped tie, held in place by a silver pin in the shape of a fountain pen. With his wispy gray hair curling over his ears and his gold-framed reading glasses, he looked more like a university professor than a police officer. He and Banks had known one another for years, and Banks thought Ken was the closest he had to a friend, next to Dirty Dick Burgess, but Burgess was in London.

“First off,” said Blackstone, “I thought you might like to see this.” He slid a photograph across his desk and Banks turned it to face him. It showed the head and shoulders of a man in his early forties, perhaps, neat black hair plastered flat with Brylcreem, hard, angled face, straight nose and square jaw with a slight dimple. But it was the eyes that caught Banks’s attention the most. They gave nothing away except, perhaps, for a slight hint of dark shadows in their depths. If eyes were supposed to be the windows to the soul, these were the blackout curtains. This was a hard, haunted, uncompromising man, Banks thought. And a moral one. He didn’t know why, and realized he was being a bit fanciful, but he sensed a hint of hard religion in the man’s background. Hardly surprising, as there had been plenty of that around in both Scotland and Yorkshire over the years. “Interesting,” Banks said, passing it back. “Stanley Chadwick, I assume?”

Blackstone nodded. “Taken on his promotion to detective inspector in October 1965.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, it’s a bit noisy and stuffy in here. Fancy heading out for a coffee?”

“I’m all coffeed out,” said Banks, “but maybe we can have a late lunch? I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“Fine with me. I’m not hungry, but I’ll join you.”

They left Millgarth and walked on to Eastgate. It had turned into a fine day, with that mix of cloud and sun you got so often in Yorkshire when it wasn’t raining, and just chilly enough for a raincoat or light overcoat.

“Did you manage to find out anything?” Banks asked.

“I’ve done a bit of digging,” said Blackstone, “and it looks like pretty solid investigating on the surface of it.”

“Only on the surface?”

“I haven’t dug that deeply yet. And remember, it was essentially a North Yorkshire case, so most of the paperwork’s up there.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “I was just wondering about the West Yorkshire angle, and about Chadwick himself.”

“DI Chadwick was on loan to the North Yorkshire Constabulary. From what I can glean, he’d had a few successes here since his promotion and was a bit of a golden boy at the time.”

“I heard he was tough, and he certainly looks that way.”

“I never knew him personally, but I managed to turn up a couple of retired officers who did. He was a hard man, by all accounts, but fair and honest, and he got results. He had a strong Scottish Presbyterian background, but one of his old colleagues told me he thought he’d lost his faith during the war. Hardly bloody surprising when you consider the poor sod saw action in Burma and was part of the D-day invasion.”

“Where is he now?”

They waited until the lights changed, then crossed Vicar Lane. “Dead,” Blackstone said finally. “According to our personnel records, Stanley Chadwick died in March 1973.”

“So young?” said Banks. “That must have been a hell of a shock for all concerned. He would only have been in his early fifties.”

“Apparently, his health had been in decline for a couple of years,” Blackstone said. “He’d had a lot of sick time, and performancewise there were rumors that he was dragging his feet. He retired due to ill health in late