“What about the girl in Cardiff? The one in Plymouth? What about them?”
Adams paled. “You know?”
“It wasn’t that hard once we started following in Nick Barber’s footsteps. He was thorough, and even his killer didn’t manage to obliterate everything he’d found out. Why have you been protecting Vic Greaves all these years?”
“Look at him, Mr. Banks,” said Adams. “What would you do? He’s my oldest friend. We grew up together, for crying out loud. He’s like a baby.”
“He’s a killer. That means he could kill again. You weren’t able to supervise him twenty-four hours a day. I imagine you only came down here because I phoned you and told you things were coming to a head, that I was close to finding out who killed Nick Barber. You guessed where Vic was. He’s been here before, hasn’t he? And told you about it, too, I’ll bet.”
“The place does seem to attract him,” said Adams calmly. “But you’re wrong about the rest. Vic’s no killer.”
At first Banks thought Adams was blowing smoke, but something snagged at his mind, a little thing, and it pulled until it brought a number of other little things tumbling into the open with it. As the wind howled around his head, Banks found himself rearranging the pieces inside and putting them together in a different pattern, one he could have kicked himself for not seeing sooner. He still wasn’t sure about everything yet, but it was all starting to add up. Was Greaves left-handed? He tried to remember from their meeting which hand Greaves had been stirring the stew with, but he couldn’t.
He was certain of one thing, though: when he was watching the Mad Hatters DVD the previous evening with Brian, he had noticed that Robin Merchant played his bass left-handed, like Paul McCartney. He had simply registered it unconsciously at the time, not really made anything of it, or tried to link it to the case. But now, as he thought about it, he realized that the last killing they knew of was on the nineteenth of May, about a month before Robin Merchant’s drowning. Unless there were other, later, incidents that Barber hadn’t uncovered, the timing worked. He glanced at his watch. He had been at Swainsview Lodge for only ten minutes.
“Robin Merchant,” he said.
“Bravo,” said Adams. “Robin Merchant was one sick puppy, as they say. Oh, he was glib and charming enough on the surface, but beyond that it was a case of Jekyll and Hyde. His mind was polluted by all that Aleister Crowley stuff he immersed himself in. Have you heard about Crowley?”
“I know the name,” said Banks.
“He was a drug addict and a womanizer, the self-proclaimed ‘wickedest man in the world.’ The Great Beast. His motto was, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ Robin Merchant took him quite literally. Do you know Robin even tried to justify his ‘sacrifices,’ as he called them to me? He had no conscience, even before he got involved in drugs and black magic and all that shit. It just made him worse, made him think he was more godlike – or more devil-like, I should say. But he hid it so well. He got obsessed with those Los Angeles murders, too, the ritualistic elements. He thought he saw some sort of occult significance in them. I don’t know if you remember, but they finally caught Manson that October, and Robin started to identify with him and his power trip. He saw himself as some sort of messenger of darkness. He didn’t murder rich piggies, though. He murdered beauty and purity. The flower was his signature.”
“What happened?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because you know I’ll find out.”
Adams sighed and stared across the pool as if he were staring across forty years of bad history. He reached in his pockets for a cigarette, dipped his head and cupped his hand to light it against the wind. “I saw him,” he said finally. “The fifth time, in Winchester. You don’t know about that one, do you?”
“No,” said Banks.
“That’s because I saved her life.” Adams spoke without any hint of vanity or self-satisfaction, as if he were stating a mere fact. “I had my suspicions about Robin, and I was about the only one who ever bothered to read the newspapers back then. I saw our reviews, and I read the stories about those girls. At first I thought nothing of it. It’s hard to really believe that the person sitting next to you on the tour bus is a killer. But I should have known. It all kept adding up. Things he said, the way he talked about people. Then I remembered Brimleigh. The first. I still couldn’t be certain it was Robin, couldn’t accept it, I suppose, but I didn’t know where he was at the time.
“Anyway, at Winchester – this would be June, just a week or so before his death – I followed him after the show. There was a girl taking a shortcut through a cemetery, of all places, the fool, and that’s where he pounced. I was just behind him. I shouted something. It was dark, and I don’t know if he recognized me, but he growled at me like some sort of wild animal, then he belted off like nobody’s business. The girl was all right. I made sure she got home okay without letting on who I was. I don’t know if she reported the incident or not, but I heard nothing more of it. Now the problem became what to do about Robin. I talked to him. He didn’t deny it. That’s when he gave me all that Aleister Crowley and Charles Manson crap, trying to justify himself and his actions. I couldn’t let him go on killing people, but at the same time… a trial, conviction… It was unthinkable. I mean, back then, a rock band could get away with most things, but murder… especially that kind of murder. We’d have been tarnished forever, especially in the wake of the Manson family trial. We’d never have survived. The band would never have survived. Vic. I couldn’t allow that to happen to the others after all the hard years they’d put in. Fortunately, the problem took care of itself.”
“No,” said Banks. “You killed Robin Merchant. You weren’t in bed with Tania Hutchison that night. You went to confront him, here, by the pool. I’m not sure whether you intended to kill him, but you saw something unstoppable in him, and you felt you had no other choice. It worked perfectly. So easy.” He glanced over to the terrace. Vic Greaves was still there, apparently listening. “But someone saw you, didn’t he, Chris? Vic saw you.” Fifteen minutes had now passed since Banks arrived.
“I’m not admitting to killing anybody,” said Adams. “You think what you like. You can’t prove a thing.”
“And you killed Nick Barber,” Banks went on. “It was your silver Mercedes the tourist couple and the girl in the youth hostel saw that night. The running figure was just a jogger. It was foolish of me to think that Vic could have done anything like that himself. Everyone was right about him. He might be a bit off in the head, but he’s a gentle soul at heart. Vic was upset, and he told you in that roundabout way of his that a music journalist had come around pestering him with questions about the past, about Brimleigh, Linda Lofthouse and the other murders. Cardiff. Brighton. Plymouth. Questions to which only you and Vic knew the answers. The journalist said he was going to come back. He’d left his card. You didn’t think Vic could take the strain of another interview. You thought he would soon break down and tell all, given what he’d witnessed all those years ago, so you killed Barber. You couldn’t kill Vic, could you, even though he was the one who was carrying the secret, the most obvious victim? Did you know that Linda Lofthouse was Nick Barber’s birth mother?”
Adams put his fist to his chest and seemed to stagger back a pace or two as if he had been hit. “My God, no!” he said. “I’m not admitting to anything,” he went on. “I talked to Robin, yes, made sure that he knew I knew, and that I was watching him. That’s all. The rest was an accident.”
“You killed him to make certain. You knew he wouldn’t stop, that there would be more victims. And you knew he’d get caught eventually and bring it all tumbling down.”
“The world’s a safer place without him, and that’s a fact. But I’m still not admitting anything. I’m guilty of no crime. There’s nothing you can do to me. Anyway, it would have been very easy just to reach out and…” Adams reached out his arm to demonstrate and let his hand fall on Banks’s shoulder. Then he smiled sadly, “…and just give a little push.” Almost twenty minutes now. The cavalry would arrive in moments.
But he didn’t push. Banks, who had tensed, ready for a struggle, felt the hand relax on his shoulder, and he knew that Adams was about to turn away, that he had reached the end of his resources. Killing Nick Barber and seizing his notes was one thing, but killing a copper in cold blood was quite another.
It all happened at once. Before Banks could move or say anything, he heard footsteps running down the lane, and someone shouted out his name. Then he heard a terrible scream from his left and a dark powerful figure came hurtling forward, crashing right into Adams and toppling both of them over into the deep end of the empty pool. The cavalry had arrived, but they were too late.
By the time Annie and Winsome arrived on the scene, the ambulances had been and gone. It was getting dark, and the wind was howling through the trees and the nooks and crannies of Swainsview Lodge fit to wake the dead.
