“Swainsview Lodge has been empty for a few years now,” Banks said. “Ever since Lord Jessop died of AIDS in 1997. There were no heirs.” And nobody wanted the old pile of stone, Banks remembered. It cost too much to keep up, for a start, and it needed a lot of work. A couple of hotel chains had shown a brief interest, but the foot-and-mouth business had soon scared them off, and there was at one time talk of the lodge being converted into a convention center, but nothing had come of it. “Tell me more about Nick Barber,” he said.
“Not much to tell, really,” said Butler.
“How did he get into the business? According to his parents, he had no training in journalism.”
“This might sound a bit odd to you, but journalistic training is rarely encouraged in this line of work. Too many bad habits. Naturally, we require writing ability, but we judge that for ourselves. What counts most is love of the music.”
That would suit Banks right down to the ground, he thought, if only he could write. “And Nick Barber had that?”
“In spades. And he had in-depth knowledge on all sorts of genres, too, including jazz and some classical. Like I said, a remarkable mind, and a tragic loss.”
“How long had he been writing for you?”
“About seven or eight years, on and off.”
“And his interest in the Mad Hatters?”
“The last five years or so.”
“He seemed to live quite frugally, from what I’ve seen.”
“Nobody said music journalism pays well, but there are a lot of fringe benefits.”
“Drugs?”
“I didn’t mean that. Backstage passes to concerts, rubbing shoulders with the rock aristocracy, a bit of cachet with the girls, that sort of thing.”
“I think I’d rather have an extra hundred quid a week,” said Banks.
“Well, I suppose that’s one reason why this business isn’t for you.”
“Fair enough. Why didn’t he have a job on staff?”
“Didn’t want one. We’d have taken him on like a shot, as would the competition, but Nick wanted to keep his independence. He liked being a freelancer. To be quite frank, some people just don’t function at their best in an office environment, and I think Nick was one of them. He liked the freedom to roam, but he always delivered on deadline.”
Banks understood what Butler was talking about. Wasn’t that pretty much what Detective Superintendent Gervaise had said about him that very morning? Stay out of the office, but bring me results.
“How did he get the assignment?”
“He pitched for it. Funnily enough, we’d just had our monthly meeting and decided we wanted to do something on the Hatters. Anniversaries, reunion tours and things like that are usually a good excuse for a reappraisal, or a new revelation.”
“So he rang you?”
“Yes. Just when we were about to ring him. He’d written about them before, only brief pieces and reviews, but insightful. Look, I can give you a few back copies, if you’d like, so you can see the kind of thing he did.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Banks, who knew that he had probably read some of Barber’s pieces in the past. But he didn’t keep his back issues of MOJO. The pile just got too high. “What was the next step?”
“We had a couple of meetings to sharpen things up and came up with a tight brief, a focus for the piece.”
“Which was to be Vic Greaves?”
“Yes. He’s always been the key figure, the mystery man. Troubled genius and all that. And the timing of his leaving couldn’t have been worse for the band. Robin Merchant had just drowned, and they were falling apart. If it hadn’t been for Chris Adams, they might have done. Nick was hoping to get an exclusive interview. That would have been a real scoop, if he could have got Greaves to talk. He also wanted to do something on their early gigs, before Merchant died and Greaves left, contrast their style with the later works.”
“How long would it take Barber to write a feature like that?”
“Anything from two to five months. There’s a lot of background research, for a start, a lot of history to sift through, a lot of people to talk to, and it’s not always easy. You also have to sort out the truth from the apocrypha, and that can be really difficult. You know what they say about the sixties and memory? What they don’t say is that if people can’t remember it, they make it up. But Nick was nothing if not thorough. He was a fine writer. He checked all his facts and his sources. Twice. There’s not a Mad Hatters gig he’d leave unexamined, not a university newspaper review he wouldn’t dig up, not an obscure B-side he wouldn’t listen to a hundred times.”
“How far had he got?”
“Hardly begun. He’d spent a week or two driving around, making phone calls, checking out old venues, that sort of thing. I mean, a lot of the places the original Hatters played don’t even exist anymore. And he might have done a bit of general background, you know, browsed over a few old reviews in the newspaper archives at the British Library. But he planned to get started on the main story up in Yorkshire. He’d only been there a week when… well, you know what happened.”
“Had he sent in any reports?”
“No. I’d spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, that’s all. Apparently he had to go into a public telephone box over the road to ring when he was in Yorkshire. He didn’t have any mobile signal up there.”
“I know,” said Banks. “How did he sound?”
“He was excited, but he was also very cagey. A story like this – I mean if Nick could really get Vic Greaves to open up about the past – well, if someone else got wind of it… you can imagine what that would mean. Ours can be a bit of a cutthroat business.”
“We really need to know where Vic Greaves lives,” said Banks.
“I understand that, and if I knew his address, I’d tell you. Nick mentioned a village called Lyndgarth in North Yorkshire. I’ve never heard of it, but apparently it’s near Eastvale, if that’s any help. That’s all I know.”
Banks knew that he ought to be able to find Vic Greaves in Lyndgarth easily enough. “I know it,” he said. “It’s very close to where Nick was staying. Walking distance, in fact. Do you happen to know if he had already spoken to Greaves?”
“Once.”
“And?”
“It didn’t go well. According to Nick, Greaves freaked out, refused to talk, as usual, sent him packing. To be honest, I very much doubt you’ll get any sense out of him.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Nobody knows. He went strange, that’s all. Has been for years.”
“When did Nick talk to him?”
“He didn’t say. Sometime last week.”
“What day did he phone you?”
“Friday, Friday morning.”
“What was he going to do?”
“Talk to Greaves again. Work out a different approach. Nick was good. He’d simply tested the waters. He’d have found something to catch Greaves’s interest, some common ground, and he’d have taken it from there.”
“Have you any idea,” Banks asked, “why this story should have cost Nick Barber his life?”
“None at all,” said Butler, spreading his hands. “I still can’t really believe that it did. I mean, maybe what happened was nothing to do with the Hatters. Have you considered that? Maybe it was an irate husband. Bit of a swordsman, was our Nick.”
“Any husband in particular who might have wanted him dead recently?”
“Not that I know of. He never seemed to stick with anyone for long, especially if they started to get clingy. He liked his independence. And the music always got in the way. Most of our guys live alone in flats, when you get right down to it. They’d rather be ferreting out old vinyl on Berwick Street than go out with a girl. They’re loners, obsessed.”
“So Nick Barber would love ’em and leave ’em?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe it was an irate girlfriend, then?”
Butler laughed uneasily.
Banks thought of Kelly Soames again, but he didn’t think she had killed Nick Barber, and not only because of the discrepancy in timing. There was still her father, though, Calvin Soames. He had disappeared from the pub for fifteen minutes, and nobody had seen him return to his farm in Lyndgarth to check the gas ring. Admittedly, it was a bad night, and the farm was off the beaten track, but it was still worth further consideration. The question was, had Soames been hiding the fact that he knew about Barber and Kelly? Banks couldn’t tell. And if he had done it, why take all Barber’s stuff?