Now he just had to find number eight. It wasn’t on the ground floor, nor the first, but on the second floor, facing the front. That landing had another shared pay phone, and again Chadwick copied down the numbers. It smelled a little better up here, mostly due to the burning incense coming from one of the rooms, but the bulb was bare and cast a thankfully weak light on the shabby decor. Chadwick could hear soft music coming from inside number eight, guitars and flutes and some sort of oriental percussion. A good sign.

He tapped on the door. A few moments later, it opened on the chain. He wasn’t in yet, but he was close. “Are you Tania Hutchison?” he asked.

“I’m Tania,” she said. “Who wants to know?”

Chadwick thought he detected an American accent. Only a thin strip of her face showed, but he could see what Dennis Nokes had meant about her good looks. “I’m Detective Inspector Chadwick,” he said, holding up his warrant card. “It’s about Linda Lofthouse.”

“Linda? Of course.”

“Do you mind if I come in?”

She looked at him for a moment – he could see only one eye – and he sensed she was calculating what was her best option. In the end the door shut, and when it opened again it opened all the way. “All right,” she said.

Chadwick followed her into an L-shaped room, the smaller part of which was taken up with a tiny kitchen. The rest was sparsely furnished, perhaps because there was so little space. There was no carpet on the floor, only old wood. A mattress covered in red cheesecloth and scattered with cushions sat against one wall, and in front of that stood a low glass table holding a vase of flowers, a copy of the Evening Standard, an ashtray and a book called The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Chadwick had never heard of Hermann Hesse, but he had the feeling he would be safer sticking to Dick Francis, Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. An acoustic guitar leaned against one wall.

Tania stretched out on the mattress, leaning against the wall, and Chadwick grabbed one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs. The room seemed clean and bright, with a colorful abstract painting on the wall and a little light coming in through the sash window, but there was no disguising the essential decrepitude of the house and neighborhood.

The woman was as Dennis Nokes and Robin Merchant had described her, petite, attractive, with white teeth and glossy dark hair down to her waist. She was wearing flared jeans and a thin cotton blouse that left little to the imagination. She reached for a packet of Pall Mall filter-tipped and lit one. “I just found out yesterday,” she said, blowing out smoke. “About Linda.”

“How?”

“The newspaper. I’ve been away.”

“How long?”

“Nine days.”

It made sense. Chadwick had only discovered Linda Lofthouse’s identity from Carol Wilkinson on Saturday, so it hadn’t really hit the papers and other news media until Monday, and now it was Wednesday, ten days since the Brimleigh Festival had ended and the body was discovered. Looking at Tania, he could see that she had been crying; the tears had dried and crusted on her flawless olive skin, and her big green eyes were glassy.

“Where were you?” Chadwick asked.

“In France, with my boyfriend. He’s studying in Paris. The Sorbonne. I just got back yesterday.”

“I assume we could check that?”

“Go ahead.” She gave him a name and a telephone number in Paris. It wasn’t much use to Chadwick. The guy was her boyfriend, after all, and he would probably swear black was white for her. But he had to go through the motions.

“You were at Brimleigh, though?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what I want to talk about.”

Tania blew out some smoke and reached for the ashtray on the table, cradling it on her lap between her crossed legs.

“What happened there?” Chadwick went on.

“What do you mean, ‘What happened there?’ Lots of things happened there. It was a festival, a celebration.”

“Of what?”

“Youth. Music. Life. Love. Peace. Things you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Chadwick. “I was young once.” He was getting used to being criticized by these people for being old and square, and as it didn’t bother him in the least, it seemed easier just to brush it aside with a glib comment, like water off a duck’s back. What he still didn’t understand, though, despite Enderby’s explanation, was why intelligent young people from good homes wanted to come to places like this and live in squalor, probably hardly eating a healthy meal from one day to the next. Were all the sex and drugs you wanted worth such a miserable existence?

Tania managed a little smile. “It was different then.”

“You can say that again. Swing. Jitterbug. Glenn Miller. Tommy Dorsey. Henry Hall. Harry Roy. Nat Gonella. Al Bowlly. Real music. And the war, of course.”

“We choose not to fight in wars.”

“It must be nice to believe that you have a choice,” said Chadwick, feeling the anger rise the way it did when he heard such pat comments. He was keen to steer back to the topic at hand. They’d sidetrack you, these people, put you on the defensive, and before you knew it you’d be arguing about war and revolution. “Look, I’d just like to know the story of you and Linda: how you came to be at Brimleigh, why you didn’t leave together, what happened. Is that so difficult?”

“Not at all. We drove up on Sunday morning. I’ve got an old Mini.”

“Just the two of you?”

“That’s about all you can fit in a Mini if you want to be comfortable.”

“And you were only there for the one day?”

“Yes. The Mad Hatters said they could get backstage passes for us, but only for the day they were there. That was Sunday. To be honest, we didn’t really feel like sitting around in a muddy field in Yorkshire for three days.”

That was about the first sensible thing Chadwick had heard a young person say in a long time. “When did you arrive?”

“Early afternoon.”

“Were the Mad Hatters there already?”

“They were around.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, it was great, really. We got to park where the bands parked, and we could just come and go as we pleased.”

“What was going on back there?”

“Music, mostly, believe it or not. When the bands were playing you could get around the front, in the press enclosure, if there was room. That was where you got the best view in the entire place.”

“The rest of the time?”

“It’s sort of like a garden party round the back. You know, a beer tent, food, tables and chairs, someone plucking on a guitar, conversation, jamming, dancing. Like a big club and a restaurant rolled into one. It got a bit chaotic at times, especially between bands when the roadies were running back and forth, but mostly it was great fun.”

“I understand there were caravans for some of the stars.”

“People need privacy. And, you know, if you wanted somewhere to go and… Well, I don’t have to spell it out, do I?”

“Did you go to a caravan with anyone?”

Her eyes widened and her skin flushed. “That’s hardly a question a gentleman would ask of a lady. And I can’t see as it has any bearing on what happened to Linda.”

“So nobody needed to go into the woods for privacy?”

“No. It was like we had our own little community, and there was no one there to lay down the law, to tell us what to do. A perfect anarchist state.”

Chadwick thought that was something of a contradiction in terms, but he didn’t bother pointing it out. He didn’t want to get sidetracked again. “Who did you spend your time with?” he asked.

“Lots of people. I suppose I was with Chris Adams a fair bit. He’s the Hatters’ manager. A nice guy. Smart and sensitive.” She smiled. “And not too stoned to have a decent conversation with.”

Interesting, Chadwick thought, that Adams hadn’t mentioned this. But why would he? It would only connect him with events from which he wanted to distance himself and his group. “Were you with him during Led Zeppelin’s performance?”