Tania frowned. “No. I was out front, in the press enclosure. I suppose he might have been there, but it was really crowded and dark. I don’t remember seeing him.”

“You’re American, I understand,” Chadwick said.

“Canadian, actually. But a lot of people make that mistake. And don’t worry, I’m here legally, work permit and all. My parents were born here. Scotland. Strathclyde. My father was a professor at the university there.”

A professor’s daughter, no less. And no doubt they had moved to Canada because he was better paid over there. Even less reason, then, for Tania to be spending her days in a tiny, shabby bedsit in Notting Hill. “So what about Linda?” he asked. “Did she disappear into any caravans?”

“Not that I saw. Look, Linda got a bit claustrophobic, developed a headache, and when Led Zeppelin came on, she told me she was going for a walk in the woods. I told her I’d probably be heading back home as soon as they finished because I wanted to catch a bit of sleep before taking the ferry over to see my boyfriend, Jeff. She told me not to worry about her, she had friends she could stay with. I knew that. I’d been up with her before and met them. It was a place in Leeds, where she used to live before she moved to London.”

“Bayswater Terrace?”

“That sounds right.”

“So she told you she would stay there?”

“Not in so many words. Only that she wasn’t planning on heading back to London with me that night.”

“Any reason?”

“I guess there were just people she wanted to see. I mean, it was where she came from. Home, I guess.”

“Did you see any of these people from the house with her at the festival?”

“No. Like I said, we had backstage passes. We were in with the bands. We didn’t know anybody there apart from Vic, Robin, Chris and the rest. Didn’t even know them very well. Look, as you can imagine, it got a bit wild at times, like all parties do. Linda slipped away. I didn’t see her again.”

“Did she have a flower painted on her face when she left you?”

Tania looked puzzled. “Flower? I don’t think so. I don’t know. It was dark. I don’t remember.”

“Would you have noticed?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Lots of girls had flowers painted on their faces. Is it important?”

“It could be.” Chadwick remembered Robin Merchant saying that Linda did have the flower on her face when he last saw her. “How was she going to get to Leeds? It was the middle of the night.”

“Hitch a ride. There were plenty of people heading that way. Most of the crowd came from Leeds or Bradford. Stands to reason.”

“Was this your original plan? For her to stay in Leeds, hitch a ride?”

“Plan? We didn’t have a plan. It was all pretty spontaneous. I mean, she knew I was going to Paris on Monday and I had to drive back Sunday night, but she also knew she could come back down to London with me in the Mini if she wanted.”

“And what did you do?”

“After Zeppelin finished, I went round the back again, hung around awhile and waited for her. There was still a party going on backstage, but people were leaving fast. I didn’t see her, so I assumed she’d headed off to Bayswater Terrace. I got in my car and drove back down here. It was about four in the morning by the time I left and I got home about nine. I slept till two, then drove to Dover and took the ferry to Calais.”

“You must have been tired.”

“Not really.”

“Don’t you have a job?”

“I’m between jobs. I’m a temp. I happened to be good at typing at school. I can choose my own hours now.”

“But what about education? You said your father was a professor. Surely he would want you to go to university?”

She gave him a curious, almost pitying look. “What my father wants doesn’t come into it,” she said. “It’s my life. I might go to university one day, but it’ll be when I want to, not when someone else decides for me.” Tania shook her hair back and lit another cigarette.

Chadwick thought he saw a mouse scurry across the kitchen floor. He gave a little shudder. It wasn’t that mice scared him, but the idea of living with them held no appeal. “I’d like to know more about Linda,” he said. “I understand she was a shopgirl?”

Tania laughed. “‘Shopgirl.’ How very quaint and English. I suppose you could say that. She worked at Biba, but she wanted to be a designer. She was good, too.”

“Wouldn’t they be worried about her not coming back?”

“She took the week off.”

“So there was a plan?”

“There were possibilities, that’s all. There were some people in St. Ives she wanted to see. Maybe she was going to stay in Leeds a few days, see her friends and her mother and then go down there. I don’t know. She also had a friend living on Anglesey she wanted to visit. What can I say? Linda was a spontaneous sort of person. She just did things. That’s why I wasn’t worried about her. Besides, you don’t think… I mean, we were with people who are into love and peace and all that, and you just don’t expect…” Tears ran down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all too much.”

Chadwick gave her a few minutes to compose herself and wipe away the tears, then he said, “When Linda left the enclosure for the woods, did you see anyone follow her?”

Tania thought for a moment, sucked at her cigarette and flicked some ash. “No,” she said.

“Did you see anyone else go out around that time?”

“Not that I remember. Most of us were excited about Led Zeppelin, getting ready to go round the front and get our minds blown.”

“Could she have arranged to meet someone? Could the headache have been an excuse?”

Tania gave him a blank look. “Why would she? If she’d been going to meet someone, she’d have said so. It wasn’t Linda’s way to be sly and sneaky.”

Christ, Chadwick thought, it was a lot easier when you were dealing with ordinary folk, most of whom lied and cheated as easily as they breathed, rather than this lot with their fancy ideals and high-handed attitudes. “Did you notice anyone paying her undue attention?” he asked.

“Linda’s a beautiful girl. Of course there were people talking to her, maybe trying to make an impression, pick her up.”

“But nobody succeeded?”

Tania paused. “Linda wasn’t seeing anyone this past while,” she answered. “Look, I’ve seen what the newspapers say about us. The News of the World, the People, trash like that. They paint us as being some sort of drug-addled and sex-crazed subculture, nothing but orgies and excess. Well, some people might be like that, but Linda was a very spiritual person. She was into Buddhism, the cabala, yoga, astrology, tarot, all sorts of spiritual stuff, and sometimes she just… you know… sex wasn’t always a part of it for her.”

“And drugs?”

“Out of the picture, too. I’m not saying she’d never smoked a joint or dropped a tab of acid, but not for a while. She was moving on, evolving.”

“I understand the two of you performed musical duets together?”

Tania looked at him as if she didn’t understand, then she managed a brief smile. “Performed musical duets? We sang together sometimes, if that’s what you mean, just in folk clubs and such.”

“Can I have a look at Linda’s flat?”

Tania bit her lip. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t. I mean…”

“You can come with me, keep an eye on me. It’ll have to be done eventually. Officially.”

Finally, Tania said, “Okay. I’ve got a key. Come on.”

She led him across the hall. Linda’s room was the same shape as Tania’s, but like a mirror image. It was more luxuriously furnished, with a couple of patterned rugs on the floor and a stylized painting of a man sitting cross-legged under a tree, surrounded by strange symbols, on the wall. Chadwick recognized the signs of the zodiac from the newspaper horoscopes Janet read. There was also a small bookcase full of volumes on mysticism and the spiritual life and packs of variously scented joss sticks. An acoustic guitar, similar to the one in Tania’s room, leaned against the wall.