On his way out of the village, Banks passed a sleek silver Merc, but thought nothing of it. All the way back to the station he thought about the strange experience he had just had, and even Pink Floyd’s “I Remember a Day” on the stereo could not dispel his gloom.

“Kev. What have you dug up?” Annie Cabbot asked, when a dusty and clearly disgruntled DS Templeton trudged over to her desk and flopped down on the visitor’s chair early that afternoon.

Templeton sighed. “We ought to do something about that basement,” he said. “It’s a bloody health hazard.” He brushed some dust off his sixty quid Topman distressed jeans and plonked a collection of files on the desk. “It’s all here, ma’am,” he said. “What there is of it, anyway.”

“Kev, I’ve told you before not to call me ma’am. I know that Detective Superintendent Gervaise insists on it, but that’s her prerogative. A simple ‘guv’ will suffice, if you must.”

“Right, Guv.”

“Give me a quick run-down.”

“Top and bottom of it is,” said Templeton, “that there was no full investigation, as such. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, and that was the end of it.”

“No reservations?”

“Not so far as I can tell, Guv.”

“Who was in the house at the time?”

“It’s all in that file, there.” Templeton tapped a thick buff folder. “For what it’s worth. Statements and everything. Basically, there were the band members, their manager, Lord Jessop, and various assorted girlfriends, groupies and hangers-on. They’re all named on the list, and they were all questioned.”

Annie scanned the list quickly and put it aside. Nothing, or no one, she hadn’t expected, though most of the names meant nothing to her.

“It happened after a private party to celebrate the success of their second album, which was called – get this – He Whose Face Gives No Light Shall Never Become a Star.”

“That’s Blake,” Annie said. “William Blake. My dad used to quote him all the time.”

“Sounds like a right load of bollocks to me,” Templeton said. “Anyway, the album was recorded at Swainsview Lodge over the winter of 1969-1970. Lord Jessop had let them convert an old banquet room he didn’t use first into a rehearsal space and then into a private recording studio. Quite a lot of bands used it over the next few years.”

“So what happened on the night of the party?”

“Everybody swore Merchant was fine when things wound up around two or three o’clock, but the next morning the gardener found him floating on his back, naked, in the pool. The postmortem found a drug called Mandrax in his system.”

“What’s that?”

“Search me. Some kind of tranquilizer?”

“Was there enough to kill him?”

“Not according to the pathologist. But he’d been drinking, too, and that enhances the effects, and the dangers. Probably been smoking dope and dropping acid, as well, but they didn’t have toxicology tests for them back then.”

“So what was the cause of death?”

“Officially, he slipped on the side of the swimming pool, fell in the shallow end, smashed his head on the bottom and drowned. The Mandrax might have slowed down his reactions. There was water in his lungs.”

“What about the blow to the head? Any way it could have been blunt-object trauma?”

“Showed impact with a large flat area rather than a blunt object.”

“Like the bottom of a swimming pool?”

“Exactly, Guv.”

“What did the party guests say?”

“What you’d expect. Everyone swore they were asleep at the time, and nobody heard anything. To be honest, they probably wouldn’t have even noticed if they were all full of drugs and he just fell in the pool. Not much to hear. He was already unconscious from hitting his head.”

“Any speculation as to why he was naked?”

“No,” said Templeton. “But it was par for the course back then, wasn’t it? Hippies and all that stuff. Free love. Orgies and whatnot. Any excuse to get their kit off.”

“Who carried out the investigation?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Cecil Grant was SIO – he’s dead now – but a DS Keith Enderby did most of the legwork and digging around.”

“Summer 1970,” said Annie. “He’ll be retired by now, most likely, but he might still be around somewhere.”

“I’ll check with Human Resources.”

“Kev, did you ever get the impression, reading through the stuff, that anyone put the kibosh on the investigation because a famous rock band and a peer of the realm were involved?”

Templeton scratched his brow. “Well, now you come to mention it, it did cross my mind. But if you look at the facts, there was no evidence to say that it happened any other way. DS Enderby seems to have done a decent enough job under the circumstances. On the other hand, they all closed ranks and presented a united front. I don’t believe for a minute that everyone went to sleep at two or three in the morning and heard nothing more. I’ll bet you there were people up and about, on the prowl, though perhaps they were in no state to distinguish reality from fantasy. Someone could easily have been lying to protect someone else. Or two or more of them could have been in it together. Conspiracy theory. The other thing, of course, is that there was no motive.”

“No strife within the band?”

“Not that anyone was able to put their finger on at the time. Again, though, they weren’t likely to tell the investigating officers about it if there was, were they?”

“No, but there might have been rumors in the music press. These people lived a great deal of their lives in the public eye.”

“Well, if there was anything, it was a well-kept secret,” said Templeton. “I’ve checked some of the stuff online and at that time they were a successful group, definitely going places. Maybe if someone dug around a bit now, asked the right questions… I don’t know… it might be different.”

“Why don’t you see if you can track down this Enderby, and I’ll have a chat with DCI Banks.”

“Yes, Guv,” said Templeton, standing up. “Want me to leave the files?”

“Might as well,” said Annie. “I’ll have a look at them.”

Thursday, 18th September, 1969

Rick Hayes’s Soho office was located above a trattoria in Frith Street, not too far from Ronnie Scott’s and any number of sleazy sex shops and strip clubs. Refreshed by an espresso from the Bar Italia across the street, Chadwick climbed the shabby staircase and knocked at the glass pane on the door labeled HAYES CONCERT PROMOTIONS. A voice called out for him to come in, and he entered to see Hayes sitting behind a littered desk, hand over the mouthpiece of his telephone.

“Inspector. What a surprise,” Hayes said. “Sit down. Can you just hang on a moment? I’ve been trying to get hold of this bloke forever.”

Chadwick waited, but instead of sitting, he wandered around the office, a practice that he found usually made people nervous. Framed signed photos of Hayes with various famous rock stars hung on the walls, unfamiliar names, for the most part: Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton. Filing cabinets stuffed with folders. He was opening drawers in a cabinet near the window when his snooping obviously made Hayes worried enough to end his phone call prematurely.

“What are you doing?” Hayes asked.

“Just having a look around.”

“Those are private files.”

“Yes?” Chadwick sat down. “Well, I’m a great believer in not wasting time sitting around doing nothing, so I thought I’d just use a bit of initiative.”

“Have you got a search warrant?”

“Not yet. Why? Do I need one?”

“To look at those files you do.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think there’s anything there of interest to me. The reason I’m here is that you’ve been lying to me since the moment we met, and I want to know why. I also want to know what you have to do with the murder of Linda Lofthouse.”