The streets were deserted, most of the houses in darkness apart from the lonely light of an insomniac here and there, or a student burning the midnight oil; a sheen of rain reflected the amber streetlights on the pavements and tarmac. Directly across from Springfield Mount was a small triangular park, locked up for the night, wedged between two merging main roads. At the end of the street, across the road, loomed the local grammar school, all in darkness now, with its bell tower and high windows.
The unmarked police car pulled up at the end of the street behind a patrol car. There were five officers altogether: Chadwick, Bradley and three uniforms, one of whom would guard the back. Geoff Broome was leading the Carberry team, and his colleague, Martin Young, the raid on Bayswater Terrace. They didn’t expect any resistance or problems, except perhaps from McGarrity, if he had his knife.
Chadwick could hear music coming from the front room, and candlelight flickered behind the curtains. Good, someone was at home. Surprise was of the essence now. When everyone was in position, Chadwick gave a nod to the uniform with the battering ram and one smash was enough to break the lock and send the door banging back on its hinges.
As arranged, the two uniformed constables dashed upstairs to secure the upper level and Chadwick and Bradley entered the front room. The officer on guard at the back would take care of the kitchen.
In the living room, Chadwick found three people lying on the floor in advanced stages of intoxication – marijuana, judging by the smell that even two smoldering joss sticks couldn’t mask. Candles flickered, and dreadful wailing electric guitar music came from the record player, a kangaroo with a pain in its testicles, by the sound of it, Chadwick thought.
It didn’t look as if their arrival had interrupted any deep conversations, or any conversations at all for that matter, as they all seemed beyond speech, and one of them could only manage a quick “What the fuck?” before Chadwick announced who he was and told them the police were there to search the premises for drugs and for a knife that may have been used in the committing of a homicide. Bradley switched on the electric light and turned the music off.
Things didn’t look so bad, Chadwick realized with surprise, not what he had expected, just three scruffy long-haired kids lounging around stoned, listening to what passed for music. There was no orgy; nobody was crawling around naked and drooling on the floor or committing outrageous sex acts. Then he saw the LP cover leaning against the wall. It showed a girl with long wavy red hair and full red lips. She was naked from the belly button up, and she couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. In her hands she cradled a chrome model airplane. What kind of perverts was he dealing with? Chadwick wondered. And one of them had been seeing his daughter. This was where Yvonne would have been tonight, had McGarrity not scared her off. This was what she would have been doing. She had been here before, done this, and that set his teeth on edge.
Bradley took their names: Steve Morrison, Todd Crowley and Jacqueline McNeil. They all seemed docile and sheepish enough. Chadwick took Steve aside to a corner of the room and gripped the front of his shirt in his fist. “Whatever comes of this,” he hissed, “I want you to stop seeing my daughter. Understand?”
Steve turned pale. “Who? Who am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Her name’s Yvonne. Yvonne Chadwick.”
“Shit, I didn’t know she…”
“Just stay away from her. Okay?”
Steve nodded, and Chadwick let him go. “Right,” he said, turning to the others. “Where’s McGarrity?”
“Dunno,” said Todd Crowley. “He was here earlier. Maybe he’s upstairs.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing. Just listening to music.”
Chadwick gestured toward the LP cover. “Where did you get that filth?”
“What?”
“The naked child. You realize we could probably prosecute you under the Obscene Publications Act, don’t you?”
“That’s art, man,” Crowley protested. “You can buy it at any record shop. Obscenity’s in the eye of the beholder.”
There were greasy fish-and-chip wrappers and newspapers on the floor beside empty bottles of beer. Bradley went over to the ashtray and extracted the remains of a number of hand-rolled cigarettes he identified by their smell as being a mix of tobacco and hash. That, in itself, was enough to charge them with possession.
What the hell did Yvonne see in this dump? Chadwick wondered. Why did she come here? Was her life at home so bad? Was she so desperate to get away from him and Janet? But there was no point trying to work it out. As Enderby had said, it was probably down to freedom.
Chadwick heard a brief scuffle and a bang upstairs, followed by a series of loud thumps, each one getting closer. When he went to the foot of the stairs, he saw the two uniformed constables, one without his hat, holding the arms of a man who was struggling to get up.
“He didn’t want to come with us, sir,” one of the officers said.
It looked as if they had held his arms and dragged him down the stairs backward, which shouldn’t have done much damage to anything except his dignity and maybe his tailbone. Chadwick watched as the unruly black-clad figure with the lank dark hair and pockmarked face got to his feet and dusted himself off, the superior smirk already back in place, if indeed it had ever been gone.
“Well, well, well,” he said, “Mr. McGarrity, I assume? I’ve been wanting a word with you.”
Enderby’s local, two streets down, was like his house: comfortable and unremarkable. It was a relatively new building, late sixties from its low squat shape and the large picture windows facing the sea. The advantages, from Banks’s point of view, were that it was practically empty at that time in the afternoon, and they sold cask-conditioned Tetley’s. One pint wouldn’t do him any harm, he decided, as he bought the drinks at the bar and carried them over.
Enderby looked at him. “Thought your resolve might weaken.”
“It often does,” Banks admitted. “Nice view.”
Enderby took a sip of beer. “Mmm.”
The window looked out over the glittering North Sea, dotted here and there with fishing boats and trawlers. Whitby was still a thriving fishing town, Banks reminded himself, even if the whaling industry it had grown from was long extinct. Captain Cook had got his seafaring start in Whitby, and his statue stood on top of West Cliff, close to the jawbone of a whale.
“When did this real murder happen?” Banks asked.
“September the year before. In 1969. By Christ, Banks, you’re taking me on a hell of a trip along Memory Lane today. I haven’t thought about that business in years.”
Banks knew all about trips down Memory Lane, having not so long ago looked into the disappearance of an old schoolfriend whose body was found buried in a field outside Peterborough. Sometimes, as he got older, it seemed as if the past was always overwhelming the present.
“Who was the victim?”
“A woman, young girl, really, called Linda Lofthouse. Lovely girl. Funny, I can still picture her there, half-covered by the sleeping bag. That white dress with the flowers embroidered on the front. She had a flower painted on her face, too. A cornflower. She looked so peaceful. She was dead, of course. Someone had grabbed her from behind and stabbed her so viciously he cut off a piece of her heart.” He gave a little shudder. “Someone’s just walked over my grave.”
“How was Swainsview Lodge involved in all this?”
“I’m getting to that. The murder took place at a rock festival in Brimleigh Glen. The body was found on the field by one of the volunteers cleaning up after it was all over. The evidence showed that she was killed in Brimleigh Woods nearby and then moved. It was only made to look as if she was killed on the field.”