“First off, he’s got form,” he said.

McCullen raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“The most recent’s for possession of a controlled substance, namely LSD. November 1967.”

“Only possession?”

“They think he dumped his stash down the toilet when he heard them coming. Unfortunately, he still had two doses in his pocket.”

“You said most recent?”

“Yes. The other’s a bit more interesting. March 1958.”

“How old was he then?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And?”

“Assault causing bodily harm. He stabbed a student in the shoulder during a town-and-gown altercation in Oxford, which apparently is where he comes from. Unfortunately the student happened to be the son of a local member of Parliament.”

“Ouch,” said McCullen, a sly smile touching his lips.

“It didn’t help that McGarrity was a teddy boy as well. Apparently the judge didn’t like teds. Threw the book at him. He was a Brasenose man, too, same as the student. Gave McGarrity eighteen months. If the wound had been more serious, and if it hadn’t been inflicted defensively during a scuffle – apparently the gown lot were carrying cricket bats, among other weapons – then he’d have got five years or more. Another interesting point,” Chadwick went on, “is that the weapon used was a flick-knife.”

“The same weapon used on the girl?”

“Same kind of weapon.”

“Go on.”

“There’s not much more,” Chadwick said. “We spent yesterday interviewing the people at the three houses who knew McGarrity. He definitely knew the victim.”

“How well?”

“There’s no evidence of any sort of relationship, and from what I’ve found out about Linda Lofthouse I very much doubt that there was one. But he knew her.”

“Anything else?”

“Everyone said he was an odd duck. They often didn’t understand what he was talking about, and he had a habit of playing with a flick-knife.”

“What kind of flick-knife?”

“Just a flick-knife, with a tortoiseshell handle.”

“Why did they put up with him?”

“If you ask me, sir, it’s down to drugs. Our lads found five ounces of cannabis resin hidden in the gas meter at Carberry Place. Apparently the lock was broken. We think it belonged to McGarrity.”

“Defrauding the gas company too, I’ll bet?”

Chadwick smiled. “Same shilling, again and again. The drugs squad think he’s a mid-level dealer, buys a few ounces now and then and splits them up into quid deals. Probably what he used the knife for.”

“So the kids tolerate him?”

“Yes, sir. He was also at the festival, and according to the people he went with he spent most of the time roaming the crowd on his own. No one can say where he was when the incident occurred.”

McCullen tapped his pipe on the ashtray, then said, “The knife?”

“No sign of it yet, sir.”

“Pity.”

“Yes. I suppose it might be a coincidence that McGarrity simply lost his knife around the same time a young woman was stabbed with a similar weapon, but we’ve gone to court with less before.”

“Aye. And lost from time to time.”

“Well, the judge has bound him over on the dealing charge. No fixed abode, so no bail. He’s all ours.”

“Then get cracking and build up a murder case if you think you’ve got one. But don’t get tunnel vision here, Stan. Don’t forget that other bloke you fancied for it.”

“Rick Hayes? We’re still looking into him.”

“Good. And, Stan?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Find the knife. It would really help.”

Some people, Banks realized, never travel very far from where they grow up, and Simon Bradley was one of them. He had, he said, transferred several times during his career, to Suffolk, Cumbria and Nottingham, but he had ended up back in Leeds, and when he had retired in 2000 at the age of fifty-six and the rank of superintendent, Traffic, he and his wife had settled in a nice detached stone-built house just off Shaw Lane in Headingley. It was, he told Banks, only a stone’s throw from where he grew up in more lowly Meanwood. Beyond the high green gate was a well-tended garden that, Bradley said, was his wife’s pride and joy. Bradley’s pride and joy, it turned out, was a small library of floor-to-ceiling shelves, where he kept his collection of first-edition crime and thriller fiction, primarily Dick Francis, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James and Colin Dexter. It was there he sat with Banks over coffee and talked about his early days at Brotherton House. Sitting in the peaceful book-lined room, Banks found it hard to believe that just down the road was Hyde Park, where one of that summer’s suicide bombers had lived.

“I was young,” Bradley said, “twenty-five in 1969, but I was never really one of that generation.” He laughed. “I suppose that would have been difficult, wouldn’t it, being a hippie and a copper at the same time? Sort of like being on both sides at once.”

“I’m a few years behind you,” said Banks, “but I did like the music. Still do.”

“Really? Dreadful racket,” said Bradley. “I’ve always been more of a classical man myself: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.”

“I like them, too,” said Banks, “but sometimes you can’t beat a bit of Jimi Hendrix.”

“Each to his own. I suppose I always associated the music too closely with the lifestyle and the things that went on back then,” Bradley said with distaste. “A sound track for the drugs, long hair, promiscuity. I was something of a young fogy, a square, I suppose, and now I’ve grown up into an old fogy. I went to church every Sunday, kept my hair cut short and believed in waiting until you were married before having sex. Still do, much to my son’s chagrin. Very unfashionable.”

Bradley was almost ten years older than Banks, and he was in good physical shape. There was no extra flab on him the way there had been on Enderby, and he still had a fine head of hair. He was wearing white trousers and a shirt with a gray V-neck pullover, a bit like a cricketer, Banks thought, or the way cricketers used to look before they became walking multicolored advertisements for everything from mobile phones to trainers.

“Did you get on well with DI Chadwick?” Banks asked, remembering Enderby’s description of “Chiller” as cold and hard.

“After a fashion,” said Bradley. “DI Chadwick wasn’t an easy man to get close to. He’d had certain… experiences… during the war, and he tended toward long silences you didn’t dare interrupt. He never spoke about it – the war – but you knew it was there, defining him, in a way, as it did many of that generation. But yes, I suppose I got along with him as well as anyone.”

“Do you remember the Linda Lofthouse case?”

“As if it were yesterday. Bound to happen eventually.”

“What was?”

“What happened to her. Linda Lofthouse. Bound to. I mean, all those people rolling in the mud on LSD and God knows what. Bound to revert to their primitive natures at some point, weren’t they? Strip away that thin but essential veneer of civilization and convention, of obedience and order, and what do you get – the beast within, Mr. Banks, the beast within. Someone was bound to get hurt. Stands to reason. I’m only surprised there wasn’t more of it.”

“But what do you think it was about Linda Lofthouse that got her killed?”

“At first, when I saw her there in the sleeping bag, you know, with her dress bunched up, I must confess I thought it was probably a sex murder. She had that look about her, you know?”

“What look?”

“A lot of young girls had it then. As if she’d invite you into her sleeping bag as soon as look at you.”

“But she was dead.”

“Well, yes, of course. I know that.” Bradley gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, I’m not a necrophiliac or anything. I’m just telling you the first impression I had of her. Turned out it wasn’t a sex crime after all, but some madman. As I said, bound to happen when you encourage deviant behavior. She’d had an illegitimate baby, you know.”