“And you?”

Tania raised her delicately arched eyebrows. “Me? I’m the enigmatic one.”

Banks smiled. “What about your relationship with Chris Adams?”

“It faded over time. It’s hard to keep a relationship going, the punishing schedule we had those first two or three years. We were touring or recording constantly. But we’re still friends, have been ever since.”

“The night Robin Merchant drowned,” Banks said, “did you really expect the police to believe that you were all sound asleep in bed?”

She seemed taken aback by the question, but she answered without much hesitation. “They did, didn’t they? Death by misadventure.”

“But you weren’t all asleep all the time, were you?” Banks pressed, shooting in the dark, hoping for a hit.

Tania looked at him, her green eyes disconcerting. He could tell she was trying to weigh him up, figure out what he knew and how he might have found out. “It’s a long time ago,” she said. “I can’t remember.”

“Come off it, Tania,” Banks said. “Why did you all lie?”

“For God’s sake, nobody lied.” She shook her head, puffing on her third cigarette. “Oh, what the hell. It was just a lot easier that way. None of us killed Robin. We knew that. Why would we? If we’d said we were all up and about, they’d only have asked more stupid questions, and we were all a bit the worse for wear. We just wanted to be left alone.”

“So what really happened?”

“I honestly don’t know. I was drunk, if you must know.”

“Drugs?”

“Some of the others. I stuck to vodka. Believe it or not, I never did anything else, except for a few tokes once in a while. Anyway, it was a big house. People were all over the place. You couldn’t possibly keep track of one another even if you wanted to.”

“Were people out by the swimming pool?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t. If anybody saw Robin in there, then they knew it was too late to do anything for him.”

“So you just left him there until the gardener came the next morning?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth. I’m not saying that’s what happened. I didn’t see him there, and I don’t know for a fact that anyone else did.”

“But someone could have?”

“Of course someone could have, but what use is could have, especially now?”

“And someone could have pushed him in.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe things weren’t all as peachy as you say they were.”

Tania sat forward. “Look, I’ve had enough of this. You come into my house and call me a liar to my face…”

“I’m not the one calling you a liar. You’ve already admitted you lied to the police in 1970. Why should I believe you now?”

“Because I’m telling the truth. I can’t think of any reason on earth why any of us would have wanted Robin dead.”

“I’m just trying to find the connection between then and now.”

“Well, maybe there isn’t one. Have you thought of that?”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that. But put yourself in my position. I have one definite murder in September 1969, and though the killer was apparently caught and jailed, there’s still room for doubt in my mind. We have another death in June 1970, easily explained as an accident at the time, but now you tell me that people were up and about most of the night; maybe there’s some doubt about that, too. And the common factor to all of these: the Mad Hatters. And Nick Barber was going to write their story, specifically Vic Greaves’s story, and he made reference to a murder.”

Tania drew on her cigarette, thought for a moment. “Look,” she said, “I know when you put it like that it sounds suspicious, but they’re all just coincidences. I was at that party when Robin died, and to my recollection there were no arguments. Everyone just had a good time and that was that. We all went off to bed – I was with Chris at the time – but it was hard to sleep, a hot night, and maybe people got the munchies, whatever, and wandered around, went to raid the fridge. I mean, I heard people around the place on and off. Voices. Laughter. Vic was tripping, as usual. Maybe some of the group even swapped partners. It happened.”

“You weren’t asleep the whole time?”

“Of course not.”

“And Chris Adams was with you all night?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Tania.”

“Well, I… I mean, maybe not every minute of the night.”

“So you woke up and he wasn’t there?”

“It wasn’t like that. For crying out loud, are you trying to blame Chris now? What is it with you?”

“Believe it or not,” said Banks, “I’m just trying to get at the truth. Maybe it was a lark. Maybe someone was playing around with Robin beside the pool and he slipped and fell. An accident.”

“In that case, why does it matter now? Even if Robin wasn’t the only one by the pool at the time, if it was an accident anyway, why does it matter?”

“Because if someone feels threatened by the truth, and if Nick Barber was close to that truth, then…” Banks spread his hands.

“Couldn’t there be some other explanation?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Robbery?”

“Well, Nick’s laptop and his mobile were stolen, but that just supports the theory that someone didn’t want people to know what he was doing.”

“His girlfriend or something, then. A jealous lover. Aren’t most people killed by someone they know, someone close to them?”

“True enough,” said Banks. “And it’s an area we’ve been looking into, along with a drug connection, but we’ve had no luck there yet.”

“I just don’t see how the past could have had anything to do with it. It’s over. Judgments were handed down.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years as a detective,” Banks said, “it’s that the past is never over, no matter what has been handed down.”

Banks was on his way back from visiting Tania Hutchison when two uniformed constables brought Calvin Soames into Western Area Headquarters in Eastvale. Annie Cabbot had them put him in an empty interview room and let him wait there awhile.

“Where did you find him?” she asked one of the PCs.

“Daleside above Helmthorpe, ma’am,” he said. “He was hiding in an old shepherd’s shelter. Must have been there all night. Fair shivering, he was.”

“Is he okay?”

“He seems all right. It might be a good idea to have a doctor check him out, though, just to be on the safe side.”

“Thanks,” said Annie. “I’ll put in a call to Dr. Burns. In the meantime, I think I’ll have a little chat with Mr. Soames myself.”

Annie called Winsome over and noticed Templeton looking at them anxiously from behind his desk. “What is it, Kev?” she called out. “Sudden attack of conscience? Bit late for that, isn’t it?” She immediately regretted her outburst, but it had no effect on Templeton, who just shrugged and got back to his paperwork. Annie could have throttled him, but that way he’d win.

Calvin Soames looked wet, cold and miserable. And old. At least there was some heat in the otherwise bleak interview room, and the constable had had the foresight to give him a gray blanket, which he wore over his shoulders like a robe.

“Well, Calvin,” said Annie, after dealing with the preliminaries, and making it clear on the tape that Soames had refused the services of a duty solicitor, “what have you been up to?”

Soames said nothing. He just stared at a fixed point ahead of him, a nerve at the side of his jaw twitching.

“What’s wrong?” Annie said. “Cat got your tongue?”

Still Soames said nothing.

Annie leaned back in her chair, hands resting on the desk. “You’ll have to talk eventually,” she said. “We already know what happened.”

“Then you don’t need me to tell you, do you?”

“We do need to hear it in your own words.”

“I hit her. Something snapped and I hit her. That’s all you need to know.”

“Why did you hit Kelly?”

“You know what she did.”