17, 18,

2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, , 21, 22, 23

Six rows. Many numbers duplicated, and no list going beyond 30. A calendar of some kind, then? Ringed dates? But why were they ringed and, perhaps even more to the point, which months, which year did they refer to? And why were some days missing? It should be possible to find out, Banks thought, perhaps with the help of a computer, then he realized that each group was not even necessarily from the same month, or the same year. They could be strings of days taken over a period of, say, thirty years. His spirits fell, and he cursed Nick Barber under his breath for not being more clear with his notes, realizing that this might be the clue he was looking for, perhaps the only one Nick had left, and he felt about as far from understanding it now as he ever had.

Annie had got over her irritation with Banks by mid-afternoon, when he came poking his head around the squad room door to tell her that Ken Blackstone had discovered the whereabouts of Yvonne Chadwick, DI Stanley Chadwick’s daughter, and would she like to accompany him to the interview? She didn’t need asking twice. Bugger Superintendent Gervaise, she thought, grabbing her jacket and briefcase. She noticed Kev Templeton give her an evil eye as she left the room. Maybe he was already getting the cold shoulder from Madame Gervaise, now that what had happened to Kelly Soames had made the local news.

Banks was quiet as Annie drove the unmarked car she had signed out of the police garage. She kept snatching sideways glances at him and realized he was thinking. Well, that was a good sign. She drove on. “I checked the Mad Hatters web site, by the way,” she said.

“And?”

“Definite possibilities for the numbers in the back of the book. There are links to other fan sites with tour dates and all sorts of esoteric information. I’ll need a lot more time to follow up on it all.”

“Maybe when we get back.”

“Sounds good.”

Yvonne Chadwick, or Reeves, as she was now called, lived on the outskirts of Durham, which wasn’t too far up the A1 from Eastvale. The road was busy with lorries, as usual, and on a couple of occasions the inevitable roadworks canceled out a lane or two and slowed traffic to a crawl. Annie glimpsed Durham Castle high on its hill and followed the directions Banks had written down for her.

The house was a semi with a bay window in a pleasant, leafy neighborhood where you wouldn’t be afraid to let your children play in the street. Yvonne Reeves turned out to be a rather plump, nervous woman of about fifty, who favored a gray peasant skirt and a shapeless maroon jumper. If she dressed up a bit, Annie thought, she would be much more attractive. She wore her long graying hair tied back in a ponytail. The interior of the house was clean and tidy. Bookcases lined the walls, mostly philosophy and law, with a sprinkling of literature. The living room was a little cramped, but comfortable once they had wedged themselves into the leather armchairs. There wasn’t much natural light, and the room smelled of dark chocolate and old books.

“This is all very intriguing,” said Yvonne. Her voice still bore the traces of her Yorkshire roots, though many of the rough edges had been flattened over the years. “But I’ve no idea at all why you think I might be able to help you. What’s it all about?”

“Have you heard about the death of a music journalist called Nick Barber?” Banks asked.

“I think I saw something in the paper,” Yvonne said. “Wasn’t he murdered somewhere in Yorkshire?”

“Near Lyndgarth,” said Banks.

“I still don’t understand.”

“Nick Barber was working on a story about a group called the Mad Hatters. Do you remember them?”

“Good Lord. Yes, of course I do.”

“In September 1969, there was a pop festival in North Yorkshire at Brimleigh Glen. Remember? You would have been about fifteen.”

Yvonne clapped her hands together. “Sixteen. I was there! I wasn’t supposed to be, but I was. My father was terribly strict. He would never have let me go if I’d told him.”

“You might also remember then that a young girl was found dead when the festival was over. Her name was Linda Lofthouse.”

“Of course I remember. It was my father’s case. He solved it.”

“Yes. A man called McGarrity.”

Annie noticed Yvonne give a little shiver at the name, and an expression of distaste flitted across her features. “Did you know him?” she asked, before the moment was lost.

Yvonne flushed. “McGarrity? How could I?”

She was a poor liar, Annie thought. “I don’t know. You just seemed to react to the name, that’s all.”

“Dad told me about him, of course. He sounded like a terrible person.”

“Look, Yvonne,” Annie persisted, “I get the feeling there’s a bit more to it than that. I know it was a long time ago, but if you know anything that might help us, then you should let us know.”

“How could knowing about back then possibly help you now?”

“Because,” said Banks, “we think the cases might be linked. Nick Barber was Linda Lofthouse’s son. She gave him up for adoption, but he found out who his mother was and what happened to her. That gave him a special interest in the Mad Hatters and the McGarrity case. We think that Nick had stumbled across something to do with his mother’s murder, and that he was killed for it. Which means that we have to look very closely at what happened at Brimleigh and afterward. Someone who worked on the case with your father let slip that McGarrity had possibly terrorized another girl, but that never came up at the trial, or in the case notes. We also heard that Mr. Chadwick had a bit of trouble with his daughter, that she was perhaps running with a wild crowd, but we couldn’t get anything more specific than that. It might be nothing, and I might be wrong, but you are that daughter, and if you do know something, anything at all, please tell us and let us be the judges.”

Yvonne said nothing for a few moments. Annie could hear a radio in the back of the house, probably the kitchen; talking, not music. Yvonne chewed on her lip and stared over their heads at one of the bookcases.

“Yvonne,” Annie said. “If there’s anything we don’t know about, you should tell us. It can’t possibly harm you. Not now.”

“But it was all so long ago,” Yvonne said. “God, I was such an idiot. An arrogant, selfish, stupid idiot.”

“That would describe quite a lot of sixteen-year-olds,” Annie said.

It broke the ice a little, and Yvonne managed a polite laugh. “I suppose so,” she said. Then she sighed. “I used to run with a wild crowd, it’s true,” she said. “Well, not really wild, but different. Hippies, you’d call them. The kind of people my father hated. He’d go on about why he fought the war for lazy, cowardly sods like that. But they were harmless, really. Well, most of them.”

“And McGarrity?”

“McGarrity was a sort of hanger-on, older, not really part of the crowd, but they couldn’t summon the energy or find a reason to kick him out, so he drifted from place to place, sleeping on floors and in empty beds. Nobody really liked him. He was weird.”

“And he had a knife.”

“Yes. A flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle. Nasty thing. Of course he said he lost it, but…”

“But the police found it in one of the houses,” said Banks. “Your father found it.”

“Yes.” Yvonne squinted at Banks. “You seem to know plenty about this already.”

“It’s my job. I read the trial transcripts, but they didn’t tell me about the girl he terrorized, the one your father asked him about during the interrogation.”

“I suppose not.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Me?”

“You knew McGarrity. Something happened. How else could you explain your father’s zeal in pursuing him or his reticence to pursue the issue? He abandoned all his other leads and concentrated on McGarrity. Now I’d say that was a little personal, wouldn’t you?”