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When it came right down to it, though, Banks had a gut feeling that it was the Mad Hatters story that got Barber killed. He had no idea why. Unless you were a soul or a rap artist, music was generally a murder-free profession, and it was a bit of a stretch to imagine aging hippies going around bashing people over the head with pokers. But there it was. Nick Barber had headed to Yorkshire in search of a reclusive ex-rock star, had found him, and within days he had turned up dead, all his notes, mobile phone and laptop computer missing.
Banks thanked Butler for his time and said he might be back with more questions. Butler accompanied him back to the lift, stopping to pick out some back issues for him on the way. Banks walked out onto busy Oxford Street a little more enlightened than when he had entered Mappin House. He noticed that he was standing right outside HMV, so he went inside.
Monday, 15th September, 1969
The mood in the Grove was subdued that Monday evening. Somebody had turned out all the electric lights and put candles on every table. Yvo
Yvo
McGarrity’s Eliot travesty aside, most of the evening was given over to local folksingers. A plump short-haired girl in jeans and a T-shirt sang “She Walks Through the Fair” and “Farewell, Farewell.” A curly-haired troubadour with a gap between his front teeth sang “The Trees They Do Grow High” and “Needle of Death,” followed by a clutch of early Bob Dylan songs.
There was a somber tone to it all, and Yvo
She remembered the photograph that had slipped out of her father’s briefcase: Linda with an expressionless face and eyes. The pathetic little cornflower on her cheek; Linda not at home; dead Linda, just a shell, her spirit soared off into the light. She felt herself well up with tears as she thought her thoughts and listened to the sad songs of long ago, ballads of murder and betrayal, of supernatural lovers, metamorphoses, disasters at sea and wasted youth. She wasn’t supposed to drink, but she could easily pass for eighteen in the Grove, and Steve brought her drinks like Babycham, Pony and Cherry B. After a while she started to feel light-headed and sick.
She made her way to the toilet and forced her finger down her throat. That helped. When she had finished she rinsed her mouth out, washed her face and lit a cigarette. She didn’t look too bad. On her way out she had to squeeze past McGarrity in the narrow corridor, and the look of cruel amusement on his face at her obvious discomfort frightened her. He paused, pressed up against her breasts, ran one dirty, nail-bitten finger down her cheek and whispered her name. It made her shiver.
When she got back to Steve and the others, it was intermission. She hadn’t brought up the subject of Linda with Steve yet, partly because she was afraid that he might have slept with her, and that would make Yvo
“Did you know Linda well?” she asked him as casually as possible.
Steve rolled a cigarette from his Old Holborn tin before answering. “Not really,” he said. “She’d gone before I came on the scene. I only saw her a couple of times when she came up from London and stayed at De
“Bayswater Terrace? Is that where she lived?”
“Yeah. Before she went to London.”
“With De
“No, not with him, just at his pad, man.” Steve gave her a puzzled look. “What does it matter, anyway? She’s dead now. We have to let go.”
Yvo
“Everybody loved Linda.”
“Not everybody, obviously.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, somebody murdered her.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t love her.”
“I don’t understand.”
Steve stroked her arm. “It’s a complicated world, Von, and people do things for many reasons, often reasons we don’t understand, reasons they don’t even understand themselves. All I’m saying is that whoever did it didn’t necessarily do it from hatred or jealousy or envy, or one of those other negative emotions. It might have been from love. Or an act of kindness. Sometimes you have to destroy the thing you love the most. It’s not for us to question.”
Yvo
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not for us to question.”
And the second half of the evening started. She could see McGarrity through the crowds, a dark shadow hunched in the candlelight, just to the right of the stage area, and she thought he was staring at her. Then a young man with long blond hair climbed on the tiny stage and began to sing “Polly on the Shore.”
In a booth in a noisy and smoky Italian restaurant on Frith Street, Banks and A
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” A
“About what?” said Banks.
“This Mad Hatters business. I hardly understood a word of what you were talking about before di
“It’s not my fault if your cultural education is severely lacking,” said Banks.
“Put it down to my callow youth and explain in words of one syllable.”
“You’ve never heard of the Mad Hatters?”