Peter Robinson: Piece Of My Heart

“Stan, sit down,” said McCullen, gesturing to the seat opposite his desk. He was a hard, compact man, one of the old school, and fast nearing retirement. Gray hair in a severe crew cut, sharp, square features, an intimidating gleam in his narrowed eyes. People said he had no sense of humor, but Chadwick thought it was just so dark and buried so deep that nobody could recognize it, or wanted to find it. McCullen had served as a commando during the war, and Chadwick had seen more than enough active duty himself. He liked to think it created a bond between them, something in common that they never spoke about. They also shared a Scottish background. Chadwick’s mother was a Scot, and his father had worked in the Clydebank shipyards. Chadwick had grown up in Glasgow, drifting down to Yorkshire only after the war.

Chadwick sat.

“I won’t beat about the bush,” McCullen began, knocking his pipe on the heavy glass ashtray, “but there’s been a body discovered at Brimleigh Glen, the big field where they held the festival this weekend. I don’t have many details yet. The report has just this minute come in. All we know is that the victim is a young woman.”

“Oh,” said Chadwick, aware of that cold sinking feeling deep in his belly. “I thought Brimleigh was the North Riding?”

McCullen refilled his pipe. “Strictly speaking, it is,” he said finally, releasing clouds of aromatic blue smoke. “Just over the border. But they’re country coppers. They don’t get many murders, just a bit of sheep-shagging now and then. They’ve certainly got no one capable of handling an investigation of this magnitude, given how many people must have been attending that festival, and they’re asking for our help. I thought, perhaps, with your recent successes…”

“The locals still won’t like it,” Chadwick said. “Perhaps it’s not as bad as having Scotland Yard tramping all over your provincial toes, but-”

“It’s already cleared,” said McCullen, turning his gaze back to the window. “There’s a local detective sergeant, name of Keith Enderby. You’ll be working with him. He’s already at the scene.” McCullen glanced at his wristwatch. “Better get out there, Stan. DC Bradley’s waiting with the car. The doc’ll be there soon wanting to get the body back to the mortuary for the postmortem.”

Chadwick knew when he was being dismissed. Solve two murders so far this year and you get lumbered with a case like this. Bloody hippies. Paperwork suddenly didn’t look so bad, after all. Tolerance, he told himself. He stood up and headed for the door.

Monday, 8th September, 1969

There was no easy access to the body in the field, not without getting his shoes muddy. Chadwick cursed under his breath as he saw his lovingly polished black brogues and the bottoms of his suit trousers daubed with brown mud. If he’d been a rural copper, he’d have kept a pair of wellies in the boot of his car, but you don’t expect mud when you’re used to working the streets of Leeds. If anything, DC Bradley complained even more.

Brimleigh Glen looked like a vast tip. A natural amphitheater cupped between low hills to the east and north and Brimleigh Woods to the west and south, it was a popular spot for picnics and brass band concerts in summer. Not this weekend, though. A stage had been erected at the western end of the field, abutting the woods, and the audience had sprawled as far back as the hillsides on the eastern and northern sides, to a distance where, Chadwick guessed, nobody would have been able to see very much at all except little dots.

The small knot of people surrounding the body stood at the southern edge of the field, about a hundred yards back from the stage, near the edge of the woods. When Chadwick and Bradley arrived, a man with long greasy hair, bell-bottom jeans and an Afghan waistcoat turned and said with far more aggression than Chadwick would have expected of someone who was supposed to embrace peace and love, “Who the fuck are you?”

Chadwick feigned a surprised expression and looked around, then he pointed his thumb at his own chest. “Who, me?”

“Yes, you.”

A clearly embarrassed young man hurried over to them. “Er… I think that’s probably the detective inspector from Leeds. Am I right, sir?”

Chadwick nodded.

“How d’you do, sir? I’m Detective Sergeant Enderby, North Yorkshire Constabulary. This is Rick Hayes, the festival promoter.”

“You must have been up all night,” said Chadwick. “I’d have thought you’d be long tucked up in bed by now.”

“There’s still a lot to see to,” Hayes said, gesturing behind him. “That scaffolding, for a start. It’s rented and it all has to be accounted for. I’m sorry, by the way.” He glanced in the direction of the sleeping bag. “This has all been very upsetting.”

“I’m sure,” said Chadwick, making his way forward. There were four people besides himself and DC Bradley at the scene, only one of them a uniformed policeman, and most of them were standing far too close to the body. They were also very casually dressed. Even DS Enderby’s hair, Chadwick noticed, was dangerously close to touching the collar of his jacket, and his sideboards needed trimming. His black winkle-pickers looked as if they had been dirty even before he crossed the field. “Were you the first officer to arrive at the scene?” Chadwick asked the young police constable, trying to move people back and clear a little space around the sleeping bag.

“Yes, sir. PC Jacobs. I was on patrol when the call came in.”

“Who called it in?”

One of the others stepped forward. “I did. Steve Naylor. I was working on the scaffolding when Dave here shouted me over. There’s a phone box on the road on the other side of the hill.”

“Did you find the body?” Chadwick asked Dave Sampson.

“Yes.”

Sampson looked pale, as well he might, Chadwick thought. His own war service and eighteen years on the force had hardened him to the sight of violent death, but he hadn’t forgotten his first time, and he never forgot how devastating it could appear to someone who had never witnessed it before. He looked around. “Any chance someone might rustle up a pot of tea?”

Everyone stared at him, dumbfounded, then Naylor, the stage worker, said, “We’ve got a Primus and a billycan back there. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good lad.”

Naylor headed for the stage.

Chadwick turned back to Sampson. “Touch anything?” he asked.

“Only the zip. I mean, I didn’t know… I thought…”

“What did you think?”

“It felt like there was someone inside. I thought they might be asleep or…”

“On drugs?”

“Possibly. Yes.”

“After you opened the zip and saw what it was, what did you do then?”

“I called over to the stage.”

Chadwick looked at the speckled mess on the grass about a yard away. “Before or after you were sick?”

Sampson swallowed. “After.”

“Did you touch the body at all?”

“No.”

“Good. Now go over and give your statement to Detective Sergeant Enderby. We’ll probably want to talk to you again, so stick around.”

Sampson nodded.

Chadwick crouched by the blue sleeping bag, keeping his hands in his pockets so that he didn’t touch anything, even by accident. Only the upper half of the girl’s body was exposed, but it was enough. She was wearing a smocked white dress with a scooped neck, and the area under the left breast was a mess – knife work, by the looks of it. Also, her dress was bunched up around her waist, as if she hadn’t had time to smooth it down when she got into the bag – or as if someone had shoved her in quickly after he’d killed her. The long dress could also have been raised for sexual purposes, if she had been sharing the sleeping bag with her boyfriend, Chadwick realized, but he would have to wait for the pathologist to find out any more about that.