Peter Robinson - Piece Of My Heart

“Were they?”

“For the most part. You got the occasional pillock complaining his caravan was too small, but on the whole it was okay.”

Chadwick jotted something down. He could tell that Hayes was craning his neck trying to read it, so he rested his hand over the words when he had finished. “Perhaps if we were to narrow down the time of death, do you think you’d be able to give us a better idea of who might have been backstage?”

“Maybe. I dunno. Like I said, it was a bit of a zoo back there.”

“I can imagine. Did you see her with anyone in particular?”

“No. It might have been her or it might not have. I only got a fleeting glance. There were a lot of people. A lot of good-looking birds.” His expression brightened. “Maybe it wasn’t even her.”

“Let’s remain optimistic, shall we, and assume that it was? Did the girl you saw have a flower painted on her right cheek?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not even sure it was her. Lots of girls had painted flowers.”

“Perhaps your security team might be able to help us?”

“Maybe. If they remember.”

“Was the press around?”

“On and off.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a matter of give and take, isn’t it? I mean, the publicity’s always useful and you don’t want to piss off the press, but at the same time you don’t want someone filming your every move or writing about you every time you go to the toilet, do you? We tried to strike a balance.”

“How did that work?”

“A big press conference before the event, scheduled interviews with specific artists at specific times.”

“Where?”

“In the press enclosure.”

“So the press weren’t allowed backstage?”

“You must be joking.”

“Photographers?”

“Only in the press enclosure.”

“Can you give me their names?”

“I can’t remember them all. You can ask Mick Lawton. He was press liaison officer for the event. I’ll give you his number.”

“What about television?”

“They were here on Saturday and Sunday.”

“Let me guess – press enclosure?”

“For the most part, they filmed crowd scenes and the bands performing, within strict copyright guidelines, with permission and everything.”

“I’ll need the names of television companies involved.”

“Sure. The usual suspects.” Hayes named them. It wasn’t as if there were that many to choose from, and Yorkshire Television and BBC North would have been Chadwick’s first guesses anyway. Chadwick stood up, stooping so he didn’t bang his head on the ceiling. “We’ll have a chat with them later, see if we can have a look at their footage. And we’ll be talking with your security people, too. Thanks for your time.”

Hayes shuffled to his feet, looking surprised. “That’s it?”

Chadwick smiled. “For now.”

It was like a scene out of Dickens painted with Rembrandt’s sense of light and shade. There were two distinct groups in the low-beamed lounge, one playing cards, the other in the midst of an animated conversation: gnarled, weather-beaten faces with lined cheeks and potato noses lit by candles and the wood fire that crackled in the hearth. The two people behind the bar were younger. One was a local girl Banks was sure he had seen before, a pale willowy blonde of nineteen or twenty. The other was a young man about ten years older, with curly hair and a wispy goatee.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked toward the door when Banks and Annie walked in, then the cardplayers resumed their game and the other group muttered quietly.

“Nasty night out there,” said the young man behind the bar. “What can I get for you?”

“I’ll have a pint of Black Sheep,” said Banks, showing his warrant card, “and DI Cabbot here will have a Slimline bitter lemon, no ice.”

Annie raised an eyebrow at Banks but accepted the drink when it came, and took out her notebook.

“Thought it wouldn’t be long before you lot came sniffing around, all that activity going on out there,” said the young man. His biceps bulged as he pulled Banks’s pint.

“And you’ll be?”

“Cameron Clarke. Landlord. Everyone calls me CC.”

Banks paid for the drinks, against CC’s protests, and took a sip of his beer. “Well, Cameron,” he said, “this is a nice pint you keep, I must say.”

“Thanks.”

Banks turned to the girl. “And you are?”

“Kelly,” she said, shifting from foot to foot and twirling her hair. “Kelly Soames. I just work here.”

Like CC, Kelly wore a white T-shirt with “The Cross Keys Inn” emblazoned across her chest. There was enough candlelight behind the bar to see that the thin material came to a stop about three inches above her low-rise jeans and broad studded belt, exposing a flat strip of pale white skin and a belly button from which hung a short silver chain. As far as Banks was concerned, the bare-midriff trend had turned every male over forty into a dirty old man.

He glanced around. A middle-aged couple he hadn’t noticed when he came in sat on the bench below the bay window, tourists by the look of them, anoraks and an expensive camera bag on the seat beside them. Several of the people were smoking, and Banks suppressed a sudden urge for a cigarette. He addressed the whole pub. “Does anyone know what’s happened up the road?”

They all shook their heads and muttered no.

“Anyone leave here during the last couple of hours?”

“One or two,” CC answered.

“I’ll need their names.”

CC told him.

“When did the electricity go off?”

“About two hours ago. There’s a line down on the Eastvale Road. It could take an hour or two more, or so they said.”

It was half past nine now, Banks noted, so the power cut had occurred at half past seven. It would be easy enough to check the exact time with Yorkshire Electricity, but that would do to be going on with. If Nick, the victim, had been killed between six and eight, then, had the killer seized the opportunity of the cover of extra darkness, or had he acted sooner, between six and half past seven? It probably didn’t matter, except that the power cut had brought Mrs. Tanner to check on her tenant, and the body had been discovered perhaps quite a bit sooner than the killer had hoped.

“Anyone arrive after the electricity went off?”

“We arrived at about a quarter to eight,” said the man in the bay-window seat. “Isn’t that right, darling?”

The woman beside him nodded.

“We were on our way to Eastvale, back to the hotel,” he went on, “and this is the first place we saw that was open. I don’t like driving after dark at the best of times.”

“I don’t blame you,” Banks said. “Did you see anyone else on the road?”

“No. I mean, there might have been a car or two earlier, but we didn’t see anyone after the power went out.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“Swainshead.”

“Did you see anyone when you parked here?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. The wind was so loud and the branches…”

“You might have seen someone?”

“I thought I saw the taillights of a car,” the man’s wife said.

“Where?”

“Heading up the hill. Straight on. I don’t know where the road goes. But I can’t be certain. As my husband says, it was a bit like a hurricane out there. It could have been something else flashing in the dark, a lantern or a torch or something.”

“You didn’t see or hear anything else?”

They both shook their heads.

A possible sighting of a car heading up the unfenced road over the moors, then; that was the sum of it. They would make inquiries at the youth hostel, of course, but it was hardly likely their murderer was conveniently staying there. Still, someone might have seen something.