Peter Robinson: Piece Of My Heart

“What do you predict?”

“That he won’t.”

“And then?”

“He’ll have to go.”

“Does that worry you?”

“A bit. Not too much, though. I mean, they did all right, didn’t they?” The Mad Hatters were performing their jaunty, rocking 1983 number one hit, “Young at Heart.” “The band will survive. It’s more the lack of communication that upsets me. I mean, Denny was a mate, and now I can’t talk to him.”

“Losing friends is always sad,” said Banks, aware of how pathetic and pointless that observation was. “It’s just one of those things, though. When you first get together with someone it’s a great adventure, finding out stuff you’ve got in common. You know, places you love, music, books. Then the more you get to know them, the more you start to see other things.”

“Yeah, like a whingeing, lying, manipulative bastard,” said Brian. Then he laughed and shook his empty can. “Want another glass of plonk?” he asked Banks, whose glass was also empty.

“Sure, why not?” said Banks, and he watched the lovely Tania sway in pastel blue diaphanous robes that flowed around her like water while Brian got the drinks.

“There is one thing I’d like to know,” he said, after a sip of Amarone. Plonk, indeed.

“What’s that?” Brian asked.

“Just what the hell does acid Celtic punk sound like?”

Annie jotted something down, then turned back to the computer monitor and scrolled. It was Monday morning. On Sunday, most of the team had taken a well-deserved day off, their first since Nick Barber’s murder almost two weeks ago. Annie had spent the morning doing household chores, the afternoon on the Mad Hatters web site and the evening enjoying that long bath and the trashy magazines she had been promising herself. At lunchtime, she had gone out with Banks, Brian and Emilia to the Bridge in Grinton. Emilia had been absolutely charming, and Annie had been secretly awestruck to meet an up-and-coming actress. More so than by meeting Banks’s rock star son, whom she had met before, though Brian had also, in his way, been charming and far less full of himself than she remembered from previous occasions they had met. He seemed to have matured and become comfortable with his success, no longer the young tearaway with something to prove.

The coffee at her right hand was lukewarm, and she made a face when she took a sip. There was plenty of activity around her in the squad room, but she was still on the Web, oblivious to most of it as she felt herself finally zooming in on the mystery of the numbers in the back of Nick Barber’s book.

It wasn’t such an esoteric solution after all, she realized with a sense of disappointment. It didn’t suddenly make everything clear and solve the case, and it was nothing she wouldn’t have expected him to make a note of anyway.

She hadn’t found everything she wanted at the official Mad Hatters web site, but she had found links there that took her to more obscure fan sites, as Nick Barber must have done in Eastvale Computes. But all the owner had heard was the snatch of song that played when he accessed the official site. Now she negotiated her way through bright orange and red Gothic print, black backgrounds with stylized logos and flashing arrows. All signs that some young web designer was eager to show off and lacked restraint. Before long, her eyes were starting to buzz, and her eyeballs felt as if they had been massaged with sandpaper.

Once she had the final string jotted down, she printed the whole document, bookmarked the web site URL and closed the browser. Then she rubbed her eyes and went in search of a fresh cup of coffee, only to find that it was her turn to make a fresh pot. When she finally got back to her desk, it was close to lunchtime and she felt like a break from the office.

“I was just thinking about you,” she said when Banks popped his head around the door and asked her how she was getting on. “I’m feeling cooped up here. Why don’t you take me to that new bistro by the castle and we go over what I’ve found so far?”

“What?” said Banks. “Lunch together two days in a row? People will talk.”

“A working lunch,” Annie said.

“Okay. Sounds good to me.”

With Templeton’s deepening frown following them, Annie picked up her papers and they walked out into the cobbled market square. It was a fine day for the time of year, scrubbed blue sky and just a hint of chill in the wind, and a couple of coachloads of tourists from Teesside were disembarking by the market cross and making a beeline for the nearest pub. The church clock struck twelve as Banks and Annie crossed the square and took the narrow lane that wound up to the castle. The bistro was down a small flight of stone stairs about halfway up the hill. It had only been open about three months and had garnered some good local reviews. Because it was early, only two of the tables were occupied already, and the owner welcomed them, giving them the pick of the rest. They chose a corner table, with their backs to the whitewashed walls. That way nobody would be able to look over their shoulders. Little light got through the half-window, and all you could see were legs and feet walking by, but the muted wall lighting was good enough to read by.

They both decided on sparkling mineral water, partly because Annie rarely drank at lunchtime and Banks said he was beginning to find that even one glass of wine so early in the day made him drowsy. Banks went for a steak sandwich and frites and Annie chose the cheese omelette and green salad. The food ordered and fizzy water poured, they began to go over the results of her morning’s work. Soft music played in the background. East-vale’s idea of Parisian chic: Charles Aznavour, Edith Piaf, a little Françoise Hardy. But it was so quiet as to be unobtrusive. Banks broke off a chunk of baguette, buttered it and looked at Annie’s notes.

“Put simply,” she said, “it’s the Mad Hatters tour dates from October 1969 to May 1970.”

“But that’s eight months, and there are only six rows.”

“They didn’t tour in December or February,” Annie said. She showed Banks the printout from the web site. “I got this all from a site run by what must be their most devoted fan. The trivia some of these people put out there is amazing. Anyway, it must have been a godsend to a writer like Nick Barber.”

“But is it all accurate?”

“I’m sure there are errors,” Annie said. “After all, these web sites are unedited, and it’s easy to make a mistake. But on the whole I’d say it’s probably pretty close.”

“So the Mad Hatters were on tour the sixth, eighth, ninth, twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-fifth of October? That’s how it goes?”

“Yes,” said Annie. She handed him the printout. “And these were the places they played.”

“The Dome, Brighton; the Locarno Ballroom, Sunderland; the Guild-hall, Portsmouth. They got around.”

“They certainly did.”

“And the ringed dates?”

“Just three of them, as you can see,” said Annie. “The twelfth of January, the nineteenth of April and the nineteenth of May. All in 1970.”

“Any significance in those two nineteenths?”

“I haven’t figured out the significance of any of the ringed dates yet.”

“Maybe it was one of his girlfriends’ periods?”

Annie gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs. “Don’t be rude. Anyway, periods don’t come that irregularly. Not usually, at any rate.”

“So you did consider it?”

Annie ignored him and prepared to move on just as their food arrived. They took a short pause to arrange papers, plates and knives and forks, then carried on. “The first gap is three months, the second is one.”