Peter Robinson - Piece Of My Heart

“Drug scores?”

“Perhaps.”

“What about the venues?”

Annie consulted her notes. “On the twelfth of January, they were playing at the Top Rank Suite in Cardiff, on the nineteenth of April, they were at the Dome in Brighton, and on the nineteenth of May, they were at the Van Dyke Club in Plymouth.”

“You can’t get much more diverse than that,” said Banks. “Okay. Now we need to find out if there’s any significance at all to those dates and places.”

The owner came over to see if everything was all right. They assured him it was, and he scooted off. That kind of solicitude wouldn’t last long in Yorkshire, Annie thought, finding herself wondering if his French accent was as false as his hairpiece. “I’ll enlist Winsome’s aid after lunch,” she said. “You?”

“I think it’s time I paid another visit to Vic Greaves,” said Banks. “See if I can get any more sense out of him this time. I was thinking of taking Jenny Fuller along, but she’s off on the lecture circuit, and there’s no on else around I can really trust for that sort of thing.”

“Be careful,” said Annie. “Remember what happened to Nick Barber when he got too interested in Greaves.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“And good luck,” Annie added. “By the sound of him, you’ll need it.”

Banks cut off a lump of glutinous brown gristle from his steak and put it on the side of his plate. The sight of it made Annie feel vaguely queasy and very glad to be a vegetarian. “You know,” Banks said, “I still can’t decide whether Greaves is truly bonkers or just a genuine English eccentric.”

“Maybe there isn’t much of a difference,” Annie said. “Have you thought of that?”

There were plenty of cars parked on Lyndgarth’s village green early on Monday afternoon, and several groups of walkers in serious gear had assembled for briefings nearby. Banks found a spot to park near the post office and headed up the lane to Vic Greaves’s cottage. He was hoping that the man might be a bit more coherent this time and had a number of questions prepared to jog the ex-keyboard player’s memory if he needed to. Since his last visit he had come to believe that Stanley Chadwick had been seriously misguided about Patrick McGarrity’s guilt, for personal reasons, and he now knew that not only had Greaves been Linda Lofthouse’s cousin, but that Nick Barber was her son, which meant that Greaves and Barber were also related in some complicated way that Banks couldn’t quite figure out. But most important, it meant connections between the different cases, and connections always excited Banks.

He walked up the short path and knocked on the door. The front curtains were closed. No answer. He remembered the last time, how it had taken Greaves a while to answer, so he knocked again. When he still got no answer, he walked around to the back, where there was a small cobbled yard and a storage shed. He peeked through the grimy kitchen window and saw that things were in pretty much the same spotless order as they had been when he had first visited Greaves.

Curious, Banks tried the back door. It opened.

He was treading on dangerous ground now, he knew, entering a suspect’s premises alone, without a search warrant. But he thought that, if he had to, he could justify his actions. Vic Greaves was mentally unstable, and Banks feared that he might have come to some harm, or harmed himself in some way. Even so, he hoped he didn’t stumble across the one piece of vital evidence that linked Greaves inextricably with Barber’s murder, or with Linda Lofthouse’s, or he might have a hard time getting it admitted in court. What he would do, he decided, was not touch anything and return with full authorization if he had to.

As he entered, Banks felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. Annie had been right in her warning. If he indicated that he was at all close to the truth, then Greaves might lash out, as Banks thought he had done at Nick Barber. He might already know who was at his door, might be lying in wait, armed and ready to attack. Banks moved cautiously through the dim kitchen. At least all the knives were in their slots in the wooden block where Greaves kept them. Banks stood still in the doorway that led through to the living room and listened. Nothing but the wind whipping the tree branches and the distant sounds of a car starting and a dog barking.

From what he could make out in the pale light that filtered through the curtains, the living room was just as it had been, too, with newspapers and magazines piled everywhere. Banks stood at the bottom of the stairs and called out Greaves’s name again. Still no answer.

Tense and alert, he started to walk up the stairs. They creaked as he moved. Every once in a while he would pause, but still he heard nothing. He stood on the upstairs landing and listened again. Nothing. It was a small cottage, and in addition to the toilet and bathroom there were only two bedrooms. Banks checked the first and found it almost as full of newspapers and magazines as the living room. Then he went into the second, which was obviously Greaves’s bedroom.

In one corner lay a mattress heaped with sheets and blankets. It reminded Banks of nothing so much as a nest of some kind. Carefully, he poked around with his toe in the bedsheets, but no one was there, either hiding or dead. Though the sheets were piled in an untidy mess, they were clean and smelled of apples. There was nothing else in the room except a wardrobe and a dresser full of old, but clean and neatly folded, clothes and underwear.

After a cursory glance in the toilet and bathroom, which told him nothing, Banks went back downstairs into the living room. It was an ideal opportunity for him to poke around, but it didn’t seem as if Greaves had anything worth poking around for. There were no mementos, no Mad Hatters memorabilia, no photos or keepsakes of any kind. In fact, as far as Banks could tell, the cottage contained nothing but a few basic toiletries, clothes, kitchenware and newspapers.

Idly, he started looking at some of the papers on the top of the pile: Northern Echo and Darlington amp; Stockton Times, along with the Yorkshire Evening Post dating back about three years, as far as he could tell. The magazines covered just about everything from computing, though Greaves had no computer as far as Banks had seen, to coin collecting, though there were none on the subject of rock music, or music of any kind. Many of the magazines still had free gifts stuck to their covers, and some hadn’t even been removed from their cellophane wrapping.

Finding nothing of interest among the papers, Banks headed for the shed in the backyard. It had a padlock, but it was already open, just hanging there loosely on the hasp. Banks opened the door. He expected more newspapers, at the very least, but the shed was empty. It had no particular smell except for soil and wood. Spiders went about their webs in the corners and one particularly large specimen scuttled across the window. Banks shuddered. He had hated spiders ever since he had found one under his pillow when he was about five.

Banks closed the door behind him and left it as it was. There was one thing, he guessed, that should have been there but wasn’t: Vic Greaves’s bicycle. So had Greaves gone rideabout, or had he gone somewhere specific?

Banks went back to his car and took out his mobile. The signal was poor, but at least there was one. Chris Adams answered almost immediately.

“Mr. Adams,” said Banks. “Where are you?”

“At home. Why?”

“Do you have any idea where Vic Greaves is?”

“I’m not his keeper, you know.”

“No, but you’re the closest he’s got to one.”

“Sorry, no. I don’t know. Why?”