Peter Robinson - Piece Of My Heart

“What happened?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because you know I’ll find out.”

Adams sighed and stared across the pool as if he were staring across forty years of bad history. He reached in his pockets for a cigarette, dipped his head and cupped his hand to light it against the wind. “I saw him,” he said finally. “The fifth time, in Winchester. You don’t know about that one, do you?”

“No,” said Banks.

“That’s because I saved her life.” Adams spoke without any hint of vanity or self-satisfaction, as if he were stating a mere fact. “I had my suspicions about Robin, and I was about the only one who ever bothered to read the newspapers back then. I saw our reviews, and I read the stories about those girls. At first I thought nothing of it. It’s hard to really believe that the person sitting next to you on the tour bus is a killer. But I should have known. It all kept adding up. Things he said, the way he talked about people. Then I remembered Brimleigh. The first. I still couldn’t be certain it was Robin, couldn’t accept it, I suppose, but I didn’t know where he was at the time.

“Anyway, at Winchester – this would be June, just a week or so before his death – I followed him after the show. There was a girl taking a shortcut through a cemetery, of all places, the fool, and that’s where he pounced. I was just behind him. I shouted something. It was dark, and I don’t know if he recognized me, but he growled at me like some sort of wild animal, then he belted off like nobody’s business. The girl was all right. I made sure she got home okay without letting on who I was. I don’t know if she reported the incident or not, but I heard nothing more of it. Now the problem became what to do about Robin. I talked to him. He didn’t deny it. That’s when he gave me all that Aleister Crowley and Charles Manson crap, trying to justify himself and his actions. I couldn’t let him go on killing people, but at the same time… a trial, conviction… It was unthinkable. I mean, back then, a rock band could get away with most things, but murder… especially that kind of murder. We’d have been tarnished forever, especially in the wake of the Manson family trial. We’d never have survived. The band would never have survived. Vic. I couldn’t allow that to happen to the others after all the hard years they’d put in. Fortunately, the problem took care of itself.”

“No,” said Banks. “You killed Robin Merchant. You weren’t in bed with Tania Hutchison that night. You went to confront him, here, by the pool. I’m not sure whether you intended to kill him, but you saw something unstoppable in him, and you felt you had no other choice. It worked perfectly. So easy.” He glanced over to the terrace. Vic Greaves was still there, apparently listening. “But someone saw you, didn’t he, Chris? Vic saw you.” Fifteen minutes had now passed since Banks arrived.

“I’m not admitting to killing anybody,” said Adams. “You think what you like. You can’t prove a thing.”

“And you killed Nick Barber,” Banks went on. “It was your silver Mercedes the tourist couple and the girl in the youth hostel saw that night. The running figure was just a jogger. It was foolish of me to think that Vic could have done anything like that himself. Everyone was right about him. He might be a bit off in the head, but he’s a gentle soul at heart. Vic was upset, and he told you in that roundabout way of his that a music journalist had come around pestering him with questions about the past, about Brimleigh, Linda Lofthouse and the other murders. Cardiff. Brighton. Plymouth. Questions to which only you and Vic knew the answers. The journalist said he was going to come back. He’d left his card. You didn’t think Vic could take the strain of another interview. You thought he would soon break down and tell all, given what he’d witnessed all those years ago, so you killed Barber. You couldn’t kill Vic, could you, even though he was the one who was carrying the secret, the most obvious victim? Did you know that Linda Lofthouse was Nick Barber’s birth mother?”

Adams put his fist to his chest and seemed to stagger back a pace or two as if he had been hit. “My God, no!” he said. “I’m not admitting to anything,” he went on. “I talked to Robin, yes, made sure that he knew I knew, and that I was watching him. That’s all. The rest was an accident.”

“You killed him to make certain. You knew he wouldn’t stop, that there would be more victims. And you knew he’d get caught eventually and bring it all tumbling down.”

“The world’s a safer place without him, and that’s a fact. But I’m still not admitting anything. I’m guilty of no crime. There’s nothing you can do to me. Anyway, it would have been very easy just to reach out and…” Adams reached out his arm to demonstrate and let his hand fall on Banks’s shoulder. Then he smiled sadly, “…and just give a little push.” Almost twenty minutes now. The cavalry would arrive in moments.

But he didn’t push. Banks, who had tensed, ready for a struggle, felt the hand relax on his shoulder, and he knew that Adams was about to turn away, that he had reached the end of his resources. Killing Nick Barber and seizing his notes was one thing, but killing a copper in cold blood was quite another.

It all happened at once. Before Banks could move or say anything, he heard footsteps running down the lane, and someone shouted out his name. Then he heard a terrible scream from his left and a dark powerful figure came hurtling forward, crashing right into Adams and toppling both of them over into the deep end of the empty pool. The cavalry had arrived, but they were too late.

By the time Annie and Winsome arrived on the scene, the ambulances had been and gone. It was getting dark, and the wind was howling through the trees and the nooks and crannies of Swainsview Lodge fit to wake the dead. The SOCOs had lit the scene with bright arc lamps and were still strutting about in their white boilersuits like spacemen on a mission. There were spatters of blood at the bottom of the pool mixed in with the other detritus. Annie saw Banks standing alone, head bowed, by the poolside and walked over to him, touching him gently on the shoulder. “Okay?” she said.

“Fine.”

“I heard what happened.”

“Greaves thought Adams was going to do to me what he saw him do to Robin Merchant all those years ago. Then the uniforms came dashing down the lane and frightened him. It’s nobody’s fault. I doubt that anyone could have foreseen it and stopped him.”

“Wasn’t Adams going to push you in?”

“No. He ran out of steam.”

“But you think Greaves witnessed Adams push Merchant?”

“I’m certain of it. He was on LSD at the time. That was what sent him over the edge. Can you imagine it? Adams has taken care of him ever since, protected him, as much for his own sake as anything. Persuaded him not to talk, maybe even persuaded him that it happened some other way. Greaves was so confused. He couldn’t trust his own judgment. But when he saw Adams rest his hand on my shoulder by the pool…”

“It all came back?”

“Something like that, in whatever fragmented and chaotic way Greaves’s mind works these days. However it happened, he snapped. He’d been like a coiled spring all those years. Adams protected him from anything that was likely to push him toward the snapping point. But when Barber appeared with his questions about Plymouth, Cardiff and Brighton, it was too much. Greaves had heard Adams’s conversation with Merchant at the pool, so somewhere in his messed-up mind he knew about these things, what Merchant had done. But he couldn’t confront it. He told Adams, who was terrified that Barber would push too hard and crack the veneer. So he killed him. Barber didn’t think he had anything to fear. He knew who Adams was, thought he’d come to talk to him. He was just having a chat, turning away, reaching for his cigarettes, then Adams picked up the poker, seized the moment. Luckily for him, he still had time to gather Barber’s stuff before the power cut.”