When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Read online

  ‘I really can’t speculate on that, but you’ve seen her body, same as I have. You’ll have to talk to Dr Glendenning when he’s done the post-mortem. No doubt the good doctor will be checking her skin for any signs of paint or any traces that might have transferred from a van. But you also have to remember that if she was hit by a van, it could have been an accident.’

  ‘She’d have been like a deer in the headlights.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Was the other van following the first one?’

  Stefan thought for a moment. ‘I’d say not. She had time to walk some distance from where she was dumped from the first vehicle before it came along. That would probably have taken her ten or fifteen minutes, the shape she was in.’

  Gerry walked over and stood beside them. ‘Did you catch that?’ Annie said. ‘A naked girl gets tossed in a ditch from a moving vehicle. She gets out, makes her way back up the road, maybe hoping for a Good Samaritan or at least a working telephone box, then someone else comes along and either runs her down or kicks the living daylights out of her.’

  ‘That’s about the way I see it,’ Stefan said. ‘And judging from the skid marks and pattern on the verge up there, I’d say that when he’d finished with her, he turned around and headed back the way he came.’

  ‘You’re saying “he”, Stefan. Is it just a figure of speech or do you really think it was a man?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Stefan. ‘It’s mostly just a habit. Easier than saying “he or she”. But now that you mention it, I find it harder to see a woman than a man doing what was done to her.’

  ‘And what are the odds of some stranger just happening along this road, seeing a naked woman walking and turning out to be a passing psychopath, deciding to beat her to death?’

  ‘That’s just the problem, isn’t it?’ Stefan said. ‘Probably close to zero.’

  ‘Did anything happen in the car?’ Banks asked.

  ‘No. Caxton went on being the perfect gentleman, chatting, solicitous of my comfort, anxious to help me with my dreams. Giving advice about how to behave onstage, how to deal with stage fright. Stuff like that. He even gave me a cigarette and a glass of champagne. It was the first time I’d ever tasted it.’

  ‘In the car? Was there a driver?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And was the other man with you?’

  ‘Yes, but he was in the front with the driver. He didn’t say anything the whole way.’

  ‘Were either of them ever questioned?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone was.’

  ‘And the hotel staff saw you when you arrived?’

  ‘No. We went into a sort of underground car park at the back and got straight in a lift. I don’t remember going through reception or anything, or seeing anyone else. Not then. I suppose maybe because he was a celebrity he had a discreet way in. To be honest, I didn’t really notice. I was on cloud nine. I was with Danny Caxton and he was going to help me get into show business. I could already see my name in lights.’

  ‘Did the driver and the other man go in with you?’

  ‘Not the driver. Just the other man . . . he . . . yes.’

  ‘OK. Then what happened?’

  ‘We went up in a tiny lift to the fourth floor, a big suite of rooms, all wood panelling and old world elegance. Gilt-framed pictures on the walls. Constable prints, Turner, stuff like that. I remember one of a horse standing by a tree. A Stubbs, maybe. It was a sad horse.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We drank more champagne. I had never really drunk alcohol before, except a sip of my dad’s beer once when he was out, and it went straight to my head. I suppose I was giggly, a bit silly. I think I even sang him a song or something.’

  ‘What did Caxton do next?’

  ‘He changed. Just like that. I asked him what I should do next, you know, to get started in the business, and he led me towards the bedroom and said something about passing the audition, that people have to pay for what they get, and they should be grateful. I don’t remember it all exactly. I was feeling a bit dizzy. He said the first thing was to take some photos.’

  ‘With your clothes off?’

  ‘No. There was still no suggestion of funny business. He said they were to show agents and whatever. A portfolio. Anyway, the other man, the assistant, took some. He had a Polaroid camera and it was the first time I’d seen one. It was like magic the way the photos came out. I think he took some more later, too, you know, while . . . I thought I could hear the sound of the camera.’

  ‘How were you feeling by the time he took the photos?’

  ‘I was feeling nervous. Danny Caxton was scaring me a bit, saying things, and the way he looked at me. I felt my heart beating fast. I didn’t know what he meant. And the smile had gone. I suppose I was a bit tipsy, too. Like I said, I wasn’t used to drinking. I asked him where Helen Shapiro was, and he laughed and said he didn’t know. I think he said something rude about her, but I didn’t really understand it. Then he sat on the bed and patted the spot next to him. I sat down. I think I told him I wanted to go home.’

  Banks could tell that despite Linda’s calm veneer she was getting upset the more she spoke. It was hardly surprising, given what was to come. ‘You don’t have to tell us all the details right now,’ he said, ‘but did Danny Caxton rape you?’

  Linda looked Banks in the eye first, then Winsome. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘And did you struggle?’

  ‘As best I could. I didn’t know what was happening, what he was doing. It might be hard for people to believe this today, but I was a virgin, and I was ignorant of the realities of sex. Oh, we talked about it at school, but that was all a load of nonsense, like rubbing willies and so on. It wasn’t anything like . . . Yes, I struggled because I was scared. But he was far stronger than me. And it hurt.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘After?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Linda averted her eyes, staring down at a robin hopping over the lawn by the fence. ‘It gets very hazy, but when Caxton finished, he rolled off me. I tried to stand up. It was hard. I was winded, and he’d made me sore . . . you know. I felt sick from the champagne. But Caxton said I couldn’t leave yet, and he pushed me down again, then he told the other man it was his turn, to hurry up.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘The younger man raped me, too. There was something . . .’ She stopped, as if trying to find the right words. ‘Something reluctant about him. Like he didn’t really want to do it, but he wanted to please Caxton. Maybe he’d been pushed into it, you know, maybe Caxton was challenging him to be a man or something. But what happened had excited him, and he’d passed a point of no return. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being fanciful, using hindsight, but I don’t think he felt comfortable.’

  ‘But he did it anyway? Did he rape you as well?’

  She turned her head away. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So this man was both a witness and an assailant. You didn’t mention this to DI MacDonald?’

  ‘No. I just told her someone else was there. I never told my mother, either.’

  ‘Or the Leeds police?’

  ‘No. I was too ashamed. Somehow, it seemed . . . being raped twice . . . I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Did you tell your friend Melanie?’

  ‘I’ve never told anyone.’

  ‘Where’s Melanie now?’

  ‘She died a few years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Banks.

  ‘We’d lost touch, more or less, over the years.’

  ‘Did they talk to each other, this man and Caxton, use names or anything?’

  ‘Not that I remember, no.’

  ‘I know this is a bit delicate,’ said Banks, ‘but did either of them use a condom?’

  ‘No. I thought later it was a miracle I didn’t get pregnant, but I didn’t.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I was crying and I just wanted to go home.
It was like I didn’t exist for them any more. I just walked out of the room in a daze.’

  ‘Nobody tried to stop you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did you leave the hotel?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Through reception, out the front.’

  ‘Caxton didn’t make you go by the back entrance, where you’d come in, have his driver take you?’

  ‘He didn’t even give me bus fare.’

  ‘Did anyone see you leaving?’

  ‘I should imagine so. I felt as if everyone could see what I’d just been doing. I was so ashamed. They had to know, just from the way I was walking, though I probably didn’t seem odd at all, just a bit dishevelled. I know it’s ridiculous, but it just felt that way, like “whore” was emblazoned on my forehead. I suppose it’s because that was how I felt inside. I thought everyone could see it. I can’t say I saw them, though. I was in a daze. I didn’t really notice anything.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I must have just walked around. I don’t know where or for how long. Maybe the Pleasure Beach. The sands. I remember I missed dinner and everyone was angry with me. I just told them I’d been walking around and lost track of the time. I said I didn’t feel very well and went to bed early.’

  ‘Now think carefully,’ said Banks. ‘You say you’d never seen this other man before, but did you ever see him again?’

  ‘That’s where it gets unclear,’ said Linda, a tone of regret and desperation in her voice. ‘I honestly can’t remember. I think I did, but I was a zombie for weeks, months after. I put on a good enough show. But inside. I don’t have much recall of the aftermath.’

  ‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘Calm down, Linda. There’s no hurry, no pressure.’

  ‘I just have this memory of seeing a picture of him sometime after he raped me, but it’s not clear where, or even if I really did. It might have been in a newspaper or something. It might even have been an image in a dream. Or a nightmare. I had plenty of those.’

  ‘A magazine, perhaps? Or a billboard? Was he also famous?’

  ‘No. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. At least, I’d have known if I’d seen him on TV or anything. No, if it really happened, it was just a fleeting glimpse, half-forgotten. Most likely a newspaper. Half created, half perceived, perhaps.’

  ‘Wordsworth,’ said Banks.

  Linda’s eyes widened. ‘You know poetry?’

  ‘No, but we did “Tintern Abbey” at school. Even went on a school trip there. It was one of the few I liked, a big favourite of our English teacher’s – he was very big on the Romantic imagination – and I’ve never forgotten those lines, or at least the paraphrase. It’s something that comes up a lot in my job.’

  ‘ “Of all the mighty world / Of eye and ear, – both what they half create, / And what perceive.” Yes, that’s what it’s like, really, trying to think back to that . . . that day. I don’t know how much I perceived or how much I’m making up, filling in, when I try to remember it.’

  She had just about put her finger on the whole problem of historical abuse cases, Banks thought – or Wordsworth had. No real evidence, just a mix of fact and fiction. But there had to be a way to crack it, to crack Danny Caxton. Linda wasn’t the only victim, and in these cases there was strength in numbers, in independent, believable testimony. When it came right down to it, most people had no reason to lie about something like that; the only problem was getting their memories as clear as possible. Even then, Banks knew, you could ask five people to describe an event they had all witnessed together and you’d get five different accounts.

  ‘You mentioned a newspaper,’ Banks said. ‘Is that where you might have seen his picture?’

  ‘It’s what comes to mind. You know, passing a rack of papers at the newsagent’s or a quick glance at someone’s paper getting on or off a bus. It feels like it was that sort of flash.’

  ‘How long after the assault?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. It wasn’t all that long, though. After summer but before winter. October, maybe. As I said, I was in bad shape for a few months, maybe a year, though I still managed to function. School, and all that. I was just jumpy, and I got depressed sometimes. I lost interest in things. Reading. Songs. Hockey. Hanging out with my friends. They started to think I was weird and ignore me. My marks went down, of course. My mother took me to a child psychologist, but I don’t really think that did any good. The same doctor who’d given me the tonic before gave me some more pills, but I only pretended to take them after the first few made everything even more fuzzy. I suppose they were all just trying to help. I was probably behaving like a real brat.’

  ‘But you never sought the photograph out later, tried to find it again?’

  ‘No. I just wanted things to get better, to feel better, and when they started to, when the anxiety decreased and it felt like a heavy weight was lifting from me, I moved on, tried to forget.’

  ‘Would you recognise the man if you saw the picture again?’

  ‘Perhaps. I couldn’t describe him, but I think I might recognise that photo if I saw it again. Memory’s a strange thing. But I can’t say for sure.’

  ‘So you didn’t ever go back and tell the police you’d seen a photo of the man who was with Caxton, a man who had also raped you and perhaps taken photos of you with Caxton?’

  ‘No. They’d dropped the case by then. I don’t know that it would have changed anything.’

  ‘You have to let the police decide things like that, Linda,’ said Banks. ‘People don’t always know what matters and what doesn’t, what’s important and what isn’t.’

  ‘But doesn’t having every little thing thrown at you clutter up your investigations?’

  Banks smiled. ‘We’ve got a special unclutter gadget that separates the wheat from the chaff.’ He paused. ‘No, seriously, please tell me everything that comes to you. Don’t self-censor.’

  ‘OK. But I don’t think I can remember anything more right now. I’m exhausted.’

  Banks handed her his card. ‘Ring me anytime if you do. And I mean anytime.’

  She took the card and read it, then shifted her eyes back to Banks. They seemed filled with a kind of dreamy wistfulness, or it could have been tears. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Would you be willing to repeat all you’ve told me in court, if it came to that?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘You’d better be certain. The defence counsel won’t make things easy for you.’

  ‘They’d do their job, I suppose. I’d be more comfortable doing it if I wasn’t alone. If there were others.’

  ‘I think you can count on that.’

  ‘You know, sometimes I feel a bit like a phoney in all this.’

  ‘Why?’

  She gestured around her. ‘My life wasn’t ruined. I’ve made a successful life for myself. Oh, I get jumpy sometimes, I have panic attacks, and I still have bad dreams – long winding corridors, something nasty behind the door, rooms beyond rooms, but they’re just typical nightmares.’

  ‘Drugs? Drink?’

  Her eyes narrowed, with a glint of humour. ‘Are you asking me if I’m a junkie or an alcoholic?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Banks felt himself blush. ‘It’s just that sometimes people who’ve experienced . . . you know, they reach for . . .’

  ‘Oblivion?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I had my moments. I was seventeen, eighteen in the late sixties, early seventies. People were experimenting. I was deep into that scene, the poetry, the music, the Eastern philosophy, the clothes, and, yes, the drugs. It took a while for the psychedelic drug culture to work its way up to Leeds, but my friends and I tried pot and acid, mescaline, speed, Mandies. Never the hard stuff, though. No coke or heroin.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got bored with it all, like watching the same cartoon show over and over again at the News Theatre. So I went to university to study English literature.’
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  ‘And drink?’

  ‘At university? Who didn’t?’

  ‘In general. Now.’

  ‘The occasional glass of wine. Hell, the occasional bottle of wine. So what?’

  Banks smiled. ‘So nothing.’ Thinking he wouldn’t mind sharing a bottle with her as they talked right now, in the summer garden by the riverside with Beethoven’s calm after the storm playing. But he pushed such thoughts out of his mind. The garden had cast its own special spell made of bee drone, blackbird song, the scent of roses and the music of the fast-running river. The warm and hazy air could do things to your mind, too, distract you, slow thought down, alter its direction. He was here to help this woman get justice for a terrible thing that had happened to her years ago, not to entertain fantasies about chatting with her about poetry and music and life in general over a glass of wine. He needed to break the spell.

  She cocked her head. ‘Do you ask all your victims questions like this?’

  ‘Everyone’s different. I don’t have a set list. I do have a few things I want to know, then I let the conversation flow from the answers. That’s often when I find out the most interesting stuff. Besides, it’s not often that both suspect and victim are celebrities.’

  ‘I wasn’t a celebrity. I was a fourteen-year-old girl with a head full of dreams of a glamorous life, like being a rock star or an actress. And if you think being a poet is a celebrity leading a glamorous life, then you know something I don’t. And I don’t want to be thought of as a victim, either. If you’re wondering if what happened inhibited me, blighted my life, then the answer’s no, it didn’t. That’s why I feel like a phoney. In small ways maybe it did. For a few months, maybe even a year, certainly, I was a mess, like I said, no doubt about that. But it was a long time ago. Sex, for a while, you know, that was out of the question. It was difficult to relax. I was afraid of the dark. I’d flash on his face, on top of me, his smell. Their faces. I didn’t . . .’ She broke the mood with laughter and turned to Winsome. ‘I always thought the sexual revolution was invented by men to get their own way.’

  ‘You might not be far wrong about that,’ Banks said. ‘Winsome here wasn’t even born then.’