When the Music's Over (6 page)

“Not at all,” said Linda. “As I said, I
want
to talk about it.”

Winsome set the mobile's voice recorder on.

“Where did the assault take place?” said Banks.

“In a suite at the Majestic Hotel in Blackpool, a big old place behind the Pleasure Beach. It's where he—Danny Caxton—and his entourage were staying during the summer season. It's not there anymore.”

“Why were you there?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Looking back, god only knows,” she whispered. “Remember, I was only fourteen. Danny Caxton was famous. He was handsome like a film star. And he was a nice man. Or
so he seemed to his public. He had one of those affable, trustworthy personalities. On the outside. Maybe that was another reason nobody believed me. It was after a matinee, and I was at the stage door on the pier autograph hunting. I used to do that back then. My friend Melanie was supposed to be with me but she cried off at the last minute and went to one of the amusement arcades instead. She wasn't really interested in autographs.”

“Did you tell your parents where you were going?”

“I probably said I was going to try and get some autographs, yes. They knew I collected them. They were used to me going off by myself. I was a solitary child. A bit of a loner. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't antisocial, and I was really glad Melanie was with us that week. But I still needed to do some things by myself. I always have.”

“So you were on your own?”

“Well, there were a few others after autographs, but no one was actually with me, no. You might remember he'd recently started hosting that talent show,
Do Your Own Thing!
, at the time, and I suppose I thought I had talent. I used to watch it regularly. I had dreams of being an actress or a singer then, the next Julie Christie or Dusty Springfield or something. People told me I had a nice voice, and I'd had some good parts in school plays. I wrote my own songs. I'd even played Juliet at school earlier that year. Most of the celebrities, they just hurried by and scribbled in the book without even looking at you, if they bothered at all. But Danny Caxton was different. He noticed people. He really seemed to
see
me. He stopped to talk to me.
Me
.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me my name, what I did.”

“You told him you were at school?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“What I was interested in. That's when I told him about . . . you know, singing and wanting to be onstage. As I said, I was usually a shy teenager, but there was something in his manner that could sort of bring people out of themselves. It felt nice to be able to talk about my dreams to someone. Most of the others had gone by then. I was last in line. He had my book in his hand and his pen ready, but I was gushing
about my favorite pop singers. He knew them all, of course—I mean really
knew
them—and that was when he said maybe he could help me, and somehow the autograph got lost in the excitement. He never did sign it.”

“What did he mean that he could help you?”

“He said maybe he could arrange for me to come to a filming of his program in the TV studio, to be a part of the audience, that maybe if I was good enough I could even be on it. It was a friendly invitation, you know, a bit mysterious, a bit promising, the hint that there'll be something good at the end of it, that I might even get to meet Helen Shapiro or Kathy Kirby. They were both in Blackpool at the time, in different shows. Can you imagine? He said I was pretty and I carried myself well, I had elegant posture, and that was always important if you wanted to be successful in show business. He said they were always needing extras and whatever for the TV show, or for a Christmas special, and maybe he could get me a start.”

“Then what?” Banks asked.

“I fell for it hook, line and sinker, didn't I? He'd finished signing autographs, so he went back to his car. Just before I set off to see if I could track down Melanie in the amusement arcade, someone asked me if I'd care to talk to Mr. Caxton now, that he had some free time.”

“Who was this?”

“I don't know. A sort of aide or assistant or something. Famous people like Danny Caxton had other people to do things for them. He was there later, in the hotel.”

“Did you recognize this assistant from anywhere?”

“No. I'd never seen him before. He wasn't someone from television or the live show. I would have recognized him then. We'd been to see the show a few days earlier with our parents, Melanie and me. An evening performance.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don't really remember. Younger than Caxton. He seemed nice enough at first. There was nothing that really stood out about him.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I didn't think twice about it. I went over with him and hopped in the car. It was really plush. A Rolls-Royce or something.
Inside it smelled all of soft leather, and when it moved it was like floating on air.”

“That's very brazen,” said Winsome. “Whisking you off in his car in public like that. Did anyone else witness this?”

“I don't know. Most of the other autograph hunters had drifted away by then, or gone chasing after Jess Conrad. I know I felt special, like a princess, getting in the car.”

“You weren't suspicious?”

“Why would I be? Believe me, I've flagellated myself time after time for not being, but how could I be, really? I was fourteen, my head full of dreams of the stage, and here was this nice, funny man from TV who everybody loved saying he could help me. He was in your living room almost every night. It was broad daylight, Blackpool in high season, there were people all around. Would
you
have been suspicious?”

“Probably not,” Winsome admitted.

Banks could see by Winsome's expression that she wouldn't have been, that she understood exactly where Linda Palmer was coming from. Perhaps the analogy with the pastor in Winsome's neighboring village, whom everyone had respected, helped make it clear to her. Like the pastor, Danny Caxton was in a position of trust and power.

Beethoven's storm broke, starkly contrasting the serenity of the garden and the cloudless blue of the sky.

“I mean, back then we didn't worry about perverts all the time,” said Linda, “and I don't think I'd ever heard of a pedophile. We were all warned not to take sweets from strangers, of course, or get into cars with strange men we didn't know, but Danny Caxton wasn't strange. He was . . . he was like someone we knew, really, a kindly uncle. He wasn't the sort of person our parents meant.”

ANNIE WAS
sweating by the time they reached the spot where Stefan's officer waited. It was about half a mile south from the girl's body, and despite the light breeze and some shade from the leafy trees, the heat was getting to her. She felt out of shape and realized that, despite the yoga and meditation, she hadn't got back to working out again yet.
She made a mental note to rejoin the small fitness center in Harkside, where she lived, as she was far more likely to use that than go after work—or, god forbid,
before
—to the larger one in Eastvale, despite its advantage in having more fit males around. She glanced at Gerry, who didn't seem to be showing any effects whatsoever from the walk.
Well, she is in her twenties
, Annie thought, a willowy, redheaded thoroughbred, though she herself was just in her early forties, and willowy enough. Plenty of time to shape up. Only Banks seemed never to have to bother with all that. No matter what he ate and drank, he stayed as lean and agile as ever. Still, it will catch up with him eventually, Annie thought, with a grim sort of satisfaction.

“Signs of activity” was all Stefan had said when Annie had asked him what they'd found. When she and Gerry finally reached the spot, she saw that another area of the roadside had been cordoned off with police tape, and there were three white-suited CSIs kneeling and swabbing the ground nearby, collecting samples in plastic or paper bags. There was also another faint skid mark in the road, as if a car or van had slowed down quickly, swerved, then speeded up again.

Even before Stefan pointed out the finer details, Annie could see that the long grass edging the ditch had been flattened and was crusted with dried mud. The dirt along the edge of the road surface was similarly disturbed, and a track continued, almost recognizable as muddy footprints, for several feet in the direction where the body lay.

“So she was hurt before she got to the place where we found her, where she was killed?” said Annie.

“Be careful,” Stefan said as Annie squatted and leaned toward the ditch. “We found barbed wire and a broken bottle in there. Both were submerged, so we don't expect anything in the way of trace evidence, but they've gone for testing. Some of the cuts on the girl's side might have been caused by the wire or broken glass.” He gestured to the fencing above the drystone wall. “It was obviously discarded when this was added. No doubt one of the farmers had problems with kids getting in scaring his sheep or whatever.”

“What are you saying, Stefan?” Annie asked. “That she was in the ditch here?” She was glad to see a sheen of sweat on the crime-scene manager's handsome face. At least someone else was human, and that
it was the ever-so-dreamy, ever-so-cool Stefan Nowak was even better.

“If you observe the way the dirt and grass are disturbed here, I'd say it indicates that someone climbed out of this ditch onto the road and starting walking north, back towards the Eastvale road. The water's dried up, but you can see the outlines her muddy feet made. No shoes. And it seems as if she was limping. I'm saying there's a strong likelihood it was our girl. If she was naked, she would have been covered in filthy ditchwater and mud, like the girl's body back up the road. And she would also show evidence of barbed wire and broken glass cuts, as the body does. If you move closer, you can also see that a handful of grass has been pulled out right there.” He pointed. Annie could see it. “To my thinking, if someone crawled out of the ditch, they had to get in there in the first place. It's an explanation. She went in here, and for some reason, she tried to get a hold on the grass, perhaps to prevent herself falling in or help haul herself out.”

“So she was moving fast when she went in?”

“Possibly. I'd say so. Rolling too fast to stop herself. And you saw the hip injury. Dr. Burns says it's probably broken. A fall could cause an injury like that, if she bumped it on the road surface, for example. You know what I'm getting at, don't you, Annie?”

“Someone chucked her in the ditch, most likely from a moving vehicle. You can see where it skidded on the verge close to where she came out. The grass is flattened in a direction that indicates the van was traveling south. She climbed out again, after getting a mud bath and cutting herself up a bit, then started walking back the way she'd come—hence the muddy footprints—most likely hoping for a lift home. Which means she wasn't actually beaten to death until later, farther up. Unless she simply collapsed and died of her injuries.”

“I'd say she was most likely killed by the roadside up there, where the body is, but she was already naked and injured when she got there.”

“Well, the position and attitude of the body certainly bear that out. But the car she was thrown from had already . . . I mean, what happened? Did he turn back for her?”

“There's no evidence of that so far,” Stefan said. “You can see the
sort of swerve those skid marks indicate. Someone stopped or slowed rather quickly and lost control of the steering for a second or two. It happens.”

“Could they have got out and run after her? Or could someone have been with her?”

“I suppose so,” said Stefan, “but there's no evidence of anyone else in the vicinity, and there's only one set of footprints. We'll check, of course. We're doing a complete work-up on what tire tracks we've got. I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope because they're just faint blurs, and you can't get decent tire impressions from skids, but there's always a chance we might get enough to check against the manufacturers' databases. For now, I'd say there were two cars.”

“Two cars?”

“Yes. Even from such small samples and skid marks we can see how the tracks differ. There was the van here, the one she was likely dumped from, traveling south. Then there was another van that stopped to give a naked girl a lift half a mile up the road in the middle of the night. It was also traveling south, but it didn't get as far as here.”

“Van? You said van.”

“Judging by the track width, both were commercial vehicles of some kind.”

“You say this second van was traveling in the same direction as the one that had dumped her?”

“Yes. Again, if you look closely, you can see the way the grass is flattened a short distance south from where her trail ends.”

“So the van would have been coming towards her, and she'd have had to turn to run back to it when it stopped. That would explain why her tracks continue on north past the spot where she's lying back there. Bloody hell,” said Annie. “What a mess. She ran back to the car when it stopped, and then the driver killed her. Or could the car have hit her?
Could
this have been a hit and run, despite what Dr. Burns said?”

“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 postmortem. No doubt the good doctor will be checking her skin for any signs of paint or any traces that might have transferred from a car. But
you also have to remember that if she was hit by a car, it could have been an accident.”

“She'd have been like a deer in the headlights.”

“Probably. But there's always the possibility.”

“Was the other car following the first one?”