Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson

Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson

1

Monday, September 8, 1969
To an observer looking down from the peak of Brimleigh Beacon early
that Monday morning, the scene below might have resembled the aftermath
of a battle. It had rained brie fly during the night, and the pale sun coaxed
tendrils of mist from the damp earth. They swirled over fields dotted with
motionless shapes, mingling here and there with the darker smoke of
smouldering embers. Human scavengers picked their way through the
carnage as if collecting discarded weapons, occasionally bending to extract
an object of value from a dead man’s pocket. Others appeared to be
shovelling soil or quicklime into large open graves. The light wind carried a
whiff of rotting flesh.
And over the whole scene a terrible stillness reigned.
But to Dave Sampson, down on the field, there had been no battle,
only a peaceful gathering, and Dave had the worm’s eye view. It was just
after eight in the morning, and he had been up half the night along with
everyone else, listening to Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin.
Now, the crowd had gone home, and he was moving among the motionless
shapes, litter left behind by the vanished hordes, helping to clean up after
the very first Brimleigh Festival. Here he was, bent over, back aching like
hell, eyes burning with tiredness, plodding across the muddy field picking
up rubbish. The eerie sounds of Jimmy Page playing his electric guitar with
a violin bow still echoed in his mind as he shoved cellophane wrappers and
half-eaten Mars bars into his plastic bag.
Ants and beetles crawled over the remains of sandwiches and half-

empty tins of cold baked beans. Flies buzzed around the feces and wasps
hovered about the necks of empty pop bottles. More than once, Dave had to
manoeuvre sharply to avoid being stung. He couldn’t believe some of the
stuff people left behind. Food wrappers, soggy newspapers and magazines,
used Durex, tampons, cigarette ends, knickers, empty beer cans and roaches
you’d expect, but what on earth had the person who left the Underwood
typewriter been thinking of? Or the wooden crutch? Had a cripple, suddenly
healed by the music, run off and left it behind?
There were other things, too, things best avoided. The makeshift toilets
set over the open cesspit had been uninviting, as well as few and far
between, and the queues had been long, encouraging more than one
desperate person to find a quiet spot elsewhere in the field. Dave glanced
towards the craters and felt glad that he wasn’t one of the volunteers
assigned to fill them up with earth.
In an otherwise isolated spot at the southern edge of the field, where
the land rose gently towards the fringes of Brimleigh Woods, Dave noticed
an abandoned sleeping bag. The closer he got, the more it looked to be
occupied. Had someone passed out or simply gone to sleep? More likely,
Dave thought, it was drugs. All night the medical tent had been open to
people suffering hallucinations from bad acid, and there had been enough
Mandrax and opiated hash around to knock out an army.
Dave prodded the bag with his foot. It felt soft and heavy. He prodded
it again, harder this time. Still nothing. It definitely felt as if someone were
inside. Finally, he bent and pulled the zip, and when he saw what was there,
he wished he hadn’t.
Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick was at his desk in Brotherton House
before eight o’clock Monday morning, as usual, with every intention of
finishing off the paperwork that had piled up during his two weeks’ annual
leave at the end of August. The caravan at Primrose Valley, with Janet and
Yvonne, had made a nice haven for a while, but Yvonne was obviously
restless, as only a sixteen-year-old on holiday with her parents can be, and
crime didn’t stop while he was away from Leeds. Nor, apparently, did the
paperwork.
It had been a good weekend. Yorkshire beat Derbyshire in the Gillette
Cup Final, and if Leeds United, coming off a season as league champions,

Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson