Final Account (19 page)

Burgess shrugged. “Like I said, orders to flag. When I called your station, Superintendent Gristhorpe told me where you were. I missed you at the solicitor's office, but the secretary told me you were coming here.”

“What's Daniel Clegg's connection with all this?”

“We don't know yet. We don't even know if there is one. I only just found out about his disappearance. It's early days yet.”

“Two other men have been looking for him, too. One black, one white. Are they your lot?”

Burgess frowned. “No, they're nothing to do with me.”

“Know anything about them?”

“No.”

He was lying, Banks was certain. “So why are you here?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Just carry on as normal. I simply wanted to warn you to tread very carefully, that's all, that things might be more complicated than they appear on the surface. And to let you know there's help available if you want it, of course. Naturally, if you get close to uncovering the killers' identities, I'd be interested in talking to them.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm interested in everything to do with Martin Churchill, as I told you.” Burgess looked at his watch. “Good lord, is that the time already?” he said, then knocked back the rest of his pint, winked and stood up. “Got to be off now. Be seeing you.” And he strutted off over the square towards Park Row.

Banks lit a cigarette and brooded over the meeting as he finished his pint, wondering what the hell the bastard was up to. He didn't trust Burgess as far as he could throw him, and he was convinced that all that stuff about offering help and giving a friendly warning was rubbish. Burgess was up to something.

At a guess, he wanted to be one of the first to get to the killers so he could find a way of hushing them up. The last thing he would want was a big story about Churchill hiring assassins to murder a Yorkshire accountant splashed all over the press. Churchill might well be up to much worse things on St Corona, but this was England, after all.

Still, no matter what Burgess suspected, and whether or not Martin Churchill was behind it all, Banks still had two killers to find, locals by the sound of them, and he wasn't going to do that by sitting around in Stumps fretting about Dirty Dick Burgess.

IV

Banks didn't expect to find anything new in Calvert's Headingley flat, but for some reason he felt the need to revisit the place after he had picked up the Khachaturian compact disc.

West Yorkshire police had talked to the other tenants, who all said they knew nothing about Mr Calvert or Keith Rothwell: they never really saw much of him; he was out a lot; and, yes, now you mention it, there was a resemblance, but it was only a newspaper photo and Mr Calvert didn't look quite the same; besides, Calvert wasn't an Eastvale accountant, was he? He lived in Leeds. Couldn't argue with that. Banks headed upstairs.

The only immediate difference he noticed was the thin layer of fingerprint powder on surfaces of metal or glass: around the gas fireplace, on the glass-topped coffee-table and the TV set.

This time, Banks examined the books more closely. There weren't many, and most of them were the usual best-seller list paperbacks: Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Ken Follett, Robert Ludlum. There was also some espionage fiction—Len Deighton, John le Carré, Adam Hall, Ian Fleming—plus a couple of Agatha Christies and an oddly out-of-place copy of
Middlemarch,
which looked unread. Hardly surprising, Banks thought, having given up on even the television adaptation. The only other books were
Palgrave's Golden Treasury,
the first part of William Manchester's Churchill biography and a
Concise Oxford Dictionary
.

The small compact disc collection concentrated entirely on jazz, mostly Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk and a few collections of big-band music. Banks noticed some decent stuff: Louis, Bix, Johnny Dodds, Bud Powell. On the whole, though, judging from the Monet print over the fireplace, the
Palgrave
and the music, Robert Calvert had agreed with Philip Larkin about the evils of Parker, Pound and Picasso.

In the bedroom, all the papers had been removed from the desk, as had the wallet with the Calvert identification and credit card. The Fraud Squad would be working already on Calvert's financial profile, now they knew that he and Rothwell were one and the same. The magazines and coins were still there, the bed still unmade.

Why had Rothwell
needed
Calvert? Banks wondered. Simple escapism? According to what everyone said, he was a different person altogether at Arkbeck Farm and in the wider community of Swainsdale. Most people there spoke of him as a rather dull chap, maybe a bit henpecked.

Then there was Robert Calvert, the dancing, gambling, laughing, fun-loving Lothario and dreamer. The man who had attracted and bedded the beautiful Pamela Jeffreys. The man who squeezed his toothpaste tube in the middle.

So which was the real Keith Rothwell? Both or neither? In a sense, Banks guessed, he needed both worlds. Did that make him a Jekyll and Hyde figure? Did it mean he was mad? Banks didn't think so.

He remembered Susan's account of her interview with Laurence Pratt, in which Pratt had indicated that Rothwell had changed over the years, cut himself off, penned himself in. Perhaps he had once been the kind of person who liked gambling, dancing and drinking. Then he had been pushed into marriage with the boss's daughter, and marriage had changed him. It happened often enough; people settled down. But, for some reason, Rothwell had felt the need for an outlet, one that would not interfere with his family life, or with his local image as a respectable, decent citizen.

Banks could think of one good reason why it was important for Rothwell to maintain this fiction: Rothwell was a crook. He certainly didn't want to draw attention to himself by high living. As Calvert, he could relive his youth as much as he wished and enjoy the proceeds of his money-laundering. Perfect.

Did Mary Rothwell know about her husband's other life? She had probably suspected something was wrong time and time again over the last few years, but denied and repressed the suspicions in order to maintain the illusion of happy, affluent family values in the community. She probably needed to believe in the lies as much as her husband needed to live them.

But you can only maintain an illusion for so long, Banks thought, then cracks appear and the truth seeps in. You can ignore that for a long time, too, but ultimately the wound begins to fester and infect everything. That's when the bad things start to happen. Did Alison know? Or Tom? It would be interesting to meet the lad.

He looked through the wardrobe and dresser drawers again. Most of Calvert's clothes were still there, though the condoms had gone. Genuine scientific testing, Banks wondered, or a Scene-of-Crime Officer with a hot date and no time to get to the chemist's?

He looked under chairs, under the bed, on top of the wardrobe, in the cistern, and in all the usual hiding places before he realized that Vic Manson and his lads had probably already done most of that, even though the flat wasn't a crime scene
per se,
and that he didn't know what he was looking for anyway. He paused by the front window, which looked out onto a tree-lined side-street off Otley Road.

Fool, he told himself. He had been looking for Keith Rothwell in Robert Calvert's flat. But he wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere; he was just a slab of chilled meat waiting for a man with his collar on the wrong way around to chant a few meaningless words that might just ease the living's fear of death until the next time it touched too close to home for comfort.

As he glanced out of the window, he glimpsed two men in suits across the street looking up at him. They were partially obscured by trees, but he could see that one was black, the other white.

He hurried down to the street. When he got there, nobody was about except a young man washing his car three houses down.

Banks approached him and showed his identification. The man wiped the sweat off his brow and looked up at Banks, shielding his eyes from the glare. Sunlight winked on the bubbles in his bucket of soapy water.

“Did you see a couple of blokes in business suits pass by a few minutes ago?” Banks asked.

“Yeah,” said the man. “Yeah, I did. I thought it was a bit odd the way they stopped and looked up at that house. To be honest, though, the way they were dressed I thought they were probably coppers.”

Banks thanked him and went back to the car. So he wasn't getting paranoid. How did the saying go? Just because you think they're out there following you, it doesn't mean they aren't.

EIGHT

I

Tom Rothwell resembled his father more than his mother, Banks thought, sitting opposite him in the split-level living-room at Arkbeck Farm the following morning. Though his hair was darker and longer, he had the same thin oval face and slightly curved nose and the same grey eyes as Banks had seen in the photograph. His sulky mouth, though, owed more to early Elvis Presley, and was no doubt more a result of artifice than nature.

His light brown hair fell charmingly over one eye and hung in natural waves over his ears and the collar of his blue denim shirt. Both knees of his jeans were torn, and the unlaced white trainers on his feet were scuffed and dirty.

The best of the lot, Cathy Grafton had said, and it wasn't hard to guess why a rather plain girl like her would value a smile and a kind word from a handsome lad like Tom.

But right from the start Banks sensed something else about him, an aura of affected arrogance, as if he were condescending from a great intellectual and moral height to answer such stupid questions as those relating to his father's murder.

It was rebellious youth, in part, and Banks certainly understood that. Also, Tom seemed to exhibit that mix of vanity and over-confidence that Banks had often encountered in the wealthy. In addition there was a hell of a lot of the wariness and subterfuge that he usually associated with someone hiding a guilty secret. Tom's body language said it all: long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, arms folded high on his chest, eyes anywhere but on the questioner. Susan Gay sat in the background to take notes. Banks wondered what she thought about Tom.

“Did you have any problems getting a flight?” Banks asked.

“No. But I had to change at some dreary place in Carolina, and then again in New York.”

“I know you must be tired. I remember from my trip to Toronto, the jet lag's much worse flying home.”

“I'm all right. I slept a little on the plane.”

“I can never seem to manage that.”

Tom said nothing. Banks wished that Alison and Mary Rothwell weren't flanking Tom on the sofa. And again the room felt dark and cold around him. Though it had windows, they were set or angled in such a way that they didn't let in much natural light. And they were all closed.

“I imagine you're upset about your father, too,” he said.

“Naturally.”

“We wanted to talk to you so soon,” Banks said, “because we hoped you might be able to tell us something about your father, something that might help lead us to his killers.”

“How would I know anything? I've been out of the country since the end of March.”

“It's possible,” Banks said, weighing his words carefully, “that the roots of the crime lie farther back than that.”

“That's ridiculous. You lot have far too much imagination for your own good.”

“Oh? What do
you
think happened?”

Tom curled his lip and looked at the carpet. “It was clearly a robbery gone wrong. Or a kidnap attempt. Dad
was
quite well off, you know.”

Banks scratched the scar beside his right eye. “Kidnapping, eh? We'd never thought of that. Can you explain?”

“Well, that's your job, isn't it? But it's hardly difficult to see how it could have been a kidnap attempt gone wrong. My father obviously wouldn't co-operate, so they had to kill him.”

“Why not just knock him out and take him away?”

Tom shrugged. “Perhaps the gun went off by accident.”

“Then why not take the body and pretend he was still alive till they got the money?”

“How would I know? You're supposed to be the professionals. I
only said that's what it
might
have been. I also suggested a bungled robbery.”

“Look, Tom, this is a pointless game we're playing. Believe me, we've covered all the possibilities, and it wasn't a kidnap attempt or a bungled burglary. I realize how difficult it is for the family to accept that a member may have been involved in something illegal, but all the evidence points that way.”

“Absurd,” spat Mary Rothwell. “Keith was an honest businessman, a good person. And if you persist in spreading these vicious rumours, we'll have to contact our solicitor.”

“Mrs Rothwell,” Banks said, “I'm trying to talk to your son. I'd appreciate it if you would keep quiet.” More than once he had thought about breaking the news that her husband led another existence as Robert Calvert, but he held back. In the first place, it would be cruel, and in the second, Gristhorpe said the Chief Constable wanted it kept from the press and family, if possible, at least until they developed a few more leads on the case.

Mary Rothwell glared at him, lips pressed so tight they were white around the edges.

Banks turned back to Tom. “Were you close to your father?”

“Close enough. He wasn't …” Tom turned up his nose. “He wasn't a clinging, emotional sort of person.”

“But you were on good terms?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you might know something that could help us.”

“I still don't see how, but if I can be of any use … Ask away.”

“Did he ever mention a man called Martin Churchill?”

“Churchill? No.”

“Do you know who he is?”