Final Account (6 page)

As he drove along the bumpy track to the Relton road, he slipped in a tape of Dr John playing solo New Orleans piano music. He had developed a craving for piano music—
any
kind of piano music—recently. He was even thinking of taking piano lessons; he wanted to learn how to play
everything
—classical, jazz, blues. The only thing that held him back was that he felt too old to embark on such a venture. His forty-first birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks.

In Relton, a couple of old ladies holding shopping baskets stood chatting outside the butcher's shop, probably about the murder.

Banks thought again about Alison Rothwell and her mother as he pulled up outside the Black Sheep. What were they holding back? And what was it that bothered him? No matter what Mrs Rothwell and Alison had said, there was something wrong in that family, and he had a hunch that Tom Rothwell might know what it was. The sooner they contacted him the better.

III

Laurence Pratt delved deep in his bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of Courvoisier VSOP and two snifters.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized to DC Susan Gay, who sat opposite him at the broad teak desk. “It's not that I'm a secret tippler. I keep it for emergencies, and I'm afraid what you've just told me most definitely constitutes one. You'll join me?”

“No, thank you.”

“Not on duty?”

“Sometimes,” Susan said. “But not today.”

“Very well.” He poured himself a generous measure, swirled it and took a sip. A little colour came back to his cheeks. “Ah … that's better.”

“If we could get back to Mr Rothwell, sir?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But you must understand Miss, Miss … ?”

“Gay, sir. DC Gay.”

She saw the inadvertent smile flash across his face. People often smiled like that when she introduced herself. “Gay” had been a perfectly good name when she was a kid—her nickname for a while had been “Happy” Gay—but now its meaning was no longer the same. One clever bugger had actually asked, “Did you say AC or DC Gay?” She comforted herself with the thought that he was doing three to five in Strangeways, thanks largely to her court evidence.

“Yes,” he went on, a frown quickly displacing the smile. “I'd heard about Keith's death, of course, on the radio this lunch-time, but they didn't say
how
it happened. That's a bit of a shock, to be honest. You see, I knew Keith quite well. I'm only about three years older than he, and we worked here together for some years.”

“He left the firm five years ago, is that right?”

“About right. A big move like that takes quite a bit of planning, quite a bit of organizing. There were client files to be transferred, that sort of thing. And he had the house to think of, too.”

“He was a partner?”

“Yes. My father, Jeremiah Pratt, was one of the founders of the firm. He's retired now.”

“I understand the family used to live in Eastvale, is that right?”

“Yes. Quite a nice house out towards the York roundabout. Catterick Street.”

“Why did they move?”

“Mary always fancied living in the country. I don't know why. She wasn't any kind of nature girl. I think perhaps she wanted to play Lady of the Manor.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

Pratt shrugged. “Just her nature.”

“What about her husband?”

“Keith didn't mind. I should imagine he liked the solitude. I don't mean he was exactly anti-social, but he was never a great mixer, not lately, anyway. He travelled a lot, too.”

Pratt was in his mid-forties, Susan guessed, which did indeed make him just a few years older than Keith Rothwell. Quite good-looking, with a strong jaw and grey eyes, he wore his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his mauve and green tie clipped with what looked like a silver American dollar sign. His hairline was receding and what hair remained was grey at the temples. He wore black-framed glasses, which sat about halfway down his nose.

“Did you ever visit him there?”

“Yes. My wife and I dined with the Rothwells on several occasions.”

“Were you friends?”

Pratt took another sip of cognac, put his hand out and waggled it from side to side. “Hmm. Somewhere between friends and colleagues, I'd say.”

“Why did he leave Hatchard and Pratt?”

Pratt broke eye contact and looked into the liquid he swirled in his snifter. “Ambition, maybe? Straightforward accountancy bored him. He was fond of abstractions, very good with figures. He certainly had a flair for financial management. Very creative.”

“Does that imply fraudulent?”

Pratt looked up at her. She couldn't read his expression. “I resent that implication,” he said.

“Was there any bad feeling?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“When he left the firm. Had there been any arguments, any problems?”

“Good lord, this was five years ago!”

“Even so.”

Pratt adopted a stiffer tone. “No, of course there hadn't. Everything was perfectly amicable. We were sorry to lose him, of course, but …”

“He wasn't fired or anything?”

“No.”

“Did he take any clients with him?”

Pratt shuffled in his chair. “There will always be clients who feel they owe their loyalty to an individual member of the firm rather than to the firm as a whole.”

“Are you sure this didn't cause bad feeling?”

“No, of course not. While it's unprofessional to solicit clients and woo them away, most firms
do
accept that they will lose some business whenever a popular member leaves to set up on his own. Say, for example, you visit a particular dentist in a group practice. You feel comfortable with him. He understands how you feel about dentists, you feel safe with him. If he left and set up on his own, would you go with him or stay and take your chances?”

Susan smiled. “I see what you mean. Do you think you could provide me with a list of names of the clients he took?”

Pratt chewed his lower lip for a moment, as if debating the ethics of such a request, then said, “I don't see why not. You could find out from his records anyway.”

“Thank you. He must have made a fair bit of money somehow,” Susan said. “How did he do it?”

Pratt, who if truth be told, Susan thought, suppressing a giggle, might not be entirely happy about
his
name, either, made a steeple of his hairy hands. “The same way we all do, I assume,” he said. “Hard work. Good investments. Excellent service. Arkbeck Farm was in pretty poor shape when they bought it, you know. It didn't cost a fortune, and he'd no trouble arranging a fair mortgage. He put a lot into that house over the years.”

Susan looked at her notes and frowned as if she were having trouble reading or understanding them. “I understand Mr Rothwell actually owned a number of businesses. Do you know anything about this?”

Pratt shook his head. “Not really. I understand he was interested in property development. As I said, Keith was an astute businessman.”

“Did Mrs Rothwell work?”

“Mary? Good heavens, no! Well, not in the sense that she went out and made money. Mary was a housewife all the way. Well, perhaps ‘house manager' or ‘lady of leisure' would be a more appropriate term, as she didn't actually do the work herself. Except for the garden. You must have seen Arkbeck, how clean it is, how well appointed?”

“I'm afraid I had other things on my mind when I was there, sir,” Susan said, “but I know what you mean.”

Pratt nodded. “For Mary,” he went on, “everything centred around the home, the family and the immediate community. Everything had to be just so, to look just right, and it had to be
seen
to look that way. I imagine she was a hard taskmaster, or should that be taskmistress? Of course, she didn't spend
all
her time in the house. There were the Women's Institute, the Church committees, the good works and the charities. Mary kept very busy, I can assure you.”

“Good works? Charities?” There was something positively Victorian about this. Susan pictured an earnest woman striding from hovel to hovel in a flurry of garments, long dress trailing in the mud, distributing alms to the peasants and preaching self-improvement.

“Yes. She collected for a number of good causes. You know, the RSPCA, NSPCC, cancer, heart foundation and the like. Nothing political—I mean, no ban the bomb or anything—and nothing controversial, like AIDS research. Just the basics. She was the boss's daughter, after all. She had certain Conservative standards to keep up.”

“The boss's daughter?”

“Yes, didn't you know? Her maiden name was Mary Hatchard. She was old man Hatchard's daughter. He's dead now, of course.”

“So Keith Rothwell married the boss's daughter,” Susan mused aloud. “I don't suppose that did his career any harm?”

“No, it didn't. But that was more good luck than good management, if you ask me. Keith didn't just marry the boss's daughter, he got her pregnant first, with Tom, as it turns out,
then
he married her.”

“How did that go over?”

Pratt paused and picked up a paper-clip. “Not very well at first. Old man Hatchard was mad as hell. He kept the lid on it pretty well, of course, and after he'd had time to consider it, I think he was
glad to get her off his hands. He could hardly have her married to a mere junior, though, so Keith came up pretty quickly through the ranks to full partner.”

Pratt twisted the paper-clip. He seemed to be enjoying this game, Susan thought. He was holding back, toying with her. She had a sense that if she didn't ask exactly the right questions, she wouldn't get the answers she needed. The problem was, she didn't know what the right questions were.

They sat in his office over Winston's Tobacconists, looking out on north Market Street, and Susan could hear the muted traffic sounds through the double-glazing. “Look,” Pratt went on, “I realize I'm the one being questioned, but could you tell me how Mary is? And Alison? I do regard myself as something of a friend of the family, and if there's anything I can do …”

“Thank you, sir. I'll make sure they know. Can you think of any reason anyone might have for killing Mr Rothwell?”

“No, I can't. Not in the way you described.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I suppose I could imagine a burglar, say, perhaps killing someone who got in the way. You read about it in the papers, especially these days. Or an accident, some kids joy-riding. But this …? It sounds like an assassination to me.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“About a month ago. No, earlier. In March, I think. Shortly after St Patrick's Day. The wife and I went for dinner. Mary's a splendid cook.”

“Did they entertain frequently?”

“Not that I know of. They had occasional small dinner parties, maximum six people. Keith didn't like socializing much, but Mary loved to show off the house, especially if she'd acquired a new piece of furniture or something. So they compromised. Last time it was the kitchen we had to admire. They used to have a country-style one, Aga and all, but someone started poking fun at ‘Aga-louts' in the papers, so Mary got annoyed and went for the modern look.”

“I see. What about the son, Tom? What do you know of him?”

“Tom? He's travelling in America, I understand. Good for him. Nothing like travel when you're young, before you get too tied down. Tom was always a cheerful and polite kid as far as I was concerned.”

“No trouble?”

“Not in any real sense, no. I mean, he wasn't into drugs or any of that weird stuff. At worst I'd say he was a bit uncertain about what he wanted to do with his life, and his father was perhaps just a little impatient.”

“In what way?”

“He wanted Tom to go into business or law. Something solid and respectable like that.”

“And Tom?”

“Tom's the artsy type. But he's a bright lad. With his personality he could go almost anywhere. He just doesn't know where yet. After he left school, he drifted a bit. Still is doing, it seems.”

“Would you say there was friction between them?”

“You can't be suggesting—”

“I'm not suggesting anything.” Susan leaned back in the chair. “Look, Mr Pratt, as far as we know Tom Rothwell is somewhere in the USA. We're trying to find him, but it could take time. The reason I'm asking you all these questions is because we need to know
everything
about Keith Rothwell.”

“Yes, of course. I'm sorry. But what with the shock of Keith's death and you asking about Tom …”

Susan leaned forward again. “Is there any reason,” she asked, “why you should think I was putting forward Tom as a suspect?”

“Stop trying to read between the lines. There's nothing written there. It was just the way you were asking about him, that's all. Tom and his father had the usual father-son arguments, but nothing more.”

“Where did Tom get the money for a trip to America?”

“What? I don't know. Saved up, I suppose.”

“You say you last saw Keith Rothwell in March?”

“Yes.”

“Have you spoken with him at all since then?”

“No.”

“Did he seem in any way different from usual then? Worried about anything? Nervous?”

“No, not that I can remember. It was a perfectly normal evening. Mary cooked duck
à l'orange
. Tom dropped in briefly, all excited about his trip. Alison stayed in her room.”

“Did she usually do that?”

“Alison's a sweet child, but she's a real loner, very secretive. Takes after her father. She's a bit of a bookworm, too.”

“What did you talk about that evening?”

“Oh, I can't remember. The usual stuff. Politics. Europe. The economy. Holiday plans.”