The beer garden was quiet. They sat at a heavy wooden bench beside a bowling green and sipped their drinks. Two old men in white were playing on the green, and occasionally the clack of the bowls disturbed the silence. Banks and Susan shared salted roast peanuts and cheese-and-onion crisps, as neither had eaten since breakfast. The sun felt warm on the back of Banks’s neck.
“You can go home whenever you want,” Banks told Pamela as she took off the tan suede jacket she had put on to go out. “We have to stay here, but we’ll pay for a taxi. I’m sorry we had to ruin your day for you.”
Pamela squinted in the sun, reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of large pink-rimmed sunglasses. “It’s all right,” she said, picking up her gin and tonic. “I know it wasn’t Robert they were talking about in the paper. Who was this man, this Keith Rothwell?”
“He was an accountant who got murdered,” Banks told her. “We can’t really say much more than that. Did you ever hear the name before?”
Pamela shook her head. “The papers said he was married.”
“Yes.”
“Robert didn’t act like a married man.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guilt. Secrecy. Fleeting visits. Furtive phone calls. The usual stuff. There was none of that with Robert. We went about quite openly. He wasn’t tied down. He was a dreamer. Besides, you just know.” She took her glasses off and squinted at Banks. “I’ll bet you’re married, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Banks, and saw, he hoped, a hint of disappointment in her eyes.
“Told you.” She put her sunglasses on again.
Banks noticed Susan grinning behind her glass of lemonade. He gave her a dirty look. A clack of bowls came from the green and one of the old men did a little dance of victory.
“So, you see,” Pamela went on. “It can’t be the same man. If I’m sure of one thing, it’s that Robert Calvert definitely wasn’t a married man with a family.”
Banks picked up his pint and raised it in a toast. “I hope you’re right,” he said, looking at her brave smile and remembering the scene in Rothwell’s garage only two nights ago. “I sincerely hope you’re right.”
Chapter 5
1
There was always something sad about an empty farmyard, Banks thought as he got out of the car in front of Arkbeck Farm again. There should be chickens squawking all over the place, the occasional wandering cow, maybe a barking sheepdog or two.
He thought of the nest egg he had held at his Uncle Len’s farm in Gloucestershire on childhood family visits. They used it to encourage hens to lay, he remembered, and when his Aunt Chloe had handed it to him in the coop, it had still felt warm. Banks also remembered the smells of hay and cow dung, the shiny metal milk churns sitting by the roadside waiting to be picked up.
As he rang the doorbell, he doubted that the Rothwells felt the same way about empty farmyards. The place seemed to suit Alison’s introspective nature; her father had no doubt appreciated the seclusion and the protection from prying eyes and questions it offered; and Mary Rothwell… well, Banks could hardly imagine her mucking out the byre or feeding the pigs. He couldn’t imagine her handing a child a warm porcelain egg, either.
“Do come in,” Mary Rothwell said, opening the door. Banks followed her to the split-level living room. Today she wore a white shirt that buttoned on the “man’s” side and a loose gray skirt that reached her ankles. Alison lay sprawled on the sofa reading.
On the way to Arkbeck Farm, he had considered what to say to them regarding his talk with Pamela Jeffreys in Leeds, but he hadn’t come up with any clear plan. Vic Manson hadn’t got back to him yet about the prints, so he still couldn’t be absolutely certain that Robert Calvert and Keith Rothwell were the same person. Best play it by ear, he decided.
“How are you doing?” he asked Mary Rothwell.
“Could be worse,” she replied. He noticed her eyes were baggy under the make-up. “I haven’t been sleeping well, despite the pills, and I’m a mass of nerves, but if I keep myself busy, time passes. I have the funeral to organize. Please, sit down.”
Banks had come partly to explain that a van was on its way to pick up Keith Rothwell’s computer disks and business files and spirit them off to the Fraud Squad’s headquarters in Northallerton, where a team of suits would pore over them for months, maybe years, costing the taxpayers millions. He didn’t put it like that, of course. Just as he had finished explaining, he heard the van pull up out front.
He went to the front door and directed the men to Rothwell’s office, then returned to the living room, shutting the door firmly behind him. It was dark in the room, and a little chilly, despite the fine weather outside. “They shouldn’t bother us,” he said. “Perhaps a little music?”
Mary Rothwell nodded and turned on the radio. Engelbert Humperdinck came on, singing “Release Me.” Banks often regretted that humans hadn’t been born with the capacity to close their ears as they did their eyes. He did his best, anyway, and reflected that it was all in a good cause, blanking out the sounds of Keith Rothwell’s office being dismantled and carried away.
“Have you found Tom?” Mary Rothwell said, sitting down. She sat at the edge of the armchair, Banks noticed, and twisted her hands in her lap, a mass of gold and precious stones. She seemed so stiff he wished someone would give her a massage. Her skin, he felt, would be brittle as lacquered hair to the touch.
Banks explained that they had tracked down the car rental agency he had used and that it wouldn’t be long before someone spotted the car.
“He should be home,” she said. “We need him. There’s the funeral… all the arrangements…”
“We’re doing our best, Mrs. Rothwell.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”
“It’s all right. Are you up to answering a few more questions?”
“I suppose so. As long as you don’t want to talk about what I went through the other night. I couldn’t bear that.” Her eyes moved in the direction of the garage and Banks could see the fear and horror flood into them.
“No, not that.” She would have to talk about it sometime, Banks almost told her, but not now, not yet. “It’s Mr. Rothwell I want to talk about. We need a better idea of how he spent his time.”
“Well, it’s hard to say, really,” she began. “When he was here, he was up in his office most of the time. I could hear him clicking away on the computer.”
“Did you ever hear him on the phone?”
“He had his own line up there. I didn’t listen in, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. But sometimes you just can’t help overhearing something, anything.”
“No. He always kept the door shut. I could hear his voice, like I could hear the keyboard, but it was muffled, even if I was passing by the office.”
“So you never knew who he was talking to or what he was saying?”
“No.”
“Did he have many calls in the days leading up to his death?”
“Not so much as I noticed. No more than usual. I could always hear it ring, you see, even from downstairs.” She stood up. “Would you like a cup of tea? I can-”
“Not at the moment, thank you,” Banks said. He didn’t want her crossing the path of the removal team. For one thing, it would upset and distract her, and for another she would start telling them off about trailing dirt in and out.
She walked over to the fireplace, straightened a porcelain figurine, then came and sat down in the same position. Alison went on reading her book. It was Villette, by Charlotte Brontë, Banks noticed. Surely a bit heavy for a fifteen-year-old?
“I understand your husband would drop in at the Black Sheep or the Rose and Crown now and then?” Banks asked.
“Yes. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he liked to get out of the house for an hour or so. You do when you work at home, don’t you? You get to feel all cooped up. He’d usually walk there and back. It was good exercise. Businessmen often don’t exercise enough, do they, living such sedentary lives, but Keith believed in keeping in good shape. He swam regularly, too, in Eastvale, and he would sometimes go for long runs.” She started picking pieces of imaginary lint from her skirt. Banks heard a thud from the staircase, and this time he couldn’t stop her from dashing to the door and yanking it open.