“Watch what you’re doing, you clumsy little man!” she said. “Just look at this. You’ve gouged a hole in my wall. The plaster’s fallen off. You’ll have to pay for that, you know. I’ll be talking to your superior.” She popped her head back around the door and said, “I’ll make that tea now, shall I?” then disappeared into the kitchen.

Banks, still sitting, noticed Alison look up and raise her eyes. “She’s been like this since yesterday,” she said. “Can’t sit still. It’s even worse than usual.”

“She’s upset,” Banks said. “It’s her way of dealing with it.”

“Or not dealing with it. I saw him too, you know. Do you think I can forget so easily?”

“You’ve got to talk to each other,” Banks said. He noticed the book was shaking in her hands and she was making an effort to keep it still.

“If Tom doesn’t come home soon, I’m going to run away,” she said. “I can’t stand it any longer. She’s always going on about something or other and running about like a headless chi-” She put her hand to her mouth. “My God, what a thing to say. I’m awful, aren’t I? Oh, I hope Tom comes back soon. He must or I’ll go mad. We’ll both go mad.”

A bit melodramatic, Banks thought, but perhaps to be expected from a young girl on a steady diet of Charlotte Brontë.

Mary Rothwell came in bearing a tea tray and wearing a brave smile. Alison picked up her book again and lapsed into moody silence while her mother poured the tea into delicate china cups with hand-painted roses on the sides and gold around the rims. Banks always felt clumsy and nervous drinking from such fine china; he was afraid he would drop the cup or break off the flimsy handle while lifting it to his mouth.

“Why are they taking all Keith’s files anyway?” Mary Rothwell asked.

“We’re beginning to think that your husband might have been involved in some shady financial dealings,” Banks explained. “And they could have something to do with his murder.”

“Shady?” She said it as Lady Bracknell said, “A handbag?”

“He might not have known what he was involved in,” Banks lied. “It’s just a line of enquiry we have to follow.”

“I can assure you that my husband was as honest as the day is long.”

“Mrs. Rothwell, can you tell me anything about what your husband did when he was travelling on business?”

“How would I know? I wasn’t there.”

“Which hotels did he stay in? You must have phoned him.”

“No. He phoned me occasionally. He told me it was better that way for his tax expenses.” She shrugged. “Well, he was the businessman. I’ve already told you he travelled all over the place.”

“You never went with him?”

“No, of course not. I have an aversion to lengthy car rides. Besides, they were business trips. One doesn’t take one’s spouse on business trips.”

“So you’ve no idea what he got up to in Leeds or wherever?”

She put down her cup. “Are you implying something, Chief Inspector? Keith didn’t ‘get up to’ anything.”

Banks was dying for a cigarette. He finished the weak tea and put his cup and saucer down gently on the coffee-table. “Do you know if your husband was much of a gambler?” he asked.

“Gambler?” She laughed. “Good heavens, no. Keith never even bet on the Grand National, and most people do that, don’t they? No, money for my husband was too hard earned to be frittered away like that. Keith had a poor childhood, you know, and one learns the value of money quite early on.”

“What sort of childhood?”

“His father was a small shopkeeper, and they suffered terribly when the supermarkets started to become popular. He eventually went bankrupt. Keith didn’t like to talk about it.”

Banks remembered the cigarettes he had found among the contents of Rothwell’s pockets. “Did you know that your husband smoked?” he asked.

“One minor weakness,” Mary Rothwell said, turning up her nose. “It’s a smelly and unpleasant habit, as well as a possibly fatal one. I certainly wouldn’t let him do it in the house, and I was always trying to persuade him to stop.”

I’ll bet you were, Banks thought. “Have you ever heard of a woman called Pamela Jeffreys?” he asked.

Mary Rothwell frowned. For the first time, she sat back in the chair and gripped its arms with both hands. “No. Why?” Banks saw suspicion and apprehension in her eyes.

Outside, the van door closed and the engine revved up. Banks noticed Mrs. Rothwell glance toward the window. “They’re finished,” he said. “What about Robert Calvert? Does the name mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing. Look, what’s this all about? Are these the people you think killed Keith? Are these the ones who got him involved in this criminal scheme you were talking about?”

Banks sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe, but I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you go and arrest them instead of bothering us?”

Banks didn’t think he was likely to get anything else out of Mary Rothwell, or out of Alison. He stood up. “I’m sorry we had to bother you,” he said. “We’ll be in touch as soon as we track down your son. And please let us know if you hear from him first. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.” And he left.

Maybe she hadn’t heard of Pamela Jeffreys, he thought as he got in the car, but he was certain that she suspected her husband might have been seeing another woman. It was there in her eyes, in the whiteness of her knuckles.

He slipped a Thelonious Monk tape in the deck and set off for his next appointment. As the edgy, repetitive figure at the opening of “Raise Four” almost pushed his ears to the limits of endurance, he wondered how long Mary Rothwell would be able to maintain her thinly-lacquered surface before the cracks started to show.

2

“Well, now, if it ain’t Mr. Banks again,” said Larry Grafton when Banks walked into the Black Sheep that lunch-time with The Sunday Times folded under his arm. “Twice in one week. We are honored. What can we do for you this time?”

“You could start with a pint of best bitter and follow it with a plate of your Elsie’s delightful roast beef and Yorkshire pud. And you could cut the bloody sarcasm.”

Grafton laughed and started pulling. Elsie’s Sunday lunches were another well-kept secret, and only a privileged few got to taste them. Banks didn’t fool himself that he was an accepted member of the elite; he knew damn well that publicans liked to keep on the good side of the law.

“And,” he said, when Larry handed him his pint, “I’d like a word with your Cathy, if I might.”

“About the Rothwells, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Aye. Well she’s just having her dinner. I’ll send her through when she’s done.”

“Thanks.”

Banks took his drink and sat by the tiled fireplace. Before he sat, he glanced at the collection of butterflies pinned to a board in a glass case on the wall. The pub wasn’t as busy as most on a Sunday lunch-time. Of course, there was no sandwich-board outside advertising “Traditional Sunday Lunch.”

Banks’s roast beef and Yorkshires came, as good as ever. Not for the first time, he reflected that Elsie’s was the only roast beef in Yorkshire, apart from Sandra’s, that was pink in the middle. As he ate, he propped the paper against a bottle of HP sauce and began to read an analysis of the growing political unrest on an obscure Caribbean island, feeling an irrational rage grow in him as he read. Christ, how he loathed these tinpot dictators, the ones who stuffed their maws with the best of everything while their subjects starved, who tortured and murdered anyone who dared to complain.

Just as he had picked up the books supplement, he noticed a tourist couple walk in and look around. They went to the bar and the man asked Larry Grafton what food he offered.

“Nowt,” said Grafton. “We don’t do food.”

The man looked toward Banks. “But he’s got some.”