The last sheep finally found the gate and scrambled through. The farmer held up his hand in thanks, as if Banks had had any option but to wait, and closed the gate behind him. Banks set off.

“Rather you than me,” he said. “I can’t stand them. Anyway, see if you can take young Tom aside, take him for a drink or something. I’ve a feeling he really wants to tell us what he knows. Did you notice the way he kept looking at you?”

“Yes.”

“Think he fancies you?”

“No,” Susan said, after a pause for thought. “No. Somehow, I don’t think it was that at all.”

2

Banks crunched the last pickled onion of his plowman’s lunch and swilled it down with a mouthful of Theakston’s bitter, then he lit a cigarette. He would have to resort to a Polo mint if he found himself interviewing anyone in the afternoon. Superintendent Gristhorpe sat opposite him in the Queen’s Arms, cradling a half-pint. It was the first time they had been able to get together since Banks had met Burgess.

“So,” Gristhorpe said, “according to Burgess, Rothwell was laundering money for Martin Churchill?”

“Looks that way,” said Banks. “He said he couldn’t be certain but I don’t think he’d come all the way up here if he wasn’t, do you?”

“Knowing how little Burgess thinks of the north, no. But I still don’t think we should overlook the possibility of Rothwell’s involvement in some other kind of organized crime, most likely drugs, prostitution or porn. Even if he were laundering money for Churchill, he could have been into something else dirty too. We can’t assume it was the Churchill link that got him killed until we know a hell of a lot more.”

“I agree,” said Banks.

“Better do as Burgess says and watch your back, though.”

“Don’t worry, sir, I will.”

“Anyway,” Gristhorpe went on, “I’ve just had a meeting with Inspector Macmillan, and he tells me that Daniel Clegg acted as Robert Calvert’s reference for his bank account and his credit card in Leeds. The account has about twenty thousand in it. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Play money,” Banks said.

“Aye. I wouldn’t mind that much to play with, myself. Anyway, according to Inspector Macmillan, the bank employees didn’t recognize Rothwell’s picture as Calvert because they hardly saw him. He used a busy branch in the city center, and the only person who did make the connection when Macmillan pushed it said Calvert looked and dressed so differently she wouldn’t have known.”

“Thank the lord for Pamela Jeffreys, then.”

“Aye, or we might never have known. What does his family have to say?”

Banks sighed and put the edge of his hand to his throat. “I’ve had it up to here with the bloody Rothwells,” he said. “They give a whole new meaning to ‘dysfunctional.’ There’s the victim laundering illegal money and leading a double life just for a hobby. There’s the daughter, who’d rather bury her face in a book than face reality now that the shock and the tiredness have worn off. There’s a son with more than a few guilty secrets hidden away. And then, watching over them all, there’s the Queen Bee, who just wants to keep up the usual upper-middle-class appearances and swears the sun shone out of her husband’s arse.”

“What do you expect her to do, Alan? Her world’s fallen apart. She must be having a hell of a job just holding things together. Have a bit more bloody compassion, lad.”

Banks took a drag at his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ve just had it with the bloody Rothwells, that’s all. What do they know? It’s hard to tell. I think the wife suspects something weird was going on, but she doesn’t know what and she doesn’t want to know. She denies it, especially to herself.”

“Could they have any involvement?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Banks said, “and I’ve discussed it with Susan. In the final analysis, I don’t really think so. Mary Rothwell might well hit out at anything that threatens her comfortable world, and if she thought her husband were profiting from porn, for example, I can’t see her just sitting still and accepting it.” He shook his head. “But not this way. This brings her exactly the kind of attention she doesn’t want. I don’t know how she’d deal with him – Susan guessed poison, maybe, or an accident – but it wouldn’t be like this.”

“Hmm. Try this for size,” said Gristhorpe. “One: Let’s assume that Rothwell and Clegg are in the money-laundering business together, for Martin Churchill or whoever.”

Banks nodded. “It makes sense, Clegg being a tax specialist and all.”

“And we’ll leave Robert Calvert out of it, as, say, just a personal aberration on Rothwell’s part, at least for the moment. A red herring, right?”

“Okay.”

“Something goes wrong. Rothwell finds out something that makes him want to get out of it, so he writes to Clegg ending their association.”

“And,” said Banks, “Churchill, or whoever it is they’re working for, doesn’t like this at all.”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“So far. Keep going.”

“Rothwell gets scared. Either he’s been cheating on his masters, and they’ve found out, or they’re afraid he’s getting nervous and is going to blow the whistle. So what do they do?”

“Take out a contract.”

“Right. And that’s the end of Rothwell.”

Gristhorpe paused as a couple of office-workers on a lunch break brushed past them and sat down at the next table. Cyril’s cash register rang up another sale.

“He could have been cheating on them to finance his life as Calvert,” said Banks. “I know we were going to leave him out of the equation, but it fits. He had twenty grand in the bank, you say, and he liked to gamble, according to Pamela Jeffreys.”

“True, but let’s stick to the simple line. What’s important is that Rothwell has become a liability, or a threat, and his masters want him dead. They’ve got enough money to be able to pay for the privilege without getting their own hands dirty. Which brings us to Mr. Daniel Clegg. The killers had a fair bit of information about Rothwell. They seemed to know that he and his wife would be out celebrating their wedding anniversary, for example. Clegg could probably have told them that. They knew Rothwell had a daughter, too, and that she would be at home. She wasn’t ‘part of the deal,’ remember? And they knew where he lived, the layout, everything.”

“Clegg?”

Gristhorpe nodded. “Let’s put it this way. If Rothwell were laundering money for someone, there’d be little, if any, contact between him and his masters, wouldn’t there?”

“That would seem to be one point of a laundering operation,” Banks agreed. “Certainly Tom Rothwell seemed genuinely puzzled when I brought up Martin Churchill.”

“Right. And Clegg was the only other person we suspect was involved, and he had information about Rothwell’s personal life.”

“So you reckon Clegg was behind it?”

“It’s a theory, isn’t it? They weren’t exactly friends, Alan. Not according to what you’ve told me. They were business colleagues. Different thing. It was a matter of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Strange bedfellows, maybe. And crooked too. It’s an odd thing is a professional gone bad. They talk about bent coppers, but what about bent lawyers, bent accountants, bent doctors? If push came to shove, would you expect one crooked businessman to stick up for another?”

“So you think Clegg was not just involved in the laundering business but in Rothwell’s murder, too?”

“Aye. He could be our link.”

“And his disappearance?”

“Scarpered. He knew what was coming, knew when. Maybe they paid him well. It doesn’t matter whether he was scared of us or them, the result was the same. He took his money and ran, collected two hundred pounds when he passed go, didn’t go to jail. Then his bosses couldn’t get in touch with him, so they sent their two goons to find him. The timing’s right.”