Final Account

by Peter Robinson

  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.

  II

  “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 honoured. 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 élite; 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 towards Banks. “But he’s got some.”

  “Last plate.”

  The man looked at his watch. “But it’s only twelve-thirty.”

  Grafton shrugged.

  “Besides, you said you don’t do food. You’re contradicting yourself. You heard him, didn’t you, darling?”

  His wife said nothing; she just stood there looking embarrassed. He had the kind of upper-class accent that expects immediate subservience, but he obviously didn’t know there could be nothing more calculated to get right up a Yorkshireman’s nose.

  “Look,” said Grafton, “does tha want a drink or doesn’t tha?”

  “We want food,” the man said.

  His wife tugged at his sleeve. “Come on, darling,” she whispered just in Banks’s range of hearing. “Don’t cause a fuss. Let’s go. There are plenty of other pubs.”

  “But I—” The man glared petulantly at Grafton, who stared back stone-faced, then followed his wife’s advice.

  “Really,” Banks heard him say on his way out, “you’d think these people didn’t want to make an honest living. They’re supposed to be in the service industry.”

  Larry Grafton winked at Banks and ambled off to serve one of the locals. Banks reflected that maybe the tourist was right. What the hell was wrong with Larry Grafton? Nowt so queer as folk, he decided, and went back to his roast beef. A couple of minutes later, when he had just finished, Cathy Grafton came from the back and joined him. He folded up his newspaper, pushed his empty plate aside and lit a cigarette.

  Cathy was a plump girl of about sixteen with a fringe and a blotchy complexion, as if she had been sitting too close to the fire too long. She also had the longest, curliest and most beautiful eyelashes Banks had ever seen.

  “Dad says you want to talk to me,” she said, wedging herself into a chair. Her accent was thick, and Banks had to listen closely to understand everything she said, even though he had been in Swainsdale for four years.

  “You helped Mary Rothwell do the housework at Arkbeck Farm, didn’t you?”

  “Aye. I do for a few folk around here. I know I should be paying more mind to school, like, but Mum says we need t’money.”

  Banks smiled. Not surprising, given the way Grafton scared business away. “What was it like, working at Arkbeck?” he asked.

  Cathy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you like working there?”

  “It were all reet.”

  “How about Mary Rothwell? Did you get along well with her?”

  Cathy wouldn’t meet his eyes. She shifted in her chair and looked down at the scored table.

  “Cathy?”

  “I heard. It’s just I was always told not to speak ill.”

  “Of the dead? Mary Rothwell isn’t dead.”

  “No. Of me employer.”

  “Am I to take it that you didn’t get along, then?”

  “Take it as you will, Mr Banks.”

  “Cathy, this could be very important. Mr Rothwell was killed, you know.”

  “Aye, I know. It’s got nowt to do with her, though, does it?”

  “We still need to know all we can about the family.”

  Cathy contemplated the table for a while longer. More locals came in. One or two looked in Banks’s direction, nudged their friends and raised their eyebrows.

  “She were just bossy, that’s all,” Cathy said at last.

  “Mary Rothwell was?”

  “Aye. She’d stand over you while you were working, with her arms folded, like this, and tell you you’d missed a bit or you weren’t polishing hard enough. I used to hate doing for her. Will I still have to, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Banks said. “What about Alison?”

  “What about her?”

  “You’re about the same age, surely you must have had things in common, things to talk about. Pop stars and the like.”

  Cathy emitted a loud snort. “Little Miss La-di-da,” she sneered, then shook her head. “No, I can’t say as we did. She always had her nose stuck in a book.”

  “You never chatted with her?”

  “No. Every time she saw me she turned up her nose. Stuck-up little madam.”

  “How did the family members get along with one another?”

  “I weren’t there often enough to notice. Not when they was all together, like.”

  “But you must have some idea, from your observations?”

  “They didn’t say much. It were a quiet house. He were in his office, when he were at home, like, and I were never allowed up there.”

  “Who cleaned it?”

  “Dunno. Maybe he did it himself. I know he didn’t like people to go in. Look, Mr Banks, I’ve got to get back and help me mum. Is there anything else?”

  “Did you notice any changes in the family recently. Did they behave any differently?”

  “Not so far as I could tell.”
r />   “What about Tom, the son? Did you know him?”

  “He were t’best of the lot,” Cathy said without hesitation. “Always had a smile and a good-morning for you.” She blushed.

  “He’s been away for a while now. Did you notice any changes before he left?”

  “They used to argue.”

  “Who did?”

  “Him and his father.”

  “What about?”

  “How would I know? I didn’t listen. Sometimes you couldn’t help but hear.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Just their voices, when they were shouting, like.”

  “Did you ever hear what they were arguing about?”

  “Once t’door were open a bit, and I heard his dad mention a name then say something like, ‘I’m disappointed in you.’ He said ‘shame,’ too.”

  “What was a shame?”

  “No. Just the word. I just heard the word ‘shame,’ that’s all. I could tell Mr Rothwell were very angry, but he sounded cold, you know.”

  “Did he say why he was disappointed?”

  She shook her head.

  “What was the name he mentioned?”

  “Sounded like Aston or Afton or summat like that.”

  “Did you hear what Tom said back?”

  “He said, ‘You’re a right one to talk about being disappointed in me.’”

  “Did you hear anything more?”

  “No.” The chair scraped along the stone flags as she stood up. “I’ve got to go, really. Me mum’ll kill me.” And she hurried back behind the bar with surprising agility.

  III

  “Vic Manson matched prints from the Calvert flat with the ones from the body,” Gristhorpe explained back at the station later that afternoon. “There were a couple of other sets, too, mostly smudged, not on file.”

  It was hot, and Banks was standing by the open window of his office. Gristhorpe sat with his feet up on the desk.

  “So Rothwell was Calvert and Calvert was Rothwell,” Banks said.

  “It certainly looks that way, aye.”

  Banks leaned against the window frame and shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. All right, so we know Rothwell had a secretive side to his nature, and he was greedy, or desperate for cash, to the point of dishonesty once. But this Calvert sounds to me like some sort of playboy. If you could have heard Pamela Jeffreys. Casinos, races, dancing … bloody hell. And you should have seen her, the one he chucked over.”

  “So you’ve told me already, two or three times at least,” Gristhorpe said with a smile. “A proper bobby-dazzler by the sound of her. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Well, she dazzled this bobby, anyway,” said Banks, sitting opposite Gristhorpe. He sighed. “I suppose we just have to accept it: Rothwell led a double life. Like Alec Guinness in that film about the ship’s captain.”

  “The Captain’s Paradise?”

  “That’s the one. The question we have to ask ourselves now is what, if anything, does that fact have to do with his murder?”

  “Has the girlfriend dazzled you so much you haven’t considered she might have a part to play?”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind once or twice, yes. I just can’t see how. Apparently Roth … Calvert found another woman five or six months ago. Pamela Jeffreys seemed to think he’d fallen in love. It’s her we need to find, but she hasn’t come forward yet.”

  “There’s always jealousy as a motive, then.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s possible, though. Maybe Mary Rothwell found out about him and arranged a hit.”

  “I was thinking more about this Pamela Jeffreys.”

  “Couldn’t afford it. She’s a classical musician. Besides, she didn’t really strike me as the jealous type. She said Calvert was just fun to be with. They never made any commitments.”

  “She could be lying.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And don’t forget the possible porn connection. If Rothwell was mixed up with beautiful women, even under another identity, who knows?”

  Banks couldn’t believe it, but he didn’t bother protesting to Gristhorpe. “I’ll have to talk to her again anyway,” he said.

  “Poor you.”

  “What did the Fraud Squad have to say?”

  Gristhorpe scratched his hooked nose. “Funny lot, aren’t they?” he said. “I spent a good part of this morning with DI Macmillan. Used to be in banking. Boring little bugger, but you should have seen his eyes light up when he heard about the locked files. Anyway, they’ve had a quick look at the stuff from Arkbeck Farm, and Macmillan and I had another chat about an hour ago. They haven’t much to go on, yet, of course, and they’re as anxious as young Phil for that by-pass software, but Macmillan’s even more excited now.”

  “Where has the software got to, by the way?”

  “On its way, according to Phil. Apparently they were out of stock but they managed to scrounge around.”

  “Sorry. What did Macmillan have to say?”

  “Well, he said he won’t know anything for certain until they manage to open some of those locked directories. He thinks that’s where the really interesting stuff is. But even some of the written documents in the filing cabinets gave him enough to suspect Rothwell was heavily into money-laundering or abetting tax evasion. Apparently, there was a fair bit of cryptic correspondence with foreign banks: Liechtenstein, Netherlands Antilles, Jersey, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, among others. Dead giveaway, Macmillan said.”

  “Tax havens,” said Banks. “Isn’t that what they are?”

  Gristhorpe held up a finger. “Aha! That was my first thought, too. But they’re only tax havens because they have strict secrecy policies and a very flexible attitude towards whom they take on as their clients.”

  “In other words,” offered Banks, “if you want to deposit a lot of money with them, they’ll take it, no questions asked?”

  “That’s about it, aye. Within the law, of course. They do insist that they verify the money’s source is legal. When it comes down to it, though, banks are basically run on greed, aren’t they?”

  “I won’t argue with that. So Keith Rothwell was putting a lot of money in foreign banks?”

  “Macmillan thought he might have been acting for a third party. He could hardly have made that much money himself. It’s a very complicated business. As I said, either he was involved in aiding and abetting some pretty serious tax evasion, or he was part of a money-laundering scheme. There are still more questions than answers.”

  “Did Macmillan tell you how this money-laundering business works?” Banks asked.

  “Aye, a bit. According to him, it’s basically simple. It’s only in the application it gets complicated. What happens is that somebody gets hold of a lot of money illegally, and he wants it to look legal so he can live off it without raising any suspicions.” Gristhorpe paused.

  “Go on,” Banks urged.

  Gristhorpe ran his hand through his hair. “Well, that’s about it, really. I told you it was basically simple. Macmillan said it would take forever to explain all the technicalities of doing it. As far as legal money is concerned, he said, you can either earn it, borrow it or receive it as a gift. When you’ve laundered your dirty money, it has to look like it came to you one of those ways.”

  “I assume we’re talking about drug money here,” Banks said. “Or the profits from some sort of organized crime—prostitution, pornography, loan sharks?”

  Gristhorpe nodded. “You know as well as I do, Alan, that the top cats in the drug trade pull in enormous wads of cash every day. You can’t just walk into a showroom and buy a Rolls in cash without raising a few eyebrows, and the last thing you want is any attention from the police or the Inland Revenue.”

  Banks walked over to the window again and lit a cigarette. Most of the cars were gone from the cobbled square now and the hush of an early Sunday evening had fallen over the town. A young woman in jeans and a red T-shirt struck a pose by the ancient mar
ket cross as her male companion took a photograph, then they got into a blue Nissan Micra and drove off.

  “What’s in it for the launderer?” Banks asked.

  “According to Macmillan, he’d get maybe four per cent for laundering the safer sort of funds and up to ten per cent for seriously dirty money.”

  “Per cent of what?”

  “Depends,” said Gristhorpe. “On a cursory glance, Macmillan estimated about between four and six million quid. He said that was conservative.”

  “Over how long?”

  “That’s four to six a year, Alan.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Money worth murdering for, isn’t it? In addition to Rothwell’s legitimate earnings as a financial consultant, if he were in this money-laundering racket he also stood to earn, let’s say five per cent of five million a year, to make it easy. How much is that?”

  “Quarter of a million quid.”

  “Aye, my arithmetic was never among the best. Well, no wonder the bugger could afford a BMW and a new kitchen.” He rubbed his hands together. “And that’s about it. Macmillan said they’ll start putting a financial profile together first thing in the morning: bank accounts, credit cards, building societies, Inland Revenue, loans, investments, the lot. He said they shouldn’t have any trouble getting a warrant from the judge, given the circumstances. He’s also getting in touch with the Yard. This is big, Alan.”

  “What about Calvert?” Banks asked.

  “Well, they’ll have to cover him too, now, won’t they?”

  A sharp knock at the door was immediately followed by Phil Richmond holding a small package. “I’ve got it,” he said, an excited light in his eyes. “The by-pass software. Give me a few minutes to study the manual and we’ll see what we can do.”

  They all followed him to the computer room, once a cupboard for storing cleaning materials, and stood around tensely in the cramped space while he booted up and consulted the instructions. All Rothwell’s computer gear and records were with the Fraud Squad, but Richmond had made back-up disks of the relevant files.

  Susan Gay popped her head around the door and, finding no room left inside, stood in the doorway. Banks watched as Richmond went through a series of commands. Dialogue boxes appeared and disappeared; drive lights flashed on and off; the machine buzzed and hummed. Banks noticed Gristhorpe chewing on his thumbnail.