Dry bones that dream, p.7
Dry Bones That Dream, page 7
‘You mean Mrs Rothwell? Wasn’t she in shock?’
‘So I’m told. I didn’t get to see her until late this morning. That gave her plenty of time to compose herself, work up an act.’
‘But the SOC team went through the place as thoroughly as they usually do, hayloft and all. They couldn’t find any traces of a weapon.’
‘I’m not saying she shot him.’
‘What then? She hired a couple of killers to do it for her?’
‘I don’t know. She could certainly afford it. I suppose I’m playing devil’s advocate, trying to look at it from all angles. I still maintain they’re an odd family. Alison was genuinely terrified, I know that. But there’s something not quite right about them all, and I’d like to know what that is. I knew when I drove away from Arkbeck Farm that something I’d seen there was bothering me, nagging away, but I didn’t know what it was until a short while ago.’
‘And?’ asked Gristhorpe.
‘It was Tom’s postcard from California. It was addressed to Alison – he called her Ali – and at the end he wrote, “Love to Mum”. There was no mention of his father.’
‘Hmm,’ said Gristhorpe. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything.’
‘Maybe not. But that’s not all. When I looked through Rothwell’s wallet a while back, I found photos of Mary and Alison, but none of Tom. Not one.’
4
ONE
A good night’s sleep is supposed to refresh you, not make you feel as if you’re recovering from a bloody anaesthetic, thought Banks miserably on Saturday morning. Never a morning person at the best of times, he sat over his second cup of black coffee and a slice of wholewheat toast and Seville marmalade, newspaper propped up in front of him, trying to muster enough energy to get going. As a background to the radio traffic reports, he could hear Sandra having a shower upstairs. Banks hated the contraption – he always seemed to get a lukewarm dribble rather than a hot shower – but Sandra and Tracy swore by it. Banks preferred a long, hot bath with a little quiet background music and a good book.
After catching up with paperwork, he hadn’t got home until almost eleven the previous night. He wished Sandra had been angry that they’d had to miss the claret, the Chopin and the candlelight, but she hadn’t seemed to care. He didn’t know whether she was pretending or she really didn’t care. In fact, she said she’d just got back from a reception at the community centre herself. It was getting to be par for the course. They had seen so little of one another lately that they were fast becoming strangers. It seemed to Banks that what had been a strength in their relationship – their natural independence – was quickly becoming a threat.
And while Sandra had slept like a log, Banks had tossed and turned all night beside her, worried about the Rothwell case, with only brief, fitful periods of sleep full of shifting images: the pornographic wadding, the headless corpse. Now it was eight-thirty the next morning, and his eyes felt like sandpaper, his brain stuffed with cotton wool.
The national dailies and radio news carried stories on the Keith Rothwell killing – sandwiched between a bloodthirsty put-down of riots on a Caribbean island, where another dictator was nearing the end of his reign of terror, and a male Member of Parliament caught in flagrante delicto with a sixteen-year-old rentboy on Clapham Common. It probably wouldn’t have even made the papers if it had happened somewhere a bit more up-market, like Hampstead Heath, Banks thought.
The Rothwell murder would be on television too, no doubt, amidst all the speculation on that afternoon’s Cup Final, but Banks had never been able to bring himself to turn the thing on during daylight hours.
Now, hints were appearing in the media that the killing was more than a run-of-the-mill domestic disagreement or a burglary gone wrong. According to the radio, Scotland Yard, Interpol and the FBI had been called in. That, Banks reflected, was a slight exaggeration. The Americans had been asked to help trace Tom Rothwell, though as far as Banks knew it was the Florida State Police, not the FBI. Interpol was something the reporters always threw in for good measure, these days, and Scotland Yard was an outright lie.
Banks scanned the Yorkshire Post and the Independent reports to see if either newspaper knew more than the police. Sometimes they did, and it could be damned embarrassing all round. Not this time, though. To them, Rothwell was as much the ‘quiet, unassuming local accountant and businessman’ as he was to the rest of the world.
‘More coffee?’
Banks looked up to see Sandra standing at the machine in her navy-blue bathrobe, wet hair hanging over the terry-cloth at her shoulders. He hadn’t heard her come down.
‘Please.’ He held his cup out.
Sandra poured, then put some bread in the toaster and picked up the Yorkshire Post. After she had read about Rothwell, she whistled. ‘Is this what kept you out so late last night?’
‘Hmm,’ murmured Banks.
The toast popped up. Sandra put the paper down and went to see to it. ‘I’ve met her a couple of times, you know,’ she said over her shoulder, buttering toast.
Banks folded the Independent and looked at Sandra’s profile. When it was wet, her hair looked darker, of course, but one of the things Banks found attractive about her was the contrast between her blonde hair and black eyebrows. This time, when he looked at her, he felt an ache deep inside. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Rothwell. Mary Rothwell.’
‘How on earth did you come across her?’
‘At the gallery.’
Sandra ran the local gallery in the Eastvale community centre, where she organized art and photography exhibitions.
‘I didn’t know she was the artistic type.’
‘She’s not really. I think for her it was just the thing to do. Women’s Institute sort of stuff, you know, organize cultural outings.’ Sandra sat down with her toast and wrinkled her nose.
Banks laughed, sensing a definite thaw in the cold war. ‘Snob.’
‘What! Me?’ She hit him lightly with the folded newspaper.
‘Anyway,’ Banks said, ‘the poor woman’s on tranquillizers. Both she and her daughter saw Rothwell’s body before they called us, and you can take my word for it, that’s enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.’
‘How’s the daughter?’
‘Alison? Not quite so bad, at least not on the surface.’ Banks shrugged. ‘More resilient, maybe, or she could just be repressing it more. Tina Smithies says she’s worried they’re both losing touch.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go.’
Sandra followed him to the door and leaned against the banister. She nibbled her toast as she watched him put on his light grey sports jacket and pick up his briefcase. ‘I can’t say I know her well enough to get any kind of impression,’ she said, holding her dressing gown at the collar when Banks opened the door, ‘but I did sense that she’s the kind who . . . well, she puts on a few airs and graces. Not so much as to be a complete pseud, but you can tell there’s a touch of the Lady Muck about her. Imperious. And she likes people to know she’s not short of a bob or two. You know, she flashes her rings, jewellery, stuff like that. She also struck me as being a very cold woman, I don’t know why. All sharp edges, like a drawer full of kitchen knives.’
Banks leaned against the door jamb. ‘It’s a bloody strange family altogether,’ he said.
Sandra shrugged. ‘Just thought I’d put in my two penn’orth. I don’t suppose you know when you’ll be back?’
‘No. Sorry, got to dash.’ Banks risked a quick kiss on the lips. They tasted of strawberry jam.
‘Can you leave me the car, today?’ Sandra called after him. ‘There’s a watercolour exhibition I want to see in Ripon. One of our locals is exhibiting. I don’t know when I’ll be back, either.’
‘Okay,’ said Banks, wincing at the barb. He could always sign a car out of the pool if he needed one. It wouldn’t have a cassette deck, but then this was hardly the best of all possible worlds, was it? At least it should have a radio. He set off determined, after a miserable night, not to let things get him down.
It was a beautiful morning. Calendar weather. May, as he knew it, had finally arrived. The sky was a cloudless blue, apart from a few high milky swirls, and even this early in the morning the temperature seemed to have risen a few notches since yesterday. Banks wouldn’t be surprised if it were shirt-sleeves weather before the day was out.
As he walked, he plugged in his earphones and switched on the Walkman in his briefcase. The tape started at the jazzy ‘Forlane’ section of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Not bad for a walk to work on a fine spring morning.
It was only about a mile to the station along Market Street, and Banks liked the way the townscape changed almost yard by yard as he walked. At his end of town, the road was broad, and the area was much like the outer part of any town centre: the main road with its garage, supermarket, school, zebra crossings and roundabouts, surrounded by residential streets of tall Victorian houses, most of them converted to student flats, all with names like Mafeking Avenue, Sebastopol Terrace, Crimea Close and Waterloo Road, and a strong smell of petrol and diesel fumes pervading the air.
But the closer Market Street got to the actual marketplace, the more it narrowed and turned into a tourist attraction with its overhanging first-floor bays, where people could almost shake hands with someone across the street; the magnifying-glass windows of twee souvenir shops; an expensive walkers’ gear shop with orange Goretex clothing hanging by the doorway and a stand of walking sticks out on the pavement; a Waterstone’s bookshop, the street’s most recent addition; the mingled aromas from Hambleton’s Tea and Coffee Emporium and Farleigh’s bakery across the street; an Oddbins wine shop; the Golden Grill café; and a newsagent’s with a rack of newspapers out front, some of them folded over at Rothwell’s grainy photograph, and a display of local guides and Ordnance Survey maps in the window. This narrow part of Market Street was always jammed with honking traffic too – mostly visitors and delivery vans.
Halfway through the ‘Menuet’ section, Banks arrived at the station, a three-storey, Tudor-fronted building facing the market square. First he called in at the Murder Room and talked to Phil Richmond. The Florida State Police had tracked down the car rental company Tom Rothwell had used at Tampa airport. At least it was a start. Now the police had a licence number to look for among the millions of cars parked at the thousands of Florida hotels, motels and beach clubs.
The PNC reported nothing doing on the use of pornographic wadding at other crime scenes.
Gristhorpe was in a meeting with Inspector Macmillan of the Fraud Squad, and Susan Gay was in her hutch phoning around the list of Rothwell’s clients Laurence Pratt had given her. Banks poured a coffee and went to his office.
He opened his window and sniffed the air, then lit a cigarette and stood looking down on the early tourists in their bright anoraks and cagoules milling about the cobbled square. It was ten past nine on a Saturday morning, market-day in Eastvale, and the vendors at their canvas-covered stalls, like the old wild-west wagon trains, hawked everything from flat caps and multi-pocketed fishing jackets to burglar alarms, spark plugs and non-stick oven-ware. The cheese van was there, as usual, and Banks thought he might nip out and buy a wedge of Coverdale or Wensleydale Blue if he got the chance. If.
Banks mulled over what Sandra had told him about Mary Rothwell. So far, he had an impression of her as an ostentatious and overbearing woman who put too much value on appearances, and of Keith Rothwell as an unassuming, yet sly and greedy, man, easily prey to temptation. Greed, as Susan Gay had remarked, is often a way of making dangerous enemies, and a habit of secrecy is a damn good way of making things difficult for the police. But did the greed originate in Rothwell himself, or had he felt pushed into it by the demands of his wife?
There had certainly been hints in what both Ian Falkland and Larry Grafton had said that Rothwell had been something of a henpecked husband, escaping to the pub for a half-pint and a quiet smoke whenever he could.
In Banks’s experience, such people often developed rich and secret fantasy lives, which sometimes imposed on reality with messy and unpredictable results. Keith Rothwell had supplied his wife and children with all the conveniences and many of the luxuries they wanted. What did he get out of it? What did he have going for himself? Nobody seemed to know or care what made him tick.
Banks moved away from the window and stubbed out his cigarette. There was at least one thing he could do right now, he thought, reaching for a pen and notepad. ‘WANTED,’ he wrote, ‘male Caucasian, about five feet nine, slight paunch, large wet brown eyes, commonly described as “spaniel” or “puppy dog” eyes, fondness for shotguns, can’t keep his hands off young girls and probably has a taste for pornography of the shaved pussy variety.’ He could just imagine the laughter and the nudge-nudges in police stations around the country as that went out over the PNC.
Just as he was about to start working on a revised version, the phone rang and Sergeant Rowe put him through to a distraught woman asking for the ubiquitous ‘someone in charge’.
‘Can I help you?’ Banks asked her.
‘They said they’d put me through to someone in charge. Are you in charge?’
‘Depends what you mean,’ said Banks. ‘In charge of what? What’s it about?’
‘The man in the paper this morning, the one who was killed.’
Suddenly Banks pricked up his ears. Was he mistaken, or was she sobbing as she spoke? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
‘I knew him.’
‘You knew Keith Rothwell?’
‘No, no—’ She sobbed again then came back on the line. ‘You’ve got it wrong. That’s not his name. His name is Robert. Robert Calvert. That’s who he is. You’ve got it all wrong. Is Robert really dead?’
The back of his neck tingling, Banks gripped his pen tight between his fingers. ‘I think we’d better have a talk, love,’ he said. ‘The sooner, the better. Would you like to give me your name and address?’
TWO
Susan Gay drove the unmarked police Fiesta to Leeds, with Banks beside her tapping his fingers on his knees. It wasn’t because of her driving. Ordinarily, he would enjoy such a trip and take his time if there were no rush, but today he was anxious to interview the woman who had phoned, Pamela Jeffreys.
He wasn’t smoking, either, and that also made him jittery. He refrained in deference to Susan, though she magnanimously said it was okay if he opened the windows. There wasn’t much worse, in his experience, than trying to enjoy a cigarette in a car next to a non-smoker with a force nine gale blowing all around you, no matter how good the weather.
As Banks had hoped, though the car had no cassette player, it did have a radio, and he was able to lose himself in a Poulenc chamber concert on Radio Three as he considered the implications of what he had just heard.
‘How are we going to play this, sir?’ Susan asked as she turned on to the Inner Ring Road and went into the yellow-lit tunnel.
Banks dragged himself out of a passage in the ‘Sextet’ where a sense of sadness seemed to pervade the levity of the woodwinds. ‘By ear,’ he said.
They had already called DI Ken Blackstone, out of courtesy for intruding on his patch, and Ken had found nothing on Pamela Jeffreys in records. Hardly surprising, Banks thought, as there was no reason to suppose she was a criminal. He glanced out of the window and saw they were crossing the bridge over the River Aire and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. The dirty, sluggish water looked especially vile in the bright sunlight.
‘Do we tell her anything?’ Susan asked.
‘If she’s read the papers, she’ll know almost as much about Keith Rothwell’s life as we do. Whether she’ll believe it or not is another matter.’
‘What do you think it’s all about?’
‘I haven’t a clue. We’ll soon find out.’
Susan negotiated the large roundabout on Wellington Road. Above them, the dark, medieval fortress of Armley Jail loomed on its hill. Susan veered right at the junction with Tong Road, passed the disused Crown bingo hall, the medical centre and the New Wortley Cemetery and headed towards Armley. It was an area of waste ground and boarded-up shopfronts, with the high black spire of St Bartholomew’s visible above the decay. She slowed to look at the street names, found Wesley Road, turned right, then right again and looked for the address Pamela Jeffreys had given.
‘This is it, sir,’ she said finally, pulling into a street of terraced back-to-backs, nicely done up, each with a postage-stamp lawn behind a privet hedge, some with new frosted-glass or wood-panel doors and dormer windows. ‘Number twenty, twenty-four . . . Here it is.’ She pulled up outside number twenty-eight.
The row of houses stood across the street from some allotments behind a low stone wall, where a number of retired or unemployed men worked their patches, stopping now and then to chat. Someone had rested a transistor radio on the wall, and Banks could hear the preamble to the Cup Final commentary. Not far down the street was an old chapel which, according to the sign, had been converted into a Sikh temple. They walked down the path to number twenty-eight and rang the doorbell.
The woman who opened the door had clearly been crying, but it didn’t mar her looks one bit, Banks thought. Perhaps the whites of her almond eyes were a little too red and the glossy blue-black hair could have done with a good brushing, but there was no denying that she was a woman of exceptional beauty.
Northern Indian, Banks guessed, or perhaps from Bangladesh or Pakistan, she had skin the colour of burnished gold, with high cheekbones, full, finely drawn lips and a figure that wouldn’t be out of place in Playboy, revealed to great advantage by skin-tight ice-blue jeans and a jade-green T-shirt tucked in at her narrow waist. Around her neck, she wore a necklace of many-coloured glass beads. She also wore a gold stud in her left nostril. She looked to be in her mid-twenties.
Her fingers, Banks noticed as she raised her hand to push the door shut, were long and tapered, with clear nails cut very short. A spiral gold bracelet slipped down her slim wrist over her forearm. On the other wrist, she wore a simple Timex with a black plastic strap. She had only one ring, and that was a gold band on the middle finger of her right hand. Light down covered her bare brown arms.
