Final Account Read online

  Acclaim for Final Account

  “Exceptionally good…. As usual, Robinson provides a fine cast of characters … [and] serves up as seamless a plot as one can find anywhere.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Mr. Robinson has done his usual impressive job of pushing a plot forward by means of detailed police procedures and exacting character analysis. Not even the dead escape his unrelenting scrutiny.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Consummately crafted…. High-quality crime from one of Canada’s top crime writers.”

  —Toronto Star

  “A complex but credible story that blends strong characterisation with exciting elements to produce a high-quality mystery novel that keeps surprises and suspense going right up to the last page.”

  —Manchester Evening News

  “Robinson’s seventh procedural maintains the sterling consistency of Wednesday’s Child and all the others.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Acclaim for Past Reason Hated

  “Robinson writes the classic mystery, hewing to the time-honored format but managing also to keep the proceedings contemporary and fresh, largely through the creation of convincing and complex characters.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “The best book yet in this superior series … intriguing characters, a solid-gold Yorkshire setting and a slam-bang plot that keeps moving right up to the final chapter.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “A steady, clear-eyed revelation of Caroline’s personality, combined with piercing insight into an unusually generous circle of suspects.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Acclaim for Cold Is the Grave

  “There’s chills and plots aplenty in Peter Robinson’s latest Inspector Banks mystery … a satisfyingly complex story, freshened by psychological resonance and written in Robinson’s usual elegant style.”

  —Toronto Star

  “Robinson writes eminently readable and engrossing tales which never seem to last long enough.”

  —Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

  “[Cold Is the Grave] displays a darker, more urban Banks and ventures into dangerous areas of sexuality and trust, as well as family relationships of different types and on different levels. This is crime-fiction writing at its best.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  Acclaim for Dead Right

  “Dead-on again…. There is a sense of an older style of mystery writing at work within his series, a throwback to Josephine Tey and Ngaio Marsh…. With nine Inspector Banks novels under his belt, Robinson has delivered enough instalments now to make for a satisfying long read, beginning with Gallows View and culminating with Dead Right.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “A very satisfying read…. Like the late, great Raymond Chandler, Peter Robinson writes good mysteries laced with social comment.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “You can maintain the quality in a series if you just pay careful attention to the details. Robinson does…. This book is full of good characters and topical relevance. Robinson knows how to make a moral point and not lose sight of the story.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  PENGUIN CANADA

  FINAL ACCOUNT

  PETER ROBINSON grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he was later writer-in-residence. His many awards include five Arthur Ellis Awards, the Edgar Award for best short story, The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library Award, the Torgi talking book of the year, France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. His books have been published internationally to great acclaim and translated into fifteen languages. Peter Robinson lives in Toronto.

  Other Inspector Banks mysteries

  Gallows View

  A Dedicated Man

  A Necessary End

  The Hanging Valley

  Past Reason Hated

  Wednesday’s Child

  Innocent Graves

  Dead Right

  In a Dry Season

  Cold Is the Grave

  Aftermath

  The Summer That Never Was

  Playing with Fire

  Strange Affair

  Piece of My Heart

  Inspector Banks collections

  Meet Inspector Banks

  (includes Gallows View, A Dedicated Man and A Necessary End)

  Inspector Banks Investigates

  (includes The Hanging Valley, Past Reason Hated and Wednesday’s Child)

  The Return of Inspector Banks

  (includes Innocent Graves, Final Account and Dead Right)

  Also by Peter Robinson

  Caedmon’s Song

  No Cure for Love

  Not Safe After Dark

  FINAL ACCOUNT

  Peter Robinson

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1994

  Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2003

  Published in this edition, 2006

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Peter Robinson, 1994

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Robinson, Peter, 1950–

  Final account : an Inspector Banks mystery / Peter Robinson.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305225-8

  ISBN-10: 0-14-305225-X

  I. Title.

  PS8585.O35176F5 2006a C813’.54 C2006-902004-3

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates avai
lable; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-399-6858, ext. 477 or 474

  For Sheila

  Dry bones that dream are bitter.

  They dream and darken our sun.

  W.B. Yeats

  The Dreaming of the Bones

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks are long overdue to Cynthia Good, my editor from the beginning of the series. I must also thank my agent, Dominick Abel, for his advice and encouragement. This book in particular could not have been completed without the help of many people, all generous with their time and expertise. My thanks go especially to Keith Wright of Nottingham CID, both detective and novelist; Douglas Lucas, Director of the Centre for Forensic Sciences, Toronto; Mario Possamai for his book Money on the Run; Ken McFarland, Chartered Accountant; John Picton, journalist; and to Rick Blechta for putting me right about violists. Any errors are entirely my own and were made purely in the interests of dramatic fiction.

  ONE

  I

  The uniformed constable lifted the tape and waved Detective Chief Inspector Banks through the gate at two forty-seven in the morning.

  Banks’s headlights danced over the scene as he drove into the bumpy farmyard and came to a halt. To his left stood the squat, solid house itself, with its walls of thick limestone and mossy, flagstone roof. Lights shone in both the upstairs and downstairs windows. To his right, a high stone wall buttressed a copse that straggled up the daleside, where the trees became lost in darkness. Straight ahead stood the barn.

  A group of officers had gathered around the open doors, inside which a ball of light seemed to be moving. They looked like the cast of a fifties sci-fi film gazing in awe on an alien spaceship or life-form.

  When Banks arrived, they parted in silence to let him through. As he entered, he noticed one young PC leaning against the outside wall dribbling vomit on his size twelves. Inside, the scene looked like a film set.

  Peter Darby, the police photographer, was busy videotaping, and the source of the light was attached to the top of his camera. It created an eerie chiaroscuro and sudden, sickening illuminations as it swept around the barn’s interior. All he needed, Banks thought, was for someone to yell “Action!” and the place would suddenly be full of sound and motion.

  But no amount of yelling would breathe life back into the grotesque shape on the floor, by which a whey-faced young police surgeon, Dr Burns, squatted with a black notebook in his hand.

  At first, the position of the body reminded Banks of a parody of Moslem prayer: the kneeling man bent forward from the waist, arms stretched out in front, bum in the air, forehead touching the ground, perhaps facing Mecca. His fists were clenched in the dirt, and Banks noticed the glint of a gold cufflink, initialled “KAR,” as Darby’s light flashed on it.

  But there was no forehead to touch the ground. Above the charcoal suit jacket, the blood-soaked collar of the man’s shirt protruded about an inch, and after that came nothing but a dark, coagulated mass of bone and tissue spread out on the dirt like an oil stain: a shotgun wound, by the look of it. Patches of blood, bone and brain matter stuck to the whitewashed stone walls in abstract-expressionist patterns. Darby’s roving light caught what looked like a fragment of skull sprouting a tuft of fair hair beside a rusty hoe.

  Banks felt the bile rise in his throat. He could still smell the gunpowder, reminiscent of a childhood bonfire night, mixed with the stink of urine and faeces and the rancid raw meat smell of sudden violent death.

  “What time did the call come in?” he asked the PC beside him.

  “One thirty-eight, sir. PC Carstairs from Relton was first on the scene. He’s still puking up out front.”

  Banks nodded. “Do we know who the victim was?”

  “DC Gay checked his wallet, sir. Name’s Keith Rothwell. That’s the name of the bloke who lived here, all right.” He pointed over to the house. “Arkbeck Farm, it’s called.”

  “A farmer?”

  “Nay, sir. Accountant. Some sort of businessman, anyroad.”

  One of the constables found a light switch and turned on the bare bulb, which became a foundation for the brighter light of Darby’s video camera. Most regions didn’t use video because it was hard to get good enough quality, but Peter Darby was a hardware junkie, forever experimenting.

  Banks turned his attention back to the scene. The place looked as if it had once been a large stone Yorkshire barn, with double doors and a hayloft, called a “field house” in those parts. Originally, it would have been used to keep the cows inside between November and May, and to store fodder, but Rothwell seemed to have converted it into a garage.

  To Banks’s right, a silver-grey BMW, parked at a slight angle, took up about half the space. Beyond the car, against the far wall, a number of metal shelf units held all the tools and potions one would associate with car care: anti-freeze, wax polish, oily rags, screwdrivers, spanners. Rothwell had retained the rural look in the other half of the garage. He had even hung old farm implements on the whitewashed stone wall: a mucking rake, a hay knife, a draining scoop and a Tom spade, among others, all suitably rusted.

  As he stood there, Banks tried to picture what might have happened. The victim had clearly been kneeling, perhaps praying or pleading for his life. It certainly didn’t look as if he had tried to escape. Why had he submitted so easily? Not much choice, probably, Banks thought. You usually don’t argue when someone is pointing a shotgun at you. But still … would a man simply kneel there, brace himself and wait for his executioner to pull the trigger?

  Banks turned and left the barn. Outside, he met Detective Sergeant Philip Richmond and Detective Constable Susan Gay coming from around the back.

  “Nothing there, sir, far as I can tell,” said Richmond, a large torch in his hand. Susan, beside him, looked pale in the glow from the barn entrance.

  “All right?” Banks asked her.

  “I’m okay now, sir. I was sick, though.”

  Richmond looked the same as ever. His sang-froid was legendary around the place, so much so that Banks sometimes wondered if he had any feelings at all or whether he had come to resemble one of those computers he spent most of his time with.

  “Anyone know what happened?” Banks asked.

  “PC Carstairs had a quick word with the victim’s wife when he first got here,” said Susan. “All she could tell him was that a couple of men were waiting when she got home and they took her husband outside and shot him.” She shrugged. “Then she became hysterical. I believe she’s under sedation now, sir. I fished his wallet from his pocket, anyway,” she went on, holding up a plastic bag. “Says his name’s—”

  “Yes, I know,” said Banks. “Have we got an Exhibits Officer yet?”

  “No, sir,” Susan answered, then both she and Phil Richmond looked away. Exhibits Officer was one of the least popular jobs in an investigation. It meant keeping track of every piece of possible evidence and preserving a record of continuity. It usually went to whoever was in the doghouse at the time.

  “Get young Farnley on the job, then,” Banks said. PC Farnley hadn’t offended anyone or cocked up a case, but he lacked imagination and had a general reputation around the station as a crashing golf bore.

  Clearly relieved, Richmond and Susan wandered off towards the Scene-of-Crime team, who had just pulled into the farmyard in a large van. As they piled out in their white boiler suits, they looked like a team of government scientists sent to examine the alien landing-spot. Pretty soon, Banks thought, if they weren’t all careful, there would be a giant spider or a huge gooey blob rolling around the Yorkshire Dales gobbling up everyone in sight.

  The night was cool and still, the air moist, tinged with a hint of manure. Banks still felt half-asleep, despite the shock of what he had seen in the garage. Maybe he was dreaming. No. He thought of Sandra, warm at home in bed, and sighed.

  Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s arrival at about three-thirty brought him out of his reverie. Gristhorpe limped over from his car. He wore an ol
d donkey-jacket over his shirt, and he clearly hadn’t bothered to shave or comb his unruly thatch of grey hair.

  “Bloody hell, Alan,” he said by way of greeting, “tha looks like Columbo.”

  There’s the pot calling the kettle black, Banks thought. Still, the super was right. He had thrown on an old raincoat over his shirt and trousers because he knew the night would be chilly.

  After Banks had explained what he had found out so far, Gristhorpe took a quick look in the barn, questioned PC Carstairs, the first officer at the scene, then rejoined Banks, his usually ruddy, pock-marked face a little paler. “Let’s go in the house, shall we, Alan?” he said. “I hear PC Weaver’s brewing up. He should be able to give us some background.”

  They walked across the dirt yard. Above them, the stars shone cold and bright like chips of ice on black velvet.

  The farmhouse was cosy and warm inside, a welcome change from the cool night and the gruesome scene in the barn. It had been renovated according to the yuppie idea of the real rustic look, with exposed beams and rough stone walls in an open, split-level living-room, all earthy browns and greens. The remains of a log fire glowed in the stone hearth, and beside it stood a pair of antique andirons and a matching rack holding poker and tongs.

  In front of the fire, Banks noticed two hard-backed chairs facing one another. One of them had fallen over, or had been pushed on its side. Beside both of them lay coils of rope. One of the chair seats looked wet.

  Banks and Gristhorpe walked through into the ultra-modern kitchen, which looked like something from a colour supplement, where PC Weaver was pouring boiling water into a large red teapot.