Final Account Read online

  “Nearly ready, sir,” he said when he saw the CID officers. “I’ll just let it mash a couple of minutes.”

  The kitchen walls were done in bright red and white patterned tiles, and every available inch of space had been used to wedge fitted microwave, oven, fridge, dishwasher, cupboards and the like. It also boasted a central island unit, complete with tall pine stools. Banks and Gristhorpe sat down.

  “How’s his wife?” Gristhorpe asked.

  “There’s a wife and daughter here, sir,” said Weaver. “The doctor’s seen them. They’re both unharmed, but they’re suffering from shock. Hardly surprising when you consider they found the body. They’re upstairs with WPC Smithies. Apparently there’s also a son rambling around America somewhere.”

  “Who was this Rothwell bloke?” Banks asked. “He must have had a bob or two. Anything missing?”

  “We don’t know yet, sir,” Weaver said. He looked around the bright kitchen. “But I see what you mean. He was some sort of financial whiz-kid, I think. These new-fangled kitchens don’t come cheap, I can tell you. The wife’s got in the habit of leaving the Mail on Sunday supplement open at some design or another. Her way of dropping hints, like, and about as subtle as a blow on the head with a hammer. The price of them makes me cringe. I tell her the one we’ve got is perfectly all right, but she—”

  As he talked, Weaver began to pour the tea into the row of cups and mugs he had arranged. But after filling the second one, he stopped and stared at the door. Banks and Gristhorpe followed his gaze and saw a young girl standing there, her slight figure framed in the doorway. She rubbed her eyes and stretched.

  “Hello,” she said. “Are you the detectives? I’d like to talk to you. My name’s Alison Rothwell and someone just killed my father.”

  II

  She was about fifteen, Banks guessed, but she made no attempt to make herself look older, as many teenagers do. She wore a baggy, grey sweatshirt advertising an American football team, and a blue tracksuit bottom with a white stripe down each side. Apart from the bruiselike pouches under her light blue eyes, her complexion was pale. Her mousy blonde hair was parted in the centre and hung in uncombed strands over her shoulders. Her mouth, with its pale, thin lips, was too small for her oval face.

  “Can I have some tea, please?” she asked. Banks noticed she had a slight lisp.

  PC Weaver looked for direction. “Go ahead, lad,” Gristhorpe told him. “Give the lass some tea.” Then he turned to Alison Rothwell. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be upstairs with your mum, love?”

  Alison shook her head. “Mum’ll be all right. She’s asleep and there’s a policewoman sitting by her. I can’t sleep. It keeps going round in my mind, what happened. I want to tell you about it now. Can I?”

  “Of course.” Gristhorpe asked PC Weaver to stay and take notes. He introduced Banks and himself, then pulled out a stool for her. Alison gave them a sad, shy smile and sat down, holding the mug of tea to her chest with both hands as if she needed its heat. Gristhorpe indicated subtly that Banks should do the questioning.

  “Are you sure you feel up to this?” Banks asked her first.

  Alison nodded. “I think so.”

  “Would you like to tell us what happened, then?”

  Alison took a deep breath. Her eyes focused on something Banks couldn’t see.

  “It was just after dark,” she began. “About ten o’clock, quarter past or thereabouts. I was reading. I thought I heard a sound out in the yard.”

  “What kind of sound?” Banks asked.

  “I … I don’t know. Just as if someone was out there. A thud, like someone bumping into something or something falling on the ground.”

  “Carry on.”

  Alison hugged her cup even closer. “At first I didn’t pay it any mind. I carried on reading, then I heard another sound, a sort of scraping, maybe ten minutes later.”

  “Then what did you do?” Banks asked.

  “I turned the yard light on and looked out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything.”

  “Did you have the television on, some music?”

  “No. That’s why I could hear the sounds outside so clearly. Usually it’s so quiet and peaceful up here. All you can hear at night is the wind through the trees, and sometimes a lost sheep baa-ing, or a curlew up on the moors.”

  “Weren’t you scared being by yourself?”

  “No. I like it. Even when I heard the noise I just thought it might be a stray dog or a sheep or something.”

  “Where were your parents at this time?”

  “They were out. It’s their wedding anniversary. Their twenty-first. They went out to dinner in Eastvale.”

  “You didn’t want to go with them?”

  “No. Well … I mean, it was their anniversary, wasn’t it?” She turned up her nose. “Besides, I don’t like fancy restaurants. And I don’t like Italian food. Anyway, it’s not as if it was Home Alone or something. I am nearly sixteen, you know. And it was my choice. I’d rather stay home and read. I don’t mind being by myself.”

  Perhaps, Banks guessed, they hadn’t invited her. “Carry on,” he said. “After you turned the yard light on, what did you do?”

  “When I couldn’t see anything, I just sort of brushed it off. Then I heard another noise, like a stone or something, hitting the wall. I was fed up of being disturbed by then, so I decided to go out and see what it was.”

  “You still weren’t frightened?”

  “A bit, maybe, by then. But not really scared. I still thought it was probably an animal or something like that, maybe a fox. We get them sometimes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I opened the front door, and as soon as I stepped out, someone grabbed me and dragged me back inside and tied me to the chair. Then they put a rag in my mouth and put tape over it. I couldn’t swallow properly. It was all dry and it tasted of salt and oil.”

  Banks noticed her knuckles had turned white around the mug. He worried she would crush it. “How many of them were there, Alison?” he asked.

  “Two.”

  “Do you remember anything about them?”

  She shook her head. “They were both dressed all in black, except one of them had white trainers on. The other had some sort of suede slip-ons, brown I think.”

  “You didn’t see their faces?”

  Alison hooked her feet over the crossbar. “No, they had balaclavas on, black ones. But they weren’t like the ones you’d buy to keep you warm. They were just made of cotton or some other thin material. They had little slits for the eyes and slits just under the nose so they could breathe.”

  Banks noticed that she had turned paler. “Are you all right, Alison?” he asked. “Do you want to stop now and rest?”

  Alison shook her head. Her teeth were clenched. “No. I’ll be all right. Just let me …” She sipped some tea and seemed to relax a little.

  “How tall were they?” Banks asked.

  “One was about as big as you.” She looked at Banks, who at only five foot nine was quite small for a policeman—just over regulation height, in fact. “But he was fatter. Not really fat, but just not, you know, wiry … like you. The other was a few inches taller, maybe six foot, and quite thin.”

  “You’re doing really well, Alison,” Banks said. “Was there anything else about them?”

  “No. I can’t remember.”

  “Did either of them speak?”

  “When he dragged me back inside, the smaller one said, ‘Keep quiet and do as you’re told and we won’t hurt you.’”

  “Did you notice his accent?”

  “Not really. It sounded ordinary. I mean, not foreign or anything.”

  “Local?”

  “Yorkshire, yes. But not Dales. Maybe Leeds or something. You know how it sounds different, more citified?”

  “Good. You’re doing just fine. What happened next?”

  “They tied me to the chair with some rope and just sat and watched television. First the
news was on, then some horrible American film about a psycho slashing women. They seemed to like that. One of them kept laughing when a woman got killed, as if it was funny.”

  “You heard them laugh?”

  “Just one of them, the tall one. The other one told him to shut up. He sounded like he was in charge.”

  “The smaller one?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all he said: ‘Shut up’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there anything unusual about the taller man’s laugh?”

  “I … I don’t … I can’t remember.” Alison wiped a tear from her eye with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “It was just a laugh, that’s all.”

  “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Did they harm you in any way?”

  Alison reddened and looked down into her half-empty mug. “The smaller one came over to me when I was tied up, and he put his hand on my breast. But the other one made him stop. It was the only time he said anything.”

  “How did he make him stop? What did he do?”

  “He just said not to, that it wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Did he use those exact words, Alison? Did he say, ‘It’s not part of the deal’?”

  “Yes. I think so. I mean, I’m not completely sure, but it was something like that. The smaller man didn’t seem to like it, being told what to do by the other, but he left me alone after that.”

  “Did you see any kind of weapon?” Banks asked.

  “Yes. The kind of gun that farmers have, with two barrels. A shotgun.”

  “Who had it?”

  “The smaller man, the one in charge.”

  “Did you hear a car at any time?”

  “No. Only when Mum and Dad came home. I mean, I heard cars go by on the road sometimes, you know, the one that goes through Relton and right over the moors into the next dale. But I didn’t hear anyone coming or going along our driveway.”

  “What happened when your parents came home?”

  Alison paused and swirled the tea in the bottom of her mug as if she were trying to see into her future. “It must have been about half past eleven or later. The men waited behind the door and the tall one grabbed Mum while the other put his gun to Dad’s neck. I tried to scream and warn them, honest I did, but the rag in my mouth … I just couldn’t make a sound …” She ran her sleeve across her eyes again and sniffled. Banks gestured to PC Weaver, who found a box of tissues on the window-sill and brought them over.

  “Thank you,” Alison said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to go on if you don’t want,” Banks said. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

  “No. I’ve started. I want to. Besides, there’s not much more to tell. They tied Mum up the same as me and we sat there facing each other. Then they went outside with Dad. Then we heard the bang.”

  “How long between the time they went out and the shot?”

  Alison shook her head dreamily. She held the mug up close to her throat. The sleeves of her sweatshirt had slipped down, and Banks could see the raw, red lines where the rope had cut into her flesh. “I don’t know. It seemed like a long time. But all I can remember is we just sat looking at each other, Mum and me, and we didn’t know what was happening. I remember a night-bird calling somewhere. Not a curlew. I don’t know what it was. And it seemed like forever, like time just stretched out and Mum and I got really scared now looking at one another not knowing what was going on. Then we heard the explosion and … and it was like it all snapped and I saw something die in Mum’s eyes, it was so, so …” Alison dropped the mug, which clipped the corner of the table then fell and spilled without breaking on the floor. The sobs seemed to start deep inside her, then she began to shake and wail.

  Banks went over and put his arms around her, and she clung onto him for dear life, sobbing against his chest.

  III

  “It looks like his office,” Banks said, when Gristhorpe turned on the light in the last upstairs room.

  Two large desks formed an L-shape. On one of them stood a computer and a laser printer, and on a small table next to them stood a fax machine with a basket attached at the front for collecting the cut-off sheets. At the back of the computer desk, a hutch stood against the wall. The compartments were full of boxes of disks and software manuals, mostly for word-processing, spreadsheets and accounting programmes, along with some for standard utilities.

  The other desk stood in front of the window, which framed a view of the farmyard. Scene-of-Crime officers were still going about their business down there: taking samples of just about everything in sight, measuring distances, trying to get casts of footprints, sifting soil. In the barn, their bright arc lamps had replaced Darby’s roving light.

  This was the desk where Rothwell dealt with handwritten correspondence and phone calls, Banks guessed. There was a blotter, which looked new—no handy wrong-way-around clues scrawled there—a jam-jar full of pens and pencils, a blank scratch-pad, an electronic adding machine of the kind that produces a printed tape of its calculations and an appointment calendar open at the day of the murder, 12th May.

  The only things written there were “Dr Hunter” beside the 10:00 A.M. slot, “Make dinner reservation: Mario’s, 8:30 P.M.” Below that, and written in capitals all across the afternoon, “FLOWERS?” Banks had noticed a vase full of fresh flowers in the living-room. An anniversary present? Sad when touching gestures like that outlive the giver. He thought of Sandra again, and suddenly he wanted very much to be near her, to bridge the distance that had grown between them, to hold her and feel her warmth. He shivered.

  “All right, Alan?” Gristhorpe asked.

  “Fine. Someone just walked over my grave.”

  “Look at all this.” Gristhorpe pointed to the two metal filing cabinets and the heavy-duty shelves that took up the room’s only long, unbroken wall. “Business records, by the looks of it. Someone’s going to have to sift through it.” He looked towards the computer and grimaced. “We’d better get Phil to have a look at this lot tomorrow,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust myself to turn the bloody thing on without blowing it up.”

  Banks grinned. He was aware of Gristhorpe’s Luddite attitude towards computers. He quite liked them, himself. Of course, he had only the most rudimentary skills and never seemed to be able to do anything right, but Phil Richmond, “Phil the Hacker” as he was known around the station, ought to be able to tell them a thing or two about Rothwell’s system.

  Finding nothing else of immediate interest in the office, they walked out to the rear of the house, which faced north, and stood in the back garden, the hems of their trousers damp with dew. It was after five now, close to dawn. A pale sun was slowly rising in the east behind a veil of thin cloud that had appeared over the last couple of hours, mauve on the horizon, but giving the rest of the sky a light grey wash and the landscape the look of a water-colour. A few birds sang, and occasionally the sound of a farm vehicle starting up broke the silence. The air smelled moist and fresh.

  It was certainly a garden they stood in, and not just a backyard. Someone—Rothwell? His wife?—had planted rows of vegetables—beans, cabbage, lettuce, all neatly marked—a small area of herbs and a strawberry patch. At the far end, beyond a dry-stone wall, the land fell away steeply to a beck that coursed down the daleside until it fed into the River Swain at Fortford.

  The village of Fortford, about a mile down the hillside, was just waking up. Below the exposed foundations of the Roman fort on its knoll to the east, the cottages with their flagstone roofs huddled around the green and the square-towered church. Already, smoke drifted from some of the chimneys as farm labourers and shopkeepers prepared themselves for the coming day. Country folk were early risers.

  The whitewashed front of the sixteenth-century Rose and Crown glowed pink in the early light. Even in there, someone would soon be in the kitchen, making bacon and eggs for the paying guests, especially for the ramblers, who liked to be off early. At the thought of food, his stom
ach rumbled. He knew Ian Falkland, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, and thought it might not be a bad idea to have a chat with him about Keith Rothwell. Though he was an expatriate Londoner, like Banks, Ian knew most of the local dalesfolk, and, given his line of work, he picked up a fair amount of gossip.

  Finally, Banks turned to Gristhorpe and broke the silence. “They certainly seemed to know what was what, didn’t they?” he said. “I don’t imagine it was a lucky guess that the girl was in the house alone.”

  “You’re thinking along the same lines as I am, aren’t you, Alan?” said Gristhorpe. “An execution. A hit. Call it what you will.”

  Banks nodded. “I can’t see any other lines to think along yet. Everything points to it. The way they came in and waited, the position of the body, the coolness, the professionalism of it all. Even the way one of them said touching the girl wasn’t part of the deal. It was all planned. Yes, I think it was an execution. It certainly wasn’t a robbery or a random killing. They hadn’t been through the house, as far as we could tell. Everything seems in order. And if it was a robbery, they’d no need to kill him, especially that way. The question is why? Why should anyone want to execute an accountant?”

  “Hmm,” said Gristhorpe. “Unhappy client, maybe? Someone he turned in to the Inland Revenue?” Nearby, a peewit sensed their closeness to its ground nest and started buzzing them, piping its high-pitched call. “One of the things we have to do is find out how honest an accountant our Mr Rothwell was,” Gristhorpe went on. “But let’s not speculate too much yet, Alan. We don’t know if there’s anything missing, for a start. Rothwell might have had a million in gold bullion hidden away in his garage for all we know. But you’re right about the execution angle. And that means we could be dealing with something very big, big enough to contract a murder for.”

  “Sir?”

  At that moment, one of the SOC officers came into the garden through the back door.

  Gristhorpe turned. “Yes?”

  “We’ve found something, sir. In the garage. I think you’d both better come and have a look for yourselves.”

  IV