“But what about the incomers?”
“Aye, hold thy horses, lad, I’m getting to them. We’re not bloody park-keepers, tha knows. We don’t graft for hours on end in all t’weather God sends keeping stone walls in good repair because we think they look picturesque, tha knows. They’re to keep old Harry Cobb’s sheep off my pasture and to make sure there’s no hanky-panky between his breed and mine.”
Banks nodded. “Fair enough, Pat. But how deep did the feeling go? Keith Rothwell bought that farm five years ago, or thereabouts. I’ve seen what he’s done to it, and it’s not a farm anymore.”
“Aye, well at least Mr. Rothwell’s a Swainsdale lad, even if he did come from Eastvale. Nay, there were no problems. He sold off his land – I got some of it, and so did Frank Rowbottom. If you’re thinking me or Frank did it, then… ”
“No, nothing like that,” Banks said. “I just wanted to get a sense of how Rothwell fitted in with the local scene, if he did.”
“Well, he did and he didn’t,” said Pat. “He was here and he wasn’t, and that’s all I can tell thee. He could tell a joke well enough when he put his mind to it, though.” Pat chuckled at the memory.
As puzzled as he was before, Banks said goodbye and went outside. On the way back, he slipped in a cassette of Busoni’s Bach transcriptions. The precise, ordered music had no influence on the chaos of his thoughts.
2
Back in his office, Banks first glanced at Dr. Glendenning’s post-mortem notes. Generally, there was no such thing as a preliminary post-mortem report, but Dr. Glendenning usually condescended to send over the main points in layman’s language as quickly as possible. He also liked to appear at the scene, but this time he had been staying overnight with friends in Harrogate.
There was nothing in the notes that Banks hadn’t expected. Rothwell hadn’t been poisoned before he was shot; the stomach contents revealed only pasta and red wine. Dr. Glendenning gave cause of death as a shotgun wound to the occipital region, the back of the head, most likely a contact wound given the massive damage to bone and tissue. He also noted that it was lucky they already knew who the victim was, as there wasn’t enough connected bone or tissue left to reconstruct the face, and though the tooth fragments could probably be collected and analyzed, it would take a bloody long time. The blood group was “O,” which matched that supplied by Rothwell’s doctor, as well as that of about half the population.
Rothwell had most likely been killed in the place and position they found him, Dr. Glendenning pointed out, because what blood remained had collected as purplish hypostasis around the upper chest and the ragged edges of the neck. He estimated time of death between eleven and one the previous night.
A cadaveric spasm had caused Rothwell to grab and hold onto a handful of dust at the moment of death, and Banks thought of the T.S. Eliot quotation, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” which he had come across as the title of an Evelyn Waugh novel.
Rothwell had been in generally good shape, Dr. Glendenning said, and the only evidence of any ill health was an appendix scar. Rothwell’s doctor, Dr. Hunter, was able to verify that Rothwell had had his appendix removed just over three years ago.
When Banks had finished, he phoned Sandra to say he didn’t know when he would be home. She said that didn’t surprise her. Then he went over to the window and looked down on the cobbled market square, most of which was covered by parked cars. The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at a quarter to four.
Banks lit a cigarette and watched the local merchants taking deliveries and the tourists snapping pictures of the ancient market cross and the Norman church front. It was fine enough weather out there, sports jacket warm, but the gray wash that had come at dawn still obscured the sunshine. On Banks’s Dalesman calendar, the May photograph showed a field of brilliant pink and purple flowers below Great Shunner Fell in Swaledale. So far, the real May had been struggling against showers and cool temperatures.
Sitting at his rattly metal desk, Banks next opened the envelope of Rothwell’s pocket contents and spread them out in front of him.
There were a few business cards in a leather slip-case, describing Rothwell as a “Financial Consultant.” In his wallet were three credit cards, including an American Express Gold; the receipt from Mario’s on the night of his anniversary dinner; receipts from Austick’s bookshop, a computer supplies shop and two restaurants, all from Leeds, and all dated the previous week; and photos of Alison and Mary Rothwell. Happy families indeed. In cash, Rothwell had a hundred and five pounds in his wallet, in new twenties and one crumpled old fiver.
Other pockets revealed a handkerchief, good quality silk and monogrammed “KAR,” like the cufflinks on the body, BMW keys, house keys, a small pack of Rennies, two buttons, a gold Cross fountain pen, an empty leather-bound notebook, and – horror of horrors – a packet of ten Benson and Hedges, six of which had been smoked.
Banks felt a surge of respect for the late Keith Rothwell. But perhaps the cigarettes helped to explain something, too. Banks was certain that Mary Rothwell would never have permitted her husband to pollute the house with his filthy habit. Smoking, then, could be the main reason he liked to sneak off to the Black Sheep or the Rose and Crown every now and then. It certainly wasn’t drinking. A secret smoker, then? Or did she know? He found no gold lighter, only a sulfurous old box of Pilot matches; and Rothwell was the kind of person who put his spent matches back in the box facing the opposite direction from the live ones.
It was almost six when the phone rang: Vic Manson calling from the forensic lab. Vic spent almost as much time with the Scene-of-Crime team from North Yorkshire Headquarters, in Northallerton, as he did at the lab, and though Banks knew Vic was a fingerprints expert, he sometimes wasn’t sure exactly what he did or where he really worked.
“What have you got for us?” Banks asked.
“Hold your horses.”
“Social call, is it, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“The wadding, for a start.”
“What about it?”
“We managed to get some more of the paper unfolded. It wasn’t too badly burned inside. Anyway, the document analysts say it’s good magazine quality, probably German. No prints. Nothing but blurs. It’s not your common-or-garden girlie magazine, but it’s not hard-core perversion either. The fullest picture we could get seemed to be a shaved vagina with a finger touching the clitoris. Bright red nail varnish. The fingernail, that is.”