“Rothwell in the porn business?”
“It’s possible. After all, he had plenty of money, didn’t he? He must have got it from somewhere. I’m not suggesting he was a front player, one who got his hands dirty. Maybe he just made some investments or handled finances. Take the lid off that can of worms – video nasties, prostitution and the like – and it wouldn’t surprise me to find murder. Perhaps the wadding was a kind of signature, a symbol.”
“It sounds a bit too fanciful to me,” said Gristhorpe, “but I take your point. It’s all tied together, anyway, isn’t it? If he was in the porn business, then that makes porn part of his business affairs. We’ll follow up on it.”
“DS Hatchley’s coming back on Monday,” said Banks. “I think he’d be a good man for the job. Remember he spent a while working on the Vice Squad for West Yorkshire? Besides, he’d enjoy it.”
Gristhorpe snorted. “I suppose he would. But keep him on a tight leash. He’s like a bloody bull in a china shop.”
Banks grinned. He knew that Gristhorpe and Hatchley didn’t get along. Jim Hatchley was a big, bluff, burly, boozy, roast-beef sort of Yorkshireman, a rugby prop forward until cigarettes and drink took their toll. More at home playing darts in the public bar than chatting in the lounge, he was the kind of person everyone underestimated, and that often worked to the advantage of the Eastvale CID. And he also had a valuable, county-wide network of low-life, quasi-criminal informers that nobody had been able to penetrate.
“The Rothwells are an interesting family,” Banks went on after a sip of Theakston’s. “Mrs. Rothwell assured me everything was fine and dandy on the domestic front, but methought the lady did protest too much. I wonder how much communication there really was between them all. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, but there’s something bothering me. I think the son, Tom, might have something to do with it.”
“I got that impression, too,” said Susan. “It all looks fine on the surface, but I’d like to know what life at Arkbeck Farm was like. After I’d talked to Laurence Pratt, I got to thinking that if Tom was the reason Keith and Mary Rothwell had to get married, and Rothwell was unhappy in his marriage, then he might blame Tom. Irrational, of course, but things happen like that.”
“I’d leave the psychology to Jenny Fuller,” said Gristhorpe.
Susan reddened.
“Susan’s right,” said Banks. “The sooner we find Tom Rothwell, the better.”
Gristhorpe shrugged. “It’s up to the Florida police now. We’ve passed on all the information we’ve got. Come on, Alan, surely you don’t think the wife and daughter had anything to do with it?”
“It would be hard to believe, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, we’ve only their word for what happened. Nobody else saw the two men in black. What if Alison and her mother did want rid of Rothwell for some reason?”
“Next you’ll be telling me the wife and daughter were making porno films for Rothwell. You talked to Alison. You could see the lass was upset.”
“Alison might not have had anything to do with it.”
“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.”
Chapter 4
1
A night’s sleep is supposed to refresh you, not make you feel as if you’re recovering from a bloody anesthetic, 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 whole wheat 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 center 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 with a sixteen-year-old rent-boy on Clapham Common. It probably wouldn’t even have made the papers if it had happened somewhere a bit more up-market, like Hampstead Heath, Banks thought.