Banks smiled. “Thanks for the compliment,” he said. “But I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
Burgess grinned. “Maybe I exaggerate. But you get my point?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Good. That’s why I’m going to tell you something very, very important and very, very secret, and I’m going to trust you with it. We’ve been keeping an eye on the St. Corona situation, and anything that could possibly have to do with Martin Churchill gets flagged. Now, we just got a report from your Fraud Squad late yesterday evening that they found something on Keith Rothwell’s computer that indicates he may have been laundering money for Martin Churchill. Lots of trips to the Channel Islands and the Caribbean. Some very dodgy bank accounts. Some very dodgy banks, too, for that matter. Anyway, there’s a pattern and a time period that matches exactly the sort of thing we’ve been looking for. We’ve known this was going on for some time, but until now we hadn’t a clue who was doing it. There’s no proof it was Rothwell, yet – the Fraud Squad still has a lot of work to do, chasing down transactions and what have you – but if I’m right, then we’re talking about a lot of money. Something in the region of thirty or forty million pounds over three or four years. Mostly money that was originally provided as aid by leading western nations. It’s the same kind of thing Baby Doc did in Haiti.”
“And you think this might have something to do with Rothwell’s murder?”
Burgess shook his head. “I don’t really know, but the odds are that there’s some kind of connection, don’t you think? Especially considering the way he was killed. I mean, it was hardly a domestic, was it?”
“Possibly,” Banks agreed. “Do you have any leads on the killers?”
“No more than you. I’m only suggesting that Churchill might be behind them.”
“And if he is?”
“Watch your back.”
Banks thought about that for a moment. He wasn’t sure who constituted the greatest threat to his exposed back, Churchill or Burgess. “I must say this is pretty quick work on your part,” he said.
Burgess shrugged. “Like I said, orders to flag. When I called your station, Superintendent Gristhorpe told me where you were. I missed you at the solicitor’s office, but the secretary told me you were coming here.”
“What’s Daniel Clegg’s connection with all this?”
“We don’t know yet. We don’t even know if there is one. I only just found out about his disappearance. It’s early days yet.”
“Two other men have been looking for him, too. One black, one white. Are they your lot?”
Burgess frowned. “No, they’re nothing to do with me.”
“Know anything about them?”
“No.”
He was lying, Banks was certain. “So why are you here?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. Just carry on as normal. I simply wanted to warn you to tread very carefully, that’s all, that things might be more complicated than they appear on the surface. And to let you know there’s help available if you want it, of course. Naturally, if you get close to uncovering the killers’ identities, I’d be interested in talking to them.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m interested in everything to do with Martin Churchill, as I told you.” Burgess looked at his watch. “Good lord, is that the time already?” he said, then knocked back the rest of his pint, winked and stood up. “Got to be off now. Be seeing you.” And he strutted off over the square toward Park Row.
Banks lit a cigarette and brooded over the meeting as he finished his pint, wondering what the hell the bastard was up to. He didn’t trust Burgess as far as he could throw him, and he was convinced that all that stuff about offering help and giving a friendly warning was rubbish. Burgess was up to something.
At a guess, he wanted to be one of the first to get to the killers so he could find a way of hushing them up. The last thing he would want was a big story about Churchill hiring assassins to murder a Yorkshire accountant splashed all over the press. Churchill might well be up to much worse things on St. Corona, but this was England, after all.
Still, no matter what Burgess suspected, and whether or not Martin Churchill was behind it all, Banks still had two killers to find, locals by the sound of them, and he wasn’t going to do that by sitting around in Stumps fretting about Dirty Dick Burgess.
4
Banks didn’t expect to find anything new in Calvert’s Headingley flat, but for some reason he felt the need to revisit the place after he had picked up the Khachaturian compact disc.
West Yorkshire police had talked to the other tenants, who all said they knew nothing about Mr. Calvert or Keith Rothwelclass="underline" they never really saw much of him; he was out a lot; and, yes, now you mention it, there was a resemblance, but it was only a newspaper photo and Mr. Calvert didn’t look quite the same; besides, Calvert wasn’t an Eastvale accountant, was he? He lived in Leeds. Couldn’t argue with that. Banks headed upstairs.
The only immediate difference he noticed was the thin layer of fingerprint powder on surfaces of metal or glass: around the gas fireplace, on the glass-topped coffee-table and the TV set.
This time, Banks examined the books more closely. There weren’t many, and most of them were the usual bestseller list paperbacks: Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Ken Follett, Robert Ludlum. There was also some espionage fiction – Len Deighton, John le Carré, Adam Hall, Ian Fleming – plus a couple of Agatha Christies and an oddly out-of-place copy of Middlemarch, which looked unread. Hardly surprising, Banks thought, having given up on even the television adaptation. The only other books were Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, the first part of William Manchester’s Churchill biography and a Concise Oxford Dictionary.
The small compact disc collection concentrated entirely on jazz, mostly Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk and a few collections of big-band music. Banks noticed some decent stuff: Louis, Bix, Johnny Dodds, Bud Powell. On the whole, though, judging from the Monet print over the fireplace, the Palgrave and the music, Robert Calvert had agreed with Philip Larkin about the evils of Parker, Pound and Picasso.
In the bedroom, all the papers had been removed from the desk, as had the wallet with the Calvert identification and credit card. The Fraud Squad would be working already on Calvert’s financial profile, now they knew that he and Rothwell were one and the same. The magazines and coins were still there, the bed still unmade.
Why had Rothwell needed Calvert? Banks wondered. Simple escapism? According to what everyone said, he was a different person altogether at Arkbeck Farm and in the wider community of Swainsdale. Most people there spoke of him as a rather dull chap, maybe a bit henpecked.