Then there was Robert Calvert, the dancing, gambling, laughing, fun-loving Lothario and dreamer. The man who had attracted and bedded the beautiful Pamela Jeffreys. The man who squeezed his toothpaste tube in the middle.
So which was the real Keith Rothwell? Both or neither? In a sense, Banks guessed, he needed both worlds. Did that make him a Jekyll and Hyde figure? Did it mean he was mad? Banks didn’t think so.
He remembered Susan’s account of her interview with Laurence Pratt, in which Pratt had indicated that Rothwell had changed over the years, cut himself off, penned himself in. Perhaps he had once been the kind of person who liked gambling, dancing and drinking. Then he had been pushed into marriage with the boss’s daughter, and marriage had changed him. It happened often enough; people settled down. But, for some reason, Rothwell had felt the need for an outlet, one that would not interfere with his family life, or with his local image as a respectable, decent citizen.
Banks could think of one good reason why it was important for Rothwell to maintain this fiction: Rothwell was a crook. He certainly didn’t want to draw attention to himself by high living. As Calvert, he could relive his youth as much as he wished and enjoy the proceeds of his money-laundering. Perfect.
Did Mary Rothwell know about her husband’s other life? She had probably suspected something was wrong time and time again over the last few years, but denied and repressed the suspicions in order to maintain the illusion of happy, affluent family values in the community. She probably needed to believe in the lies as much as her husband needed to live them.
But you can only maintain an illusion for so long, Banks thought, then cracks appear and the truth seeps in. You can ignore that for a long time, too, but ultimately the wound begins to fester and infect everything. That’s when the bad things start to happen. Did Alison know? Or Tom? It would be interesting to meet the lad.
He looked through the wardrobe and dresser drawers again. Most of Calvert’s clothes were still there, though the condoms had gone. Genuine scientific testing, Banks wondered, or a Scene-of-Crime Officer with a hot date and no time to get to the chemist’s?
He looked under chairs, under the bed, on top of the wardrobe, in the cistern, and in all the usual hiding places before he realized that Vic Manson and his lads had probably already done most of that, even though the flat wasn’t a crime scene per se, and that he didn’t know what he was looking for anyway. He paused by the front window, which looked out onto a tree-lined side-street off Otley Road.
Fool, he told himself. He had been looking for Keith Rothwell in Robert Calvert’s flat. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere; he was just a slab of chilled meat waiting for a man with his collar on the wrong way around to chant a few meaningless words that might just ease the living’s fear of death until the next time it touched too close to home for comfort.
As he glanced out of the window, he glimpsed two men in suits across the street looking up at him. They were partially obscured by trees, but he could see that one was black, the other white.
He hurried down to the street. When he got there, nobody was about except a young man washing his car three houses down.
Banks approached him and showed his identification. The man wiped the sweat off his brow and looked up at Banks, shielding his eyes from the glare. Sunlight winked on the bubbles in his bucket of soapy water.
“Did you see a couple of blokes in business suits pass by a few minutes ago?” Banks asked.
“Yeah,” said the man. “Yeah I did. I thought it was a bit odd the way they stopped and looked up at that house. To be honest, though, the way they were dressed I thought they were probably coppers.”
Banks thanked him and went back to the car. So he wasn’t getting paranoid. How did the saying go? Just because you think they’re out there following you, it doesn’t mean they aren’t.
Chapter 8
1
Tom Rothwell resembled his father more than his mother, Banks thought, sitting opposite him in the split-level living room at Arkbeck Farm the following morning. Though his hair was darker and longer, he had the same thin oval face and slightly curved nose and the same gray eyes as Banks had seen in the photograph. His sulky mouth, though, owed more to early Elvis Presley, and was no doubt more a result of artifice than nature.
His light brown hair fell charmingly over one eye and hung in natural waves over his ears and the collar of his blue denim shirt. Both knees of his jeans were torn, and the unlaced white trainers on his feet were scuffed and dirty.
The best of the lot, Cathy Grafton had said, and it wasn’t hard to guess why a rather plain girl like her would value a smile and a kind word from a handsome lad like Tom.
But right from the start Banks sensed something else about him, an aura of affected arrogance, as if he were condescending from a great intellectual and moral height to answer such stupid questions as those relating to his father’s murder.
It was rebellious youth, in part, and Banks certainly understood that. Also, Tom seemed to exhibit that mix of vanity and over-confidence that Banks had often encountered in the wealthy. In addition there was a hell of a lot of the wariness and subterfuge that he usually associated with someone hiding a guilty secret. Tom’s body language said it alclass="underline" long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, arms folded high on his chest, eyes anywhere but on the questioner. Susan Gay sat in the background to take notes. Banks wondered what she thought about Tom.
“Did you have any problems getting a flight?” Banks asked.
“No. But I had to change at some dreary place in Carolina, and then again in New York.”
“I know you must be tired. I remember from my trip to Toronto, the jet lag’s much worse flying home.”
“I’m all right. I slept a little on the plane.”
“I can never seem to manage that.”
Tom said nothing. Banks wished that Alison and Mary Rothwell weren’t flanking Tom on the sofa. And again the room felt dark and cold around him. Though it had windows, they were set or angled in such a way that they didn’t let in much natural light. And they were all closed.
“I imagine you’re upset about your father, too,” he said.
“Naturally.”
“We wanted to talk to you so soon,” Banks said, “because we hoped you might be able to tell us something about your father, something that might help lead us to his killers.”