“No. He phoned me occasionally. He told me it was better that way for his tax expenses.” She shrugged. “Well,
“You never went with him?”
“No, of course not. I have an aversion to lengthy car rides. Besides, they were business trips. One doesn’t take one’s spouse on business trips.”
“So you’ve no idea what he got up to in Leeds or wherever?”
She put down her cup. “Are you implying something, Chief Inspector? Keith didn’t ‘get up to’ anything.”
Banks was dying for a cigarette. He finished the weak tea and put his cup and saucer down gently on the coffee-table. “Do you know if your husband was much of a gambler?” he asked.
“Gambler?” She laughed. “Good heavens, no. Keith never even bet on the Grand National, and most people do that, don’t they? No, money for my husband was too hard earned to be frittered away like that. Keith had a poor childhood, you know, and one learns the value of money quite early on.”
“What sort of childhood?”
“His father was a small shopkeeper, and they suffered terribly when the supermarkets started to become popular. He eventually went bankrupt. Keith didn’t like to talk about it.”
Banks remembered the cigarettes he had found among the contents of Rothwell’s pockets. “Did you know that your husband smoked?” he asked.
“One minor weakness,” Mary Rothwell said, turning up her nose. “It’s a smelly and unpleasant habit, as well as a possibly fatal one. I certainly wouldn’t let him do it in the house, and I was always trying to persuade him to stop.”
I’ll bet you were, Banks thought. “Have you ever heard of a woman called Pamela Jeffreys?” he asked.
Mary Rothwell frowned. For the first time, she sat back in the chair and gripped its arms with both hands. “No. Why?” Banks saw suspicion and apprehension in her eyes.
Outside, the van door closed and the engine revved up. Banks noticed Mrs. Rothwell glance toward the window. “They’re finished,” he said. “What about Robert Calvert? Does the name mean anything to you?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing. Look, what’s this all about? Are these the people you think killed Keith? Are these the ones who got him involved in this criminal scheme you were talking about?”
Banks sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe, but I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go and arrest
Banks didn’t think he was likely to get anything else out of Mary Rothwell, or out of Alison. He stood up. “I’m sorry we had to bother you,” he said. “We’ll be in touch as soon as we track down your son. And please let us know if you hear from him first. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.” And he left.
Maybe she hadn’t heard of Pamela Jeffreys, he thought as he got in the car, but he was certain that she suspected her husband might have been seeing another woman. It was there in her eyes, in the whiteness of her knuckles.
He slipped a Thelonious Monk tape in the deck and set off for his next appointment. As the edgy, repetitive figure at the opening of “Raise Four” almost pushed his ears to the limits of endurance, he wondered how long Mary Rothwell would be able to maintain her thinly-lacquered surface before the cracks started to show.
2
“Well, now, if it ain’t Mr. Banks again,” said Larry Grafton when Banks walked into the Black Sheep that lunch-time with
“You could start with a pint of best bitter and follow it with a plate of your Elsie’s delightful roast beef and Yorkshire pud. And you could cut the bloody sarcasm.”
Grafton laughed and started pulling. Elsie’s Sunday lunches were another well-kept secret, and only a privileged few got to taste them. Banks didn’t fool himself that he was an accepted member of the elite; he knew damn well that publicans liked to keep on the good side of the law.
“And,” he said, when Larry handed him his pint, “I’d like a word with your Cathy, if I might.”
“About the Rothwells, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Aye. Well she’s just having her dinner. I’ll send her through when she’s done.”
“Thanks.”
Banks took his drink and sat by the tiled fireplace. Before he sat, he glanced at the collection of butterflies pinned to a board in a glass case on the wall. The pub wasn’t as busy as most on a Sunday lunch-time. Of course, there was no sandwich-board outside advertising “Traditional Sunday Lunch.”
Banks’s roast beef and Yorkshires came, as good as ever. Not for the first time, he reflected that Elsie’s was the only roast beef in Yorkshire, apart from Sandra’s, that was pink in the middle. As he ate, he propped the paper against a bottle of HP sauce and began to read an analysis of the growing political unrest on an obscure Caribbean island, feeling an irrational rage grow in him as he read. Christ, how he loathed these tinpot dictators, the ones who stuffed their maws with the best of everything while their subjects starved, who tortured and murdered anyone who dared to complain.
Just as he had picked up the books supplement, he noticed a tourist couple walk in and look around. They went to the bar and the man asked Larry Grafton what food he offered.
“Nowt,” said Grafton. “We don’t do food.”
The man looked toward Banks. “But he’s got some.”
“Last plate.”
The man looked at his watch. “But it’s only twelve-thirty.”
Grafton shrugged.
“Besides, you said you don’t do food. You’re contradicting yourself. You heard him, didn’t you, darling?”
His wife said nothing; she just stood there looking embarrassed. He had the kind of upper-class accent that expects immediate subservience, but he obviously didn’t know there could be nothing more calculated to get right up a Yorkshireman’s nose.
“Look,” said Grafton, “does the want a drink or doesn’t tha?”
“We want food,” the man said.
His wife tugged at his sleeve. “Come on, darling,” she whispered just in Banks’s range of hearing. “Don’t cause a fuss. Let’s go. There are plenty of other pubs.”
“But I-” The man glared petulantly at Grafton, who stared back stone-faced, then followed his wife’s advice.
“Really,” Banks heard him say on his way out, “you’d think these people didn’t want to make an honest living. They’re supposed to be in the service industry.”
Larry Grafton winked at Banks and ambled off to serve one of the locals. Banks reflected that maybe the tourist was right. What the hell was wrong with Larry Grafton? Nowt so queer as folk, he decided, and went back to his roast beef. A couple of minutes later, when he had just finished, Cathy Grafton came from the back and joined him. He folded up his newspaper, pushed his empty plate aside and lit a cigarette.
Cathy was a plump girl of about sixteen with a fringe and a blotchy complexion, as if she had been sitting too close to the fire too long. She also had the longest, curliest and most beautiful eyelashes Banks had ever seen.
