Final Account

oblivious to the world, then went out to his car and lit a cigarette. He rolled the window down and listened to the birds as he smoked. Birds aside, it was bloody quiet up here. How, he wondered, could a teenager like Alison stand the isolation? As WPC Smithies had said, the Rothwells were an odd family.

As he drove along the bumpy track to the Relton road, he slipped in a tape of Dr. John playing solo New Orleans piano music. He had developed a craving for piano music – any kind of piano music – recently. He was even thinking of taking piano lessons; he wanted to learn how to play everything – classical, jazz, blues. The only thing that held him back was that he felt too old to embark on such a venture. His forty-first birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks.

In Relton, a couple of old ladies holding shopping baskets stood chatting outside the butcher’s shop, probably about the murder.

Banks thought again about Alison Rothwell and her mother as he pulled up outside the Black Sheep. What were they holding back? And what was it that bothered him? No matter what Mrs. Rothwell and Alison had said, there was something wrong in that family, and he had a hunch that Tom Rothwell might know what it was. The sooner they contacted him the better.

3

Laurence Pratt delved deep in his bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of Courvoisier VSOP and two snifters.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized to DC Susan Gay, who sat opposite him at the broad teak desk. “It’s not that I’m a secret tippler. I keep it for emergencies, and I’m afraid what you’ve just told me most definitely constitutes one. You’ll join me?”

“No, thank you.”

“Not on duty?”

“Sometimes,” Susan said. “But not today.”

“Very well.” He poured himself a generous measure, swirled it and took a sip. A little color came back to his cheeks. “Ah… that’s better.”

“If we could get back to Mr. Rothwell, sir?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But you must understand Miss, Miss…?”

“Gay, sir. DC Gay.”

She saw the inadvertent smile flash across his face. People often smiled like that when she introduced herself. “Gay” had been a perfectly good name when she was a kid – her nickname for a while had been “Happy” Gay – but now its meaning was no longer the same. One clever bugger had actually asked, “Did you say AC or DC Gay?” She comforted herself with the thought that he was doing three to five in Strangeways thanks largely to her court evidence.

“Yes,” he went on, a frown quickly displacing the smile. “I’d heard about Keith’s death, of course, on the radio this lunch-time, but they didn’t say how it happened. That’s a bit of a shock, to be honest. You see, I knew Keith quite well. I’m only about three years older than he, and we worked here together for some years.”

“He left the firm five years ago, is that right?”

“About right. A big move like that takes quite a bit of planning, quite a bit of organizing. There were client files to be transferred, that sort of thing. And he had the house to think of, too.”

“He was a partner?”

“Yes. My father, Jeremiah Pratt, was one of the founders of the firm. He’s retired now.”

“I understand the family used to live in Eastvale, is that right?”

“Yes. Quite a nice house out toward the York roundabout. Catterick Street.”

“Why did they move?”

“Mary always fancied living in the country. I don’t know why. She wasn’t any kind of nature girl. I think perhaps she wanted to play Lady of the Manor.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Pratt shrugged. “Just her nature.”

“What about her husband?”

“Keith didn’t mind. I should imagine he liked the solitude. I don’t mean he was exactly antisocial, but he was never a great mixer, not lately, anyway. He travelled a lot, too.”

Pratt was in his mid-forties, Susan guessed, which did indeed make him just a few years older than Keith Rothwell. Quite good-looking, with a strong jaw and gray eyes, he wore his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his mauve and green tie clipped with what looked like a silver American dollar sign. His hairline was receding and what hair remained was gray at the temples. He wore black-framed glasses, which sat about halfway down his nose.

“Did you ever visit him there?”

“Yes. My wife and I dined with the Rothwells on several occasions.”

“Were you friends?”

Pratt took another sip of Cognac, put his hand out and waggled it from side to side. “Hmm. Somewhere between friends and colleagues, I’d say.”

“Why did he leave Hatchard and Pratt?”

Pratt broke eye contact and looked into the liquid he swirled in his snifter. “Ambition, maybe? Straightforward accountancy bored him. He was fond of abstractions, very good with figures. He certainly had a flair for financial management. Very creative.”

“Does that imply fraudulent?”

Pratt looked up at her. She couldn’t read his expression. “I resent that implication,” he said.

“Was there any bad feeling?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When he left the firm. Had there been any arguments, any problems?”

“Good lord, this was five years ago!”

“Even so.”

Pratt adopted a stiffer tone. “No, of course there hadn’t. Everything was perfectly amicable. We were sorry to lose him, of course, but… ”

“He wasn’t fired or anything?”

“No.”

“Did he take any clients with him?”

Pratt shuffled in his chair. “There will always be clients who feel they owe their loyalty to an individual member of the firm rather than to the firm as a whole.”

“Are you sure this didn’t cause bad feeling?”

“No, of course not. While it’s unprofessional to solicit clients and woo them away, most firms do accept that they will lose some business whenever a popular member leaves to set up on his own. Say, for example, you visit a particular dentist in a group practice. You feel comfortable with him. He understands how you feel about dentists, you feel safe with him. If he left and set up on his own, would you go with him or stay and take your chances?”

Susan smiled. “I see what you mean. Do you think you could provide me with a list of names of the clients he took?”

Pratt chewed his lower lip for a moment, as if debating the ethics of such a request, then said, “I don’t see why not. You could find out from his records anyway.”

“Thank you. He must have made a fair bit of money somehow,” Susan said. “How did he do it?”

Pratt, who if truth be told, Susan thought, suppressing a giggle, might not be entirely