Peter Robinson: Final Account

“Do you remember anything about them?”

She shook her head. “They were both dressed all in black, except one of them had white trainers on. The other had some sort of suede slip-ons, brown I think.”

“You didn’t see their faces?”

Alison hooked her feet over the crossbar. “No, they had balaclavas on, black ones. But they weren’t like the ones you’d buy to keep you warm. They were just made of cotton or some other thin material. They had little slits for the eyes and slits just under the nose so they could breathe.”

Banks noticed that she had turned paler. “Are you all right, Alison?” he asked. “Do you want to stop now and rest?”

Alison shook her head. Her teeth were clenched. “No. I’ll be all right. Just let me… ” She sipped some tea and seemed to relax a little.

“How tall were they?” Banks asked.

“One was about as big as you.” She looked at Banks, who at only five foot nine was quite small for a policeman – just over regulation height, in fact. “But he was fatter. Not really fat, but just not, you know, wiry… like you. The other was a few inches taller, maybe six foot, and quite thin.”

“You’re doing really well, Alison,” Banks said. “Was there anything else about them?”

“No. I can’t remember.”

“Did either of them speak?”

“When he dragged me back inside, the smaller one said, ‘Keep quiet and do as you’re told and we won’t hurt you.’”

“Did you notice his accent?”

“Not really. It sounded ordinary. I mean, not foreign or anything.”

“Local?”

“ Yorkshire, yes. But not Dales. Maybe Leeds or something. You know how it sounds different, more citified?”

“Good. You’re doing just fine. What happened next?”

“They tied me to the chair with some rope and just sat and watched television. First the news was on, then some horrible American film about a psycho slashing women. They seemed to like that. One of them kept laughing when a woman got killed, as if it was funny.”

“You heard them laugh?”

“Just one of them, the tall one. The other one told him to shut up. He sounded like he was in charge.”

“The smaller one?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all he said: ‘Shut up’?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything unusual about the taller man’s laugh?”

“I… I don’t… I can’t remember.” Alison wiped a tear from her eye with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “It was just a laugh, that’s all.”

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Did they harm you in any way?”

Alison reddened and looked down into her half-empty mug. “The smaller one came over to me when I was tied up, and he put his hand on my breast. But the other one made him stop. It was the only time he said anything.”

“How did he make him stop? What did he do?”

“He just said not to, that it wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Did he use those exact words, Alison? Did he say, ‘It’s not part of the deal’?”

“Yes. I think so. I mean, I’m not completely sure, but it was something like that. The smaller man didn’t seem to like it, being told what to do by the other, but he left me alone after that.”

“Did you see any kind of weapon?” Banks asked.

“Yes. The kind of gun that farmers have, with two barrels. A shotgun.”

“Who had it?”

“The smaller man, the one in charge.”

“Did you hear a car at any time?”

“No. Only when Mum and Dad came home. I mean, I heard cars go by on the road sometimes, you know, the one that goes through Relton and right over the moors into the next dale. But I didn’t hear anyone coming or going along our driveway.”

“What happened when your parents came home?”

Alison paused and swirled the tea in the bottom of her mug as if she were trying to see into her future. “It must have been about half past eleven or later. The men waited behind the door and the tall one grabbed Mum while the other put his gun to Dad’s neck. I tried to scream and warn them, honest I did, but the rag in my mouth… I just couldn’t make a sound…” She ran her sleeve across her eyes again and sniffled. Banks gestured to PC Weaver, who found a box of tissues on the window-sill and brought them over.

“Thank you,” Alison said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to go on if you don’t want,” Banks said. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

“No. I’ve started. I want to. Besides, there’s not much more to tell. They tied Mum up the same as me and we sat there facing each other. Then they went outside with Dad. Then we heard the bang.”

“How long between the time they went out and the shot?”

Alison shook her head dreamily. She held the mug up close to her throat. The sleeves of her sweatshirt had slipped down, and Banks could see the raw, red lines where the rope had cut into her flesh. “I don’t know. It seemed like a long time. But all I can remember is we just sat looking at each other, Mum and me, and we didn’t know what was happening. I remember a night-bird calling somewhere. Not a curlew. I don’t know what it was. And it seemed like forever, like time just stretched out and Mum and I got really scared now looking at one another not knowing what was going on. Then we heard the explosion and… and it was like it all snapped and I saw something die in Mum’s eyes, it was so, so… ” Alison dropped the mug, which clipped the corner of the table then fell and spilled without breaking on the floor. The sobs seemed to start deep inside her, then she began to shake and wail.

Banks went over and put his arms around her, and she clung onto him for dear life, sobbing against his chest.

“It looks like his office,” Banks said, when Gristhorpe turned on the light in the last upstairs room.

Two large desks formed an L-shape. On one of them stood a computer and a laser printer, and on a small table next to them stood a fax machine with a basket attached at the front for collecting the cut-off sheets. At the back of the computer desk, a hutch stood against the wall. The compartments were full of boxes of disks and software manuals, mostly for word processing, spreadsheets and accounting programs, along with some for standard utilities.

The other desk stood in front of the window, which framed a view of the farmyard. Scene-of-Crime Officers were still going about their business down there taking samples of just about everything in sight, measuring distances, trying to get casts of footprints, sifting soil. In the barn, their bright arc lamps had replaced Darby’s roving light.

This was the desk where Rothwell dealt with handwritten correspondence and phone calls, Banks guessed. There was a blotter, which looked new – no handy wrong-way-around clues scrawled there – a jam-jar full of pens and pencils, a blank scratch-pad, an electronic adding machine of the kind that produces a printed tape of its calculations, and an appointment calendar open at the day of the murder, May 12.

The only things written there were “Dr. Hunter” beside the 10:00 a.m. slot, “Make dinner reservation: Mario’s, 8:30 p.m.” Below that, and written in capitals all across the afternoon, “FLOWERS?” Banks had noticed a vase full of fresh flowers in the living room. An anniversary present? Sad when touching gestures like that outlive the giver. He thought of Sandra again, and suddenly he wanted very much to be near her, to bridge the distance that had grown between them, to hold her and feel her warmth. He shivered.

“All right, Alan?” Gristhorpe asked.

“Fine. Someone just walked over my grave.”

“Look at all this.” Gristhorpe pointed to the two metal filing cabinets and the heavy-duty shelves that took up the room’s only long, unbroken wall. “Business records, by the looks of it. Someone’s going to have to sift through it.” He looked toward the computer and grimaced. “We’d better get Phil to have a look at this lot tomorrow,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust myself to turn the bloody thing on without blowing it up.”