Peter Robinson: Final Account

She spoke with such disbelief that Banks wondered if she had noticed that her father really wasn’t so shocked or surprised and it confused her. “Do you think he knew what was happening?” he pressed. “Why it was happening?”

“Maybe. No. I don’t know. He couldn’t possibly, could he?” She screwed up her eyes. “I can’t see it that clearly. I don’t want to see it clearly.”

“All right, Alison. It’s all right. I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”

“I know. I don’t mean to be a cry-baby.” She rubbed her bare arm over her eyes.

“You’re being very brave. Just one more question about what happened and then we’ll move on. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Did your father go quietly or did they have to force him?”

“No, he just walked out with them. He didn’t say anything.”

“Did he look frightened?”

“He didn’t look anything.” She reddened. “And he didn’t do anything. He just left Mum and me all tied up and let them take him and… and kill him like an animal.”

“All right, Alison, calm down. How did you get free from the chair after they’d gone?”

Alison sniffled and blew her nose. “It was a long time,” she said finally. “Hours maybe. Some of the time I just sat there, but not really there, if you know what I mean. I think Mum had fainted. They’d really tied us tight and I couldn’t feel my hands properly.”

As she spoke, she rubbed at her wrists, still ringed by the burn-marks. “In the end, I tipped my chair and crawled over near the table where my mother’s sewing basket was. I knew there were scissors in there. I had to rub my hands for a long time, so they could feel properly, and I don’t know how… but in the end I cut the rope, then I untied Mum.” She shifted her position. “I’m worried about Mum. She’s not herself. She doesn’t want to eat. What’s going to happen to her?”

“I’m all right, Alison, dear. There’s no need to worry.”

The voice came from the doorway, and Banks turned for his first glance of Mrs. Rothwell. She was a tall woman with short gray hair and fine-boned, angular features, the small nose perhaps just a little too sharply chiselled. There seemed an unusually wide space, Banks thought, between her nose and her thin upper lip, which gave her tilted head a haughty, imperious aspect. Banks could see where Alison got her small mouth from.

Her chestnut-brown eyes looked dull. Tranquilizers prescribed by Dr. Burns, Banks guessed. They would help to explain her listless movements, too. Her skin was pale, as if drained of blood, though Banks could tell she had put some make-up on. In fact, she had made a great effort to look her best. She wore black silk slacks over her thin, boyish hips, and a cable-knit jumper in a rainbow pattern, which looked to Banks’s untutored eye like an exclusive design. At least he had never seen one like it before. Even in her sedated grief, there was something controlled, commanding and attention-demanding about her, a kind of tightly reined-in power.

She sat down in the other armchair, crossed her legs and clasped her hands on her lap. Banks noticed the chunky rings on her fingers: diamond clusters, a large ruby and a broad gold wedding band.

Banks introduced himself and expressed his condolences. She inclined her head slightly in acceptance.

“I’m afraid I have some difficult questions for you, Mrs. Rothwell,” he said.

“Not about last night,” she said, one bejewelled hand going to her throat. “I can’t talk about it. I feel faint, my voice goes and I just can’t talk.”

“Mummy,” said Alison. “I’ve told him about… about that. Haven’t I?” And she looked at Banks as if daring him to disagree.

“Yes,” he said. “Actually, it wasn’t that I wanted to ask about specifically. It’s just that we need more information on your husband’s movements and activities. Can you help?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector. I’m not usually such a mess.” She touched her hair. “I must look dreadful.”

Banks murmured a compliment. “Did your husband have any enemies that you knew of?” he asked.

“No. None at all. But then he didn’t bore me with the details of his business. I really had no idea what kind of people he dealt with.” Her accent, Banks noticed, was Eastvale filtered through elocution lessons. Elocution lessons . He hadn’t thought people took those in this day and age.

“So he never brought his business home, so to speak?”

“No.”

“Did he travel much?”

“Do you mean abroad?”

“Anywhere.”

“Well, he did go abroad now and then, on business, and of course, we’d holiday in Mexico, Hawaii or Bermuda. He also travelled a lot locally in the course of business. He was away a lot.”

“Where did he go?”

“Oh, all over. Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol. Sometimes to London, Europe. He had a very important job. He was a brilliant financial analyst, much in demand. He could pick and choose his clients, could Keith, he didn’t have to take just any old thing that came along.”

“You mentioned financial analysis. What exactly did he do?”

She picked at the wool on her sleeve with long, bony fingers. “As I said, he didn’t tell me much about work, not about the details, anyway. He qualified as a chartered accountant, of course, but that was only part of it. He had a genius for figures. He advised people what to do with their money, helped businesses out of difficulties. I suppose he was a kind of trouble-shooter, if you like. A very exclusive one. He didn’t need any new clients, and people only found out about him by word of mouth.”

That all sounded sufficiently vague to be suspicious to Banks. On the other hand, what did he do? Investigate crimes, yes. But to do so, he chatted with locals over a pint, interviewed bereaved relatives, pored over fingerprints and blood samples. It would all sound rather nebulous and aimless to an outsider.

“And you never met any of his business associates?”

“We had people for dinner occasionally, but we never talked business.”

“Maybe, if you have a moment later, you could make a list of those you entertained most frequently?”

She raised her eyebrows. “If you want.”

“Now, Mrs. Rothwell,” Banks said, wishing he could have a cigarette in what was obviously a non-smoking household, “this next question may strike you as rather indelicate, but were there any problems in the family?”

“Of course not. We’re a happy family. Aren’t we, Alison?”

Alison looked at Banks. “Yes, Mother,” she said.

Banks turned back to Mrs. Rothwell. “Had your husband been behaving at all unusually recently?” he asked. “Had you noticed any changes in him?”

She frowned. “He had been a bit edgy, tense, a bit more preoccupied and secretive than usual. I mean, he was always quiet, but he’d been even more so.”

“For how long?”

She shrugged. “Two or three weeks.”

“But he never told you what was wrong?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“My husband didn’t appreciate people prying into his private business affairs, Chief Inspector.”

“Not even his wife?”

“I assumed that if and when he wanted to tell me, he would do so.”

“What did you talk about over dinner yesterday?”

She shrugged. “Just the usual things. The children, the house extension we wanted to have done… I don’t know, really. What do you talk about when you’re out for dinner with your wife?”

Good question, Banks thought. It had been so long since he and Sandra had gone out to dinner together that he couldn’t remember what they talked about. “Did you have any idea what he might have been worried about?” he asked.