Final Account

“What came between you?”

“What? Well, we stayed friends, really. At least, I like to think we did. There was her work, of course. It’s very demanding and between us we couldn’t always be sure we could make time to get together. And Pamela was more outgoing. She wanted more of a social life. She wanted me to meet her friends, and she wanted to meet mine.”

“But you didn’t have any?”

“Exactly. And I didn’t want to get too well known around the place. It was a risk, playing Calvert, always a risk.”

“Go on. What happened next?”

“I met Julia.”

“How?”

“We met on a bus, would you believe? It had been raining, one of those sudden showers, and I was out walking without an umbrella. So I jumped on a bus into town. Then the rain stopped and the sun came out. I’d been looking at her out of the corner of my eye. She was so beautiful, like a model, such delicate, fragile, sculpted features. I imagined she was probably stuck-up and wouldn’t talk to the likes of me. Anyway, she left her umbrella. I saw it, grabbed it, and dashed after her. When I caught her up she seemed startled at first, then I gave it to her and she blushed. She seemed flustered, so I asked her if she wanted to go for a coffee. She said yes. She was very shy. It was hard to get her talking at first, but slowly I found out she was a teacher and she lived in Adel and she adored Greek history and literature.

“Do you believe in love at first sight, Mr. Banks? Do you? Because that’s what this is all about, really. It’s not just about money. It’s not just about leaving my old life behind and seeking novelty. I fell in love with Julia the moment I saw her, and that’s the truth. It might sound foolish and sentimental to you, but I have never in my life felt that way before. Bells ringing, earth moving, all the cliches. And it’s mutual. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted. When I met Julia, nothing else mattered. I knew we had to get away, find our Eden, if you like, our paradise. I had to get a new life, a new identity. Everything was in such a mess, falling apart. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

“Except Daniel Clegg.”

Rothwell banged on his chair arm with his fist. “I told you! That wasn’t my fault. I had to appear to have been violently murdered. By Daniel himself, or by someone he’d hired. And that’s exactly the way it would have been, too, if I hadn’t been tipped off and made other plans. But Julia knew nothing of that. She’s a complete i

“So you invited Clegg over to the Calvert flat to get his fingerprints there? Am I right?”

“Yes. On the Monday. I said I had some business to discuss that couldn’t wait and he came over. I showed him around, had him touch things. I’d cleaned the place thoroughly. Daniel was a touchy-feely kind of person. Anything he saw, he’d pick it up and have a look: compact discs, wallet, credit cards in Calvert’s name, coins, books, you name it. He’d even let his fingers rest on surfaces as if he were claiming them or something. He handled just about everything in the place. I was much more careful to make mine blurred.” Rothwell laughed quietly. “He really was a fool, you know. Every time I got him to help me with something illegal, like setting up the Calvert bank account and credit card, for example, he thought he was getting more power over me.”

“So you must have known we’d find out about the Calvert identity, about Pamela, about Clegg and the money-laundering?”

“Of course. As I said earlier, I had to leave Calvert behind. It was part of my plan that you should find out about him. Another dead end. But please believe me, Pamela wasn’t meant to be a part of it, except maybe to confirm the Calvert identity. I mean, I thought she might get in touch with the police if she saw my picture in the papers. Or someone else might, someone who thought they recognized me. It was meant to confuse you, that’s all. I left a careful trail for you. I thought it led the wrong way. I knew the police would be able to unlock and interpret the data on my computer eventually, that they would realize I’d been laundering money for Martin Churchill. I also left a letter for Daniel Clegg in a locked file. I knew you’d get at that eventually, too.”

“That was one of the things that bothered me,” Banks said. “In retrospect, it was all too easy. And we never found a copy of the letter among his papers. He could have destroyed it, of course, but it was just one of those little niggling details. Lawyers tend to hang onto things.”

“I never sent it,” said Rothwell. “I just created the file so you’d get onto Daniel if you hadn’t already. It was a way of telling you his name, but I couldn’t make it too easy. Then you’d assume he’d had me killed and disappeared with the money.”

“Oh, we did,” said Banks. “We did.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I’m a persistent bastard, among other things. There were too many loose ends. They worried me. Two different sets of thugs roaming the country, for a start. They could be explained, of course, but it still seemed odd. And we couldn’t find any trace of Clegg, no matter how hard we tried. His ex-wife said he fancied Tahiti, but we had no luck there. We had no luck anywhere else, either. Of course we didn’t. We were looking for the wrong person. But mostly, I think, it was the co

“How did you find out about her?”

“Pamela Jeffreys mentioned her first. She said she thought you were in love. Just a feeling she had, you understand. Then I began to wonder how it would upset the apple-cart if you fell in love as Robert Calvert. How would you handle it? Then Tom came back from America for your funeral.”

“Ah, Tom. My Achilles heel.”

“Oh, he didn’t realize the significance of it. But you made him angry. He followed you to Leeds once. He saw you have lunch with a woman. Julia Marshall. You didn’t know that, did you? But Tom couldn’t imagine the scale of your plans. He’s just a kid who caught his father with another woman. He was already angry, mixed up and confused at the way you treated him. He was after getting his own back, but what he saw upset him so much that all he could do was keep it to himself.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “I didn’t know that. He didn’t tell Mary?”

“No. He wanted to protect her.”

“My God.” Rothwell ran his hand over the side of his face. “Maybe you think I reacted too harshly, Chief Inspector? I know we’re living in liberal times, where anything goes. I know it’s old-fashioned of me, but I still happen to believe that homosexuality is an aberration, an abomination of nature, and not just an ‘alternative lifestyle,’ as the liberals would have it. And to find out that my own son… ”

“So you decided it would be best to send Tom away?”

“Yes. It seemed best for both of us if he went away, a long way away. He was well provided for. As it turned out, he wanted to go travelling in America and try to get into film school there. By then I knew I had to get away, too, so it seemed best to let him go. At least he had a good chance. I might have abhorred his homosexuality, but I’m not a tyrant. He was still my son, after all.”

“Tom gave us an accurate description of Julia,” Banks went on. “He’s a very observant young man. We ran the artist’s impression in the Yorkshire Post and a woman called Barbara Ledward came forward, a colleague of Julia’s, then Julia’s family. Nobody lives in a vacuum. When we followed up on their phone calls, we found out that Julia had resigned from her teaching job suddenly and told everyone she was going away, that she had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity abroad but couldn’t divulge the details. She said she’d be in touch, then she simply disappeared about three days before your apparent murder. Her family and friends were worried about her. She didn’t usually behave so irresponsibly. But they didn’t report her as a missing person because she had told them she was going away.