“Don’t worry, I’m not going to. But it’s half-killed me, keeping it going. I really only bought the place because of him. ‘Put it all into property, you can’t lose with property,’ he said.”
He looked as though he was going to say something else, but if so, decided against it.
“Max, I wanted to ask you something,” said Robin, “but it’s totally fine if the answer’s no. My younger brother and a girlfriend are looking for a place to stay in London for the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth of February. But if you don’t—”
“Don’t be silly,” said Max. “They can sleep on this,” he said, patting the sofa. “It folds out.”
“Oh,” said Robin, who hadn’t known this. “Well, great. Thanks, Max.”
The champagne and the hot bath had made Robin feel incredibly sleepy, but they talked on for a while about Max’s new drama, until at last Robin apologized and said she really did need to go to bed.
As she pulled the duvet over herself, Robin decided against starting a new chapter on Creed. It was best not to have certain things in your head if you wanted to get to sleep. However, once she’d turned out her bedside lamp she found her mind refusing to shut down, so she reached for her iPod.
She never listened to music on headphones unless she knew Max was in the flat. Some life experiences made a person forever conscious of their ability to react, to have advance warning. Now, though, with the front door safely double-locked (Robin had checked, as she always did), and with her flatmate and a dog mere seconds away, she inserted her earbuds and pressed shuffle on the four albums of Joni Mitchell’s she’d now bought, choosing music over another bottle of perfume she didn’t like.
Sometimes, when listening to Mitchell, which Robin was doing frequently these days, she could imagine Margot Bamborough smiling at her through the music. Margot was forever frozen at twenty-nine, fighting not to be defeated by a life more complicated than she had ever imagined it would be, when she conceived the ambition of raising herself out of poverty by brains and hard work.
An unfamiliar song began to play. The words told the story of the end of a love affair. It was a simpler, more direct lyric than many of Mitchell’s, with little metaphor or poetry about it. Last chance lost/The hero cannot make the change/Last chance lost/The shrew will not be tamed.
Robin thought of Matthew, unable to adapt himself to a wife who wanted more from life than a steady progression up the property ladder, unable to give up the mistress who had always, in truth, been better suited to his ideals and ambitions than Robin. So did that make Robin the shrew, fighting for a career that everyone but she thought was a mistake?
Lying in the dark, listening to Mitchell’s voice, which was deeper and huskier on her later albums, an idea that had been hovering on the periphery of Robin’s thoughts for a couple of weeks forced its way into the forefront of her mind. It had been lurking ever since she’d read the letter from the Ministry of Justice, refusing Strike permission to see the serial killer.
Strike had accepted the Ministry of Justice’s decision, and indeed, so had Robin, who had no desire to increase the suffering of the victims’ families. And yet the man who might save Anna from a lifetime of continued pain and uncertainty was still alive. If Irene Hickson had been bursting to talk to Strike, how much more willing might Creed be, after decades of silence?
Last chance lost/the hero cannot make the change.
Robin sat up abruptly, pulled out her earphones, turned the lamp back on, sat up and reached for the notebook and pen she always kept beside her bed these days.
There was no need to tell Strike what she was up to. The possibility that her actions might backfire on the agency must be taken. If she didn’t try, she’d forever wonder whether there hadn’t been a chance of reaching Creed, after all.
34
… no Art, nor any Leach’s Might…
Can remedy such hurts; such hurts are hellish Pain.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
The train service between Cornwall and London resumed at last. Strike packed his bags, but promised his aunt and uncle he’d be back soon. Joan clung to him in silence at parting. Incredibly, Strike would have preferred one of the emotional-blackmail-laden farewells that had previously antagonized him.
Riding the train back to London, Strike found his mood mirrored in the monochrome winter landscape of mud and shivering trees he was watching through the dirt-streaked window. Joan’s slow decline was a different experience to the deaths with which Strike was familiar, which had almost all been of the unnatural kind. As a soldier and an investigator, he’d become inured to the need to assimilate, without warning, the sudden, brutal extinction of a human being, to accept the sudden vacuum where once a soul had flickered. Joan’s slow capitulation to an enemy inside her own body was something new to him. A small part of Strike, of which he was ashamed, wanted everything to be over, and for the mourning to begin in earnest, and, as the train bore him east, he looked forward to the temporary sanctuary of his empty flat, where he was free to feel miserable without either the need to parade his sadness for the neighbors, or to sport a veneer of fake cheerfulness for his aunt.
He turned down two invitations for dinner on Saturday night, one from Lucy, one from Nick and Ilsa, preferring to deal with the agency’s books and review case files submitted by Barclay, Hutchins and Morris. On Sunday he spoke again to Dr. Gupta and to a couple of relatives of deceased witnesses in the Bamborough case, preparatory to a catch-up with Robin the following day.
But on Sunday evening, while standing beside the spaghetti boiling on his single hob, he received a second text from his unknown half-sister, Prudence.
Hi Cormoran, I don’t know whether you received my first text. Hopefully this one will reach you. I just wanted to say (I think) I understand your reasons for not wanting to join us for Dad’s group photo, or for the party. There’s a little more behind the party than a new album. I’d be happy to talk to you about that in person, but as a family we’re keeping it confidential. I hope you won’t mind me adding that, like you, I’m the result of one of Dad’s briefer liaisons (!) and I’ve had to deal with my own share of hurt and anger over the years. I wonder whether you’d like to have a coffee to discuss this further? I’m in Putney. Please do get in touch. It would be great to meet. Warmest wishes, Pru
His spaghetti now boiling noisily, Strike lit a cigarette. Pressure seemed to be building behind his eyeballs. He knew he was smoking too much: his tongue ached, and ever since his Christmas flu, his morning cough had been worse than ever. Barclay had been extolling the virtues of vaping the last time they’d met. Perhaps it was time to try that, or at least to cut down on the cigarettes.
He read Prudence’s text a second time. What confidential reason could be behind the party, other than his father’s new album? Had Rokeby finally been given his knighthood, or was he making a fuss over the Deadbeats’ fiftieth anniversary in an attempt to remind those who gave out honors that he hadn’t yet had one? Strike tried to imagine Lucy’s reaction, if he told her he was off to meet a host of new half-siblings, when her small stock of relatives was about to be diminished by one. He tried to picture this Prudence, of whom he knew nothing at all, except that her mother had been a well-known actress.
Turning off the hob, he left the spaghetti floating in its water, and began to text a response, cigarette between his teeth.
Thanks for the texts. I’ve got no objection to meeting you, but now’s not a good time. Appreciate that you’re doing what you think is the right thing but I’ve never been much for faking feelings or maintaining polite fictions to suit public celebrations. I don’t have a relationship with—
Strike paused for a full minute. He never referred to Jonny Rokeby as “Dad” and he didn’t want to say “our father,” because that seemed to bracket himself and Prudence together in a way that felt uncomfortable, as she was a total stranger.
And yet some part of him didn’t feel she was a
stranger. Some part of him felt a tug toward her. What was it? Simple curiosity? An echo of the longing he’d felt as a child, for a father who never turned up? Or was it something more primitive: the calling of blood to blood, an animal sense of connection that couldn’t quite be eradicated, no matter how much you tried to sever the tie?
—Rokeby and I’ve got no interest in faking one for a few hours just because he’s putting out a new album. I hold no ill will toward you and, as I say, I’d be happy to meet when my life is less—
Strike paused again. Standing in the steam billowing from his saucepan, his mind roved over the dying Joan, over the open cases on the agency’s books, and, inexplicably, over Robin.
—complicated. Best wishes, Cormoran.
He ate his spaghetti with a jar of shop-bought sauce, and fell asleep that night to the sound of rain hammering on the roof slates, to dream that he and Rokeby were having a fist fight on the deck of a sailing ship, which pitched and rolled until both of them fell into the sea.
Rain was still falling at ten to eleven the following morning, when Strike emerged from Earl’s Court Tube station to wait for Robin, who was going to pick him up before driving to meet Cynthia Phipps at Hampton Court Palace. Standing beneath the brick overhang outside the station exit, yet another cigarette in his mouth, Strike read two recently arrived emails off his phone: an update from Barclay on Two-Times, and one from Morris on Shifty. He’d nearly finished them when the mobile rang. It was Al, and rather than let the call go to voicemail, Strike decided to put an end to this badgering once and for all.
“Hey, bruv,” said Al. “How’re you?”
“Been better,” said Strike.
He deliberately didn’t reciprocate the polite inquiry.
“Look,” said Al, “um… Pru’s just rung me. She told me what you sent her. Thing is, we’ve got a photographer booked for next Saturday, but if you’re not going to be in the picture—the whole point is that it’s from all of us. First time ever.”
“Al, I’m not interested,” said Strike, tired of being polite.
There was a brief silence. Then Al said,
“You know, Dad keeps trying to reach out—”
“Is that right?” said Strike, anger suddenly piercing the fog of fatigue, of his worry about Joan, and the mass of probable irrelevancies he’d found out on the Bamborough case, which he was trying to hold in his head, so he could impart them to Robin. “When would this be? When he set his lawyers on me, chasing me for money that was legally mine in the first—?”
“If you’re talking about Peter Gillespie, Dad didn’t know how heavy he was getting with you, I swear he didn’t. Pete’s retired now—”
“I’m not interested in celebrating his new fucking album,” said Strike. “Go ahead and have fun without me.”
“Look,” said Al, “I can’t explain right now—if you can meet me for a drink, I’ll tell you—there’s a reason we want to do this for him now, the photo and the party—”
“The answer’s no, Al.”
“You’re just going to keep sticking two fingers up at him forever, are you?”
“Who’s sticking two fingers up? I haven’t said a word about him publicly, unlike him, who can’t give a fucking interview without mentioning me these days—”
“He’s trying to put things right, and you can’t give an inch!”
“He’s trying to tidy up a messy bit of his public image,” said Strike harshly. “Tell him to pay his fucking taxes if he wants his knighthood. I’m not his pet fucking black sheep.”
He hung up, angrier than he’d expected, his heart thumping uncomfortably hard beneath his coat. Flicking his cigarette butt into the road, his thoughts traveled inescapably back to Joan, with her headscarf hiding her baldness, and Ted weeping into his tea. Why, he thought, furiously, couldn’t it have been Rokeby who lay dying, and his aunt who was well and happy, confident she’d reach her next birthday, striding through St. Mawes, chatting to lifelong friends, planning dinners for Ted, nagging Strike over the phone about coming to visit?
When Robin turned the corner in the Land Rover a few minutes later, she was taken aback by Strike’s appearance. Even though he’d told her by phone about the flu and the out-of-date chicken, he looked noticeably thinner in the face, and so enraged she automatically checked her watch, wondering whether she was late.
“Everything all right?” she asked, when he opened the passenger seat door.
“Fine,” he said shortly, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door.
“Happy New Year.”
“Haven’t we already said that?”
“No, actually,” said Robin, somewhat aggravated by his surliness. “But please don’t feel pressured into saying it back. I’d hate you to feel railroaded—”
“Happy New Year, Robin,” muttered Strike.
She pulled out into the road, her windscreen wipers working hard to keep the windscreen clear, with a definite sense of déjà vu. He’d been grumpy when she’d picked him up on his birthday, too, and in spite of everything he was going through, she too was tired, she too had personal worries, and would have appreciated just a little effort.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
They drove for a few minutes in silence, until Robin said,
“Did you see Barclay’s email?”
“About Two-Times and his girlfriend? Yeah, just read it,” said Strike. “Ditched, and she’ll never realize it was because she was too faithful.”
“He’s such a freak,” said Robin, “but as long as he pays his bill…”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Strike, making a conscious effort to throw off his bad temper. After all, none of it—Joan, Pru, Al, Rokeby—was Robin’s fault. She’d been holding the agency together while he dealt with matters in Cornwall. She was owed better.
“We’ve got room for another waiting list client now,” he said, trying for a more enthusiastic tone. “I’ll call that commodities broker who thinks her husband’s shagging the nanny, shall I?”
“Well,” said Robin, “the Shifty job’s taking a lot of manpower at the moment. We’re covering him, his boss and the woman in Stoke Newington. The boss went back to Elinor Dean yesterday evening, you know. Same thing all over again, including the pat on the head.”
“Really?” said Strike, frowning.
“Yeah. The clients are getting quite impatient for proper evidence, though. Plus, we haven’t got any resolution on Postcard yet and Bamborough’s taking up quite a bit of time.”
Robin didn’t want to say explicitly that with Strike moving constantly between London and Cornwall, she and the subcontractors were covering the agency’s existing cases by forfeiting their days off.
“So you think we should concentrate on Shifty and Postcard, do you?”
“I think we should accept that Shifty’s currently a three-person-job and not be in a hurry to take anything else on just now.”
“All right, fair enough,” grunted Strike. “Any news on the guide at the National Portrait Gallery? Barclay told me you were worried she might’ve topped herself.”
“What did he tell you that for?” Robin said. She regretted blurting out her anxiety now: it felt soft, unprofessional.
“He didn’t mean anything by it. Has she reappeared?”
“No,” said Robin.
“Any more postcards to the weatherman?”
“No.”
“Maybe you’ve scared her off.”
Strike pulled his notebook out of his pocket and opened it, while the rain continued to drum against the windscreen.
“I’ve got a few bits and pieces on Bamborough, before we meet Cynthia Phipps. That was great work of yours, eliminating the wholefoods van, by the way.”
“Thanks,” said Robin.
“But there’s a whole new van on the scene,” said Strike.
“What?” said Robin sharply.
“I spoke to the daughter of Ruby Elliot yesterday. Y
ou remember Ruby—”
“The woman who saw the two women struggling from her car.”
“That’s the one. I also spoke to a nephew of Mrs. Fleury, who was crossing Clerkenwell Green, trying to get her senile mother home out of the rain.”
Strike cleared his throat, and said, reading from his notes:
“According to Mark Fleury, his aunt was quite upset by the description in the papers of her ‘struggling’ and even ‘grappling’ with her mother, because it suggested she’d been rough with the old dear. She said she was chivvying her mother along, not forcing her, but admitted that otherwise the description fitted them to a tee: right place, right time, rain hat, raincoat, etc.
“But Talbot leapt on the ‘we weren’t grappling’ discrepancy and tried to pressure Mrs. Fleury into retracting her story and admitting that she and the old lady couldn’t have been the people Ruby Elliot saw. Mrs. Fleury wasn’t having that, though. The description of them was too good: she was sure they were the right people.
“So Talbot went back to Ruby and tried to force her to change her story. You’ll remember that there was another phone box at the opening of Albemarle Way. Talbot tried to persuade Ruby that she’d seen two people struggling in front of that phone box instead.
“Which is where things get mildly interesting,” said Strike, turning a page in his notebook. “According to Ruby’s daughter, Ruby was an absentminded woman, a nervous driver and a poor map reader, with virtually no sense of direction. On the other hand, her daughter claims she had a very retentive memory for small visual details. She might not remember what street she’d met an acquaintance on, but she could describe down to the color of a shoelace what they’d been wearing. She’d been a window dresser in her youth.
“Given her general vagueness, Talbot should have found it easy to persuade her she’d mistaken the phone box, but the harder he pushed, the firmer she stood, and the reason she stood firm, and said the two women couldn’t have been in front of the Albemarle phone box, was because she’d seen something else happen beside that particular phone box, something she’d forgotten all about until Talbot mentioned the wedge-shaped building. Don’t forget, she didn’t know Clerkenwell at all.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 40
