Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  “Give me the anonymous note,” she ordered Strike, holding out her hand for the piece of crumpled blue paper they’d taken away from their meeting with the Bayliss sisters. “There.”

  She set them side by side, facing Strike. To Robin, the similarities were undeniable: the same odd mixture of capital and lower-case letters, all distinct and separate, but with odd and unnecessary little flourishes, rather like the incongruous lisp of a tall, dangerous-looking man whose skin was as pitted as a partly peeled orange.

  “You can’t prove it’s the same writing from a photograph,” said Strike. He knew he was being ungracious, but his anger wasn’t yet fully spent. “Expert analysis relies on pen pressure, apart from anything else.”

  “OK, fine,” said Robin, who now had a hard, angry lump in her throat. She got up and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Through the gap, Strike heard her talking to Pat, followed by the tinkle of mugs. Annoyed though he was, he still hoped she was going to get him a cup of tea, as well.

  Frowning slightly, he pulled Robin’s mobile and the anonymous note toward him and looked again from one to the other. She was right, and he’d known, though not acknowledged it, from the moment she’d shown him the picture on her phone, on her return from St. Peter’s. Though he hadn’t told Robin so, Strike had forwarded a picture of both the anonymous note and Luca Ricci’s visitors’ book message to an expert handwriting analyst he’d reached through his police contacts. The woman had expressed caution about reaching a hard and fast conclusion without having the original samples in front of her, but said that, on the evidence, she was “seventy to eighty percent certain” that both had been written by the same person.

  “Does handwriting remain that consistent, forty years apart?” Strike asked.

  “Not always,” the expert replied. “You expect changes, typically. Mostly, people’s handwriting deteriorates with age because of physical factors. Mood can have an influence, too. My research tends to show that handwriting alters least in people who write infrequently, compared with those who write a lot. Occasional writers seem to stick with the style they adopted early, possibly in school. In the case of these two samples, there are certainly distinctive features that seem to have hung around from youth.”

  “I think it’s fair to say this guy doesn’t write a lot in his line of work,” said Strike.

  Luca’s last spell in jail, as Shanker had told him, had been for ordering and overseeing a stabbing. The victim had been knifed in the balls. By a miracle, he’d survived, “but ’e won’t be ’avin’ any more kids, poor cunt,” Shanker had informed Strike, two nights previously. “Can’t get a fuckin’ ’ard-on wivvout agony. Not worf living, is it, after that? The knife sliced straight through the right bollock, I ’eard—course, they ’ad him pinned down—”

  “No need for details,” Strike had said. He’d just experienced a nasty sensation radiating out of his own balls up to his chest.

  Strike had called Shanker on some slight pretext, purely to see whether any rumor had reached his old friend of Luca Ricci being concerned that a female detective had turned up in his father’s nursing home. As Shanker hadn’t mentioned anything, Strike had to conclude that no such whispers were abroad.

  While this was a relief, it wasn’t really a surprise. Once he’d calmed down, Strike had been forced to admit to himself that he was sure Robin had got away with it. Everything Strike knew about Luca Ricci suggested he’d never have let her walk away unscathed if he’d believed she was there to investigate any member of his family. The kinds of people whose darkest impulses were kept in check by their own consciences, the dictates of the law, by social norms and common sense might find it hard to believe anyone would be so foolish or reckless as to hurt Robin inside a nursing home bedroom, or march her out of the building with a knife to her back. He wouldn’t do it in broad daylight, they’d say. He wouldn’t dare, with witnesses all around! But Luca’s fearsome reputation rested on his propensity for brazen violence, no matter where he was, or who was watching. He operated on an assumption of impunity, for which he had much justification. For every prison term he’d served, there’d been many incidents that should have seen him convicted, but which he’d managed to escape by intimidating witnesses, or terrifying others into taking the rap.

  Robin returned to the inner office, stony-faced, but carrying two mugs of tea. She pushed the door closed with her foot, then set down the darker of the two teas in front of Strike.

  “Thanks,” muttered Strike.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied stiffly, checking her watch as she sat down again. They had twenty minutes to go, before the conference call with Anna and Kim.

  “We can’t,” said Strike, “tell Anna we think Luca Ricci wrote the anonymous notes.”

  Robin simply looked at him.

  “We can’t have two nice middle-class women walking around telling people Ricci threatened Margot, and maybe killed her,” said Strike. “We’d be putting them in danger, quite apart from ourselves.”

  “Can’t we at least show the samples to an expert?”

  “I have,” said Strike, and he explained what the woman had said.

  “Why didn’t you tell—”

  “Because I was still bloody angry,” said Strike, sipping his tea. It was exactly the way he liked it, strong, sweet and the color of creosote. “Robin, the reality is, if we take the photo and the note to the police, whether or not anything comes of it, you’ll have painted a giant target on your back. Ricci’ll start digging around on who could have photographed his handwriting in that visitors’ book. It won’t take him long to find us.”

  “He was twenty-two when Margot went missing,” said Robin quietly. “Old enough and big enough to abduct a woman. He had contacts to help with the disposal of a body. Betty Fuller thought the person who wrote the notes was the killer, and she’s still scared of telling us who it was. That could imply the son, just as well as the father.”

  “I grant you all that,” said Strike, “but it’s time for a reality check. We haven’t got the resources to go up against organized criminals. You going to St. Peter’s was reckless enough—”

  “Could you explain to me why it was reckless when I did it, but not when you were planning to do it?” said Robin.

  Strike was momentarily stymied.

  “Because I’m less experienced?” said Robin. “Because you think I’ll mess it up, or panic? Or that I can’t think on my feet?”

  “None of those,” said Strike, though it cost him some pain to admit it.

  “Well then—”

  “Because my chances of surviving if Luca Ricci comes at me with a baseball bat are superior to yours, OK?”

  “But Luca doesn’t come at people with baseball bats,” said Robin reasonably. “He comes at them with knives, electrodes and acid, and I don’t see how you’d withstand any of them better than I would. The truth is, you’re happy to take risks you don’t want me to take. I don’t know whether it’s lack of confidence in me, or chivalry, or one dressed up as the other—”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look,” said Robin. “If you’d been recognized in there, the whole agency would have paid the price. I’ve read up on Ricci, I’m not stupid. He goes for people’s families and associates and even their pets as often as he goes for them personally. Like it or not, there are places I can go more easily than you. I’m less distinctive-looking, I’m easier to disguise, and people trust women more than men, especially around kids and old people. We wouldn’t know any of this if I hadn’t gone to St. Peter’s—”

  “We’d be better off not knowing it,” Strike snapped back. “Shanker said to me months back, ‘If Mucky’s the answer, you need to stop asking the question.’ Same goes for Luca, in spades.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Robin. “I know you don’t. You’d never choose not to know.”

  She was right, but Strike didn’t want to admit it. Indeed, one of the things that had kept his anger simmering for
the past two weeks was that he knew there was a fundamental lack of logic in his own position. If trying to get information on the Ricci family had been worth doing at all, it should have been done, and as Robin had proven, she’d been the best person for the job. While he resented the fact that she hadn’t warned him what she was about to do, he knew perfectly well that if she’d done so, he’d have vetoed it, out of a fundamentally indefensible desire to keep her out of harm’s way, when the logical conclusion of that line of thinking was that she oughtn’t to be doing this job at all. He wanted her to be open and direct with him, but knew that his own incoherent position on her taking physical risks was the reason she hadn’t been honest about her intentions. The long scar on her forearm reproached him every time he looked at it, even though the mistake that had led to the attack had been entirely her own. He knew too much about her past; the relationship had become too personal: he didn’t want to visit her in hospital again. He felt precisely that irksome sense of responsibility that kept him determinedly single, but without any of the compensatory pleasures. None of this was her fault, but it had taken a fortnight for him to look these facts clearly in the face.

  “OK,” he muttered at last. “I wouldn’t choose not to know.” He made a supreme effort. “You did bloody well.”

  “Thank you,” said Robin, as startled as she was gratified.

  “Can we agree, though—please? That in future, we talk these things through?”

  “If I’d asked you—”

  “Yeah, I might’ve said no, and I’d’ve been wrong, and I’ll bear that in mind next time, OK? But as you keep reminding me, we’re partners, so I’d be grateful—”

  “All right,” said Robin. “Yes. We’ll discuss it. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  At that moment, Pat knocked on the door and opened it a few inches.

  “I’ve got a Ms. Phipps and a Ms. Sullivan on the line for you.”

  “Put them through, please,” said Strike.

  Feeling as though she was sitting in on the announcement of bad medical news, Robin let Strike do the talking to Anna and Kim. He took the couple systematically through every interview the agency had conducted over the past eleven and a half months, telling them the secrets he and Robin had unearthed, and the tentative conclusions they’d drawn.

  He revealed that Irene Hickson had been briefly involved with Margot’s ex-boyfriend, and that both had lied about it, and explained that Satchwell might have been worried that Margot would tell the authorities about the way his sister died; that Wilma the cleaner had never set foot in Broom House, and that the story of Roy walking was almost certainly false; that the threatening notes had been real, but (with a glance at Robin) that they hadn’t managed to identify the writer; that Joseph Brenner had been a more unsavory character than anyone had realized, but that there was nothing to tie him to Margot’s disappearance; that Gloria Conti, the last person to see Margot alive, was living in France, and didn’t want to talk to them; and that Steve Douthwaite, Margot’s suspicious patient, had vanished without trace. Lastly, he told them that they believed they’d identified the van seen speeding away from Clerkenwell Green on the night that Margot disappeared, and were confident that it hadn’t been Dennis Creed’s.

  The only sound to break the silence when Strike first stopped talking was the soft buzzing emitted by the speaker on his desk, which proved the line was still open. Waiting for Anna to speak, Robin suddenly realized that her eyes were full of tears. She’d so very much wanted to find out what had happened to Margot Bamborough.

  “Well… we knew it would be difficult,” said Anna at last. “If not impossible.”

  Robin could tell that Anna was crying, too. She felt wretched.

  “I’m sorry,” said Strike formally. “Very sorry, not to have better news for you. However, Douthwaite remains of real interest, and—”

  “No.”

  Robin recognized Kim’s firm negative.

  “No, I’m sorry,” said the psychologist. “We agreed a year.”

  “We’re actually two weeks short,” said Strike, “and if—”

  “Have you got any reason to believe you can find Steve Douthwaite in the next two weeks?”

  Strike’s slightly bloodshot eyes met Robin’s wet ones.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “As I said in my email, we’re about to go on holiday,” said Kim. “In the absence of actually finding Margot’s body, there was always bound to be another angle you could try, one more person who might know something, and as I said at the start of this, we haven’t got the money, or, frankly, the emotional stamina, to keep this going forever. I think it’s better—cleaner—if we accept that you’ve done your best, and thank you for the trouble you’ve clearly taken. This has been a worthwhile exercise, even if—I mean, Anna and Roy’s relationship’s better than it’s been in years, thanks to your visit. He’ll be glad to hear that the cleaner accepted he wasn’t able to walk that day.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Strike. “I’m only sorry—”

  “I knew,” said Anna, her voice wavering, “that it was going to be… almost impossible. At least I know I tried.”

  After Anna had hung up, there was a silence in the room. Finally Strike said “Need a pee,” pulled himself up and left the room.

  Robin got up, too, and began to gather together the photocopied pages from the police file. She couldn’t believe it was all over. Having put the records into a neat pile, she sat down and began to flick through them one more time, knowing that she was hoping to see something—anything—they’d overlooked.

  From Gloria Conti’s statement to Lawson:

  She was a short, dark, stocky woman who looked like a gypsy. I judged her to be in her teens. She came in alone and said she was in a lot of pain. She said her name was Theo. I didn’t catch her surname and I didn’t ask her to repeat it because I thought she needed urgent attention. She was clutching her abdomen. I told her to wait and I went to ask Dr. Brenner if he’d see her, because Dr. Bamborough was still with patients.

  From Ruby Elliot’s statement to Talbot:

  I saw them beside a telephone box, two women sort of struggling together. The tall one in the raincoat was leaning on the short one, who wore a plastic rain hood. They looked like women to me, but I didn’t see their faces. It looked to me like one was trying to make the other walk quicker.

  From Janice Beattie’s statement to Lawson:

  I’ve been on speaking terms with Mr. Douthwaite since he was assaulted at the flats, but I wouldn’t call him a friend. He did tell me how upset he was his friend had killed herself. He told me he had headaches. I thought it was tension. I know he grew up in foster care, but he never told me the names of any of his foster mothers. He never talked to me about Dr. Bamborough except to say he’d gone to her about his headaches. He didn’t tell me he was leaving Percival House. I don’t know where he’s gone.

  From Irene Hickson’s second statement to Lawson:

  The attached receipt proves that I was in Oxford Street on the afternoon in question. I deeply regret not being honest about my whereabouts, but I was ashamed of lying to get the afternoon off.

  And beneath the statement was the photocopy of Irene’s receipt: Marks & Spencer, three items, which came to a total of £4.73.

  From Joseph Brenner’s statement to Talbot:

  I left the practice at my usual time, having promised my sister that I’d be home in time for dinner. Dr. Bamborough kindly agreed to see the emergency patient, as she had a later appointment with a friend in the area. I have no idea whether Dr. Bamborough had personal troubles. Our relationship was entirely professional. I have no knowledge of anyone who wanted to do her harm. I remember one of her patients sending her a small box of chocolates, although I can’t say for certain that it was from Steven Douthwaite. I don’t know Mr. Douthwaite. I remember Dr. Bamborough seemed displeased when Dorothy handed the chocolates to her, and asked Gloria, the receptionist, to throw them straight in the bin, alth
ough she later took them back out of the bin. She had a very sweet tooth.

  Strike re-entered the office and dropped a five-pound note onto the table in front of Robin.

  “What’s that for?”

  “We had a bet,” he said, “about whether they’d extend the year if we had any outstanding leads. I said they would. You said they wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not taking that,” said Robin, leaving the fiver where it lay. “There are still two more weeks.”

  “They’ve just—”

  “They’ve paid till the end of the month. I’m not stopping.”

  “Did I not make myself clear just now?” said Strike, frowning down at her. “We’re leaving Ricci.”

  “I know,” said Robin.

  She checked her watch again.

  “I’m supposed to be taking over from Andy in an hour. I’d better go.”

  After Robin had left, Strike returned the photocopied papers to the boxes of old police records that still lay underneath the desk, then went out into the office where Pat sat, electronic cigarette between her teeth as always.

  “We’ve lost two clients,” he told her. “Who’s next on the waiting list?”

  “That footballer,” said Pat, bringing up the encrypted file on her monitor to show Strike a well-known name. “And if you want to replace both of them, there’s that posh woman who’s got the chihuahua.”

  Strike hesitated.

  “We’ll just take the footballer for now. Can you ring his assistant and say I’m available to take details any time tomorrow?”

  “It’s Saturday,” said Pat.

  “I know,” said Strike. “I work weekends and I doubt he’ll want anyone to see him coming in here. Say I’m happy to go to his place.”

  He returned to the inner office and pushed up the window, allowing the afternoon air, heavy with exhaust fumes and London’s particular smell of warm brick, soot and, today, a faint trace of leaves, trees and grass, to permeate the office. Tempted to light up, he restrained himself out of deference to Pat, because he’d asked her not to smoke in the office. Clients these days were nearly all non-smokers and he felt it gave a poor impression to have the place reeking like an ashtray. He leaned on the windowsill and watched the Friday-night drinkers and shoppers walking up and down Denmark Street, half-listening to Pat’s conversation with the Premier League footballer’s assistant, but mostly thinking about Margot Bamborough.