Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  He’d known all along there was only the remotest chance of finding out what had happened to her, but where had fifty weeks gone? He remembered all the time spent with Joan in Cornwall, and the other clients who’d come and gone, and asked himself if they might have found out what had happened to Margot Bamborough if none of these things had got in the way. Tempting though it was to blame distractions, he believed the outcome would have been the same. Perhaps Luca Ricci was the answer they weren’t ever going to be able to admit. A plausible answer, in many ways: a professional hit, done for some inscrutable underworld reason, because Margot had got too close to a secret, or interfered in the gangsters’ business. Leave my girl alone… she’d been the type to advise a stripper, or a hooker, or a porn actress, or an addict, to choose a different life, to give evidence against men who abused her…

  “Eleven tomorrow,” rasped Pat, from behind Strike. “At ’is place. I’ve left his address on the desk for you.”

  “Thanks very much,” he said, turning to see her already in her coat. It was five o’clock. She looked vaguely surprised to hear his thanks, but ever since Robin had shouted at him for being rude to Pat, Strike had been consciously trying to be politer to the secretary. For a moment she hesitated, electronic cigarette between her yellow teeth, then removed it to say,

  “Robin told me what that Morris did. What he sent her.”

  “Yeah,” said Strike. “Sleazy bastard.”

  “Yeah,” said Pat. She was scrutinizing him closely, as though seeing things she hadn’t ever expected to find. “’Orrible. And ’e always reminded me,” she said surprisingly, “of a young Mel Gibson.”

  “Really?” said Strike.

  “Funny fing, looks,” she said. “You make assumptions.”

  “I s’pose,” said Strike.

  “You’ve got a real look of my first ’usband,” Pat told him.

  “Is that right?” said Strike, startled.

  “Yeah. Well… I’ll be off. ’Ave a good weekend.”

  “You too,” said Strike.

  He waited until her footsteps had died away on the metal staircase, before pulling out his cigarettes, lighting one and returning to the inner office, where the window was still open. Here, he took an old ashtray out of the desk drawer and Talbot’s leather notebook out of the top drawer of the filing cabinet, and settled down in his usual chair to flick through it once more, stopping at the final page.

  Strike had never given Talbot’s final jottings more than cursory attention, partly because his patience had run out by the time he got there, partly they were among the most shambolic and incoherent parts of the notes. Tonight, though, he had a melancholy reason for examining the last page of Talbot’s notebook, because Strike, too, had come to the end of the case. So he examined Talbot’s drawing of the demon he believed he’d conjured before the ambulance came to take him away: the spirit of Margot Bamborough, returned from some astral plane to haunt him in the form of Babalon, the Mother of Abominations.

  There was no pressure to understand any more. Strike defocused his mind as he’d have relaxed his eyes, the better to spot one of those apparently three-dimensional images hidden in what appeared to be a flat pattern. His eyes glided over the phrases and fragments Talbot had half-remembered from Crowley’s writings, and of consultation of the Thoth tarot. As he scrutinized the picture of the heavy-breasted demon, on whose belly the penitent Talbot had subsequently inscribed a Christian cross, he remembered Robin’s words all those months previously in Hampton Court Palace, about the allure of myth and symbol, and the idea of the collective unconscious, where archetypes lurked. This demon, and the disconnected phrases that had seemed pertinent to Talbot in his psychotic state, had sprung from the policeman’s own subconscious: it was too easy, too simplistic, to blame Crowley and Lévi for what Talbot’s own mind had chosen to retain. This was what it generated, in a last spasm of madness, in a final attempt at resolution. Seven veils, seven heads, seven streams. Lust and strange drugs. Seven around her neck. The poisoned darkness of the BLACK MOON. Blood and sin. She rides upon the lion serpent.

  Strike bent the lamp closer to the page, so that he could scrutinize the drawing more closely. Was he deluding himself, or did some of these crazy jottings indicate that Talbot had noticed the odd coinci­dences that Strike had, after talking to the Bayliss sisters? As his gaze moved from one fragment of mystic writing to another, Strike thought he saw, not just a penitent churchgoer trying to make amends for his descent into witchcraft, but the last desperate effort of a good detective, trying to salvage clues from chaos, sense from madness.

  63

  At last resoluing forward still to fare,

  Till that some end they finde or in or out,

  That path they take, that beaten seemd most bare,

  And like to lead the labyrinth about…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  Over the next couple of weeks, Robin noticed that Astrology 14 by Steven Schmidt, the second-hand book she’d left at the office, kept changing position. One morning it was on top of the filing cabinet where she’d left it, a few days later on Strike’s half of the desk, and the following evening lying beside the kettle. Similarly, various bits of the Bamborough police records kept appearing, then disappearing again, while Bill Talbot’s leather-bound notebook had vanished from the filing cabinet and, she suspected, made its way upstairs to Strike’s attic flat.

  The agency was once again very busy. The new client, a Premier League footballer, had sunk two million pounds into a proposed nightclub which had failed to materialize. His partner in the venture had now disappeared, along with all the money. The footballer, nicknamed Dopey by an unsympathetic Barclay, feared press exposure almost as much as not getting his cash back.

  Meanwhile, Miss Jones’s boyfriend continued to live a frustratingly law-abiding life, but she appeared happy to keep paying the agency’s bills, as long as Strike endured twice-weekly phone calls with her. During these supposed catch-ups, she told Strike all her problems, and hinted broadly that a dinner invitation would be happily accepted.

  In addition to these clients, and leapfrogging those on the waiting list, was Shifty’s Boss, who’d been forced into early retirement by the board. SB walked in off Denmark Street one morning looking for Barclay, who’d left his contact details with Elinor Dean. To Strike’s surprise, early retirement seemed not to have spurred SB into despair, but liberated him.

  “If you can believe it, I was genuinely thinking of killing myself, just a few months back,” he told Strike. “But I’m out from under that bastard’s thumb now. Now I’ve told my wife about Elinor—”

  “Told her, have you?” said Strike, surprised.

  “And she’s been very understanding,” said SB. “In my previous marriage, my—well, my needs—were taken care of by my ex-wife, but since we split… anyway, Portia and I have talked it all through, and she’s perfectly happy for my arrangement with Elinor to continue, as long as there’s no infidelity.”

  Strike hid his expression behind his mug. He could well imagine that Portia, with her inch-long nails and her professional blow-dries, her thrice-yearly holidays, her black American Express card and her six-bedroomed house with swimming pool in West Brompton, preferred someone else to change SB’s nappy.

  “No, all I want now,” said SB, his satisfied smile replaced by a hard glare, “is to make sure that shifty bastard gets what’s coming to him. And I’m prepared to pay.”

  So the agency had resumed surveillance on both Shifty and his PA.

  The upshot of three demanding cases meant that most of the communication between the two partners was done by phone for the rest of the month. Their paths finally crossed one Thursday afternoon in late August, when Strike entered the office as Robin was about to leave it.

  Pat, who was listening to the radio while paying a slew of bills, offered to turn it off on seeing Strike, whose attention had just been caught by the figure-hugging blue dress Robin was
wearing.

  “No, it’s fine,” he said. “Nice to hear some music.”

  “Cormoran, can I have a quick word before I go?” Robin asked, beckoning him into the inner office.

  “… next up, in our hundred hits of the seventies, an oldie but goodie from one-hit-wonder Middle of the Road: ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep…’”

  “Where’re you off to?” said Strike, closing the internal door on Pat. He’d spent most of the previous night on his feet, watching Shifty get drunk and coked up in a nightclub, and today driving between the various addresses Dopey’s business partner had used over the previous two years. Unshaven and aching all over, he grunted in relief as he sank into his usual chair.

  “The Vintry. Wine bar in the City,” said Robin. “Gemma’s going to be there later, Andy heard her arranging it. I’m hoping she’s with girlfriends. I’m going to try and infiltrate the group somehow.”

  Gemma was Shifty’s PA. Through the closed door they now heard strains of a jaunty song playing on the radio, with its incongruous lyric,

  “Where’s your mamma gone?”

  “You’re still working on Bamborough, aren’t you?” Robin asked.

  “Just going back over a few things,” Strike admitted.

  “And?”

  “And nothing. It’s like a maze. Moment I start thinking I’m getting somewhere, I turn a corner and come up against a dead end. Or find myself back where I started. Why are you looking so pleased?”

  “I’m just glad you haven’t given up,” said Robin.

  “You won’t say that when they cart me off to the same asylum as Bill Talbot. If I never see another fucking star sign, it’ll be too soon… Where the hell is Douthwaite? What happened to him?”

  “You think—?”

  “I think he’s bloody fishy, I always did. His alibi amounts to fuck all. Then he changes his name. Then, as you found out, another young woman dies in his vicinity—that drowned Redcoat. Then he vanishes again.

  “If I could just speak to Douthwaite,” said Strike, drumming his fingers on the desk, “I’d give it up.”

  “Really?” said Robin.

  He glanced at her, then, frowning, looked away. She was looking particularly sexy in that blue dress, which he’d never seen before.

  “Yeah, if I could speak to Douthwaite, that’d do me.”

  “Last night I heard my mamma singing a song…”

  “And maybe Gloria Conti,” said Strike.

  “Woke up this morning, and my mamma was gone…”

  “And Creed,” said Strike. “I’d like to talk to Dennis Creed.”

  Robin felt a little skip of excitement. She’d received an email earlier, telling her to expect a decision by the end of the day on whether or not Creed could be re-interviewed.

  “I’d better get going,” she said. “Gemma’s supposed to be there at six. It was nice of you,” she added, as she reached for the door handle, “to let Pat keep the radio on.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Strike, with a shrug. “Trying to be friendly.”

  As Robin was putting on her coat in the outer office, Pat said,

  “That’s a very good color on you.”

  “Thanks. It’s quite old. Miracle it still fits, all the chocolate I’ve been eating lately.”

  “Would he like a cuppa, d’you think?”

  “I’m sure he would,” said Robin, surprised. Apparently Strike wasn’t the only one who was trying to be friendly.

  “Oooh, I used to love this,” said Pat, as the opening bars of “Play That Funky Music” filled the office, and as Robin walked down the stairs, she heard Pat singing along, in her raspy baritone:

  Once I was a funky singer,

  Playin’ in a rock and roll band…

  The Vintry, which Robin reached twenty minutes later, lay near Cannon Street Tube station in the heart of the financial district, and was precisely the kind of place her ex-husband had most enjoyed. Undemandingly modern in a conventional, high-spec manner, with its sleek mixture of steel beams, large windows and wooden floors, it had a hint of open-plan office about it, in spite of the long bar with padded stools. There was the odd quirky touch, such as the two stuffed rabbits on a windowsill, which carried model guns and wore shooting caps, but in the main the clientele, which consisted overwhelmingly of men in suits, were cocooned in an atmosphere of tasteful beige blandness. They stood in cliques, fresh from the day’s work, drinking, laughing together, reading newspapers or their phones, or eyeing up the few female customers—to Robin they seemed to exude not just confidence, but self-satisfaction. She received a number of appreciative looks as she sidled between stockbrokers, bankers and traders on her way to the bar.

  Looking carefully around the large open-plan area, Robin gathered that Gemma hadn’t yet arrived, so she took a free bar stool, ordered a tonic water and pretended to be reading the day’s news off her phone, purely to avoid the open staring of the two young men to her right, one of whom seemed determined to make Robin look up, if only to ascertain where the annoying, braying laugh was coming from. To her left, a pair of older men were discussing the imminent Scottish independence referendum.

  “Polls are looking shaky,” said the first man. “Hope Cameron knows what he’s doing.”

  “They’d be bloody mad to do it. Mad.”

  “There’s opportunity in madness—for a few, anyway,” said the first man. “I remember, when I was in Hong Kong—oh, I think that’s our table free…”

  The two speakers departed for their dinner. Robin glanced around again, carefully avoiding meeting the eyes of the young man with the braying laugh, and a patch of scarlet at the far end of the bar caught her eye. Gemma had arrived, and was standing alone, trying to catch the barman’s eye. Robin slid off her bar stool, and carried her drink over to Gemma, whose long dark hair fell in gypsyish curls to the middle of her back.

  “Hi—Linda?”

  “What?” said Gemma, startled. “No, sorry.”

  “Oh,” said Robin, looking crestfallen. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong bar. Has this place got other branches?”

  “I’ve no idea, sorry,” said Gemma, still with her hand raised, trying to attract the barman’s attention.

  “She said she’d be wearing red,” said Robin, looking around at the sea of suits.

  Gemma glanced at Robin, mildly interested.

  “Blind date?”

  “I wish,” said Robin, rolling her eyes. “No, it’s a friend of a friend who thinks there might be an opening at Winfrey and Hughes. The woman said she’d meet me for a quick drink.”

  “Winfrey and Hughes? That’s where I work.”

  “You’re kidding!” said Robin, with a laugh. “Hey—you’re not really Linda, are you? And pretending to be someone different, because you don’t like the look of me or something?”

  “No,” said the other woman, smiling. “I’m Gemma.”

  “Oh. Are you meeting someone, or—?”

  “S’posed to be,” said Gemma, “yeah.”

  “D’you mind me sitting here with you? Just till they arrive? I was getting some properly lechy looks over there.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Gemma, as Robin climbed up onto the barstool beside her. The barman now approached a pinstriped, gray-haired man who’d just arrived.

  “Oi,” Robin called, and half a dozen businessmen’s heads turned, as well as the barman’s. “She was here first,” said Robin, pointing sideways at Gemma, who laughed again.

  “Wow. You don’t mess around, do you?”

  “No point, is there?” said Robin, taking a sip of her water. She’d subtly broadened her Yorkshire accent, as she often did when pretending to be a bolder, brasher character than she really felt herself to be. “Gotta take charge, or they’ll walk all bloody over you.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” sighed Gemma.

  “Winfrey and Hughes isn’t like that, is it?” said Robin. “Full of tossers?”

  “Well…”

  The barman arrived
at that moment to take Gemma’s order. Once the PA had her large glass of red wine, she took a swig and said,

  “It’s OK, actually. Depends which bit you’re working in. I’m PA to one of the high-ups. The work’s interesting.”

  “Nice guy?” asked Robin casually.

  Gemma drank several mouthfuls of wine before saying,

  “He’s… all right. Devil you know, isn’t it? I like the job and the company. I’ve got a great salary and a ton of friends there… oh damn—”

  Her handbag had slipped off the barstool. As Gemma bent to retrieve it, Robin, whose eyes had roamed across the vista of cream, gray and beige in front of her, suddenly spotted Saul Morris.

  He’d just walked into the bar, wearing a suit, an open-necked shirt and a remarkably smug smile. He glanced around, picked out Gemma and Robin by the bright colors of their dresses, and froze. For a second or two, he and Robin simply stared at each other; then Morris turned abruptly and hurried back out of the bar.

  Gemma settled herself back onto her barstool, bag safely on her lap. The mobile phone she’d left lying on the counter now lit up.

  “Andy?” said Gemma, answering quickly. “Yeah… no, I’m here already…”

  There was a long silence. Robin could hear Morris’s voice. He was using the same wheedling tone in which he’d tried to talk her into bed, with all those puerile jokes and have-I-upset-yous.

  “Fine,” said Gemma, her expression hardening. “Fine. I just… I’m going to take your number off my phone now and I’d like you… no, actually, I… oh just fuck off!”