Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  She hung up, flushed, her lips trembling.

  “Why,” she said, “do they always want to be told they’re still nice guys, after they’ve been total shits?”

  “Often wondered that meself,” said Yorkshire Robin. “Boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” said the shaken Gemma. “For six months. Then he just stands me up one night, with no explanation. Then he comes back a couple of times—booty calls, basically,” she said, taking another big swig of wine. “And finally he just ghosts me. I texted him yesterday, I said, look, I just wanna meet, just want an explanation—”

  “Sounds like a right twat,” said Robin, whose heart was racing with excitement at this perfect opportunity to have a heart-to-heart. “Hey,” she called to the barman, “can we have a couple more wines and a menu, please?”

  And after that, Robin found getting confidences out of Gemma as easy as shelling peas. With three large glasses of wine inside her, and her new friend from Yorkshire being so funny, supportive and understanding, a plate of chicken and polenta to eat, and a bottle of wine (“Yeah, why the hell not?”), she moved seamlessly from the misdemeanors of “Andy” to the inappropriate and unsolicited groping by her boss that had escalated until she was on the verge of quitting.

  “Can’t you go to HR?” asked Robin.

  “He says nobody’ll believe me because of what happened when we were on a course last year… although… To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what happened,” said Gemma, and looking away from Robin she mumbled, “I mean… we had sex… but I was so out of it… so drunk… I mean, it wasn’t, you know… it wasn’t rape… I’m not saying that…”

  “Were you in a fit state to give consent?” said Robin, no longer laughing. She’d only drunk half a glass of wine.

  “Well, not… but… no, I’m not putting myself through that,” said Gemma, flushed and tearful. “Not the police and everything, God no… he’s a big shot, he could afford great lawyers… an’ if I didn’t win, how’m I gonna get another job in the City?… Court, and the papers… anyway, it’s too late now… people saw me… coming out of his room. I pretended it was all OK. I had to, I was so embarrassed… rumor mill’s been in overdrive since. We both denied anything happened, so how would it look if I…

  “Andy told me I shouldn’t report it,” said Gemma, pouring the last of the bottle into her glass.

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah… I told him about it, firs’ time we had sex… see, it was the firs’ time I’d slept with anyone since… and he said, “Yeah, you’ll want to keep that quiet… be loads of grief for you, an’ he’ll probably get off’… He was ex-police, Andy, he knew all about that kind of thing.”

  You total shit, Morris.

  “No, if I was going to tell about anything,” said Gemma, hazily, “it’d be the insider bloody trading… Oh yeah… nobody knows ’cept me…”

  One hour later, Robin and Gemma emerged into the darkening street, Robin almost holding Gemma up, because she showed a tendency to sag if unsupported. After a ten-minute wait, she succeeded in flagging down a taxi, and loaded the very drunk Gemma into it.

  “Le’s go out Saturday!” Gemma called to Robin, trying to stop her closing the door.

  “Fantastic!” said Robin, who’d given the PA a fake number. “Ring me!”

  “Yeah, I will… thanks so much for dinner!”

  “No problem!” said Robin, and she succeeded at last in slamming the door on Gemma, who waved at her until the cab turned the corner.

  Robin turned away and walked quickly back past the Vintry. A young man in a suit wolf-whistled as she passed.

  “Oh bugger off,” muttered Robin, pulling out her phone to call Strike.

  To her surprise, she saw she’d missed seven calls from him. She’d also received an email whose subject line read: Creed.

  “Oh my God,” said Robin out loud.

  She sped up, wanting to get away from the hordes of suited men still walking the streets, to be alone and able to concentrate. Retreating at last into the dark doorway of a gray stone office block, she opened the email. After reading it through three times, to make absolutely sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her, she called Strike back.

  “There you are!” he said, answering on the first ring. “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve found Douthwaite!”

  “You’ve what?” gasped Robin, attracting the startled attention of a sober-looking City gent shuffling past in the dark, holding a tightly furled umbrella. “How?”

  “Names,” said Strike, who sound elated. “And Pat listening to hits of the seventies.”

  “I don’t—”

  “He called himself Jacks first time, right? Well, Terry Jacks had a massive hit with a song called ‘Seasons in the Sun’ in ’74. They played it this afternoon. We know Douthwaite fancied himself a singer, so I thought, bet that’s where he got the idea for ‘Jacks’…”

  Robin could hear Strike pacing. He was evidently as excited as she felt.

  “So then I went back to Oakden’s book. He said Douthwaite’s ‘Longfellow Serenade’ was a particular hit with the ladies. I looked it up. That was one of Neil Diamond’s. So then,” said Strike, “I start Googling Steve Diamond…

  “I’m about to text you a picture,” said Strike. “Stand by.”

  Robin took the phone away from her ear and waited. Within a few seconds, the text arrived, and she opened the accompanying picture.

  A sweaty, red-faced, balding man in his sixties was singing into a microphone. He wore a turquoise T-shirt stretched over a sizable belly. A chain still hung around his neck, but the only other resemblance to the picture of the spiky-haired, cheeky chap in his kipper tie were the eyes, which were as dark and bright as ever.

  “It’s him,” Robin said.

  “That picture came off the website of a pub in Skegness,” said Strike. “He’s still a karaoke king and he co-owns and runs a bed and breakfast up there, with his wife Donna. I wonder,” said Strike, “whether she realizes his name hasn’t always been Diamond?”

  “This is amazing!” said Robin, so jubilant that she began to walk down the street again, purely to use the energy now surging through her. “You’re brilliant!”

  “I know,” said Strike, with a trace of smugness. “So, we’re going to Skegness. Tomorrow.”

  “I’m supposed to be—”

  “I’ve changed the rota,” said Strike. “Can you pick me up early? Say, eight o’clock? I’ll come out to Earl’s Court.”

  “Definitely,” said Robin.

  “Then I’ll see you—”

  “Wait,” said Robin.

  “Oh, shit, yeah,” said Strike politely. “Should’ve asked. How’d it go with Gemma?”

  “Great,” said Robin. “Shifty’s insider trading, but never mind that now.”

  “He’s—?”

  “Strike, I don’t want to upstage you or anything,” she said, failing to suppress the note of triumph in her voice, “because finding Douthwaite’s incredible, but I think you ought to know… you’re going to be allowed to interview Dennis Creed in Broadmoor, on September the nineteenth.”

  64

  … his hand did quake,

  And tremble like a leafe of Aspin greene,

  And troubled blood through his pale face was seene

  To come, and goe with tidings from the heart,

  As it a ronning messenger had beene.

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  “Well,” said Strike, getting into the Land Rover next morning.

  They beamed at each other: for a moment, Robin thought she saw the idea of hugging her cross Strike’s mind, but instead he held out his hand, and shook hers.

  “My Christ, you wait a year for a breakthrough…”

  Robin laughed, put the Land Rover into gear and pulled out onto the road. The day was unusually hot: she was driving in sunglasses, yet Strike noted a scarf protruding from the bag behind her seat.
<
br />   “Don’t think you’re going to need that. Proper summer weather,” he said, looking out at the clear sky.

  “We’ll see,” said Robin skeptically. “We used to visit Skegness when we were kids. Mum’s sister used to live in Boston, up the road. There’s usually a bracing breeze off the North Sea.”

  “So, I read the email,” said Strike, referring to the message Robin had forwarded him, which laid out both the terms and conditions of him interviewing Dennis Creed, and the reasoning which had led the authorities to permit Strike to do it.

  “What did you think?” Robin asked.

  “Other than being bloody astounded you pulled this off—”

  “It took ages.”

  “I’m not surprised. Other than that, I won’t lie… I’m feeling the pressure.”

  “You mean, because of the Tuckers?”

  “Yeah,” said Strike, opening the window so he could light a ciga­rette. “Anna doesn’t know I’m getting this shot, so she won’t get their hopes up, but that poor bastard Tucker…”

  Absolute secrecy about the interview, including signing a non-disclosure agreement that guaranteed Strike would never talk to the press about it, had been the first precondition set by the authorities.

  “He really wants it to be you,” said Robin. “Tucker. He says Creed’s got a big ego and he’ll want to meet you. And the psychiatrists must agree, mustn’t they, or they wouldn’t be allowing it? Brian Tucker says Creed always saw himself as high status, and deserving of associating with famous, successful people.”

  “It isn’t a psychiatrist’s job to decide whether I’ll be able to get anything out of him,” said Strike. “I’d imagine all they’ll care about is whether I’m going to rile him up. You don’t get put in Broadmoor for being mildly eccentric.”

  Strike was silent for a long time, looking out of the window, and Robin too remained quiet, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought. When at last Strike spoke again, he sounded matter of fact, and focused on the plan for Skegness.

  “I looked up the B&B on TripAdvisor. It’s called the Allardice, which is his wife’s maiden name. We won’t walk in there cold, because if he isn’t there and the wife smells a rat, she can call him and warn him not to come back, so we’ll park, get ourselves into a position where we can see the building, and ring him. If he’s there, we walk straight in before he’s got a chance to run—or catch him as he leaves, as the case might be. And if he isn’t in, we wait.”

  “For how long?” said Robin.

  “I’d like to say ‘as long as it takes,’” said Strike, “but we’re not actually being paid for this, so I’ve got to be back in town on Monday.”

  “I could stay behind,” suggested Robin.

  “I don’t think so,” said Strike.

  “Sorry,” said Robin, immediately regretting the suggestion, afraid that Strike might think she was simply after another weekend away in a hotel. “I know we’re short-staffed—”

  “It isn’t that. You were the one who pointed out women have a habit of dying or disappearing around Steve Douthwaite. Could be a case of bad luck, but on the other hand… three different surnames is a lot for a man with nothing to hide. I’m taking the lead on this one.”

  They arrived in the small seaside town at eleven, leaving the Land Rover in a car park beside Skegness Bowl, an enormous red-walled seafront bowling alley. Strike could smell and taste the sea as he got out of the car, and turned instinctively toward it, but the ocean was invisible from where he stood. Instead he found himself looking at a manmade waterway of a murky green, along which a laughing young woman and her boyfriend were pedaling a dinghy-sized boat. The driver’s door slammed and Strike turned to see Robin, still in sunglasses, wrapping the scarf around her neck.

  “Told you,” she said to the mystified Strike, to whom the day felt unequivocally hot. Not for the first time wondering what it was about women and their bizarre ability to feel non-existent chills, Strike lit up, waited beside the Land Rover while Robin bought a parking permit, then walked with her up to Grand Parade, a wide street that ran along the seafront.

  “‘The Savoy,’” said Strike, smirking as he read the names of the larger hotels, whose upper windows could surely see the distant sea. “‘The Quorn.’ ‘The Chatsworth.’”

  “Don’t jeer,” said Robin. “I used to love coming to Skegness when I was a kid.”

  “The Allardice should be up there,” Strike said, as they crossed the road, pointing up broad Scarbrough Avenue. “Yeah, that’s it, the one with the blue awning.”

  They paused on the corner, beside an enormous mock Tudor hotel which boasted the Jubilee Carvery and Café. Early-morning drinkers of both beer and coffee were sitting at outside tables, enjoying the sunshine.

  “Perfect place to keep an eye out,” said Strike, pointing at one of these pavement tables. “I could use a cup of tea.”

  “OK, I’ll order,” said Robin. “I need the loo, anyway. Are you going to call him or d’you want me to do it?”

  “I will,” said Strike, already sinking onto one of the chairs, and taking out his mobile.

  As Robin disappeared into the bar, Strike lit a cigarette, then keyed in the Allardice’s number, his eyes on the front of the B&B. It stood in a row of eight tall red buildings, several of which had been converted into small boarding houses and had similar scalloped PVC awnings over the entrances. Spotless white net curtains hung at almost every window.

  “Morning, the Allardice,” said a Scottish woman, who sounded on the irritable side of brisk.

  “Steve there?” said Strike, faking casualness and confidence.

  “That you, Barry love?”

  “Yeah,” said Strike.

  “He’s on his way now,” she said. “We only had a small, sorry. But do me a favor, Barry, and don’t hold him up, because there are four beds to change here and he’s supposed to be getting me more milk.”

  “Righto,” said Strike, and not wanting to speak another syllable that might reveal him to be anyone other than Barry, he hung up.

  “Is he there?” asked Robin anxiously, dropping into the seat opposite Strike. She’d washed her hands in the bathroom, but they were still damp, because she’d been in such a hurry to get back to Strike.

  “No,” said Strike, knocking his cigarette ash into the small pink metal bucket placed on the table for that purpose. “He’s delivering something to a bloke up the road and will be back shortly, bringing milk.”

  “Oh,” said Robin quietly, turning to look over her shoulder at the Allardice’s royal blue awning, on which the name was inscribed in curly white lettering.

  The barman brought out two metal pots and china teacups, and the detectives drank their tea in silence, Strike keeping a watchful eye on the Allardice, Robin on Grand Parade. The sea was blocked from her view by the wide, multicolored frontage of the entrance to Skegness Pier, which advertised, among other attractions, the optimistically named Hollywood Bar and Diner. Elderly people rode mobility scooters up and down Grand Parade. Families strolled past, eating ice cream. Plume-tailed Maltese, fat pugs and panting chihuahuas trotted over the hot pavements alongside their owners.

  “Cormoran,” muttered Robin suddenly.

  A man had just turned the corner into Scarbrough Avenue, a heavy carrier bag dangling from his hand. His gray hair was close cropped around the ears, but a few strands had been combed over a wide expanse of sweaty forehead. His round shoulders and hangdog look gave him the air of a man whom life had ground down to a sullen obedience. The same turquoise T-shirt he’d worn in the karaoke picture was stretched tightly over his beer belly. Douthwaite crossed the road, climbed the three steps leading to the Allardice’s front door and, with a flash of sun on glass, disappeared from view.

  “Have you paid for this?” Strike asked, downing the rest of his tea and putting his empty cup back onto the saucer.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Strike, dropping his cigarette into the metal bucket a
nd pulling himself to his feet, “before he can disappear upstairs and start changing beds.”

  They crossed the road as fast as Strike could walk and headed up the front steps, which had been painted pale blue. Baskets of purple petunias hung beneath the ground-floor windows and an assortment of stickers adorned the glass portion of the front door, one of which announced that this was a three-star residence, another asking guests to wipe their feet.

  A tinkling bell announced their arrival. The deserted hall was narrow, its stairs carpeted in dark blue and green tartan. They waited beside a table laden with leaflets about local attractions, breathing in a combination of fried food and a powerful rose-scented air-freshener.

  “… and Paula’s got new tubes in her sunbeds,” said a Scottish voice, and a woman with short hair dyed canary yellow emerged through a door to the right. A deep vertical line was graven down the middle of her forehead. Barelegged, she wore an apron decorated with a Highland cow over her T-shirt and denim skirt, and a pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

  “We’ve no vacancies, sorry,” she said.

  “Are you Donna?” asked Strike. “We were hoping for a word with Steve.”

  “What about?”

  “We’re private detectives,” said Strike, pulling out his wallet to hand her a card, “and we’re investigating—”

  A hugely obese old lady came into view on the landing above them. She was clad in shocking-pink leggings and a T-shirt bearing the slogan “The More People I Meet, The More I Like My Dog.” Panting audibly, she began a sideways descent, both hands clutching the banister.

  “—a missing person case,” Strike finished quietly, as he handed Donna his card.

  At that moment, Steve Douthwaite emerged from behind his wife, a pile of towels in his arms. Close up, his dark eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Every feature had coarsened with age and, possibly, drink. His wife’s demeanor, the card in her hand and the presence of the two strangers now looking at him brought him to a halt, the dark eyes frightened above his pile of towels.

  “Cormoran Strike?” murmured Donna, reading the card. “Aren’t you the one…”