Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  “Why wasn’t there any trace of her in the basement?” said Strike.

  “There was. I had her necklace. But I never had her in the basement, see? You want proof, I’ll give you proof: she called her stepmother ‘Claws.’ Tell Tucker she told me that, all right? Yeah, we had a five-minute chat about how pissed off she was at home, before she realized we were going the wrong way. Then she starts screaming and banging on the windows.

  “I turned into a dark car park,” said Creed quietly, “put my hand over her mouth, dragged her into the back of the van, fucked her and throttled her. I’d’ve liked to keep her longer, but she was loud, too loud.

  “Dumb thing to do, but I couldn’t resist, Cormoran. No planning—school uniform! But I had work next day, I needed the van empty. I wanted to take the body back to the basement, but old Vi Cooper was wide awake when I drove back up Liverpool Road. She was looking down at me out the top window when I drove past, so I didn’t stop. Told her later she’d imagined it was me. The old bitch used to sit up to see what time I came in. I usually drugged her if I was off on the prowl, but this was a spur-of-the-moment treat…”

  “What did you do with the body?” said Strike.

  “Ah,” said Creed, sitting back in his seat. The wet lips slid over each other, and the wide pupils gaped. “I think I’m going to need a transfer back to Belmarsh before I tell anyone that. You go and tell the newspapers I’ve decided to confess to killing Louise, and that I’m sane, and I should be in Belmarsh, and if I’m transferred, I’ll tell old Brian Tucker where I put his little girl. You go tell the authorities, that’s my offer…

  “You never know, I might even feel up to talking about Margot Bamborough when I’m out of here. Let’s get these drugs out of my system, and maybe I’ll remember better.”

  “You’re full of shit,” said Strike, getting to his feet, looking angry. “I’m not passing this on.”

  “Don’t be like that, because it’s not the one you came for,” said Creed, with a slow smile. “You’re coming across like a proper narcissist, Cormoran.”

  “I’m ready to go,” Strike told Dr. Bijral.

  “Don’t be like that,” said Creed. “Oi!”

  Strike turned back.

  “All right… I’ll give you a little clue about where I put Louise’s body, and we’ll see whether you’re as clever as you think you are, all right? We’ll see whether you or the police work it out first. If they find the body, they’ll know I’m sane, and I’m ready to talk about Margot Bamborough, as long as I get moved where I want to go. And if nobody can figure out the clue, someone’ll have to come back and talk to me, won’t they? Maybe even you. We could play chess for more clues, Cormoran.”

  Strike could tell that Creed was imagining weeks of front pages, as he laid a trail for investigators to follow. Psychological torture for the Tuckers, manipulation of public opinion, Strike, perhaps, at his beck and call: it was a sadist’s wet dream.

  “Go on then,” said Strike, looking down at him. “What’s the clue?”

  “You’ll find Louise Tucker’s body where you find M54,” said Creed, and Strike knew Creed had thought out the clue well ahead of time, and was certain that it would have been a clue about Margot, had Strike said he’d been hired by the Tuckers. Creed needed to believe he hadn’t given Strike what he really wanted. He had to come out on top.

  “Right,” said Strike. He turned to Dr. Bijral. “Shall we?”

  “M54, all right, Cormoran?” called Creed.

  “I heard you,” said Strike.

  “Sorry not to be able to help with Dr. Bamborough!” called Creed, and Strike could hear his pleasure at the idea that he’d thwarted the detective.

  Strike turned back one last time, and now he stopped pretending to be angry, and grinned, too.

  “I was here for Louise, you silly fucker. I know you never met Margot Bamborough. She was murdered by a far more skillful killer than you ever were. And just so you know,” Strike added, as the nurse’s keys jangled, and Creed’s slack, fat face registered dismay, “I think you’re a fucking lunatic, and if anyone asks me, I’ll say you should be in Broadmoor till you rot.”

  69

  Beare ye the picture of that Ladies head?

  Full liuely is the semblaunt, though the substance dead.

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  After almost an hour’s debrief with Dr. Bijral, during which the shaken psychiatrist phoned Scotland Yard, the detective left the hospital feeling as though he’d been there twice as long as he really had. The village of Crowthorne didn’t lie on Strike’s route back to London, but he was hungry, he wanted to call Robin and he felt a powerful need to place himself among ordinary people going about their lives, to expel the memory of those empty, echoing corridors, the jangle of keys and the widely dilated pupils of Dennis Creed.

  He parked outside a pub, lit himself the cigarette he’d been craving for the past two and a half hours, then turned his phone back on. He’d already missed two calls from Brian Tucker, but instead of phoning the old man back, he pressed Robin’s number. She answered on the second ring.

  “What happened?”

  Strike told her. When he’d finished, there was a short silence.

  “Say the clue again,” said Robin, who sounded tense.

  “‘You’ll find her where you find M54.’”

  “Not the M54? Not the motorway?”

  “He could’ve meant that, but he left out the definite article.”

  “The M54’s twenty-odd miles long.”

  “I know.”

  Reaction was setting in: Strike should have felt triumphant, but in fact he was tired and tense. His phone beeped at him and he glanced at the screen.

  “That’s Brian Tucker again, trying to ring me,” he told Robin.

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “The truth,” said Strike heavily, exhaling smoke out of his open window. “Dr. Bijral’s already called Scotland Yard. Trouble is, if that clue’s meaningless, or unsolvable, it leaves Tucker knowing Creed killed his daughter, but never getting the body back. This could well be Creed’s idea of the ultimate torture.”

  “It’s something to have a confession, though, isn’t it?” said Robin.

  “Tucker’s been convinced Creed killed her for decades. Confession without a body just keeps the wound open. Creed’ll still have the last laugh, knowing where she is and not telling… How’ve you got on in the British Library?”

  “Oh. Fine,” said Robin. “I found Joanna Hammond a couple of hours ago.”

  “And?” said Strike, now alert.

  “She had a large mole on her face. Left cheek. You can see it in the picture of her wedding in the local paper. I’ll text it to you now.”

  “And the holy—?”

  “It would’ve been on the back of her obituary. Same local paper.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Strike.

  There was a longer silence. Strike’s phone beeped again, and he saw that Robin had texted him a picture.

  Opening it, he saw a couple on their 1969 wedding day: a blurry black and white picture of a toothy, beaming brunette bride, her hair worn in ringlets, in a high-necked lace dress, a pillbox hat on top of her veil, a large mole on her left cheekbone. The blond husband loomed over her shoulder, unsmiling. Even minutes into married life, he had the air of a man ready to wield a baseball bat.

  “She wasn’t Sagittarius under Schmidt,” said Robin, and Strike put the phone back up to his ear, “she was Scorpio—”

  “—which Talbot thought fitted her better, because of the mole,” said Strike, with a sigh. “I should’ve gone back through all the identifications once you found out about Schmidt. We might’ve got here sooner.”

  “What are we going to do about Douthwaite?”

  “I’ll ring him,” said Strike, after a moment’s pause. “Now. Then I’ll call you back.”

  His stomach rumbled as he called the Allardice boarding house in Skeg
ness, and heard the familiar cross Scottish accent of Donna, Douthwaite’s wife.

  “Oh Christ,” she said, when Strike identified himself. “What now?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” lied Strike, who could hear a radio playing in the background. “Just wanted to double-check a couple of points.”

  “Steve!” he heard her yell, away from the receiver. “It’s him!… What d’you mean, ‘Who?,’ who d’you bloody think?”

  Strike heard footsteps and then Douthwaite, who sounded half-angry, half-scared.

  “What d’you want?”

  “I want to tell you what I think happened during your last appoint­ment with Margot Bamborough,” said Strike.

  He spoke for two minutes, and Douthwaite didn’t interrupt, though Strike knew he was still there, because of the distant sounds of the boarding house still reaching him over the line. When Strike had finished his reconstruction of Douthwaite’s final consultation, there was silence but for the distant radio, which was playing “Blame” by Calvin Harris.

  So blame it on the night… don’t blame it on me…

  “Well?” said Strike.

  He knew Douthwaite didn’t want to confirm it. Douthwaite was a coward, a weak man who ran away from problems. He could have prevented further deaths had he had the courage to tell what he knew, but he’d been scared for his own skin, scared he’d be seen as complicit, stupid and shabby, in the eyes of newspaper readers. And so he’d run, but that had made things worse, and nightmarish consequences had ensued, and he’d run from those, too, barely admitting to himself what he feared, distracting himself with drink, with karaoke, with women. And now Strike was presenting him with a dreadful choice that was really no choice at all. Like Violet Cooper, Steve Douthwaite was facing a lifetime of opprobrium from the censorious public, and how much better would it have been if he’d come clean to Talbot forty years previously, when Margot Bamborough’s body could have been found quickly, and a killer could have been brought to justice before others had to die.

  “Am I right?” Strike said.

  “Yes,” said Douthwaite, at last.

  “OK, well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go straight to your wife and tell her, before the press do it. There’s going to be no hiding from this one.”

  “Shit,” said Douthwaite quietly.

  “See you in court, then,” said Strike briskly, and he hung up, and called Robin straight back.

  “He’s confirmed it.”

  “Cormoran,” said Robin.

  “I advised him to tell Donna—”

  “Cormoran,” said Robin, again.

  “What?”

  “I think I know what M54 is.”

  “Not—”

  “—the motorway? No. M54 is a globular cluster—”

  “A what?”

  “A spherical cluster of stars.”

  “Stars?” said Strike, with a sinking sensation. “Hang on—”

  “Listen,” said Robin. “Creed thought he was being clever, but it only takes a Google search—”

  “They haven’t got internet in there,” said Strike. “He was whining about it—”

  “Well, M54 is a cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius,” said Robin.

  “Not astrology again,” said Strike, closing his eyes. “Robin—”

  “Listen to me. He said ‘You’ll find her where you find M54,’ right?”

  “Yeah—”

  “The constellation Sagittarius is also known as the Archer.”

  “So?”

  “Brian showed us the map, Strike! Dennis Creed was a regular visitor to the Archer Hotel in Islington in the early seventies, when he was delivering their dry cleaning. There was a well on the property, in the back garden. Boarded up, and now covered over with a conservatory.”

  A pair of jolly men with matching beer bellies walked into the pub across the road. Strike barely registered them. He’d even forgotten to take drags of the cigarette burning between his fingers.

  “Think this through,” said Robin in his ear. “Creed’s got a body he didn’t expect in the van, but he can’t take it to Epping Forest, because there was still an active crime scene there. They’d just found the remains of Vera Kenny. I don’t know why he didn’t take the body to the basement—”

  “I do,” said Strike. “He’s just told me. He drove past the house and Vi Cooper was awake and at the window.”

  “OK—right—so he’s got to empty the van before work. He knows his way around the Archer garden, and he knows there’s a back gate. He’s got tools in the back of the van, he could prize those boards up easily. Cormoran, I’m sure she’s in the old Archer well.”

  There was a brief pause, then hot ash fell into Strike’s lap from his neglected cigarette.

  “Bollocks—”

  He flicked the end out of the window, earning himself a look of disapproval from a passing old woman pulling a tartan shopping trolley.

  “All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” he told Robin. “I’ll phone Tucker and tell him what’s just happened, including your deduction. You call George Layborn and tell him about the well at the Archer. The quicker the police search it, the better for the Tuckers, especially if the news leaks that Creed’s confessed.”

  “OK, I’ll get on to that right—”

  “Hang on, I haven’t finished,” said Strike. He’d closed his eyes now, and he was rubbing his temples as he thought through everything the agency needed to do, and quickly. “When you’ve spoken to Layborn, I want you to ring Barclay and tell him he’s going on a job with you, tomorrow morning. He can forget Miss Jones’s boyfriend for a few hours. Or, most probably, all day, if what I think’s going to happen happens.”

  “What job are Barclay and I doing?” asked Robin.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Strike, opening his eyes again. “We’re up against the clock if Douthwaite talks to anyone.”

  “So Barclay and I are…?”

  “Finding Margot’s body,” said Strike. “Yes.”

  There was a long silence. Strike’s stomach rumbled again. Now a pair of young women entered the pub, giggling at something one had shown the other on her phone.

  “You really think she’s there?” said Robin, a little shaken.

  “I’m sure of it,” said Strike.

  “And you’re—?”

  “I’m going to call Brian Tucker, eat some chips, make that long-distance phone call—I think they’re three hours ahead of us, so that should work fine—then drive back to the office. I’ll be back late afternoon and we can talk it all over properly.”

  “Right,” said Robin, “good luck.”

  She rang off. Strike hesitated for a moment before calling Brian Tucker: he’d have liked to do it with a pint in his hand, but he still needed to drive back to London, and being arrested for drink driving on the eve of catching Margot Bamborough’s killer was a complication he really didn’t want to risk. Instead, he lit himself a second cigarette, and prepared to tell a grieving father that after a forty-two year wait, he might soon be in a position to bury his daughter.

  70

  … and lastly Death;

  Death with most grim and griesly visage seene…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  The morning was so mild it might have been summer, but the leaves of the plane trees beside the telephone box at the mouth of Albemarle Way were starting to turn yellow. A patchwork blue and white sky gave and withdrew warmth as the sun slid in and out behind clouds, and Robin felt shivery in spite of the sweater she was wearing beneath her raincoat, as though a cold wind was blowing up Albemarle Way, the short side street whose tall, unbroken buildings kept it forever in shadow.

  She was standing beside the telephone box where once, nearly forty years previously, the killer of Margot Bamborough had waited and watched, feeling, Robin imagined, much as she did now. There must have been fear, and nervousness, and doubt that the plan could possibly work, and terror of the co
nsequences of failure. But this sense of kinship didn’t make Robin feel any more kindly to the killer. Looking across the road at the ancient arch of St. John’s Gate, she could imagine Margot Bamborough walking through it on a rainy evening forty years previously, or perhaps weaving, feeling strangely groggy and not knowing why… or had she realized? Possibly. Margot was a clever woman, and that was why she’d had to die…

  Clerkenwell Road was busy with traffic and pedestrians. Robin felt entirely isolated from all of them. Nobody passing Robin could have the slightest idea of what she was about to try and do. How bizarre they’d think her morning’s plans, how macabre… a trickle of panic ran down Robin’s spine…

  Think about something else.

  There’d been a picture in the Metro that morning of Charlotte Ross wearing sunglasses and a long dark coat, walking along a street in Mayfair with her sister, Amelia. There had been no sign of Charlotte’s husband or young twins, and the short non-story beneath the picture had told Robin nothing she wanted to know.

  Charlotte Campbell was spotted enjoying a morning walk in London with her sister, Amelia Crichton, yesterday. Charlotte, who is married to Jago, heir to the Viscountcy of Croy, was recently released from hospital, following a prolonged stay in Symonds House, an addiction and mental health facility much favored by the rich and famous.

  Charlotte, who once topped Tatler’s list of 100 Most Beautiful Londoners, has been a favorite of the gossip columns since she first ran away from school, aged 14. Daughter of…

  Think about something else, Robin told herself, and consciously groped around for another subject.

  It was September the twentieth. A person born today would be born under the sign of Virgo. Robin wondered how long it was going to take to rid herself of the mental tic of tying dates to star signs. She thought of Matthew, who was the Virgoan she knew best. The sign was supposed to be clever, and organized, and nervous. He was certainly organized, and bright in a book-smart way… she remembered Oonagh Kennedy saying, “I sometimes t’ink, the cleverer they are with books, the stupider they are with sex,” and wondered whether he was now happy about the pregnancy he’d said was accidental…