Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Read online

  “It’s too early for me to eat,” lied Strike. “I’ve had a cup of tea and I’ll get something on the train. Tell her,” he said to Ted, because Joan wasn’t listening, but scurrying for the kitchen.

  “Joanie!” Ted called. “He doesn’t want anything!”

  Strike grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair and hoisted the kit bag out to the hall.

  “You should go back to bed,” he told Joan, as she hurried to bid him goodbye. “I really didn’t want to wake you. Rest, all right? Let someone else run the town for a few weeks.”

  “I wish you’d stop smoking,” she said sadly.

  Strike managed a humorous eye roll, then hugged her. She clung to him the way she had done whenever Leda was waiting impatiently to take him away, and Strike squeezed her back, feeling again the pain of divided loyalties, of being both battleground and prize, of having to give names to what was uncategorizable and unknowable.

  “Bye, Ted,” he said, hugging his uncle. “I’ll ring you when I’m home and we’ll fix up a time for the next visit.”

  “I could’ve driven you,” said Uncle Ted feebly. “Sure you don’t want me to drive you?”

  “I like the ferry,” lied Strike. In fact, the uneven steps leading down to the boat were almost impossible for him to navigate without assistance from the ferryman, but because he knew it would give them pleasure, he said, “Reminds me of you two taking us shopping in Falmouth when we were kids.”

  Lucy was watching him, apparently unconcerned, through the door from the sitting room. Luke and Adam hadn’t wanted to leave their Coco Pops, but Jack came wriggling breathlessly into the tiny hall to say,

  “Thanks for my badges, Uncle Corm.”

  “It was a pleasure,” said Strike, and he ruffled the boy’s hair. “Bye, Luce,” he called. “See you soon, Jack,” he added.

  5

  He little answer’d, but in manly heart

  His mightie indignation did forbeare,

  Which was not yet so secret, but some part

  Thereof did in his frouning face appeare…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  The bedroom in the bed and breakfast where Robin spent the night barely had room for a single bed, a chest of drawers and a rickety sink plumbed into the corner. The walls were covered in a mauve floral wallpaper that Robin thought must surely have been considered tasteless even in the seventies, the sheets felt damp and the window was imperfectly covered by a tangled Venetian blind.

  In the harsh glare of a single lightbulb unsoftened by its shade of open wickerwork, Robin’s reflection looked exhausted and ill-kempt, with purple shadows beneath her eyes. Her backpack contained only those items she always carried on surveillance jobs—a beanie hat, should she need to conceal her distinctive red-blonde hair, sunglasses, a change of top, a credit card and ID in a couple of different names. The fresh T-shirt she’d just pulled out of her backpack was heavily creased and her hair in urgent need of a wash; the sink was soapless and she’d omitted to pack toothbrush or toothpaste, unaware that she was going to be spending the night away from home.

  Robin was back on the road by eight. In Newton Abbot she stopped at a chemist and a Sainsbury’s, where she purchased, in addition to basic toiletries and dry shampoo, a small, cheap bottle of 4711 cologne. She cleaned her teeth and made herself as presentable as possible in the supermarket bathroom. While brushing her hair, she received a text from Strike:

  I’ll be in the Palacio Lounge café in The Moor, middle of Falmouth. Anyone will tell you where The Moor is.

  The further west Robin drove, the lusher and greener the landscape became. Yorkshire-born, she’d found it extraordinary to see palm trees actually flourishing on English soil, back in Torquay. These twisting, verdant lanes, the luxuriance of the vegetation, the almost sub-tropical greenness was a surprise to a person raised among bare, rolling moors and hillside. Then there were the glints to her left of a quicksilver sea, as wide and gleaming as plate glass, and the tang of the salt now mixed with the citrus of her hastily purchased cologne. In spite of her tiredness she found her spirits buoyed by the glorious morning, and the idea of Strike waiting at journey’s end.

  She arrived in Falmouth at eleven o’clock, and drove in search of a parking space through streets packed with tourists and past shop doorways accreted in plastic toys and pubs covered in flags and multi­colored window boxes. Once she’d parked in The Moor itself—a wide open market square in the heart of the town—she saw that beneath the gaudy summertime trappings, Falmouth boasted some grand old nineteenth-century buildings, one of which housed the Palacio Lounge café and restaurant.

  The high ceilings and classical proportions of what looked like an old courthouse had been decorated in a self-consciously whimsical style, which included garish orange floral wallpaper, hundreds of kitschy paintings in pastel frames, and a stuffed fox dressed as a magistrate. The clientele, which was dominated by students and families, sat on mismatched wooden chairs, their chatter echoing through the cavernous space. After a few seconds Robin spotted Strike, large and surly-looking at the back of the room, seeming far from happy beside a pair of families whose many young children, most of whom were wearing tie-dyed clothing, were racing around between tables.

  Robin thought she saw the idea of standing to greet her cross Strike’s mind as she wound her way through the tables toward him, but if she was right, he decided against. She knew how he looked when his leg was hurting him, the lines around his mouth deeper than usual, as though he had been clenching his jaw. If Robin had looked tired in the dusty bed and breakfast mirror three hours previously, Strike looked utterly drained, his unshaven jaw appearing dirty, the shadows under his eyes dark blue.

  “Morning,” he said, struggling to make himself heard over the merry shrieking of the hippy children. “Get parked OK?”

  “Just round the corner,” she said, sitting down.

  “I chose this place because I thought it would be easy to find,” he said.

  A small boy knocked into their table, causing Strike’s coffee to slop over onto his plate, which was littered with croissant flakes, and ran off again. “What d’you want?”

  “Coffee would be great,” said Robin loudly, over the cries of the children beside them. “How’re things in St. Mawes?”

  “Same,” said Strike.

  “I’m sorry,” said Robin.

  “Why? It’s not your fault,” grunted Strike.

  This was hardly the greeting Robin had expected after a two-and-a-half drive to pick him up. Possibly her annoyance showed, because Strike added,

  “Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Oh, don’t pretend you can’t see me, dipshit,” he added crossly, as a young waiter walked away without spotting his raised hand.

  “I’ll go to the counter,” said Robin. “I need the loo anyway.”

  By the time she’d peed and managed to order a coffee from a harassed waiter, a tension headache had begun to pound on the left-hand side of her head. On her return to the table she found Strike looking like thunder, because the children at the next tables were now shrieking louder than ever as they raced around their oblivious parents, who simply shouted over the din. The idea of giving Strike Charlotte’s telephone message right now passed through Robin’s mind, only to be dismissed.

  In fact, the main reason for Strike’s foul mood was that the end of his amputated leg was agony. He’d fallen (like a total tit, as he told himself) while getting onto the Falmouth ferry. This feat required a precarious descent down worn stone steps without a handhold, then a step down into the boat with only the boatman’s hand for assistance. At sixteen stone, Strike was hard to stabilize when he slipped, and slip he had, with the result that he was now in a lot of pain.

  Robin took paracetamol out of her bag.

  “Headache,” she said, catching Strike’s eye.

  “I’m not bloody surprised,” he said loudly, looking at the parents shouting at each other over the raucous yells of
their offspring, but they didn’t hear him. The idea of asking Robin for painkillers crossed Strike’s mind, but this might engender inquiries and fussing, and he’d had quite enough of those in the past week, so he continued to suffer in silence.

  “Where’s the client?” she asked, after downing her pills with coffee.

  “About five minutes’ drive away. Place called Wodehouse Terrace.”

  At this point, the smallest of the children racing around nearby tripped and smacked her face on the wooden floor. The child’s shrieks and wails of pain pounded against Robin’s eardrums.

  “Oh, Daffy!” said one of the tie-dyed mothers shrilly, “what have you done?”

  The child’s mouth was bloody. Her mother crouched beside their table, loudly castigating and soothing, while the girl’s siblings and friends watched avidly. The ferry-goers this morning had worn similar expressions when Strike had hit the deck.

  “He’s got a false leg,” the ferryman had shouted, partly, Strike suspected, in case anyone thought the fall was due to his negligence. The announcement had in no way lessened Strike’s mortification or the interest of his fellow travelers.

  “Shall we get going?” Robin asked, already on her feet.

  “Definitely,” said Strike, wincing as he stood and picked up his holdall. “Bloody kids,” he muttered, limping after Robin toward the sunlight.

  6

  Faire Lady, hart of flint would rew

  The vndeserued woes and sorrowes, which ye shew.

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  Wodehouse Terrace lay on a hill, with a wide view of the bay below. Many of the houses had had loft conversions, but Anna and Kim’s, as they saw from the street, had been more extensively modified than any other, with what looked like a square glass box where once there had been roof.

  “What does Anna do?” asked Robin, as they climbed the steps toward the deep blue front door.

  “No idea,” said Strike, “but her wife’s a psychologist. I got the impression she isn’t keen on the idea of an investigation.”

  He pressed the doorbell. They heard footsteps on what sounded like bare wood, and the door was opened by Dr. Sullivan, tall, blonde and barefoot in jeans and a shirt, the sun glinting off her spectacles. She looked from Strike to Robin, apparently surprised.

  “My partner, Robin Ellacott,” Strike explained.

  “Oh,” said Kim, looking displeased. “You do realize—this is only supposed to be an exploratory meeting.”

  “Robin happened to be just up the coast on another case, so—”

  “I’m more than happy to wait in the car,” said Robin politely, “if Anna would rather speak to Cormoran alone.”

  “Well—we’ll see how Anna feels.”

  Standing back to admit them, Kim added, “Straight upstairs, in the sitting room.”

  The house had clearly been remodeled throughout and to a high standard. Everywhere was bleached wood and glass. The bedroom, as Robin saw through an open door, had been relocated to the ground floor, along with what looked like a study. Upstairs, in the glass box they’d seen from the street, was an open-plan area combining kitchen, dining and sitting room, with a dazzling view of the sea.

  Anna was standing beside a gleaming, expensive coffee machine, wearing a baggy blue cotton jumpsuit and white canvas shoes, which to Robin looked stylish and to Strike, frumpy. Her hair was tied back, revealing the delicacy of her bone structure.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, starting at the sight of them. “I didn’t hear the door over the coffee machine.”

  “Annie,” said Kim, following Strike and Robin into the room, “this is Robin Ellacott, er—Cameron’s partner. She’s happy to go if you’d rather just talk to—”

  “Cormoran,” Anna corrected Kim. “Do people get that wrong a lot?” she asked Strike.

  “More often than not,” he said, but with a smile. “But it’s a bloody stupid name.”

  Anna laughed.

  “I don’t mind you staying,” she told Robin, advancing and offering a handshake. “I think I read about you, too,” she added, and Robin pretended that she didn’t notice Anna glancing down at the long scar on her forearm.

  “Please, sit down,” said Kim, gesturing Strike and Robin to an inbuilt seating area around a low Perspex table.

  “Coffee?” suggested Anna, and both of them accepted.

  A ragdoll cat came prowling into the room, stepping delicately through the puddles of sunlight on the floor, its clear blue eyes like Joan’s across the bay. After subjecting both Strike and Robin to dispassionate scrutiny, it leapt lightly onto the sofa and into Strike’s lap.

  “Ironically,” said Kim, as she carried a tray laden with cups and biscuits to the table, “Cagney absolutely loves men.”

  Strike and Robin laughed politely. Anna brought over the coffee pot, and the two women sat down side by side, facing Strike and Robin, their faces in the full glare of the sun until Anna reached for a remote control, which automatically lowered cream-colored sun blinds.

  “Wonderful place,” said Robin, looking around.

  “Thanks,” said Kim. “Her work,” she said, patting Anna’s knee. “She’s an architect.”

  Anna cleared her throat.

  “I want to apologize,” she said, looking steadily at Strike with her unusual silver-gray eyes, “for the way I behaved last night. I’d had a few glasses of wine. You probably thought I was a crank.”

  “If I’d thought that,” said Strike, stroking the loudly purring cat, “I wouldn’t be here.”

  “But mentioning the medium probably gave you entirely the wrong… because, believe me, Kim’s already told me what a fool I was to go and see her.”

  “I don’t think you’re a fool, Annie,” Kim said quietly. “I think you’re vulnerable. There’s a difference.”

  “May I ask what the medium said?” asked Strike.

  “Does it matter?” asked Kim, looking at Strike with what Robin thought was mistrust.

  “Not in an investigative sense,” said Strike, “but as he—she?—is the reason Anna approached me—”

  “It was a woman,” said Anna, “and she didn’t really tell me anything useful… not that I…”

  With a nervous laugh, she shook her head and started again.

  “I know it was a stupid thing to do. I—I’ve been through a difficult time recently—I left my firm and I’m about to turn forty and… well, Kim was away on a course and I—well, I suppose I wanted—”

  She waved her hands dismissively, took a deep breath and said,

  “She’s quite an ordinary-looking woman who lives in Chiswick. Her house was full of angels—made of pottery and glass, I mean, and there was a big one painted on velvet over the fireplace.

  “Kim,” Anna pressed on, and Robin glanced at the psychologist, whose expression was impassive, “Kim thinks she—the medium—knew who my mother was—that she Googled me before I arrived. I’d given her my real name. When I got there, I simply said that my mother died a long time ago—although of course,” said Anna, with another nervous wave of her thin hands, “there’s no proof that my mother’s dead—that’s half the—but anyway, I told the medium she’d died, and that nobody had ever been clear with me about how it happened.

  “So the woman went into a—well, I suppose you’d call it a trance,” Anna said, looking embarrassed, “and she told me that people thought they were protecting me for my own good, but that it was time I knew the truth and that I would soon have a ‘leading’ that would take me to it. And she said ‘your mother’s very proud of you’ and ‘she’s always watching over you,’ and things like that, I suppose they’re boilerplate—and then, at the end, ‘she lies in a holy place.’”

  “‘Lies in a holy place’?” repeated Strike.

  “Yes. I suppose she thought that would be comforting, but I’m not a churchgoer. The sanctity or otherwise of my mother’s final resting place—if she’s buried—I mean, it’s hardly my primary concern.” />
  “D’you mind if I take notes?” Strike asked.

  He pulled out a notebook and pen, which Cagney the cat appeared to think were for her personal amusement. She attempted to bat the pen around as Strike wrote the date.

  “Come here, you silly animal,” said Kim, getting up to lift the cat clear and put her back on the warm wooden floor.

  “To begin at the beginning,” said Strike. “You must’ve been very young when your mother went missing?”

  “Just over a year old,” said Anna, “so I can’t remember her at all. There were no photographs of her in the house while I was growing up. I didn’t know what had happened for a long time. Of course, there was no internet back then—anyway, my mother kept her own surname after marriage. I grew up as Anna Phipps, which is my father’s name. If anybody had said ‘Margot Bamborough’ to me before I was eleven, I wouldn’t have known she had any connection to me.

  “I thought Cynthia was my mum. She was my childminder when I was little,” she explained. “She’s a third cousin of my father’s and quite a bit younger than him, but she’s a Phipps, too, so I assumed we were a standard nuclear family. I mean—why wouldn’t I?

  “I do remember, once I’d started school, questioning why I was calling Cyn ‘Cyn’ instead of ‘Mum.’ But then Dad and Cyn decided to get married, and they told me I could call her ‘Mum’ now if I wanted to, and I thought, oh, I see, I had to use her name before, because they weren’t married. You fill in the gaps when you’re a child, don’t you? With your own weird logic.

  “I was seven or eight when a girl at school said to me, ‘That’s not your real mum. Your real mum disappeared.’ It sounded mad. I didn’t ask Dad or Cyn about it. I just locked it away, but I think, on some deep level, I sensed I’d just been handed the answer to some of the strange things I’d noticed and never been given answers to.

  “I was eleven when I found out properly. By then, I’d heard other things from other kids at school. ‘Your real mum ran away’ was one of them. Then one day, this really poisonous boy said to me, ‘Your mum was killed by a man who cut off her head.’”