Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Read online

  Twinkletoes, whose unimaginative nickname had been chosen by Morris, was a twenty-four-year-old dancer who was currently having an affair with a thirty-nine-year-old double-divorcée, notable mainly for her history of drug abuse and her enormous trust fund. The socialite’s father was employing the agency to discover anything they could about Twinkletoes’ background or behavior, which could be used to prize his daughter away from him.

  Postcard was, so far, an entirely unknown quantity. A middle-aged and, in Robin’s opinion, fairly unattractive television weather forecaster had come to the agency after the police had said there was nothing they could do about the postcards that had begun to arrive at his place of work and, most worryingly, hand delivered to his house in the small hours. The cards made no threats; indeed, they were often no more than banal comments on the weatherman’s choice of tie, yet they gave evidence of knowing far more about the man’s movements and private life than a stranger should have. The use of postcards was also a peculiar choice, when persecution was so much easier, these days, online. The agency’s subcontractor, Andy Hutchins, had now spent two solid weeks’ worth of nights parked outside the weatherman’s house, but Postcard hadn’t yet shown themselves.

  Last, and most lucrative, was the interesting case of Shifty, a young investment banker whose rapid rise through his company had generated a predictable amount of resentment among overlooked colleagues, which had exploded into full-blown suspicion when he’d been promoted to the second-in-command job ahead of three undeniably better qualified candidates. Exactly what leverage Shifty had on the CEO (known to the agency as Shifty’s Boss or SB) was now a matter of interest not only to Shifty’s subordinates, but to a couple of suspicious board members, who’d met Strike in a dark bar in the City to lay out their concerns. Strike’s current strategy was to try to find out more about Shifty through his personal assistant, and to this end Morris had been given the job of chatting her up after hours, revealing neither his real name nor his occupation, but trying to gauge how deep her loyalty to Shifty ran.

  “D’you need to be back in London by any particular time?” Strike asked, after a brief silence.

  “No,” said Robin, “why?”

  “Would you mind,” said Strike, “if we stop for food? I didn’t have breakfast.”

  Despite remembering that he had, in fact, had a plate full of croissant crumbs in front of him when she arrived at the Palacio Lounge, Robin agreed. Strike seemed to read her mind.

  “You can’t count a croissant. Mostly air.”

  Robin laughed.

  By the time they reached Subway at Cornwall Services, the atmosphere between the two of them had become almost light-hearted, notwithstanding their tiredness. Once Robin, mindful of her resolution to eat more healthily, had started on her salad and Strike had taken a few satisfying mouthfuls of his steak and cheese sandwich, he emailed Kim Sullivan their form letter about billing clients, then said,

  “I had a row with Lucy this morning.”

  Robin surmised that it must have been a bad one, for Strike to mention it.

  “Five o’clock, in the garden, while I was having a quiet smoke.”

  “Bit early for conflict,” said Robin, picking unenthusiastically through lettuce leaves.

  “Well, it turns out we’re competing in the Who Loves Joan Best Handicap Stakes. Didn’t even know I’d been entered.”

  He ate in silence for a minute, then went on,

  “It ended with me telling her I thought Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

  Robin, who’d been sipping her water, inhaled, and was seized by a paroxysm of coughs. Diners at nearby tables glanced round as Robin spluttered and gasped. Grabbing a paper napkin from the table to mop her chin and her streaming eyes, she wheezed,

  “What—on earth—did you say that for?”

  “Because Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

  Still trying to cough water out of her windpipe, Robin laughed, eyes streaming, but shook her head.

  “Bloody hell, Cormoran,” she said, when at last she could talk properly.

  “You haven’t just had a solid week of them. Luke broke my new headphones, then ran off with my leg, the little shit. Then Lucy accuses me of favoring Jack. Of course I favor him—he’s the only decent one.”

  “Yes, but telling their mother—”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Strike heavily. “I’ll ring and apologize.” There was a brief pause. “But for fuck’s sake,” he growled, “why do I have to take all three of them out together? Neither of the others give a toss about the military. ‘Adam cried when you came back from the War Rooms,’ my arse. The little bastard didn’t like that I’d bought Jack stuff, that’s all. If Lucy had her way, I’d be taking them on group outings every weekend, and they’d take turns to choose; it’ll be the zoo and effing go-karting, and everything that was good about me seeing Jack’ll be ruined. I like Jack,” said Strike, with what appeared to be surprise. “We’re interested in the same stuff. What’s with this mania for treating them all the same? Useful life lesson, I’d have thought, realizing you aren’t owed. You don’t get stuff automatically because of who you’re related to.

  “But fine, she wants me to buy the other two presents,” and he framed a square in mid-air with his hands. “‘Try Not Being a Little Shit.’ I’ll get that made up as a plaque for Luke’s bedroom wall.”

  They bought a bag of snacks, then resumed their drive. As they turned out onto the road again, Strike expressed his guilt that he couldn’t share the driving, because the old Land Rover was too much of a challenge with his false leg.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Robin. “I don’t mind. What’s funny?” she added, seeing Strike smirking at something he had found in their bag of food.

  “English strawberries,” he said.

  “And that’s comical, why?”

  He explained about Dave Polworth’s fury that goods of Cornish origin weren’t labeled as such, and his commensurate glee that more and more locals were putting their Cornish identity above English on forms.

  “Social identity theory’s very interesting,” said Robin. “That and self-categorization theory. I studied them at uni. There are implications for businesses as well as society, you know…”

  She talked happily for a couple of minutes before realizing, on glancing sideways, that Strike had fallen fast asleep. Choosing not to take offense, because he looked gray with tiredness, Robin fell silent, and other than the occasional grunting snore, there was no more communication to be had from Strike until, on the outskirts of Swindon, he suddenly jerked awake again.

  “Shit,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “sorry. How long was I asleep?”

  “About three hours,” said Robin.

  “Shit,” he said again, “sorry,” and immediately reached for a ciga­rette. “I’ve been kipping on the world’s most uncomfortable sofa and the kids have woken me up at the crack of fucking dawn every day. Want anything from the food bag?”

  “Yes,” said Robin, throwing the diet to the winds. She was in urgent need of a pick-me-up. “Chocolate. English or Cornish, I don’t mind.”

  “Sorry,” Strike said for a third time. “You were telling me about a social theory or something.”

  Robin grinned.

  “You fell asleep around the time I was telling you my fascinating application of social identity theory to detective practice.”

  “Which is?” he said, trying to make up in politeness now what he had lost earlier.

  Robin, who knew perfectly well that this was why he had asked the question, said,

  “In essence, we tend to sort each other and ourselves into groupings, and that usually leads to an overestimation of similarities between members of a group, and an underestimation of the similarities between insiders and outsiders.”

  “So you’re saying all Cornishmen aren’t rugged salt-of-the-earthers and all Englishmen aren’t pompous arseholes?”

 
Strike unwrapped a Yorkie and put it into her hand.

  “Sounds unlikely, but I’ll run it past Polworth next time we meet.”

  Ignoring the strawberries, which had been Robin’s purchase, Strike opened a can of Coke and drank it while smoking and watching the sky turn bloody as they drew nearer to London.

  “Dennis Creed’s still alive, you know,” said Strike, watching trees blur out of the window. “I was reading about him online this morning.”

  “Where is he?” asked Robin.

  “Broadmoor,” said Strike. “He went to Wakefield initially, then Belmarsh, and was transferred to Broadmoor in ’95.”

  “What was the psychiatric diagnosis?”

  “Controversial. Psychiatrists disagreed about whether or not he was sane at his trial. Very high IQ. In the end the jury decided he was capable of knowing what he was doing was wrong, hence prison, not hospital. But he must’ve developed symptoms since that to justify medical treatment.

  “On a very small amount of reading,” Strike went on, “I can see why the lead investigator thought Margot Bamborough might have been one of Creed’s victims. Allegedly, there was a small van seen speeding dangerously in the area, around the time she should have been walking toward the Three Kings. Creed used a van,” Strike elucidated, in response to Robin’s questioning look, “in some of the other known abductions.”

  The lamps along the motorway had been lit before Robin, having finished her Yorkie, quoted:

  “‘She lies in a holy place.’”

  Still smoking, Strike snorted.

  “Typical medium bollocks.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, I bloody think,” said Strike. “Very convenient, the way people can only speak in crossword clues from the afterlife. Come off it.”

  “All right, calm down. I was only thinking out loud.”

  “You could spin almost anywhere as ‘a holy place’ if you wanted. Clerkenwell, where she disappeared—that whole area’s got some kind of religious connection. Monks or something. Know where Dennis Creed was living in 1974?”

  “Go on.”

  “Paradise Park, Islington,” said Strike.

  “Oh,” said Robin. “So you think the medium did know who Anna’s mother was?”

  “If I was in the medium game, I’d sure as hell Google clients’ names before they showed up. But it could’ve been a fancy touch designed to sound comforting, like Anna said. Hints at a decent burial. However bad her end was, it’s purified by where her remains are. Creed admitted to scattering bone fragments in Paradise Park, by the way. Stamped them into the flower-beds.”

  Although the car was still stuffy, Robin felt a small, involuntary shudder run through her.

  “Fucking ghouls,” said Strike.

  “Who?”

  “Mediums, psychics, all those shysters… preying on people.”

  “You don’t think some of them believe in what they’re doing? Think they really are getting messages from the beyond?”

  “I think there are a lot of nutters in the world, and the less we reward them for their nuttery, the better for all of us.”

  The mobile rang in Strike’s pocket. He pulled it out.

  “Cormoran Strike.”

  “Yes, hello—it’s Anna Phipps. I’ve got Kim here, too.”

  Strike turned the mobile to speakerphone.

  “Hope you can hear us all right,” he said, over the rumble and rattle of the Land Rover. “We’re still in the car.”

  “Yes, it is noisy,” said Anna.

  “I’ll pull over,” said Robin, and she did so, turning smoothly onto the hard shoulder.

  “Oh, that’s better,” said Anna, as Robin turned off the engine. “Well, Kim and I have talked it over, and we’ve decided: we would like to hire you.”

  Robin felt a jolt of excitement.

  “Great,” said Strike. “We’re very keen to help, if we can.”

  “But,” said Kim, “we feel that, for psychological and—well, candidly, financial—reasons we’d like to set a term on the investigation, because if the police haven’t solved this case in nigh on forty years—I mean, you could be looking for the next forty and find nothing.”

  “That’s true,” said Strike. “So—”

  “We think a year,” said Anna, sounding nervous. “What do you—does that seem reasonable?”

  “It’s what I would have suggested,” said Strike. “To be honest, I don’t think we’ve got much chance in anything under twelve months.”

  “Is there anything more you need from me to get started?” Anna asked, sounding both nervous and excited.

  “I’m sure something will occur to me,” said Strike, taking out his notebook to check a name, “but it would be good to speak to your father and Cynthia.”

  The other end of the line became completely silent. Strike and Robin looked at each other.

  “I don’t think there’s any chance of that,” said Anna. “I’m sorry, but if my father knew I was doing this, I doubt he’d ever forgive me.”

  “And what about Cynthia?”

  “The thing is,” came Kim’s voice, “Anna’s father’s been unwell recently. Cynthia is the more reasonable of the two on this subject, but she won’t want anything to upset Roy just now.”

  “Well, no problem,” said Strike, raising his eyebrows at Robin. “Our first priority’s got to be getting hold of the police file. In the meantime, I’ll email you one of our standard contracts. Print it out, sign it and send it back, we’ll get going.”

  “Thank you,” said Anna and, with a slight delay, Kim said, “OK, then.”

  They hung up.

  “Well, well,” said Strike. “Our first cold case. This is going to be interesting.”

  “And we’ve got a year,” said Robin, pulling back out onto the motorway.

  “They’ll extend that if we look as though we’re onto something,” said Strike.

  “Good luck with that,” said Robin sardonically. “Kim’s prepared to give us a year so she can tell Anna they’ve tried everything. I’ll bet you a fiver right now we don’t get any extensions.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” said Strike. “If there’s a hint of a lead, Anna’s going to want to see it through to the end.”

  The remainder of the journey was spent discussing the agency’s four current investigations, a conversation that took them all the way to the top of Denmark Street, where Strike got out.

  “Cormoran,” said Robin, as he lifted the holdall out of the back of the Land Rover, “there’s a message on your desk from Charlotte Campbell. She called the day before yesterday and asked you to ring her back. She said she’s got something you want.”

  There was a brief moment where Strike simply looked at Robin, his expression unreadable.

  “Right. Thanks. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. No, I won’t,” he instantly contradicted himself, “you’ve got time off. Enjoy.”

  And with a slam of the rear door he limped off toward the office, head down, carrying his holdall over his shoulder, leaving an exhausted Robin no wiser as to whether he did or didn’t want whatever it was that Charlotte Campbell had.

  PART TWO

  Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  8

  Full dreadfull thinges out of that balefull booke

  He red…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  When Strike and Robin broke the news of her husband’s bigamy, the white-faced woman they now called the Second Mrs. Tufty had sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Her small but charming house in central Windsor was quiet that Tuesday morning, her son and daughter at primary school, and she’d cleaned before they arrived: there was a smell of Pledge in the air and Hoover marks on the carpet. Upon the highly polished coffee table lay ten photographs of Tufty in Torquay, minus his toupee, laughing as he walked out of the pizza restaurant with the teenage boys who so strongly resembled the yo
ung children he’d fathered in Windsor, his arm around a smiling woman who might have been their client’s older sister.

  Robin, who could remember exactly how she’d felt when Sarah Shadlock’s diamond earring had fallen out of her own marital bed, could only guess at the scale of pain, humiliation and shame behind the taut face. Strike was speaking conventional words of sympathy, but Robin would have bet her entire bank account that Mrs. Tufty hadn’t heard a word—and knew she’d been right when Mrs. Tufty suddenly stood up, shaking so badly that Strike also struggled to his feet, mid-sentence, in case she needed catching. However, she walked jerkily past him out of the room. Shortly afterward, they heard the front door open and spotted their client through the net curtain, approaching a red Audi Q3 parked in front of the house with a golf club in her hand.

  “Oh shit,” said Robin.

  By the time they reached her, the Second Mrs. Tufty had smashed the windscreen and put several deep dents in the roof of the car. Gawping neighbors had appeared at windows and a pair of Pomeranians were yapping frenziedly behind glass in the house opposite. When Strike grabbed the four iron out of her hand, Mrs. Tufty swore at him, tried to wrestle it back, then burst into a storm of tears.

  Robin put her arm around their client and steered her firmly back into the house, Strike bringing up the rear, holding the golf club. In the kitchen, Robin instructed Strike to make strong coffee and find brandy. On Robin’s advice, Mrs. Tufty called her brother and begged him to come, quickly, but when she’d hung up and begun scrolling to find Tufty’s number, Robin jerked the mobile out of her well-manicured hand.