“Oh my God,” she said, “so even the Julie bit’s a lie?”

“It’s not a lie!” said Douthwaite loudly. “I told you Julie and I had an argument a couple of days before she died, I told you that, because I felt so guilty after! This man, this—what did you say his name was? Oakden?—yeah, he turned up, saying he was writing a book about Dr. Bamborough disappearing. Went round all the other Redcoats talking to them about me, telling them all I’d been a suspect and how I’d changed my name afterward, making me sound dodgy as hell. And Julie was really pissed off with me because I hadn’t told her—”

“Well, you really learned that lesson, didn’t you, Steve?” said Donna. “Run and hide, that’s all you know, and when you’re found out, you just sneak off and find some other woman to whine to, until she finds you out, and then—”

“Mr. Douthwaite,” said Strike, cutting across Donna, “I want to thank you for your time. I know it’s been a shock, having all this raked up again.”

Robin looked up at Strike, astonished. He couldn’t be leaving the interview here, surely? The Douthwaites (or Diamonds, as they thought of themselves), looked similarly taken aback. Strike extracted a second card from his pocket and held it out to Douthwaite.

“If you remember anything,” the detective said, “you know where to find me. It’s never too late.”

The hourglass tattoo on Douthwaite’s forearm rippled as he held out his hand for the card.

“Who else’ve you talked to?” Douthwaite asked Strike.

Now that his ordeal was over, he seemed curiously averse to it ending. Perhaps, thought Robin, he feared being alone with his wife.

“Margot’s husband and family,” said Strike, watching Douthwaite’s reactions. “The co-workers who’re still alive—Dr. Gupta. One of the receptionists, Irene Hickson. Janice Beattie, the nur—”

“That’s nice,” piped up Donna, “the nurse is still available, Steve—”

“—an ex-boyfriend of Margot’s, her best friend, and a few other people.”

Douthwaite, who’d flushed at his wife’s interjection, said,

“Not Dennis Creed?”

“Not yet,” said Strike. “Well,” he looked from husband to wife, “thanks for your time. We appreciate it.”

Robin got to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly to Donna. “I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Donna.

As Strike and Robin reached the top of the stairs, they heard shouting break out again behind the door of Lochnagar.

“Donna, babes—”

“Don’t you dare call me babes, you fucking bastard!”

“No point carrying on,” said Strike quietly, setting off down the steep tartaned stairs as slowly as the obese old lady had moved. “He’s not going to say it with her there.”

“Say what?”

“Well, that,” said Strike, as the Douthwaites’ shouts echoed down the stairs, “is the question, isn’t it?”

65

Like as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde

Directs her course vnto one certaine cost,

Is met of many a counter winde and tyde,

With which her winged speed is let and crost,

And she her selfe in stormie surges tost;

Yet making many a borde, and many a bay,

Still winneth way, ne hath her compasse lost:

Right so it fares with me in this long way,

Whose course is often stayd, yet neuer is astray.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

“I’m hungry,” Strike announced, once they stepped down onto the sunny pavement outside the Allardice.

“Let’s get some fish and chips,” said Robin.

“Now you’re talking,” said Strike enthusiastically, as they headed off toward the end of Scarbrough Avenue.

“Cormoran, what makes you think Douthwaite knows something?”

“Didn’t you see the way he looked at me, when I asked him about his last appointment with Margot?”

“I must’ve been looking at Donna. I was seriously worried she was going to pass out.”

“Wish she had,” said Strike.

“Strike!”

“He was definitely thinking about telling me something, then she bloody ruined it.” As they reached the end of the road, he said, “That was a scared man, and I don’t think he’s only scared of his wife… Do we go left or right?”

“Right,” said Robin, so they headed off along Grand Parade, passing a long open-fronted building called Funland, which was full of beeping and flashing video games, claw machines and coin-operated mechanical horses for children to ride. “Are you saying Douthwaite’s guilty?”

“I think he feels it,” Strike said, as they wove their way in and out of cheerful, T-shirted families and couples. “He looked at me back there as though he was bursting to tell me something that’s weighing on him.”

“If he had actual evidence, why didn’t he tell the police? It would’ve got them off his back.”

“I can think of one reason.”

“He was scared of the person he thought had killed her?”

“Exactly.”

“So… Luca Ricci?” said Robin.

At that moment, a male voice from the depths of Funland called, “White seven and four, seventy-four.”

“Possibly,” said Strike, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Douthwaite and Ricci were living in the same area at the time. Maybe going to the same pubs. I suppose he might’ve heard a rumor about Ricci being out to get her. But that doesn’t fit with the eye-witness accounts, does it? If Douthwaite was issuing the warning, you’d think it’d be Margot looking distressed afterward, whereas we know he was the one who came running out of there looking scared and worried… but my gut feeling is that Douthwaite thinks whatever happened between them at that last appointment is relevant to her disappearance.”

The entrance to a well-maintained park on their right was ablaze with petunias. Ahead, on an island in the middle of a traffic island, stood a sixty-foot-high clock tower of brick and stone, with a faintly Gothic appearance, and faces like a miniature Big Ben.

“Exactly how many chippies has Skegness got?” Strike asked, as they came to a halt on the busy intersection beside the clock tower. They were standing right beside two establishments which had tables spilling out onto the pavement, and he could see a further two fish and chip shops on the other side of the junction.

“I never counted,” said Robin. “I was always more interested in the donkeys. Shall we try here?” she asked, pointing at the nearest free table, which was pistachio green and belonged to Tony’s Chippy (“We Sell on Quality not Price”).

“Donkeys?” repeated Strike, grinning, as he sat down on the bench.

“That’s right,” said Robin. “Cod or haddock?”

“Haddock, please,” said Strike, and Robin headed into the chip shop to order.

After a minute or so, looking forward to his chips and enjoying the feeling of sun on his back, Strike became aware that he was still watching Robin, and fixed his eyes instead on a fluttering mass just above him. Even though the top of the yellow railings separating Tony’s from Harry Ramsbottom’s had been fitted with fine spikes to stop birds landing on them, a handful of speckled starlings were doing just that, delicately poised between the needles, and balanced in the iron circles just below them, waiting for the chance to swoop on an abandoned chip.

Watching the birds, Strike wondered what the chances were of Douthwaite ringing the number on his card. He was a man with a long track record of hiding from his past, but Strike had definitely read in his face a desperation he’d only ever seen in the faces of men who could no longer bear the pressure of a terrible secret. Idly rubbing his chin, Strike decided to give the man a short period of grace, then either call him again, or even return, unannounced, to Skegness, where he might waylay Douthwaite in the street or a pub, where Donna couldn’t interfere.

Strike was still watching the starlings when Robin set down two polystyrene trays, two small wooden forks and two cans of Coke on the table.

“Mushy peas,” said Strike, looking at Robin’s tray, where a hefty dollop of what looked like green porridge sat alongside her fish and chips.

“Yorkshire caviar,” said Robin, sitting down. “I didn’t think you’d want any.”

“You were right,” said Strike, picking up a sachet of tomato sauce while watching with something like revulsion as Robin dipped a chip into the green sludge and ate it.

“Soft Southerner, you are,” she said, and Strike laughed.

“Don’t ever let Polworth hear you say that,” he said, breaking off a bit of fish with his fingers, dipping it in ketchup and eating it. He then, without warning, broke into song:

A good sword and a trusty hand!

A merry heart and true!

King James’s men shall understand,

What Cornish lads can do.

“What on earth’s that?” asked Robin, laughing.

“First verse of ‘The Song of the Western Men,’” said Strike. “The gist is that Cornishmen are the antithesis of soft bastards. Bloody hell, this is good.”