“No, you said I’d try,” Strike contradicted her, temper rising now, in spite of his best intentions. “You said ‘You’ll make it if you can, though.’ Well, I couldn’t make it, I told you so in advance and it’s not my fault you told Luke differently—”
“I appreciate you taking Jack out every now and then,” said Lucy, talking over him, “but has it never occurred to you that it would be nice if the other two could come, too? Adam cried when Jack came home from the War Rooms! And then you come down here,” said Lucy, who seemed determined to get everything off her chest now she’d started, “and you only bring a present for Jack. What about Luke and Adam?”
“Ted called with the news about Joan and I set straight off. I’d been saving those badges for Jack, so I brought them with me.”
“Well, how do you think that makes Luke and Adam feel? Obviously they think you don’t like them as much as Jack!”
“I don’t,” said Strike, finally losing his temper. “Adam’s a whiny little prick and Luke’s a complete arsehole.”
He crushed out his cigarette on the wall, flicked the stub into the hedge and headed back inside, leaving Lucy gasping for air like a beached fish.
Back in the dark sitting room, Strike blundered straight into the table nest: the vase of dried flowers toppled heavily onto the patterned carpet and before he knew what he was doing he’d crushed the fragile stems and papery heads to dust beneath his false foot. He was still tidying up the fragments as best he could when Lucy strode silently past him toward the door to the stairs, emanating maternal outrage. Strike set the now empty vase back on the table and, waiting until he heard Lucy’s bedroom door close, headed upstairs for the bathroom, fuming.
Afraid to use the shower in case he woke Ted and Joan, he peed, pulled the flush and only then remembered how noisy the old toilet was. Washing as best he could in tepid water while the cistern refilled with a noise like a cement mixer, Strike thought that if anyone slept through that, they’d have to be drugged.
Sure enough, on opening the bathroom door, he came face to face with Joan. The top of his aunt’s head barely came up to Strike’s chest. He looked down on her thinning gray hair, into once forget-me-not blue eyes now bleached with age. Her frogged and quilted red dressing gown had the ceremonial dignity of a kabuki robe.
“Morning,” Strike said, trying to sound cheerful and achieving only a fake bonhomie. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, no, I’ve been awake for a while. How was Dave?” she asked.
“Great,” said Strike heartily. “Loving his new job.”
“And Penny and the girls?”
“Yeah, they’re really happy to be back in Cornwall.”
“Oh good,” said Joan. “Dave’s mum thought Penny might not want to leave Bristol.”
“No, it’s all worked out great.”
The bedroom door behind Joan opened. Luke was standing there in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes ostentatiously.
“You woke me up,” he told Strike and Joan.
“Oh, sorry, love,” said Joan.
“Can I have Coco Pops?”
“Of course you can,” said Joan fondly.
Luke bounded downstairs, stamping on the stairs to make as much noise as possible. He was gone barely a minute before he came bounding back toward them, glee etched over his freckled face.
“Granny, Uncle Cormoran’s broken your flowers.”
You little shit.
“Yeah, sorry. The dried ones,” Strike told Joan. “I knocked them over. The vase is fine—”
“Oh, they couldn’t matter less,” said Joan, moving at once to the stairs. “I’ll fetch the carpet sweeper.”
“No,” said Strike at once, “I’ve already—”
“There are still bits all over the carpet,” Luke said. “I trod on them.”
I’ll tread on you in a minute, arsehole.
Strike and Luke followed Joan back to the sitting room, where Strike insisted on taking the carpet sweeper from Joan, a flimsy, archaic device she’d had since the seventies. As he plied it, Luke stood in the kitchen doorway watching him, smirking while shoveling Coco Pops into his mouth. By the time Strike had cleaned the carpet to Joan’s satisfaction, Jack and Adam had joined the early morning jamboree, along with a stony-faced Lucy, now fully dressed.
“Can we go to the beach today, Mum?”
“Can we swim?”
“Can I go out in the boat with Uncle Ted?”
“Sit down,” Strike told Joan. “I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
But Lucy had already done it. She handed Joan the mug, threw Strike a filthy look, then turned back to the kitchen, answering her sons’ questions as she went.
“What’s going on?” asked Ted, shuffling into the room in pajamas, confused by this break-of-dawn activity.
He’d once been nearly as tall as Strike, who greatly resembled him. His dense, curly hair was now snow white, his deep brown face more cracked than lined, but Ted was still a strong man, though he stooped a little. However, Joan’s diagnosis seemed to have dealt him a physical blow. He seemed literally shaken, a little disorientated and unsteady.
“Just getting my stuff together, Ted,” said Strike, who suddenly had an overpowering desire to leave. “I’m going to have to get the first ferry to make the early train.”
“Ah,” said Ted. “All the way back up to London, are you?”
“Yep,” said Strike, chucking his charging lead and deodorant back into the kit bag where the rest of his belongings were already neatly stowed. “But I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. You’ll keep me posted, right?”
“You can’t leave without breakfast!” said Joan anxiously. “I’ll make you a sandwich—”
“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.