“Well, yes, actually,” said Robin, after a fractional hesitation, “but now’s probably not the moment. I’ll tell you when you’re—”

“Now’s a great moment,” said Strike, who was yearning for normality, for something to think about that wasn’t connected to Joan, or loss, or St. Mawes.

So Robin related the story of her interview with Paul Satchwell, and Strike listened in silence.

“… and then he called me a nasty little bitch,” Robin concluded, “and left.”

“Christ almighty,” said Strike, genuinely amazed, not only that Robin had managed to draw so much information from Satchwell, but at what she’d found out.

“I’ve just been sitting here looking up records on my phone—I’m back in the Land Rover, going to head home in a bit. Blanche Doris Satchwell, died 1945, aged ten. She’s buried in a cemetery outside Leamington Spa. Satchwell called it a mercy killing. Well,” Robin corrected herself, “he called it a dream, which was his way of telling Margot, while retaining some plausible deniability, wasn’t it? It’s a traumatic memory to carry around with you from age six, though, isn’t it?”

“Certainly is,” said Strike, “and it gives him a motive of sorts, if he thought Margot might tell the authorities…”

“Exactly. And what d’you think about the Janice bit? Why didn’t she tell us she knew Satchwell?”

“Very good question,” said Strike. “Go over it again, what he said about Janice?”

“When I told him Janice was the one who said Margot was spotted in Leamington Spa, he said she was a shit-stirrer and that she was trying to implicate him somehow in Margot’s disappearance.”

“Very interesting indeed,” said Strike, frowning at the bobbing seagull, which was staring at the horizon with concentrated intent, its cruel, hooked beak pointing toward the horizon. “And what was that thing about Roy?”

“He said somebody had told him Roy was a ‘mummy’s boy’ who ‘had a stick up his arse,’” said Robin. “But he wouldn’t tell me who’d said it.”

“Doesn’t sound much like Janice, but you never know,” said Strike. “Well, you’ve done bloody well, Robin.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll have a proper catch-up on Bamborough when I get back,” said Strike. “Well, we’ll need a catch-up on everything.”

“Great. I hope the rest of your stay’s OK,” said Robin, with that note of finality that indicated the call was about to end. Strike wanted to keep her on the line, but she evidently thought she oughtn’t monopolize his time in his last afternoon with the grieving family, and he could think of no pretext to keep her talking. They bade each other goodbye, and Strike returned his mobile to his pocket.

“Here you go, Diddy.”

Polworth had emerged from the hotel carrying a couple of fresh pints. Strike accepted his with thanks, and both turned to face the bay as they drank.

“You back up to London tomorrow, are you?” said Polworth.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “But not for long. Joan wanted us to take her ashes out on Ted’s boat and scatter them at sea.”

“Nice idea,” said Polworth.

“Listen, mate—thanks for everything.”

“Shut up,” said Polworth. “You’d do it for me.”

“You’re right,” said Strike. “I would.”

“Easy to say, you cunt,” said Polworth, without skipping a beat, “seeing as my mum’s dead and I don’t know where the fuck my dad is.”

Strike laughed.

“Well, I’m a private detective. Want me to find him for you?”

“Fuck, no,” said Polworth. “Good riddance.”

They drank their pints. There was a brief break in the cloud and the sea was suddenly a carpet of diamonds and the bobbing seagull, a paper-white piece of origami. Strike was wondering idly whether Polworth’s passionate devotion to Cornwall was a reaction against his absent Birmingham-born father when Polworth spoke up again:

“Speaking of fathers… Joan told me yours was looking for a reunion.”

“She did, did she?”

“Don’t be narked,” said Polworth. “You know what she was like. Wanted me to know you were going through a tough time. Nothing doing, I take it?”

“No,” said Strike. “Nothing doing.”

The brief silence was broken by the shrieks and yells of Polworth’s two daughters sprinting out of the hotel. Ignoring their father and Strike, they wriggled under the chain separating road from damp shingle and ran out to the water’s edge, pursued a moment later by Strike’s nephew Luke, who was holding a couple of cream buns in his hand and clearly intent on throwing them at the girls.

“OI,” bellowed Strike. “NO!”

Luke’s face fell.

“They started it,” he said, turning to show Strike a white smear down the back of his black suit jacket, newly purchased for his great-aunt’s funeral.

“And I’m finishing it,” said Strike, while the Polworth girls giggled, peeking out over the rim of the rowing boat behind which they had taken refuge. “Put those back where you got them.”

Glaring at his uncle, Luke took a defiant bite out of one of the buns, then turned and headed back into the hotel.

“Little shit,” muttered Strike.

Polworth watched in a detached way as his girls began to kick cold seawater and sand at each other. Only when the younger girl overbalanced and fell backward into a foot of icy sea, eliciting a scream of shock, did he react.

“Fuck’s sake… get inside. Come on—don’t bloody whine, it’s your own fault—come on, inside, now!”

The three Polworths headed back into the Ship and Castle, leaving Strike alone again.

The bobbing seagull, which was doubtless used to a tide of tourists, to the chugging and grinding of the Falmouth ferry and the fishing boats passing in and out of the bay every day, had been unfazed by the shrieks and yells of the Polworth girls. Its sharp eyes were fixed upon something Strike couldn’t see, far out at sea. Only when the clouds closed again and the sea darkened to iron, did the bird take off at last. Strike’s eyes followed it as it soared on wide, curved wings into the distance, away from the shelter of the bay for open sea, ready to resume the hard but necessary business of survival.

PART FIVE

… lusty Spring, all dight in leaues of flowres…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

49

After long storms and tempests overblown,

The sun at length his joyous face doth clear;

So whenas fortune all her spite hath shown,

Some blissful hours at last must needs appear;

Else would afflicted wights oft-times despair…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

At 8 a.m. on the morning she should have been meeting her estranged husband for mediation, Robin emerged from Tottenham Court Road station beneath a cerulean sky. The sunshine felt like a minor miracle after the long months of rain and storms and Robin, who had no surveillance to do today, had put on a dress, glad to be out of her everlasting jeans and sweatshirts.

Angry as she felt at Matthew for calling off the session with only twenty-four hours’ notice (“My client regrets that an urgent matter of a personal nature has arisen. Given my own unavailability for the latter part of March, I suggest we find a mutually convenient date in April”), suspicious as she was that Matthew was dragging out the process merely to demonstrate his power and add pressure to give up her claim on their joint account, her spirits were raised by the dusty glow of the early morning sunshine illuminating the eternal roadworks at the top of Charing Cross Road. The truth, which had been borne forcibly upon Robin during the five days off that Strike had insisted she take, was that she was happier at work. With no desire to go home to Yorkshire and face the usual barrage of questions from her mother about the divorce and her job, and insufficient funds to get out of London to take a solitary mini-break, she’d spent most of her time taking care of her backlog of chores, or working on the Bamborough case.

She had, if not precisely leads, then ideas, and was now heading into the office early in the hope of catching Strike before the business of the day took over. The pneumatic drills drowned out the shouts of workmen in the road as Robin passed, until she reached the shadowy calm of Denmark Street, where the shops hadn’t yet opened.

Almost at the top of the metal staircase, Robin heard voices emanating from behind the glass office door. In spite of the fact that it was not quite eight-fifteen, the light was already on.

“Morning,” said Strike, when she opened the door. He was standing beside the kettle and looked mildly surprised to see her so early. “I thought you weren’t going to be in until lunchtime?”

“Canceled,” said Robin.

She wondered whether Strike had forgotten what she’d had on that morning, or whether he was being discreet because Morris was sitting on the fake leather sofa. Though as handsome as ever, Morris’s bright blue eyes were bloodshot and his jaw dark with stubble.

“Hello, stranger,” he said. “Look at you. Proper advert for taking it easy.”