Troubled Blood

“But,” said Tucker, sweeping the two maps off the table and folding them up with his shaking hands, “there’s no will, or there hasn’t been, not for years. Nobody in authority cares. They think it’s all over, they think Creed’ll never talk. So that’s why it’s got to be your boss who interviews him. I wish it could be me,” said Tucker, “but you’ve seen what Creed thought I was worth…”

As Tucker slid his papers back inside his windcheater, Robin became aware that the café around them had filled up during their conversation. At the nearest table sat three young men, all with amusingly Edwardian beards. So long attuned only to Tucker’s low, hoarse voice, Robin’s ears seemed suddenly full of noise. She felt as though she’d suddenly been transported from the distant past into a brash and indifferent present. What would Margot Bamborough, Louise Tucker and Kara Wolfson make of the mobile phones in almost every hand, or the sound of Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” now playing somewhere nearby, or the young woman carrying a coffee back from the counter, her hair in high bunches, wearing a T-shirt that read GO F#CK YOUR #SELFIE?

“Don’t cry, Grandad,” said yellow-haired Lauren softly, putting her arm around her grandfather as a fat tear rolled down his swollen nose and fell upon the wooden table. Now that he’d stopped talking about Louise and Creed, he seemed to have become smaller.

“It’s affected our whole family,” Lauren told Robin. “Mum and Auntie Lisa are always scared if me and my cousins go out after dark—”

“Quite right!” said Tucker, who was now mopping his eyes on his sleeve again.

“—and all us grew up knowing it’s something that can really happen, you know?” said the innocent-faced Lauren. “People really do disappear. They really do get murdered.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “I know.”

She reached across the table and briefly gripped the old man’s forearm.

“We’ll do everything we can, Mr. Tucker, I promise. I’ll be in touch.”

As she left the café, Robin was aware that she’d just spoken for Strike, who knew absolutely nothing of the plan to interview Creed, let alone to try and find out what had happened to Louise Tucker, but she had no energy left to worry about that just now. Robin drew her jacket more closely around her and walked back to the office, her thoughts consumed by the terrible vacuum left in the wake of the vanished.



52



Oft Fire is without Smoke.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

It was one o’clock in the morning, and Strike was driving toward Stoke Newington to relieve Robin, who was currently keeping watch over the terraced house that Shifty’s Boss was again visiting, and where he was almost certainly indulging in another bout of the blackmailable behavior Shifty had somehow found out about. Even though Shifty’s hold on his boss had driven the latter onto Tower Bridge, SB didn’t appear able or willing to give up whatever it was he was doing inside the house of Elinor Dean.

The night was crisp and clear, although the stars overhead were only dimly visible from brightly lit Essex Road, and Barclay’s voice was currently issuing from the speaker of the BMW. A week had passed since the Scot had managed to persuade SB to leave Tower Bridge and get a coffee with him.

“He cannae help himself, the poor bastard.”

“Clearly,” said Strike. “This is his third visit in ten days.”

“He said to me, ‘Ah cannae stop.’ Says it relieves his stress.”

“How does he square that with the fact he’s suicidal?”

“It’s the blackmail that’s makin’ him suicidal, Strike, no’ whatever he gets up tae in Stoke Newington.”

“And he didn’t give any indication what he does in there?”

“I told ye, he said he doesnae shag her, but that his wife’ll leave him if it gets oot. Could be rubber,” added Barclay, thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Rubber,” repeated Barclay. “Like that guy we had who liked wearin’ latex to work under his suit.”

“Oh yeah,” said Strike. “I forgot about him.”

The various sexual predilections of their clients often blurred in Strike’s memory. He could hear the hum of the casino in the background. Shifty had been in there for hours and Barclay had been keeping him company, unnoticed, from across the floor.

“Anyway,” said Barclay, “ye want me tae stay in here, do ye? Because it’s costin’ a small fortune and ye said the client’s gettin’ pissy aboot how much we’re chargin’. I could watch when the slimy bastard leaves, from ootside on the street.”

“No, stay on him, keep photographing him, and try and get something incriminating,” said Strike.

“Shifty’s coked oot o’ his head,” said Barclay.

“Half his colleagues will be cokeheads, as well. We’re going to need something worse than that to nail the bastard for blackmailing people onto high bridges…”

“You’re goin’ soft, Strike.”

“Just try and get something on the fucker and don’t place large bets.”

“It’s no’ the gamblin’ that’ll bankrupt us,” said Barclay, “it’s the drinks.”

He hung up, and Strike wound down the window and lit a cigarette, trying to ignore the pain in his stiff neck and shoulders.

Like SB, Strike could have used a respite from life’s problems and challenges, but such outlets were currently non-existent. Over the past year, Joan’s illness had taken from him that small sliver of time that wasn’t given over to work. Since his amputation, he no longer played any kind of sport. He saw friends infrequently due to the demands of the agency, and derived many more headaches than pleasures from his relatives, who were being particularly troublesome just now.

Tomorrow was Easter Sunday, meaning that Joan’s family would be gathering together in St. Mawes to scatter her ashes at sea. Quite apart from the mournful event itself, Strike wasn’t looking forward to yet another long journey to Cornwall, or to further enforced contact with Lucy, who’d made it clear over the course of several phone calls that she was dreading this final farewell. Again and again she returned to her sadness at not having a grave to visit, and Strike detected an undertone of blame, as though she thought Strike ought to have overruled Joan’s dying wishes. Lucy had also expressed disappointment that Strike wasn’t coming down for the whole weekend, as she and Greg were, and added bluntly that he’d better remember to bring Easter eggs for all three of his nephews, not just Jack. Strike could have done without transporting three fragile chocolate eggs all the way to Truro on the train, with a holdall to manage and his leg sore from days and weeks of nonstop work.

To compound his stress, both his unknown half-sister, Prudence, and his half-brother Al had started texting him again. His half-siblings seemed to imagine that Strike, having enjoyed a moment of necessary catharsis by shouting at Rokeby over the phone, was probably regretting his outburst, and more amenable to attending his father’s party to make up. Strike hadn’t answered any of their texts, but he’d experienced them as insect bites: determined not to scratch, they were nevertheless the source of a niggling aggravation.

Overhanging every other worry was the Bamborough case which, for all the hours he and Robin were putting into it, was proving as opaque as it had when first they’d agreed to tackle the forty-year-old mystery. The year’s deadline was coming ever closer, and nothing resembling a breakthrough had yet occurred. If he was honest, Strike had low hopes of the interview with Wilma Bayliss’s daughters, which he and Robin would be conducting later that morning, before Strike boarded the train to Truro.

All in all, as he drove toward the house of the middle-aged woman for whom SB seemed to feel such an attraction, Strike had to admit he felt a glimmer of sympathy for any man in desperate search of what the detective was certain was some form of sexual release. Recently it had been brought home to Strike that the relationships he’d had since leaving Charlotte, casual though they’d been, had been his only unalloyed refuge from the job. His sex life had been moribund since Joan’s diagnosis of cancer: all those lengthy trips to Cornwall had eaten up time that might have been given to dates.