Troubled Blood

With five active cases on the agency’s books, and only four days to go until Christmas, two of the agency’s subcontractors succumbed to seasonal flu. Morris fell first: he blamed his daughter’s nursery, where the virus had swept like wildfire through toddlers and parents alike. He continued to work until a high temperature and joint pain forced him to telephone in his apologies, by which time he’d managed to pass the bug to a furious Barclay, who in turn had transmitted it to his own wife and young daughter.

“Stupid arsehole shoulda stayed at home instead o’ breathin’ all over me in the car,” Barclay ranted hoarsely over the phone to Strike early on the morning of the twentieth, while Strike was opening up the office. The last full team meeting before Christmas was to have taken place at ten o’clock, but as two of the team were now unable to attend, Strike had decided to cancel. The only person he hadn’t been able to reach was Robin, who he assumed was on the Tube. Strike had asked her to come in early so they could catch up with the Bamborough case before everyone else arrived.

“We’re supposedtae be flying to Glasgow the morra,” Barclay rasped, while Strike put on the kettle. “The wean’s in that much pain wi’ her ears—”

“Yeah,” said Strike, who was feeling sub-standard himself, doubtless due to tiredness, and too much smoking. “Well, feel better and get back whenever you can.”

“Arsehole,” growled Barclay, and then, “Morris, I mean. Not you. Merry fuckin’ Christmas.”

Trying to convince himself that he was imagining the tickle in his throat, the slight clamminess of his back and the pain behind his eyes, Strike made himself a mug of tea, then moved through to the inner office and pulled up the blinds. Wind and heavy rain were causing the Christmas lights strung across Denmark Street to sway on their cables. Just as they’d done on the five previous mornings, the decorations reminded Strike that he still hadn’t started his Christmas shopping. He took a seat on his accustomed side of the partners’ desk, knowing that he’d now left the job so late that he would be forced to execute it within a couple of hours, which at least obviated the tedious preliminary of carefully considering what anyone might like. Rain lashed the window behind him. He’d have liked to go back to bed.

He heard the glass door open and close.

“Morning,” Robin called from the outer office. “It’s vile out there.”

“Morning,” Strike called back. “Kettle’s just boiled and team meeting’s canceled. That’s Barclay down with flu as well.”

“Shit,” said Robin. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” said Strike, now sorting out his various Bamborough notes.

But when Robin entered the inner office, carrying tea in one hand and her own notebook in the other, she didn’t think Strike looked fine at all. He was paler than usual, his forehead looked shiny and there were gray shadows around his eyes. She closed the office door and sat down opposite him without passing comment.

“Not much point to a team meeting anyway,” muttered Strike. “Fuck-all progress on any of the cases. Twinkletoes is clean. The worst you can say about him is he’s with her for the money, but her dad knew that from the start. Two-Times’ girlfriend isn’t cheating and Christ only knows what Shifty’s got on SB. You saw my email about the blonde in Stoke Newington?”

“Yes,” said Robin, whose face had been whipped into high color by the squally weather. She was trying to comb her hair back into some semblance of tidiness with her fingers. “Nothing come up on the address?”

“No. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s a relative. She patted him on the head as he left.”

“Dominatrix?” suggested Robin.

There wasn’t much she hadn’t learned about the kinks of powerful men since joining the agency.

“It occurred to me, but the way he said goodbye… they looked… cozy. But he hasn’t got a sister and she looked younger than him. Would cousins pat each other on the head?”

“Well, Sunday night’s all wrong for a normal counselor or a therapist, but patting’s quasi-parental… life coach? Psychic?”

“That’s a thought,” said Strike, stroking his chin. “Stockholders wouldn’t be impressed if he’s making business decisions based on what his fortune teller in Stoke Newington’s telling him. I was going to put Morris on to the woman over Christmas, but he’s out of action, Hutchins is on Two-Times’ girl and I’m supposed to be leaving for Cornwall day after tomorrow. You’re off to Masham when—Tuesday?”

“No,” said Robin, looking anxious. “Tomorrow—Saturday. We did discuss this back in September, remember? I swapped with Morris so I could—”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” lied Strike. His head was starting to throb, and the tea wasn’t making his throat feel much more comfortable. “No problem.”

But this, of course, meant that if he was going to give Robin a Christmas present, he’d have to buy it and get it to her by the end of the day.

“I’d try and get a later train,” said Robin, “but obviously, with it being Christmas—”

“No, you’re owed time off,” he said brusquely. “You shouldn’t be working just because those careless bastards got flu.”

Robin, who had a strong suspicion that Barclay and Morris weren’t the only people at the agency with flu, said,

“D’you want more tea?”

“What? No,” said Strike, feeling unreasonably resentful at her for, as he saw it, forcing him to go shopping. “And Postcard’s a washout, we’ve got literally noth—”

“I might —might—have something on Postcard.”

“What?” said Strike, surprised.

“Our weatherman got another postcard yesterday, sent to the television studio. It’s the fourth one bought in the National Portrait Gallery shop, and it’s got an odd message on it.”

She pulled the postcard from her bag and handed it over the desk to Strike. The picture on the front reproduced a self-portrait of Joshua Reynolds, his hand shading his eyes in the stereotypical pose of one staring at something indistinct. On the back was written:



I hope I’m wrong, but I think you sent someone to my work, holding some of my letters. Have you let someone else see them? I really hope you haven’t. Were you trying to scare me? You act like you’re so kind and down-to-earth, no airs and graces. I’d have thought you’d have the decency to come yourself if you’ve got something to say to me. If you don’t understand this, ignore.

Strike looked up at Robin.

“Does this mean…?”

Robin explained that she’d bought the same three postcards that Postcard had previously sent from the gallery shop, then roamed the gallery’s many rooms, holding the postcards so that they were visible to all the guides she passed, until an owlish woman in thick-lensed glasses had appeared to react at the sight of them, and disappeared through a door marked “Staff Only.”

“I didn’t tell you at the time,” Robin said, “because I thought I might’ve imagined it, and she also looked exactly like the kind of person I’d imagined Postcard to be, so I was worried I was doing a Talbot, chasing my own mad hunches.”

“But you’re not off your rocker, are you? That was a bloody good idea, going to the shop, and this,” he brandished the postcard of the Reynolds, “suggests you hit the bullseye first throw.”

“I didn’t manage to get a picture of her,” said Robin, trying not to show how much pleasure Strike’s praise had given her, “but she was in Room 8 and I can describe her. Big glasses, shorter than me, thick brown hair, bobbed, probably fortyish.”

Strike made a note of the description.

“Might nip along there myself before I head for Cornwall,” he said. “Right, let’s get on with Bamborough.”

But before either could say another word, the phone rang in the outer office. Glad to have something to complain about, Strike glanced at his watch, heaved himself to his feet and said,

“It’s nine o’clock, Pat should—”

But even as he said it, they both heard the glass door open, Pat’s unhurried tread and then, in her usual rasping baritone,

“Cormoran Strike Detective Agency.”

Robin tried not to smile as Strike dropped back into his chair. There was a knock on the door, and Pat stuck her head inside,

“Morning. Got a Gregory Talbot on hold for you.”

“Put him through,” said Strike. “Please,” he added, detecting a martial look in Pat’s eye, “and close the door.”

She did so. A moment later, the phone rang on the partners’ desk and Strike switched it to speakerphone.

“Hi, Gregory, Strike here.”

“Yes, hello,” said Gregory, who sounded anxious.

“What can I do for you?”

“Er, well, you know how we were clearing out the loft?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“Well, yesterday I unpacked an old box,” said Gregory, sounding tense, “and I found something hidden under Dad’s commendations and his uniform—”

“Not hidden,” said a querulous female voice in the background.

“I didn’t know it was there,” said Gregory. “And now my mother—”

“Let me talk to him,” said the woman in the background.

“My mother would like to talk to you,” said Gregory, sounding exasperated.

A defiant, elderly female voice replaced Gregory’s.

“Is this Mr. Strike?”

“It is.”

“Gregory’s told you all about how the police treated Bill at the end?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“He could have kept working once he got treatment for his thyroid, but they didn’t let him. He’d given them everything, the force was his life. Greg says he’s given you Bill’s notes?”