Page 166 of The Running Grave

‘Is there much more of that?’

‘She called again,’ said Pat, ‘but it’s more of the same. Threatening to go to the press with all her made-up nonsense.’

‘How d’you know it’s made-up nonsense?’ said Strike perversely.

‘You never assaulted her, I know that.’

‘You don’t know anything of the bloody sort,’ said Strike irritably, getting up from the sofa to fetch a banana from the kitchen area, instead of the chocolate biscuit he really fancied.

‘You might be a grumpy sod,’ said Pat, scowling, ‘but I can’t see you knocking a woman around.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Strike. ‘Be sure and tell the Mail that when they come calling – and delete those messages.’

Well aware that he was venting his anger on the office manager, he forced himself to say,

‘You’re right: I never threw her across a boat and I never did any of the other stuff she’s shouting about, either.’

‘She doesn’t like Robin,’ said Pat, looking up at him, her dark eyes shrewd behind the lenses of her reading glasses. ‘Jealous.’

‘There’s nothing—’

‘I know that,’ said Pat. ‘She’s with Ryan, isn’t she?’

Strike took a moody bite of banana.

‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Pat.

‘Nothing,’ said Strike, his mouth full. ‘I don’t negotiate with terrorists.’

‘Hm,’ said Pat. She took a deep drag on her e-cigarette then spoke through a cloud of vapour. ‘You can’t trust a drinker. Never know what they might do when the brakes are off.’

‘I’m not going to be held over a barrel for the rest of my life,’ said Strike. ‘She had sixteen fucking years from me. That’s enough.’

Throwing the banana skin into the bin, he headed back to the inner office.

Charlotte’s swerve from kindliness to vehement recrimination and threats came as no surprise to Strike, who’d endured her mood swings for years. Clever, funny and often endearing, Charlotte was also capable of fathomless spite, not to mention a self-destructive recklessness that had led her to sever relationships on a whim or to take extreme physical risks. Various psychiatrists and therapists had had their say over the years, each trying to corral her unpredictability and unhappiness into some neat medical classification. She’d been prescribed drugs, ricocheted between counsellors and been admitted to therapeutic facilities, yet Strike knew something in Charlotte herself had stubbornly resisted help. She’d always insisted that nothing the medical or psychiatric profession offered would ever, or could ever, help her. Only Strike could do that, she’d insisted time and again: only Strike could save her from herself.

Without realising it, he’d sat down in Robin’s chair instead of his own, facing the board on which he’d pinned the notes and pictures related to the UHC case, but thinking about Charlotte. He well remembered the night on the barge owned by one of her friends, the vicious row that had erupted after Charlotte had consumed a bottle and a half of wine, and the hasty departure of the rest of the intoxicated party, who’d left Strike alone to deal with a knife-wielding Charlotte who was threatening to stab herself. He’d disarmed her physically, and in the process she’d slipped over onto the floor. Ever afterwards, when she lost her temper, she’d claimed he’d thrown her. Doubtless if he’d listened to the third message he’d have been accused of other assaults, of infidelity and cruelty: in Charlotte’s telling, whenever she was drunk or angry, he was a monster of unparalleled sadism.

Six years since the relationship had ended for good, Strike had come to see that the unfixable problem between them was that he and Charlotte could never agree what reality was. She disputed everything: times, dates and events, who’d said what, how rows started, whether they were together or had broken up when he’d had other relationships. He still didn’t know whether the miscarriage she claimed she’d had shortly before they parted forever had been real: she’d never shown him proof of pregnancy, and the shifting dates might have suggested either that she wasn’t sure who the father was, or that the whole thing was imaginary. Sitting here today, he asked himself how he, whose entire professional life was an endless quest for truth, could have endured it all for so long.

With a grimace, Strike got to his feet yet again, picked up his notebook and pen and approached the board on the wall, willing himself to focus, because the following morning he’d be heading up to HMP Bedford to interview Jordan Reaney. His eyes travelled back up the left-hand column to the picture of Cherie Gittins, whose spell at Chapman Farm had overlapped with that of Reaney. After a few moments’ contemplation of her pictures, he called Pat through to the inner office.

‘You’ve got a daughter, right?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Pat, frowning.

‘How old is she?’

‘The hell are you asking me that for?’ said Pat, her simian face turning red. Strike, who’d never seen her blush before, had no idea what had engendered this strange reaction. Wondering whether she could possibly have imagined he had dishonourable designs on her daughter, whom he’d never met, he said,

‘I’m trying to get access to this woman’s Facebook profile. It’s set to private and she hasn’t accepted my follow request. I thought, if your daughter’s already on Facebook, with an established history, she might have a better chance. Another mother might seem less—’

‘My daughter’s not on Facebook.’

‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Sorry,’ he added, though he wasn’t sure why he was apologising.

Strike had the impression Pat wanted to say something else, but after a few seconds, she returned to the outer office. The tapping of computer keys resumed shortly afterwards.