Page 33 of The Running Grave

By the time he arrived back at his attic flat, he felt as grimly unhappy as he’d been for a long time. In consequence, he poured himself a double whisky, refilled his vape pen, sat down at his kitchen table and stared into space while alternately downing Scotch and exhaling vapour in the direction of his draughty window.

He’d rarely felt as angry at his mother as he did this afternoon. She’d died of what had been ruled an accidental overdose when Strike was nineteen, an overdose which Strike believed to this day had been administered by her far younger husband. His reaction to the news had been to drop out of university and join the military police, a decision he knew his unconventional mother would have found both inexplicable and vaguely comical. But why? he demanded of the Leda in his head. You knew I wanted order, and boundaries, and a life without endless fucking mess. If you hadn’t been what you were, maybe I wouldn’t be what I am. Maybe I’m reaping what you sowed, so don’t you fucking laugh at the army, or me, you with your paedophile mates and the squatters and the junkies…

These thoughts of Leda led inevitably to thoughts of Charlotte Campbell, because he knew that plenty of armchair psychologists, including close friends and family members, thought he’d been so irreparably damaged by Leda’s parenting, he’d been inevitably drawn to a similarly chaotic and unstable woman. This had always irritated Strike, and it irritated him now as he sat with his whisky, staring out of his attic window, because it so happened that there’d been profound differences between his ex-fiancée and his late mother.

Leda had had a bottomless compassion for underdogs and an incurable optimism about human nature that had never failed her. That, indeed, had been the problem: her naive, unconquerable conviction that genuine evil was only found in the repressions of small-town respectability. She might have taken endless risks, but she wasn’t self-destructive: on the contrary, she’d fully expected to live to a hundred.

Charlotte, on the other hand, was profoundly unhappy, and Strike suspected he was the only person who truly knew the depths of her misery. The surface of Charlotte’s life might look glamorous and easy, because she was extraordinarily beautiful, and came from a rich and newsworthy family, but her real value to the gossip columns was her instability. There were several suicide attempts in Charlotte’s past, and a long history of psychiatric evaluations. He’d seen the press pictures of her, dead-eyed in her red slip dress, and his only thought had been that she’d probably taken something to get her through another night of revelry, a supposition backed up by the fact that she’d called his office at midnight on the same night, leaving an incoherent message on the answer machine, which he’d deleted before anyone else could hear it.

Strike was well aware that Lucy, and some of his friends, believed him trapped perpetually in the shadow cast by those two dark caryatids, Leda and Charlotte. They wanted him to stride out into the sunlight, free at last, to find a less complicated woman, and a love untainted by pain. But what was a man supposed to do if he thought he might finally be ready to do that, and it was too late? Alone of the women jostling in his thoughts, Robin brought feelings of warmth, though they were tinged with a bitterness no less easier to bear because it was self-directed. He should have spoken up, should have forced a conversation about their respective feelings before Ryan Murphy swooped in and carried off the prize Strike had complacently thought was his for the taking.

Fuck this.

The sky outside the window was rapidly darkening. He got up from the table, went into his bedroom, returned to the kitchen with his notebook and laptop, and opened both. Work had always been his greatest refuge, and the sight of an email from Eric Wardle headed Census information at the top of his inbox felt like an immediate reward for turning away from alcohol, and back to investigation.

Wardle had done him proud. The last three censuses for Chapman Farm were attached: 1991, 2001 and 2011. Strike typed out a brief message of thanks to Wardle, then opened the first attachment, scanning the list of names provided.

After an hour and a half of online cross-referencing, and having found a bonus in the form of an interesting article about the church dating from 2005, dusk was drawing in. Strike poured himself a second whisky, sat back down at his table and contemplated the immediate results of his research: a list of names, only one of which so far had an address beside it.

He contemplated his mobile, thinking back on the days he’d occasionally called Robin at home, while she was still married. Those calls, he knew, had sometimes caused trouble, given Matthew’s resentment of his wife’s growing dedication to the job. It was Saturday night: Robin and Murphy might be at a restaurant, or the bloody theatre again. Strike took another swig of whisky, and pressed Robin’s number.

‘Hi,’ she said, answering on the second ring. ‘What’s up?’

‘Got a moment to talk? I’ve been digging information out of the census.’

‘Oh, great – Wardle came through?’

Strike heard the rattle of what he thought might be a saucepan.

‘Sure you’re not busy?’

‘No, it’s fine, I’m cooking. Ryan’s coming over for dinner, but he’s not here yet.’

‘I might have a couple of leads. There’s a woman called Sheila Kennett who lived at Chapman Farm with her late husband until the nineties. She’s knocking on a bit, but I’ve got an address for her in Coventry. Wondering whether you’d mind driving up there and interviewing her. Old lady – better you than me.’

‘No problem,’ said Robin, ‘but it’ll have to be week after next, because Midge is away from Wednesday and I’m covering for her.’

‘OK. I’ve also found an article written by a journalist called Fergus Robertson, who got an ex-member of the UHC to speak to him anonymously in 2006. There are a lot of “allegeds”: violence used against members, misappropriation of funds. They protect their sources, journalists, but I thought there might be stuff Robertson couldn’t put in, for fear of litigation. Fancy coming with me if he agrees to talk?’

‘Depends when it is,’ said Robin, ‘I’ve got a heavy week on the new stalker case, but – ouch—’

‘You OK?’

‘Burned myself – sorry, I – hang on, that’s Ryan.’

He heard her walking away towards the door. Slightly despising himself, Strike hung on: he really wanted Ryan Murphy to arrive and find Robin on the phone to him.

‘Hi,’ he heard her say, and then came Murphy’s muffled voice, and the unmistakeable sound of a kiss. ‘Dinner’s nearly done,’ she said, and Murphy said something, Robin laughed, and said ‘No, it’s Strike,’ while her detective partner sat frowning in front of his laptop.

‘Sorry, Cormoran,’ said Robin, her mouth to the receiver again, ‘carry on.’

‘I haven’t found contact details for anyone else who lived at Chapman Farm yet, but I’ll keep digging and email you what I’ve got,’ said Strike.

‘It’s Saturday night,’ said Robin. ‘Take a break. No!’ she added, laughing, and he assumed this was directed at Murphy, whose laughter he could also hear. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

‘No problem, I’ll let you go,’ he said, as she had earlier, and before she could reply, he hung up.

Thoroughly irritated at himself, Strike slapped his laptop closed and got up to examine the contents of his healthily stocked fridge. As he took out a packet of what he was starting to think of as ‘more fucking fish’ to check the sell-by date, his mobile rang. He returned to the table to check before answering, because if it was another call forwarded from the office phone, he wasn’t going to answer: the last thing he needed right now was Charlotte. Instead, he saw an unfamiliar mobile number.