Page 101 of Troubled Blood

“You’re coming back into the office later, though?” Strike asked.

He needed to give her the as-yet-unbought Christmas present before she left for Yorkshire.

“I wasn’t planning to,” said Robin. “Why?”

“Come back in,” Strike said, trying to think of a reason. He opened the door into the outer office. “Pat?”

“Yes?” said Pat, without looking round. She was once more typing fast and accurately, her electronic cigarette waggling between her teeth.

“Robin and I both need to head out now, but a man called Gregory Talbot’s about to drop off a can of 16mm film. D’you think you can track down a projector that’ll play it? Ideally before five o’clock?”

Pat swung slowly around on her desk chair to look at Strike, her monkey-ish face set, her eyes narrowed.

“You want me to find a vintage film projector by five o’clock?”

“That’s what I said.” Strike turned to Robin. “Then we can have a quick look at whatever Talbot had hiding in the attic before you leave for Masham.”

“OK,” said Robin, “I’ll come back at four.”

27

His name was Talus, made of yron mold,

Immoueable, resistlesse, without end.

Who in his hand an yron flale did hould,

With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth vnfould.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Some two and a half hours later, Strike stood beneath the awning of Hamleys on Regent Street, shopping bags by his feet, telling himself firmly that he was fine in spite of ample empirical evidence that he was, in fact, shivering. Cold rain was spattering all around him onto the dirty pavements, where it was kicked out of puddles by the marching feet of hundreds of passing pedestrians. It splashed over curbs in the wake of passing vehicles and dripped down the back of Strike’s collar, though he stood, theoretically, beneath shelter.

While checking his phone yet again for some sign that Shanker hadn’t forgotten they were supposed to be meeting for a drink, he lit a cigarette, but his raw throat didn’t appreciate the sudden ingestion of smoke. With a foul taste in his mouth, he ground out the cigarette after one drag. There was no message from Shanker, so Strike picked up his bulky shopping bags and set off again, his throat burning every time he swallowed.

He’d imagined optimistically that he might have finished all his shopping within two hours, but midday had come and gone and he still wasn’t done. How did people decide what to buy, when the speakers were all shrieking Christmas tunes at you, and the shops were full of too much choice, and all of it looked like junk? Endless processions of women kept ranging across his path, choosing items with apparently effortless ease. Were they genetically programmed to seek and find the right gift? Was there nobody he could pay to do this for him?

His eyes felt heavy, his throat ached and his nose had started running. Unsure where he was going, or what he was looking for, he walked blindly onwards. He, who usually had an excellent sense of direction, kept turning the wrong way, becoming disorientated. Several times he knocked into carefully stacked piles of Christmas merchandise, or buffeted smaller people, who scowled and muttered and scurried away.

The bulky bags he was carrying contained three identical Nerf blasters for his nephews; large plastic guns which shot foam bullets, which Strike had decided to buy on the dual grounds that he would have loved one when he was eleven, and the assistant had assured him they were one of the must-have gifts of the year. He’d bought his Uncle Ted a sweater because he couldn’t think of anything else, his brother-in-law a box of golf balls and a bottle of gin on the same principle, but he still had the trickiest gifts to buy—the ones for the women: Lucy, Joan and Robin.

His mobile rang.

“Fuck.”

He hobbled sideways out of the crowd and, standing beside a mannequin wearing a reindeer sweater, shook himself free from a few of his bags so that he could pull out his mobile.

“Strike.”

“Bunsen, I’m near Shakespeare’s ’Ead on Great Marlborough Street. See you there in twenty?”

“Great,” said Strike, who was becoming hoarse. “I’m just round the corner.”

Another wave of sweat passed over him, soaking scalp and chest. It was, some part of his brain acknowledged, just possible that he had caught Barclay’s flu, and if that was the case, he mustn’t give it to his severely immunosuppressed aunt. He picked up his shopping bags again and made his way back to the slippery pavement outside.

The black and white timbered frontage of Liberty rose up to his right as he headed along Great Marlborough Street. Buckets and boxes of flowers lay all around the main entrance, temptingly light and portable, and already wrapped; so easy to carry to the Shakespeare’s Head and take on to the office afterward. But, of course, flowers wouldn’t do this time. Sweating worse than ever, Strike turned into the store, dumped his bags once more on the floor beside an array of silk scarves, and called Ilsa.