Page 192 of Troubled Blood

“Striking, aren’t they?” said the meek-faced husband of the angry painter of Long Itchington, appearing at Robin’s side to contemplate a picture of a totally naked Io, whose hair streamed behind her and whose breasts gleamed with sweat as she fled a bull with a gargantuan erection.

“Mm,” said Robin. “I was wondering whether he was going to come to the exhibition. Paul Satchwell, I mean.”

“I think he said he’s going to pop back in,” said the man.

“Back—? You mean he’s here? In England?”

“Well, yes,” said the man, looking somewhat surprised. “He was here yesterday, anyway. Came to see them hung.”

“Visiting family, I think he said,” said the young woman in black, who seemed glad of a reason to talk to somebody other than the fuming artist in the hairband.

“You haven’t got contact details for him, have you?” asked Robin. “Maybe the address of where he’s staying?”

“No,” said the young woman, now looking intrigued. Evidently local artists didn’t usually engender this much excitement. “You can leave your name and address, though, if you like, and I’ll tell him you want to speak to him if he drops by?”

So Robin accompanied the young woman back to the reception area, where she scribbled her name and phone number onto a piece of paper and then, her heart still beating fast in excitement, went to the café, bought herself a cappuccino and positioned herself beside a long window looking out onto the Pump Room Gardens, where she had a good view of people entering the building.

Should she book back into the Premier Inn and wait here in Leamington Spa until Satchwell showed himself? Would Strike think it worth neglecting their other cases to remain here in the hope of Satchwell turning up? It was Joan’s funeral today: she couldn’t burden him with the question.

She wondered what her partner was doing now. Perhaps already dressing for the service. Robin had only ever attended two funerals. Her maternal grandfather had died just before she dropped out of university: she’d gone home for the funeral and never gone back. She remembered very little of the occasion: it had taken everything she’d had to preserve a fragile façade of well-being, and she remembered the strange sense of disembodiment that underlay the eggshell brittleness with which she’d met the half-scared inquiries of family members who knew what had happened to her. She remembered, too, Matthew’s hand around hers. He hadn’t once dropped it, skipping lectures and an important rugby game to come and be with her.

The only other funeral she’d attended had been four years previously, when she and Strike had attended the cremation of a murdered girl in the course of their first murder investigation, standing together at the back of the sparsely populated, impersonal crematorium. That had been before Strike had agreed to take her on permanently, when she’d been nothing but a temp whom Strike had allowed to inveigle her way into his investigation. Thinking back to Rochelle Onifade’s funeral, Robin realized that even then, the ties binding her to Matthew had been loosening. Robin hadn’t yet realized it, but she’d found something she wanted more than she’d wanted to be Matthew’s wife.

Her coffee finished, Robin made a quick trip to the bathroom, then returned to the gallery in the hope that Satchwell might have entered it while she wasn’t watching, but there was no sign of him. A few people had drifted in to wander around the temporary exhibition. Satchwell’s paintings were attracting the most interest. Having walked the room once more, Robin pretended an interest in an old water fountain in the corner. Covered in swags and lion’s heads with gaping mouths, it had once dispensed the health-giving spa waters.

Beyond the font lay another a room, which presented a total contrast to the clean, modern space behind her. It was octagonal and made of brick, with a very high ceiling and windows of Bristol blue glass. Robin stepped inside: it was, or had once been, a Turkish hammam or steam room, and had the appearance of a small temple. At the highest point of the vaulted ceiling was a cupola decorated with an eight-pointed star in glass, with a lantern hanging from it.

“Nice to see a bit of pagan influence, innit?”

The voice was a combination of self-conscious cockney, overlain with the merest whiff of a Greek accent. Robin spun around and there, planted firmly in the middle of the hammam, in jeans and an old denim shirt, was an elderly man with his left eye covered in a surgical dressing, which stood out, stark white against skin as brown as old terra-cotta. His straggly white hair fell to his stooping shoulders; white chest hair grew in the space left by his undone buttons, a silver chain hung around his crêpe-skinned throat, and silver and turquoise rings decorated his fingers.

“You the young lady ’oo wanted to talk to me?” asked Paul Satchwell, revealing yellow-brown teeth as he smiled.

“Yes,” said Robin, “I am. Robin Ellacott,” she added, holding out her hand.

His uncovered eye swept Robin’s face and figure with unconcealed appreciation. He held her hand a little too long after shaking it but Robin continued to smile as she withdrew it, and delved in her handbag for a card, which she gave him.

“Private detective?” said Satchwell, his smile fading a little as he read the card, one-eyed. “The ’ell’s all this?”

Robin explained.

“Margot?” said Satchwell, looking shocked. “Christ almighty, that’s, what… forty years ago?”

“Nearly,” said Robin, moving aside to let some tourists claim her spot in the middle of the hammam, and read its history off the sign on the wall. “I’ve come up from London in hopes of talking to you about her. It’d mean a lot to the family if you could tell me whatever you remember.”

“Éla ré, what d’you expect me to remember after all this time?” said Satchwell.

But Robin was confident he was going to accept. She’d discovered that people generally wanted to know what you already knew, why you’d come to find them, whether they had any reason to worry. And sometimes they wanted to talk, because they were lonely or felt neglected, and it was flattering to have somebody hang on your words, and sometimes, as now (elderly as he was, the single eye, which was a cold, pale blue, swept her body and back to her face) they wanted to spend more time with a young woman they found attractive.

“All right, then,” said Satchwell slowly, “I don’t know what I can tell you, but I’m hungry. Let me take you to lunch.”

“That’d be great, but I’ll be taking you,” said Robin, smiling. “You’re doing me the favor.”

47

… the sacred Oxe, that carelesse stands,

With gilden hornes, and flowry girlonds crownd…