Page 223 of Troubled Blood

“Don’t you think,” said Robin cautiously, “when they built over it, they might have noticed—”

“Why would they?” said Tucker aggressively. “I never knew a builder who went looking for work when he could just slap concrete over it. Anyway, Creed’s not stupid. He’d’ve thrown rubbish down there on top of the body, wouldn’t he? Cover it up. So that’s a possibility,” he said firmly. “And then you’ve got this.”

Tucker’s last piece of paper was a second map.

“That there,” he said, tapping his swollen-knuckled finger on another circled building, “is Dennis Creed’s great-grandmother’s house. It’s mentioned in The Demon of Paradise Park. Creed said, in one of his interviews, the only time he ever saw countryside when he was a kid was when he got taken there.

“And look here,” said Tucker, pointing on a large patch of green. “The house backs right onto Great Church Wood. Acres of woodland, acres and acres. Creed knew the way there. He had a van. He’d played in those woods as a child.

“We know he chose Epping Forest for most of the bodies, because he had no known connection with the place, but by ’75, police were regularly checking Epping Forest by night, weren’t they? But here’s a different wood he knows, and it’s not so far away from London, and Creed’s got his van and his spades ready in the back.

“My best guess,” said Tucker, “is my Lou and your doc are in the well or in the woods. And they’ve got different technology now to what they had in the seventies. Ground-penetrating radar and what have you. It wouldn’t be difficult to see if there was a body in either of those places, not if the will was there.

“But,” said Tucker, sweeping the two maps off the table and folding them up with his shaking hands, “there’s no will, or there hasn’t been, not for years. Nobody in authority cares. They think it’s all over, they think Creed’ll never talk. So that’s why it’s got to be your boss who interviews him. I wish it could be me,” said Tucker, “but you’ve seen what Creed thought I was worth…”

As Tucker slid his papers back inside his windcheater, Robin became aware that the café around them had filled up during their conversation. At the nearest table sat three young men, all with amusingly Edwardian beards. So long attuned only to Tucker’s low, hoarse voice, Robin’s ears seemed suddenly full of noise. She felt as though she’d suddenly been transported from the distant past into a brash and indifferent present. What would Margot Bamborough, Louise Tucker and Kara Wolfson make of the mobile phones in almost every hand, or the sound of Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” now playing somewhere nearby, or the young woman carrying a coffee back from the counter, her hair in high bunches, wearing a T-shirt that read GO F#CK YOUR #SELFIE?

“Don’t cry, Grandad,” said yellow-haired Lauren softly, putting her arm around her grandfather as a fat tear rolled down his swollen nose and fell upon the wooden table. Now that he’d stopped talking about Louise and Creed, he seemed to have become smaller.

“It’s affected our whole family,” Lauren told Robin. “Mum and Auntie Lisa are always scared if me and my cousins go out after dark—”

“Quite right!” said Tucker, who was now mopping his eyes on his sleeve again.

“—and all us grew up knowing it’s something that can really happen, you know?” said the innocent-faced Lauren. “People really do disappear. They really do get murdered.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “I know.”

She reached across the table and briefly gripped the old man’s forearm.

“We’ll do everything we can, Mr. Tucker, I promise. I’ll be in touch.”

As she left the café, Robin was aware that she’d just spoken for Strike, who knew absolutely nothing of the plan to interview Creed, let alone to try and find out what had happened to Louise Tucker, but she had no energy left to worry about that just now. Robin drew her jacket more closely around her and walked back to the office, her thoughts consumed by the terrible vacuum left in the wake of the vanished.

52

Oft Fire is without Smoke.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

It was one o’clock in the morning, and Strike was driving toward Stoke Newington to relieve Robin, who was currently keeping watch over the terraced house that Shifty’s Boss was again visiting, and where he was almost certainly indulging in another bout of the blackmailable behavior Shifty had somehow found out about. Even though Shifty’s hold on his boss had driven the latter onto Tower Bridge, SB didn’t appear able or willing to give up whatever it was he was doing inside the house of Elinor Dean.

The night was crisp and clear, although the stars overhead were only dimly visible from brightly lit Essex Road, and Barclay’s voice was currently issuing from the speaker of the BMW. A week had passed since the Scot had managed to persuade SB to leave Tower Bridge and get a coffee with him.

“He cannae help himself, the poor bastard.”

“Clearly,” said Strike. “This is his third visit in ten days.”

“He said to me, ‘Ah cannae stop.’ Says it relieves his stress.”

“How does he square that with the fact he’s suicidal?”

“It’s the blackmail that’s makin’ him suicidal, Strike, no’ whatever he gets up tae in Stoke Newington.”

“And he didn’t give any indication what he does in there?”

“I told ye, he said he doesnae shag her, but that his wife’ll leave him if it gets oot. Could be rubber,” added Barclay, thoughtfully.