Page 224 of Troubled Blood

“What?”

“Rubber,” repeated Barclay. “Like that guy we had who liked wearin’ latex to work under his suit.”

“Oh yeah,” said Strike. “I forgot about him.”

The various sexual predilections of their clients often blurred in Strike’s memory. He could hear the hum of the casino in the background. Shifty had been in there for hours and Barclay had been keeping him company, unnoticed, from across the floor.

“Anyway,” said Barclay, “ye want me tae stay in here, do ye? Because it’s costin’ a small fortune and ye said the client’s gettin’ pissy aboot how much we’re chargin’. I could watch when the slimy bastard leaves, from ootside on the street.”

“No, stay on him, keep photographing him, and try and get something incriminating,” said Strike.

“Shifty’s coked oot o’ his head,” said Barclay.

“Half his colleagues will be cokeheads, as well. We’re going to need something worse than that to nail the bastard for blackmailing people onto high bridges…”

“You’re goin’ soft, Strike.”

“Just try and get something on the fucker and don’t place large bets.”

“It’s no’ the gamblin’ that’ll bankrupt us,” said Barclay, “it’s the drinks.”

He hung up, and Strike wound down the window and lit a cigarette, trying to ignore the pain in his stiff neck and shoulders.

Like SB, Strike could have used a respite from life’s problems and challenges, but such outlets were currently non-existent. Over the past year, Joan’s illness had taken from him that small sliver of time that wasn’t given over to work. Since his amputation, he no longer played any kind of sport. He saw friends infrequently due to the demands of the agency, and derived many more headaches than pleasures from his relatives, who were being particularly troublesome just now.

Tomorrow was Easter Sunday, meaning that Joan’s family would be gathering together in St. Mawes to scatter her ashes at sea. Quite apart from the mournful event itself, Strike wasn’t looking forward to yet another long journey to Cornwall, or to further enforced contact with Lucy, who’d made it clear over the course of several phone calls that she was dreading this final farewell. Again and again she returned to her sadness at not having a grave to visit, and Strike detected an undertone of blame, as though she thought Strike ought to have overruled Joan’s dying wishes. Lucy had also expressed disappointment that Strike wasn’t coming down for the whole weekend, as she and Greg were, and added bluntly that he’d better remember to bring Easter eggs for all three of his nephews, not just Jack. Strike could have done without transporting three fragile chocolate eggs all the way to Truro on the train, with a holdall to manage and his leg sore from days and weeks of nonstop work.

To compound his stress, both his unknown half-sister, Prudence, and his half-brother Al had started texting him again. His half-siblings seemed to imagine that Strike, having enjoyed a moment of necessary catharsis by shouting at Rokeby over the phone, was probably regretting his outburst, and more amenable to attending his father’s party to make up. Strike hadn’t answered any of their texts, but he’d experienced them as insect bites: determined not to scratch, they were nevertheless the source of a niggling aggravation.

Overhanging every other worry was the Bamborough case which, for all the hours he and Robin were putting into it, was proving as opaque as it had when first they’d agreed to tackle the forty-year-old mystery. The year’s deadline was coming ever closer, and nothing resembling a breakthrough had yet occurred. If he was honest, Strike had low hopes of the interview with Wilma Bayliss’s daughters, which he and Robin would be conducting later that morning, before Strike boarded the train to Truro.

All in all, as he drove toward the house of the middle-aged woman for whom SB seemed to feel such an attraction, Strike had to admit he felt a glimmer of sympathy for any man in desperate search of what the detective was certain was some form of sexual release. Recently it had been brought home to Strike that the relationships he’d had since leaving Charlotte, casual though they’d been, had been his only unalloyed refuge from the job. His sex life had been moribund since Joan’s diagnosis of cancer: all those lengthy trips to Cornwall had eaten up time that might have been given to dates.

Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t had opportunities. Ever since the agency had become successful, a few of the rich and unhappy women who’d formed a staple of the agency’s work had shown a tendency to size up Strike as a potential palliative for their own emotional pain or emptiness. Strike had taken on a new client of exactly this type the previous day, Good Friday. As she’d replaced Mrs. Smith, who’d already initiated divorce proceedings against her husband on the basis of Morris’s pictures of him with their nanny, they’d nicknamed the thirty-two-year-old brunette Miss Jones.

She was undeniably beautiful, with long legs, full lips and skin of expensive smoothness. She was of interest to the gossip columns partly because she was an heiress, and partly because she was involved in a bitter custody battle with her estranged boyfriend, on whom she was seeking dirt to use in court. Miss Jones had crossed and re-crossed her long legs while she told Strike about her hypocritical ex-partner’s drug use, the fact that he was feeding stories about her to the papers, and that he had no interest in his six-month-old daughter other than as a means to make Miss Jones unhappy. While he was seeing her to the door, their interview concluded, she’d repeatedly touched his arm and laughed longer than necessary at his mild pleasantries. Trying to usher her politely out of the door under Pat’s censorious eye, Strike had had the sensation of trying to prize chewing gum off his fingers.

Strike could well imagine Dave Polworth’s comments had he been privy to the scene, because Polworth had trenchant theories about the sort of women who found his oldest friend attractive, and of whom Charlotte was the purest example of the type. The women most readily drawn to Strike were, in Polworth’s view, neurotic, chaotic and occasionally dangerous, and their fondness for the bent-nosed ex-boxer indicated a subconscious desire for something rocklike to which they could attach themselves like limpets.

Driving through the deserted streets of Stoke Newington, Strike’s thoughts turned naturally to his ex-fiancée. He hadn’t responded to the desperate text messages she’d sent him from what he knew, having Googled the place, to be a private psychiatric clinic. Not only had they arrived on the eve of his departure for Joan’s deathbed, he hadn’t wanted to fuel her vain hopes that he would appear to rescue her. Was she still there? If so, it would be her longest ever period of hospitalization. Her one-year-old twins were doubtless in the care of a nanny, or the mother-in-law Charlotte had once assured him was ready and willing to take over maternal duties.

A short distance away from Elinor Dean’s street, Strike called Robin.

“Is he still inside?”

“Yes. You’ll be able to park right behind me, there’s a space. I think number 14 must’ve gone away for Easter with the kids. Both cars are gone.

“See you in five.”

When Strike turned into the street, he saw the old Land Rover parked a few houses down from Elinor’s front door, and was able to park without difficulty in the space directly behind it. As he turned off his engine, Robin jumped down out of her Land Rover, closed the door quietly, and walked around the BMW to the passenger’s side, a messenger bag over her shoulder.

“Morning,” she said, sliding into the seat beside him.

“Morning. Aren’t you keen to get away?”

As he said it, the screen of the mobile in her hand lit up: somebody had texted her. Robin didn’t even look at the message, but turned the phone over on her knee, to hide its light.

“Got a few things to tell you. I’ve spoken to C. B. Oakden.”