Page 23 of Troubled Blood

The remainder of the journey was spent discussing the agency’s four current investigations, a conversation that took them all the way to the top of Denmark Street, where Strike got out.

“Cormoran,” said Robin, as he lifted the holdall out of the back of the Land Rover, “there’s a message on your desk from Charlotte Campbell. She called the day before yesterday and asked you to ring her back. She said she’s got something you want.”

There was a brief moment where Strike simply looked at Robin, his expression unreadable.

“Right. Thanks. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. No, I won’t,” he instantly contradicted himself, “you’ve got time off. Enjoy.”

And with a slam of the rear door he limped off toward the office, head down, carrying his holdall over his shoulder, leaving an exhausted Robin no wiser as to whether he did or didn’t want whatever it was that Charlotte Campbell had.

PART TWO

Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

8

Full dreadfull thinges out of that balefull booke

He red…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

When Strike and Robin broke the news of her husband’s bigamy, the white-faced woman they now called the Second Mrs. Tufty had sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Her small but charming house in central Windsor was quiet that Tuesday morning, her son and daughter at primary school, and she’d cleaned before they arrived: there was a smell of Pledge in the air and Hoover marks on the carpet. Upon the highly polished coffee table lay ten photographs of Tufty in Torquay, minus his toupee, laughing as he walked out of the pizza restaurant with the teenage boys who so strongly resembled the young children he’d fathered in Windsor, his arm around a smiling woman who might have been their client’s older sister.

Robin, who could remember exactly how she’d felt when Sarah Shadlock’s diamond earring had fallen out of her own marital bed, could only guess at the scale of pain, humiliation and shame behind the taut face. Strike was speaking conventional words of sympathy, but Robin would have bet her entire bank account that Mrs. Tufty hadn’t heard a word—and knew she’d been right when Mrs. Tufty suddenly stood up, shaking so badly that Strike also struggled to his feet, mid-sentence, in case she needed catching. However, she walked jerkily past him out of the room. Shortly afterward, they heard the front door open and spotted their client through the net curtain, approaching a red Audi Q3 parked in front of the house with a golf club in her hand.

“Oh shit,” said Robin.

By the time they reached her, the Second Mrs. Tufty had smashed the windscreen and put several deep dents in the roof of the car. Gawping neighbors had appeared at windows and a pair of Pomeranians were yapping frenziedly behind glass in the house opposite. When Strike grabbed the four iron out of her hand, Mrs. Tufty swore at him, tried to wrestle it back, then burst into a storm of tears.

Robin put her arm around their client and steered her firmly back into the house, Strike bringing up the rear, holding the golf club. In the kitchen, Robin instructed Strike to make strong coffee and find brandy. On Robin’s advice, Mrs. Tufty called her brother and begged him to come, quickly, but when she’d hung up and begun scrolling to find Tufty’s number, Robin jerked the mobile out of her well-manicured hand.

“Give it back!” said Mrs. Tufty, wild-eyed and ready to fight. “The bastard… the bastard… I want to talk to him… give it back!”

“Bad idea,” said Strike, putting coffee and brandy in front of her. “He’s already proven he’s adept at hiding money and assets from you. You need a shit-hot lawyer.”

They remained with the client until her brother, a suited HR executive, arrived. He was annoyed that he’d been asked to leave work early, and so slow at grasping what he was being told that Strike became almost irate and Robin felt it necessary to intervene to stop a row.

“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, as they drove back toward London. “He was already married to someone else when he married your sister. How hard is that to grasp?”

“Very hard,” said Robin, an edge to her voice. “People don’t expect to find themselves in these kinds of situations.”

“D’you think they heard me when I asked them not to tell the press we were involved?”

“No,” said Robin.

She was right. A fortnight after they’d visited Windsor, they woke to find several tabloids carrying front-page exposés of Tufty and his three women, a picture of Strike in all the inside pages and his name in one of the headlines. He was news in his own right now, and the juxtaposition of famous detective and squat, balding, wealthy man who’d managed to run two families and a mistress was irresistible.

Strike had only ever given evidence at noteworthy court cases while sporting the full beard that grew conveniently fast when he needed it, and the picture the press used most often was an old one that showed him in uniform. Nevertheless, it was an ongoing battle to remain as inconspicuous as his chosen profession demanded, and being badgered for comment at his offices was an inconvenience he could do without. The storm of publicity was prolonged when both Mrs. Tuftys formed an offensive alliance against their estranged husband. Showing an unforeseen taste for publicity, they not only granted a women’s magazine a joint interview, but appeared on several daytime television programs together to discuss their long deception, their shock, their newfound friendship, their intention to make Tufty rue the day he’d met either of them and to issue a thinly veiled warning to the pregnant mistress in Glasgow (who, astonishingly, seemed disposed to stand by Tufty) that she had another think coming if she imagined he’d have two farthings to rub together once his wives had finished with him.

September proceeded, cool and unsettled. Strike called Lucy to say sorry for being rude about her sons, but she remained cold even after the apology, doubtless because he’d merely expressed regret for voicing his opinion out loud, and hadn’t retracted it. Strike was relieved to discover that her boys had weekend sporting fixtures now that school had started again, which meant he didn’t have to sleep on the sofa on the next visit to St. Mawes, and could devote himself to Ted and Joan without the distraction of Lucy’s tense, accusatory presence.

Though as desperate to cook for him as ever, his aunt was already enfeebled by the chemotherapy. It was painful to watch her dragging herself around the kitchen, but she wouldn’t sit down, even when Ted implored her to do so. On Saturday night, his uncle broke down after Joan had gone to bed, and sobbed into Strike’s shoulder. Ted had once seemed an unperturbable, invulnerable bastion of strength to his nephew, and Strike, who could normally sleep under almost any conditions, lay awake past two in the morning, staring into the darkness that was deeper by far than a London night, wondering whether he should stay longer, and despising himself for deciding that it was right that he should return to London.