Page 251 of Troubled Blood

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Adding daytime surveillance of St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Nursing Home to the rota meant that as May progressed, the agency was again struggling to cover all open cases. Strike wanted to know how many visitors were going in and out, and at what times, so that he might ascertain when he’d have the best chance of entering the building without running into one of the old gangster’s relatives.

The nursing home lay in a quiet Georgian street on the very edge of Clerkenwell, in a quiet, leafy enclave where dun-colored brick houses sported neo-classical pediments and glossy black front doors. A dark wood plaque on the exterior wall of the nursing home was embellished with a cross, and a biblical quotation, in gold:

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

Peter 1:18–19

“Nice sentiment,” as Strike commented to Robin, on one of their handovers, “but nobody’s getting in there without a good bit of cash.”

The private nursing home was small and clearly expensive. The staff, all of whom the agency quickly grew to know by sight, wore dark blue scrubs and hailed mostly from abroad. There was a black male nurse who sounded as though he’d come from Trinidad, and two blondes who talked Polish to each other every morning as they passed whichever agency member happened to be loitering in the area at the time, feigning a call on their mobile, reading a newspaper or appearing to wait, slightly impatiently, for a friend who never showed up.

A podiatrist and a hairdresser went regularly in and out of the home, but after two weeks’ daytime surveillance, the agency tentatively concluded that Ricci only received visits on Sundays, when his two sons appeared, wearing the resigned looks of people for whom this was an unwelcome chore. It was easy to identify which brother was which from pictures that had appeared in the press. Luca looked, in Barclay’s phrase, “like a piano fell oan his heid,” having a bald, flat, noticeably scarred skull. Marco was smaller, slighter and hairier, but gave off an air of barely contained violence, slamming his hand repeatedly on the nursing home’s doorbell if the door wasn’t opened immediately, and slapping a grandson around the back of the head for dropping a chocolate bar on the pavement. Both the brothers’ wives had a hard-boiled look about them, and none of the family had the good looks Robin associated with Italians. The great-grandfather sitting mutely behind the doors of the nursing home might have been a true Latin, but his descendants were disappointingly pallid and Saxon in appearance, right down to the little ginger-haired boy who dropped his chocolate.

It was Robin who first laid eyes on Ricci himself, on the third Saturday the agency was watching the home. Beneath her raincoat, Robin was wearing a dress, because she was meeting Strike later at the Stafford hotel in Mayfair, to interview C. B. Oakden. Robin, who’d never been to the hotel, had looked it up and learned that the five-star establishment, with its bowler-hatted doormen, was one of the oldest and smartest hotels in London, hence her atypical choice of surveillance wear. As she’d previously disguised herself while lurking outside St. Peter’s (alternately beanie hat, hair up, dark contact lenses and sunglasses), she felt safe to look like herself for once as she strolled up and down the street, pretending to talk on the phone, although she’d added clear-lensed glasses she’d remove for the Stafford.

The elderly residents of St. Peter’s were occasionally escorted or wheeled down the street in the afternoon to the nearby square, which had a central private garden enclosed by railings, open only to keyholders, there to doze or enjoy the lilac and pansies while well wrapped up against the cold. Hitherto, the agency had seen only elderly women taken on the outings, but today, for the first time, an old man was among the group coming down a ramp at the side of the building.

Robin recognized Ricci instantly, not by his lion ring, which, if he was wearing it, was well hidden beneath a tartan rug, but by the profile that time might have exaggerated, but could not disguise. His thick black hair was now dark gray and his nose and earlobes enormous. The large eyes that reminded Strike of a Basset hound had an even more pronounced droop these days. Ricci’s mouth hung slightly open as one of the Polish nurses pushed him toward the square, talking to him brightly, but receiving no response.

“You all right, Enid, love?” the black male nurse called ahead to a frail-looking old lady wearing a sheepskin hat, and she laughed and nodded.

Robin gave the group a head start, then followed, watching as one of the nurses unlocked the gate to the garden, and the party disappeared inside. Walking around the square with her phone clamped to her ear, pretending to be in conversation, Robin thought how typical it was that today, of all days, she’d worn heels, never imagining that there might have been a possibility of approaching Ricci and chatting to him.

The group from the nursing home had come to a halt beside flower-beds of purple and yellow, Ricci parked in his wheelchair beside an empty park bench. The nurses chatted amongst themselves, and to those old ladies capable of doing so, while the old man stared vacantly across the lawns.

If she’d been wearing her usual trainers, Robin thought, she might possibly have been able to scale the railings and get into the garden unseen: there was a clump of trees that would provide cover from the nurses, and she could have sidled over to Ricci and found out, at the very least, whether he had dementia. Unfortunately, she had absolutely no chance of managing that feat in her dress and high heels.

As she completed her walk around the square, Robin spotted Saul Morris walking toward her. Morris was early, as he always tended to be, whenever it was Robin from whom he was taking over.

He’s going to mention either the glasses or the heels first, Robin thought.

“High heels,” said Morris, as soon as he was within earshot, his bright blue eyes sweeping over her. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you in heels before. Funny, I never think of you as tall, but you are, aren’t you? Sexy specs, too.”

Before Robin could stop him, he’d stooped and kissed her on the cheek.

“I’m the guy you’re meeting on a blind date,” he told her, straightening up again and winking.

“How do we account for the fact that I’m about to leave you standing here?” Robin asked, unsmiling, and Morris laughed too hard, just as he did at Strike’s mildest jokes.

“Dunno—what would it take to make you walk out on a blind date?” asked Morris.

You turning up, thought Robin, but ignoring the question she checked her watch and said,

“If you’re OK to take over now, I’ll head—”

“Here they come,” said Morris quietly. “Oh, the old fella’s outside this time, is he? I wondered why you’d abandoned the front door.”

The comment aggravated Robin almost as much as his flirtatious manner. Why did he think she’d leave the front door, unless the target had moved? Nevertheless, she waited beside him while the small group of nurses and residents, having decided that twenty minutes was enough fresh air, passed them on the other side of the street, heading back to the home.

“My kids were taken out like that at nursery,” said Morris quietly, watching the group pass. “All bundled up in pushchairs, the helpers wheeling them out. Some of that lot are probably wearing nappies, too,” he said, his bright blue eyes following the St. Peter’s party. “Christ, I hope I never end up like that. Ricci’s the only man, too, poor sod.”

“I think they’re very well looked after,” Robin said, as the Trinidadian nurse shouted,

“Up we go, Enid!”