Page 292 of Troubled Blood

Still winneth way, ne hath her compasse lost:

Right so it fares with me in this long way,

Whose course is often stayd, yet neuer is astray.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

“I’m hungry,” Strike announced, once they stepped down onto the sunny pavement outside the Allardice.

“Let’s get some fish and chips,” said Robin.

“Now you’re talking,” said Strike enthusiastically, as they headed off toward the end of Scarbrough Avenue.

“Cormoran, what makes you think Douthwaite knows something?”

“Didn’t you see the way he looked at me, when I asked him about his last appointment with Margot?”

“I must’ve been looking at Donna. I was seriously worried she was going to pass out.”

“Wish she had,” said Strike.

“Strike!”

“He was definitely thinking about telling me something, then she bloody ruined it.” As they reached the end of the road, he said, “That was a scared man, and I don’t think he’s only scared of his wife… Do we go left or right?”

“Right,” said Robin, so they headed off along Grand Parade, passing a long open-fronted building called Funland, which was full of beeping and flashing video games, claw machines and coin-operated mechanical horses for children to ride. “Are you saying Douthwaite’s guilty?”

“I think he feels it,” Strike said, as they wove their way in and out of cheerful, T-shirted families and couples. “He looked at me back there as though he was bursting to tell me something that’s weighing on him.”

“If he had actual evidence, why didn’t he tell the police? It would’ve got them off his back.”

“I can think of one reason.”

“He was scared of the person he thought had killed her?”

“Exactly.”

“So… Luca Ricci?” said Robin.

At that moment, a male voice from the depths of Funland called, “White seven and four, seventy-four.”

“Possibly,” said Strike, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Douthwaite and Ricci were living in the same area at the time. Maybe going to the same pubs. I suppose he might’ve heard a rumor about Ricci being out to get her. But that doesn’t fit with the eye-witness accounts, does it? If Douthwaite was issuing the warning, you’d think it’d be Margot looking distressed afterward, whereas we know he was the one who came running out of there looking scared and worried… but my gut feeling is that Douthwaite thinks whatever happened between them at that last appointment is relevant to her disappearance.”

The entrance to a well-maintained park on their right was ablaze with petunias. Ahead, on an island in the middle of a traffic island, stood a sixty-foot-high clock tower of brick and stone, with a faintly Gothic appearance, and faces like a miniature Big Ben.

“Exactly how many chippies has Skegness got?” Strike asked, as they came to a halt on the busy intersection beside the clock tower. They were standing right beside two establishments which had tables spilling out onto the pavement, and he could see a further two fish and chip shops on the other side of the junction.

“I never counted,” said Robin. “I was always more interested in the donkeys. Shall we try here?” she asked, pointing at the nearest free table, which was pistachio green and belonged to Tony’s Chippy (“We Sell on Quality not Price”).

“Donkeys?” repeated Strike, grinning, as he sat down on the bench.

“That’s right,” said Robin. “Cod or haddock?”

“Haddock, please,” said Strike, and Robin headed into the chip shop to order.

After a minute or so, looking forward to his chips and enjoying the feeling of sun on his back, Strike became aware that he was still watching Robin, and fixed his eyes instead on a fluttering mass just above him. Even though the top of the yellow railings separating Tony’s from Harry Ramsbottom’s had been fitted with fine spikes to stop birds landing on them, a handful of speckled starlings were doing just that, delicately poised between the needles, and balanced in the iron circles just below them, waiting for the chance to swoop on an abandoned chip.