Page 293 of Troubled Blood

Watching the birds, Strike wondered what the chances were of Douthwaite ringing the number on his card. He was a man with a long track record of hiding from his past, but Strike had definitely read in his face a desperation he’d only ever seen in the faces of men who could no longer bear the pressure of a terrible secret. Idly rubbing his chin, Strike decided to give the man a short period of grace, then either call him again, or even return, unannounced, to Skegness, where he might waylay Douthwaite in the street or a pub, where Donna couldn’t interfere.

Strike was still watching the starlings when Robin set down two polystyrene trays, two small wooden forks and two cans of Coke on the table.

“Mushy peas,” said Strike, looking at Robin’s tray, where a hefty dollop of what looked like green porridge sat alongside her fish and chips.

“Yorkshire caviar,” said Robin, sitting down. “I didn’t think you’d want any.”

“You were right,” said Strike, picking up a sachet of tomato sauce while watching with something like revulsion as Robin dipped a chip into the green sludge and ate it.

“Soft Southerner, you are,” she said, and Strike laughed.

“Don’t ever let Polworth hear you say that,” he said, breaking off a bit of fish with his fingers, dipping it in ketchup and eating it. He then, without warning, broke into song:

A good sword and a trusty hand!

A merry heart and true!

King James’s men shall understand,

What Cornish lads can do.

“What on earth’s that?” asked Robin, laughing.

“First verse of ‘The Song of the Western Men,’” said Strike. “The gist is that Cornishmen are the antithesis of soft bastards. Bloody hell, this is good.”

“I know. You don’t get fish and chips like this in London,” said Robin.

For a few minutes they ate in silence. The greaseproof paper in which the trays of chips were wrapped was printed with old pages of the Mirror newspaper. Paul Quits the Beatles. There were cartoons too, of the dirty postcard type: a busty blonde in bed with her elderly boss was saying “Business must be booming. You’ve never given me so much overtime.” It reminded her of Gemma the PA, who’d perhaps already called the fake number Robin had given her, and realized that it wasn’t only her ex, “Andy,” who wasn’t all he appeared to be. But Robin had a recording on her phone of everything Gemma knew about Shifty’s insider trading and Pat, at that moment, was transcribing it into a document shorn of anything that might identify the informant. Shifty, Robin hoped, would soon be jobless and, with any luck, in court.

A long stretch of fairground rides on the other side of the road hid the sea from her sight. The seats of the distant Ferris wheel were enclosed in casings shaped like pastel-colored hot-air balloons. Nearby stood a gigantic climbing frame for adults, with ropes and swinging tires, a hundred feet up in the air. Watching the harnessed people navigating the obstacles, Robin felt a strange mixture of contentment and melancholy: the possibility of an unknown development in the Bamborough case, the delicious chips and peas, the companionship of Strike and the sunshine were all cheering, but she was also remembering chasing along the out-of-sight beach as a small child, trying to outrun her brother Stephen to reach the donkeys and have first pick. Why did the memory of innocence sting so much, as you got older? Why did the memory of the child who’d thought she was invulnerable, who’d never known cruelty, give her more pain than pleasure?

Her childhood had been happy, unlike Strike’s; it ought not to hurt. Over the space of summer weekends spread years apart, Robin and her brothers had competed to ride the black donkey called Noddy, who was doubtless long gone. Was it mortality, then, which turned cheerful memories bittersweet? Maybe, Robin thought, she’d bring Annabel here when she was old enough, and treat her to her first donkey ride. It was a nice idea, but she doubted Stephen and Jenny would see Skegness as a desirable weekend destination. Annabel’s great-aunt had moved away from Boston: there was no longer any family connection to the area. Times changed, and so did childhoods.

“You all right?” said Strike, watching Robin’s face.

“Fine,” she said. “Just thinking… I’m going to be thirty in a few weeks.”

Strike snorted.

“Well, you’re getting no sympathy from me,” he said. “I’ll be forty the month after.”

He snapped open his can of Coke and drank. Robin watched a family pass, all four eating ice creams, accompanied by a waddling dachshund that was nosing the Union Jack carrier bag which swung from the father’s hand.

“D’you think Scotland’s going to leave?”

“Go for independence? Maybe,” said Strike. “The polls are close. Barclay thinks it could happen. He was telling me about some old mates of his at home. They sound just like Polworth. Same hate figures, same promises everything’ll be rainbows and unicorns if only they cut themselves free of London. Anyone pointing out pitfalls or difficulties is scaremongering. Experts don’t know anything. Facts lie. ‘Things can’t be any worse than they are.’”

Strike put several chips in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said,

“But life’s taught me things can always get worse than they are. I thought I had it hard, then they wheeled a bloke onto the ward who’d had both his legs and his genitals blown off.”

He’d never before talked to Robin about the aftermath of his life-changing injury. Indeed, he rarely mentioned his missing leg. A barrier had definitely fallen, Robin thought, since their whisky-fueled talk in the dark office.

“Everyone wants a single, simple solution,” he said, now finishing his last few chips. “One weird trick to lose belly fat. I’ve never clicked on it, but I understand the appeal.”

“Well, reinvention’s such an inviting idea, isn’t it?” said Robin, her eyes on the fake hot-air balloons, circling on their prescribed course. “Look at Douthwaite, changing his name and finding a new woman every few years. Reinventing a whole country would feel amazing. Being part of that.”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Of course, people think if they subsume themselves in something bigger, and that changes, they’ll change too.”