Page 3 of Troubled Blood

“No,” said Strike.

“How come?” asked Polworth, frowning again. As with Cornish independence, Strike was refusing to embrace an obvious and desirable objective. “She’s a looker. Seen her in the paper. Maybe not on a par with Milady Berserko,” Polworth acknowledged. It was the nickname he had long ago bestowed on Strike’s ex-fiancée. “But on the other hand, she’s not a fucking nutcase, is she, Diddy?”

Strike laughed.

“Lucy likes her,” said Polworth. “Says you’d be perfect together.”

“When were you talking to Lucy about my love life?” asked Strike, with a touch less complaisance.

“Month or so ago,” said Polworth. “She brought her boys down for the weekend and we had them all over for a barbecue.”

Strike drank and said nothing.

“You get on great, she says,” said Polworth, watching him.

“Yeah, we do,” said Strike.

Polworth waited, eyebrows raised and looking expectant.

“It’d fuck everything up,” said Strike. “I’m not risking the agency.”

“Right,” said Polworth. “Tempted, though?”

There was a short pause. Strike carefully kept his gaze averted from the dark woman and her companion, who he was sure were discussing him.

“There might’ve been moments,” he admitted, “when it crossed my mind. But she’s going through a nasty divorce, we spend half our lives together as it is and I like having her as a business partner.”

Given their longstanding friendship, the fact that they’d already clashed over politics and that it was Polworth’s birthday, he was trying not to let any hint of resentment at this line of questioning show. Every married person he knew seemed desperate to chivvy others into matrimony, no matter how poor an advertisement they themselves were for the institution. The Polworths, for instance, seemed to exist in a permanent state of mutual animosity. Strike had more often heard Penny refer to her husband as “that twat” than by his name, and many was the night when Polworth had regaled his friends in happy detail of the ways in which he’d managed to pursue his own ambitions and interests at the expense of, or over the protests of, his wife. Both seemed happiest and most relaxed in the company of their own sex, and on those rare occasions when Strike had enjoyed hospitality at their home, the gatherings always seemed to follow a pattern of natural segregation, the women congregating in one area of the home, the men in another.

“And what happens when Robin wants kids?” asked Polworth.

“Don’t think she’s does,” said Strike. “She likes the job.”

“They all say that,” said Polworth dismissively. “What age is she now?”

“Ten years younger than us.”

“She’ll want kids,” said Polworth confidently. “They all do. And it happens quicker for women. They’re up against the clock.”

“Well, she won’t be getting kids with me. I don’t want them. Anyway, the older I get, the less I think I’m the marrying kind.”

“Thought that myself, mate,” said Polworth. “But then I realized I’d got it all wrong. Told you how it happened, didn’t I? How I ended up proposing to Penny?”

“Don’t think so,” said Strike.

“I never told you about the whole Tolstoy thing?” asked Polworth, surprised at this omission.

Strike, who’d been about to drink, lowered his glass in amazement. Since primary school, Polworth, who had a razor-sharp intelligence but despised any form of learning he couldn’t put to immediate, practical use, had shunned all printed material except technical manuals. Misinterpreting Strike’s expression, Polworth said,

“Tolstoy. He’s a writer.”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Thanks. How does Tolstoy—?”

“Telling you, aren’t I? I’d split up with Penny the second time. She’d been banging on about getting engaged, and I wasn’t feeling it. So I’m in this bar, telling my mate Chris about how I’m sick of her telling me she wants a ring—you remember Chris? Big guy with a lisp. You met him at Rozwyn’s christening.

“Anyway, there’s this pissed older guy at the bar on his own, bit of a ponce in his corduroy jacket, wavy hair, and he’s pissing me off, to be honest, because I can tell he’s listening, and I ask him what the fuck he’s looking at and he looks me straight in the eye,” said Polworth, “and he says: ‘You can only carry a weight and use your hands, if you strap the weight to your back. Marry, and you get the use of your hands back. Don’t marry, and you’ll never have your hands free for anything else. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov. They’ve ruined their careers for the sake of women.’

“I thought Mazankov and Krupov were mates of his. Asked him what the fuck he was telling me for. Then he says he’s quoting this writer, Tolstoy.