Page 58 of Troubled Blood

Gregory swiftly cleared a leaking bubble-gun, two naked Barbie dolls, a child’s sock, a number of small bits of brightly colored plastic and half a satsuma off the seat of an armchair to allow Strike to sit down. He dumped the homeless objects onto a wooden coffee table that was already piled high with magazines, a jumble of remote controls, several letters and empty envelopes and further small plastic toys, including a good deal of Lego.

“Tea?” he offered. “Coffee? My wife’s taken the boys swimming.”

“Oh, there are boys, too?”

“Hence the loft conversion,” said Gregory. “Darren’s been with us nearly five years.”

While Gregory fetched hot drinks, Strike picked up the official sticker album of this year’s Champions League, which he’d spotted lying on the floor beneath the coffee table. He turned the pages with a feeling of nostalgia for the days when he, too, had collected football stickers. He was idly pondering Arsenal’s chances of winning the cup when a series of crashes directly overhead, which made the pendant light sway very slightly, made him look up. It sounded as though the twins were jumping on and off their bed. Setting the sticker book down, he pondered, without finding an answer, the question of what could have motivated Talbot and his wife to bring into their home children with whom they had no biological relationship. By the time Gregory reappeared with a tray, Strike’s thoughts had traveled to Charlotte, who had always declared herself entirely unmaternal, and whose premature twins she’d vowed, while pregnant, to abandon to the care of her mother-in-law.

“Would you mind shifting—?” Gregory asked, eyes on the coffee table.

Strike hastened to move handfuls of objects off it, onto the sofa.

“Cheers,” said Gregory, setting down the tray. He scooped yet another mound of objects off the second armchair, dumped them, too, onto the now considerable pile on the sofa, picked up his mug, sat down and said,

“Help yourself,” indicating a slightly sticky sugar bowl and an unopened packet of biscuits.

“Thanks very much,” said Strike, spooning sugar into his tea.

“So,” said Gregory, looking mildly excited. “You’re trying to prove Creed killed Margot Bamborough.”

“Well,” said Strike, “I’m trying to find out what happened to her and one possibility, obviously, is Creed.”

“Did you see, in the paper last weekend? One of Creed’s drawings, selling for over a grand?”

“Missed that,” said Strike.

“Yeah, it was in the Observer. Self-portrait in pencil, done when he was in Belmarsh. Sold on a website where you can buy serial-killer art. Crazy world.”

“It is,” agreed Strike. “Well, as I said on the phone, what I’d really like to talk to you about is your father.”

“Yes,” said Gregory, and some of his jauntiness left him. “I, er, I don’t know how much you know.”

“That he took early retirement, following a breakdown.”

“Well, yes, that’s it in a nutshell,” said Gregory. “His thyroid was at the bottom of it. Overactive and undiagnosed, for ages. He was losing weight, not sleeping… There was a lot of pressure on him, you know. Not just from the force; the press, as well. People were very upset. Well, you know—a missing doctor—Mum put him acting a bit oddly down to stress.”

“In what way was he acting oddly?”

“Well, he took over the spare room and wouldn’t let anyone in there,” said Gregory, and before Strike could ask for more details, he continued: “After they found out about his thyroid and got him on the right drugs, he went back to normal, but it was too late for his career. He got his pension, but he felt guilty about the Bamborough case for years. He blamed himself, you know, thinking that if he hadn’t been so ill, he might’ve got him.

“Because Margot Bamborough wasn’t the last woman Creed took—I suppose you’ll know all about that? He abducted Andrea Hooton after he took Bamborough. When they arrested him and went into the house and saw what was in the basement—the torture equipment and the photos he’d taken of the women—he admitted he’d kept some of them alive for months before he killed them.

“Dad was really upset when he heard that. He kept going back over it in his head, thinking if he’d caught him earlier, Bamborough and Hooton might’ve still been alive. He beat himself up for getting fixated—”

Gregory cut himself off.

“—distracted, you know.”

“So, even once your father had recovered, he still thought Creed had taken Margot?”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” said Gregory, looking mildly surprised that this was in question. “They ruled out all the other possibilities, didn’t they? The ex-boyfriend, that dodgy patient who had a thing for her, they all came up clean.”

Rather than answering this with his honest view, which was that Talbot’s unfortunate illness had allowed valuable months to pass in which all suspects, Creed included, had had time to hide a body, cover up evidence, refine their alibis, or all three, Strike took from an inside pocket the piece of paper on which Talbot had written his Pitman message, and held it out to Gregory.

“Wanted to ask you about something. I think that’s your father’s handwriting?”

“Where did you get this?” asked Gregory, taking the paper cautiously.