Page 77 of Troubled Blood

“No, I will,” said Strike firmly. “What d’you want?”

“Just a lime and soda, please, as I’m driving.”

As Strike walked into the pub, there was a sudden chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.” For a split-second, seeing helium balloons in the corner, he was horror-struck, thinking that Robin had brought him here for a surprise party; but a bare heartbeat later, it registered that he didn’t recognize a single face, and that the balloons formed the figure 80. A tiny woman with lavender hair was beaming at the top of a table full of family: flashes went off as she blew out the candles on a large chocolate cake. Applause and cheers followed, and a toddler blew a feathered whistle.

Strike headed toward the bar, still slightly shaken, taking himself to task for having imagined, for a moment, that Robin would have arranged a surprise party for him. Even Charlotte, with whom he’d had the longest and closest relationship of his life, had never done that. Indeed, Charlotte had never allowed anything as mundane as his birthday to interfere with her own whims and moods. On Strike’s twenty-seventh, when she’d been going through one of her intermittent phases of either rampant jealousy, or rage at his refusal to give up the army (the precise causes of their many scenes and rows tended to blur in his mind), she’d thrown his wrapped gift out of a third-floor window in front of him.

But, of course, there were other memories. His thirty-third birthday, for instance. He’d just been discharged from Selly Oak hospital, and was walking for the first time on a prosthesis, and Charlotte had taken him back to her flat in Notting Hill, cooked for him, and returned from the kitchen at the end of the meal holding two cups of coffee, stark naked and more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. He’d laughed and gasped at the same time. He hadn’t had sex for nearly two years. The night that had followed would probably never be forgotten by him, nor the way she had sobbed in his arms afterward, telling him that he was the only man for her, that she was afraid of what she felt, afraid that she was evil for not regretting his missing lower leg if it brought her back to him, if it meant that, at last, she could look after him as he had always looked after her. And close to midnight, Strike had proposed to her, and they’d made love again, and then talked through to dawn about how he was going to start his detective agency, and she’d told him she didn’t want a ring, that he was to save his money for his new career, at which he would be magnificent.

Drinks and crisps purchased, Strike returned to Robin, who was sitting on an outside bench, hands in her pockets, looking glum.

“Cheer up,” said Strike, speaking to himself as much as to her.

“Sorry,” said Robin, though she didn’t really know why she was apologizing.

He sat down beside her, rather than opposite, so both of them faced the river. There was a small shingle beach below them, and waves lapped the cold pebbles. On the opposite bank rose the steel-colored office blocks of Canary Wharf; to their left, the Shard. The river was the color of lead on this cold November day. Strike tore one of the crisp packets down the middle so that both could help themselves. Wishing she’d asked for coffee instead of a cold drink, Robin took a sip of her lime and soda, ate a couple of crisps, returned her hands to her pockets, then said,

“I know this isn’t the attitude, but honestly… I don’t think we’re going to find out what happened to Margot Bamborough.”

“What’s brought this on?”

“I suppose Irene misremembering names… Janice going along with her, covering up the reason for the Christmas party row… it’s such a long time ago. People are under no obligation to tell the truth to us now, even if they can remember it. Factor in people getting wedded to old theories, like that whole thing about Gloria and the pill in Brenner’s mug, and people wanting to make themselves important, pretending to know things and… well, I’m starting to think we’re attempting the impossible here.”

A wave of tiredness had swept over Robin while sitting in the cold, waiting for Strike, and in its wake had come hopelessness.

“Pull yourself together,” said Strike bracingly. “We’ve already found out two big things the police never knew.” He pulled out his cigarettes, lit one, then said, “Firstly: there was a big stock of barbiturates on the premises where Margot worked. Secondly: Margot Bamborough might well have had an abortion.

“Taking the barbiturates first,” he said, “are we overlooking something very obvious, which is that there were means on the premises to put someone to sleep?”

“Margot wasn’t put to sleep,” said Robin, gloomily munching crisps. “She walked out of there.”

“Only if we assume—”

“—Gloria wasn’t lying. I know,” said Robin. “But how do she and Theo—because Theo’s still got to be in on it, hasn’t she? How did Gloria and Theo administer enough barbiturates to render Margot unconscious? Don’t forget, if Irene’s telling the truth, Margot wasn’t letting anyone else make her drinks at that point. And from what Janice said about dosage, you’d need a lot of pills to make someone actually unconscious.”

“Well reasoned. So, going back to that little story about the pill in the tea—”

“Didn’t you believe it?”

“I did,” said Strike, “because it seems a totally pointless lie. It’s not interesting enough to make an exciting anecdote, is it, a single pill? It does reopen the question of whether Margot knew about or suspected Brenner’s addiction, though. She might’ve noticed him being odd in his manner. Downers would make him drowsy. Perhaps she’d seen he was slow on the uptake. Everything we’ve found out about Margot suggests that if she thought Brenner was behaving unprofessionally, or might be dangerous to patients, she’d have waded straight in and confronted him. And we’ve just heard a lot of interesting background on Brenner, who sounds like a traumatized, unhappy and lonely man. What if Margot threatened him with being struck off? Loss of status and prestige, to a man who has virtually nothing else in his life? People have killed for less.”

“He left the surgery before she did, that night.”

“What if he waited for her? Offered her a lift?”

“If he did, I think she’d have been suspicious,” said Robin. “Not that he wanted to hurt her, but that he was going to shout at her, which would’ve been in character, from what we know of him. I’d rather have walked in the rain, personally. And she was a lot younger than him, and tall and fit. I can’t remember now where he lived…”

“With his unmarried sister, about twenty minutes’ drive from the practice. The sister said he’d arrived home at the usual time. A dog-walking neighbor confirmed they’d seen him through the window round about eleven…

“But I can think of one other possibility regarding those barbitu­rates,” Strike went on. “As Janice pointed out, they had street value, and by the sounds of it, Brenner had amassed a big stock of them. We’ve got to consider the possibility that some outsider knew there were valuable drugs on the premises, set out to nick them, and Margot got in the way.”

“Which takes us back to Margot dying on the premises, which means—”

“Gloria and Theo come back into the frame. Gloria and Theo might have planned to take the drugs themselves. And we’ve just heard—”

“—about the drug-dealing brother,” said Robin.

“Why the skeptical tone?”