Strike’s uncle had provided the model of manhood to which Strike had aspired through his mother’s many changes of lover, and a childhood spent in the long shadow cast by his biological father. Leda had always blamed Ted, the ex-military policeman, for Strike’s unnatural interest in the army and investigation. Speaking from the middle of a blue haze of cannabis smoke, she would earnestly attempt to dissuade her son from a career in the army, lecturing him on Britain’s shameful military history, on the inextricable links between imperialism and capitalism, and trying, without success, to persuade him to learn the guitar or, at the very least, to let his hair grow.
Yet with all the disadvantages and pain they had brought, Strike knew that the peculiar circumstances of his birth and upbringing had given him a head start as an investigator. He’d learned early how to color himself according to his environment. From the moment he learned that penalties attached to not sounding like everyone else, his accent had switched between London and Cornwall. Before the loss of a leg had hampered his full range of physical movement, he’d been able, in spite of his distinctive size, to move and talk in ways that made him appear smaller than he really was. He’d also learned the value of concealing personal information, and of editing the stories you told about yourself, to avoid becoming entangled in other people’s notions of who you must be. Most importantly of all, Strike had developed a sensitive radar for the changes in behavior that marked the sudden realization that he was a famous man’s son. He’d been wise to the ways of manipulators, flatterers, liars, chancers and hypocrites ever since he was a child.
These dubious gifts were the best his father had given him, for, apart from child support, there’d never been a birthday card or a Christmas present. It had taken his leg being blown off in Afghanistan for Rokeby to send Strike a handwritten note. Strike had asked Charlotte, who had been sitting next to his hospital bed when he received it, to put it in the bin.
Since Strike had become of interest to the newspapers in his own right, Rokeby had made further tentative attempts to reconnect with his estranged son, going so far as to suggest in recent interviews that they were on good terms. Several of Strike’s friends had sent him links to a recent online interview with Rokeby in which he’d spoken of his pride in Strike. The detective had deleted the messages without a response.
Strike was grudgingly fond of Al, the half-brother whom Rokeby had recently used as an emissary. Al’s dogged pursuit of a relationship with Strike had been maintained in spite of his older brother’s initial resistance. Al appeared to admire in Strike those qualities of self-reliance and independence that the latter had had no choice but to develop. Nevertheless, Al was showing an antagonizing bull-headedness in continuing to push Strike into celebrating an anniversary which meant nothing to Strike, except in serving as yet another reminder of how much more important Rokeby’s band had always been to him than his illegitimate son. The detective resented the time he spent on Saturday morning, crafting a response to Al’s latest text message on the subject. He finally chose brevity over further argument:
Haven’t changed my mind, but no hard feelings or bitterness this end. Hope all goes well & let’s get a beer when you’re next in town.
Having taken care of this irksome bit of personal business, Strike made himself a sandwich, put on a clean shirt over his T-shirt, extracted from the Bamborough case file the page on which Bill Talbot had written his cryptic message in Pitman shorthand, and set off by car for West Wickham, where he had an appointment with Gregory Talbot, son of the late Bill.
Driving through intermittent sun and rain, and smoking as he went, Strike refocused his mind on business, mulling not only the questions he planned to ask the policeman’s son, but also the various concerns related to the agency that had arisen since his return. Certain issues that needed his personal attention had been raised by Barclay the previous day. The Scot, who Strike was inclined to rate as his best investigator after Robin, had firstly expressed himself with characteristic bluntness on the subject of the West End dancer on whom they were supposed to be finding dirt.
“We’re not gonnae get anythin’ on him, Strike. If he’s shaggin’ some other bird, she must be livin’ in his fuckin’ wardrobe. I ken e’s wi’ oor lassie for her credit card, but he’s too smart tae fuck up a good thing.”
“Think you’re probably right,” said Strike, “but I said we’d give the client three months, so we keep going. How’re you getting on with Pat?” he added. He was hoping that somebody else found the new secretary as much of a pain in the arse as he did, but was disappointed.
“Aye, she’s great. I ken she sounds like a bronchial docker, but she’s very efficient. But if we’re havin’ an honest talk aboot new hires, here…” Barclay said, his large blue eyes looking up at his boss from under thick brows.
“Go on,” said Strike. “Morris not pulling his weight?”
“I wouldnae say that, exactly.”
The Glaswegian scratched the back of his prematurely gray head, then said,
“Robin not mentioned anything to ye?”
“Has there been trouble between them?” asked Strike, more sharply.
“Not tae say trouble, exactly,” said Barclay slowly, “but he doesnae like takin’ orders from her. Makes that plain behind her back.”
“Well, that’ll have to change. I’ll have a word.”
“An’ he’s got his own ideas aboot the Shifty case.”
“Is that right?” said Strike.
“He still thinks he’s gonnae win over the PA. Robin told him it wus time tae let it go, time tae put Hutchins in. She’s found oot—”
“That Shifty belongs to Hendon Rifle Club, yeah, she emailed me. And she wants to get Hutchins in there, to try and befriend him. Smart plan. Shifty fancies himself a bit of a macho man, from all we know about him.”
“But Morris wants tae do it his way. He said tae her face he was happy wi’ the new plan, but—”
“You think he’s still seeing the PA?”
“‘Seein’ ’ might be a polite way o’ puttin’ it,” said Barclay.
So Strike had called Morris into the office and laid it down in plain language that he was to leave Shifty’s PA alone, and concentrate for the next week on Two-Times’ girlfriend. Morris had raised no objections: indeed, his capitulation had been tinged with obsequiousness. The encounter had left a slightly unpleasant aftertaste. Morris was, in nearly all respects, a desirable hire, with many good contacts in the force, but there had been something in his manner as he hurried to agree that denoted a slipperiness Strike couldn’t like. Later that night, while Strike was following the taxi containing Twinkletoes and his girlfriend through the West End, he remembered Dr. Gupta’s interlaced fingers, and the old doctor’s verdict that what made a successful business was the smooth functioning of a team.
Entering West Wickham, he found rows of suburban houses with bay windows, broad drives and private garages. The Avenue, where Gregory Talbot lived, was lined with solid family residences that spoke of conscientious middle-class owners who mowed their lawns and remembered bin day. The houses weren’t as palatial as the detached houses on Dr. Gupta’s street, but were many times more spacious than Strike’s attic flat over the office.
Turning into Talbot’s drive, Strike parked his BMW behind a skip that blocked the front of the garage. As he switched off his engine, a pale, entirely bald man with large ears and steel-rimmed glasses opened his door looking cautiously excited. Strike knew from his online research that Gregory Talbot was a hospital administrator.
“Mr. Strike?” he called, while the detective was getting carefully out of the BMW (the drive was slick with rain and the memory of tripping on the Falmouth ferry, still fresh).
“That’s me,” said Strike, closing his car door and holding out his hand as Talbot came walking toward him. Talbot was shorter than Strike by a good six inches.
“Sorry about the skip,” he said. “We’re doing a loft conversion.”
As th
ey approached the front door, a pair of twin girls Strike guessed to be around ten years old came bursting outside, almost knocking Gregory aside.
“Stay in the garden, girls,” called Gregory, though Strike thought the more pressing problem was surely that they had bare feet, and that the ground was cold and wet.
“Thtay in the garden, girlth,” imitated one of the twins. Gregory looked mildly over the top of his glasses at the twins.
“Rudeness isn’t funny.”
“It bloody is,” said the first twin, to the raucous laughter of the second.
“Swear at me again, and there’ll be no chocolate pudding for you tonight, Jayda,” said Gregory. “Nor will you borrow my iPad.”
Jayda pulled a grotesque face but did not, in fact, swear again.
“We foster,” Gregory told Strike as they stepped inside. “Our own kids have left home. Through to the right and have a seat.”
To Strike, who lived in a slightly Spartan minimalism by choice, the cluttered and very untidy room was unappealing. He wanted to accept Gregory’s invitation to sit down, but there was nowhere he could do so without having to first shift a large quantity of objects, which felt rude. Oblivious to Strike’s plight, Gregory glanced through the window at the twins. They were already running back indoors, shivering.
“They learn,” he said, as the front door slammed and the twins ran upstairs. Turning back to face the room, he became aware that none of the seats were currently usable.
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” he said, though with none of the embarrassment that Strike’s Aunt Joan would have displayed had a casual visitor found her house in this state of disorder. “The girls were in here this morning.”
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.
“From the police file. It says: ‘And that is the last of them, the twelfth, and the circle will be closed upon finding the tenth’—and then there’s an unknown word—‘Baphomet. Transcribe in the true book,’” said Strike, “and I was wondering whether that meant anything to you?”
At that moment, there came a particularly loud crash from overhead. With a hasty “excuse me,” Gregory laid the paper on top of the tea tray and hurried from the room. Strike heard him climbing the stairs, and then a telling-off. It appeared that one of the twins had overturned a chest of drawers. Soprano voices united in exculpation and counter-accusation.
Through the net curtains, Strike now saw an old Volvo pulling up outside the house. A plump middle-aged brunette in a navy raincoat got out, followed by two boys, whom he guessed to be around fourteen or fifteen. The woman went to the boot of the car and took out two sports bags and several bags of shopping from Aldi. The boys, who’d begun to slouch toward the house, had to be called back to assist her.
Gregory arrived back at
the sitting-room door just as his wife entered the hall. One of the teenage boys shoved his way past Gregory to survey the stranger with the amazement appropriate to spotting an escaped zoo animal.
“Hi,” said Strike.
The boy turned in astonishment to Gregory.
“Who’s he?” he asked, pointing.
The second boy appeared beside the first, eyeing Strike with precisely the same mixture of wonder and suspicion.
“This is Mr. Strike,” said Gregory.
His wife now appeared between the boys, placed a hand on their shoulders and steered them bodily away, smiling at Strike as she did so.
Gregory closed the door behind him and returned to his armchair. He appeared to have momentarily forgotten what he and Strike had been talking about before he had gone upstairs, but then his eye fell upon the piece of paper scrawled all over with his father’s handwriting, dotted with pentagrams and with the cryptic lines in Pitman shorthand.
“D’you know why Dad knew Pitman shorthand?” he said, with forced cheerfulness. “My mother was learning it at secretarial college, so he learned it as well, so he could test her. He was a good husband—and a good dad, too,” he added, a little defiantly.
“Sounds it,” said Strike.
There was another pause.
“Look,” said Gregory, “they kept the—the specifics of Dad’s illness out of the press at the time. He was a good copper and it wasn’t his fault he got ill. My mother’s still alive. She’d be devastated if it all got out now.”
“I can appreciate—”
“Actually, I’m not sure you can,” said Gregory, flushing slightly. He seemed a polite and mild man, and it was clear that this assertive statement cost him some effort. “The families of some of Creed’s victims, afterward—there was a lot of ill feeling toward Dad. They blamed him for not getting Creed, for screwing it all up. People wrote to the house, telling him he was a disgrace. Mum and Dad ended up moving… From what you said on the phone, I thought you were interested in Dad’s theories, not in—not in stuff like that,” he said, gesturing at the pentagram-strewn paper.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 19