“All right, why don’t the social worker’s kids want to talk to us?” asked Strike.
“The one who called me—Eden, she’s the eldest—said they didn’t want to drag up what had been a difficult time for the family. She said it had nothing to do with Margot—but then she contradicted herself, because when I said we only wanted to talk about Margot—I can’t remember her exact words, but the sense was that talking about Margot’s disappearance would involve them talking about the family’s personal stuff.”
“Well, their father was in jail in the early seventies and Margot was urging Wilma to leave him,” said Strike. “It’s probably that. Think it’s worth calling her back? Trying a bit more persuasion?”
“I don’t think she’s going to change her mind.”
“And she said she was speaking for her brothers and sisters, as well?”
“Yes. One of them’s having chemotherapy. She warned me specifically away from her.”
“OK, avoid her, but one of the others might be worth a shot.”
“That’ll annoy Eden.”
“Probably, but we’ve got nothing to lose now, have we?”
“S’pose not,” said Robin. “So what’s your news?”
“The practice nurse and the receptionist, the one who isn’t Gloria Conti—”
“Irene Bull,” said Robin.
“Irene Bull, now Hickson, exactly—they’re both happy to talk to us. Turns out they’ve been friends since the St. John’s practice days. Irene will be delighted to host Janice and us at her house on Saturday afternoon. I think we should both go.”
Robin turned her mobile to speakerphone so that she could check the rota she kept on her phone. The entry for Saturday read: Strike’s birthday/TT girlfriend.
“I’m supposed to be following Two-Times’ girlfriend,” said Robin, switching back from speakerphone.
“Sod that, Morris can do it,” said Strike. “You can drive us—if you don’t mind,” he added, and Robin smiled.
“No, I don’t mind,” she said.
“Well, great,” said Strike. “Enjoy the rest of your day off.”
He rang off. Robin picked up the rest of the brownie and finished it slowly, savoring every bite. In spite of the prospect of mediation with Matthew, and doubtless because of a much-needed infusion of chocolate, she felt a good deal happier than she had ten minutes previously.
19
There did I finde mine onely faithfull frend
In heauy plight and sad perplexitie;
Whereof I sorie, yet my selfe did bend,
Him to recomfort with my companie.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
Strike never told anyone that his birthday was imminent and avoided announcing it on the day itself. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate people remembering: indeed, he tended to be far more touched when they did than he ever let show, but he had an innate dislike of scheduled celebration and forced jollity, and of all inane practices, having “Happy Birthday” sung to him was one of his least favorites.
As far back as he could remember, the day of his birth had brought up unhappy memories on which he chose, usually successfully, not to dwell. His mother had sometimes forgotten to buy him anything when he was a child. His biological father had never acknowledged the date. Birthdays were inextricably linked with the knowledge, which had long since become part of him, that his existence was accidental, that his genetic inheritance had been contested in court, and that the birth itself had been “fucking hideous, darling, if men had to do it the human race would be extinct in a year.”
To his sister, Lucy, it would have been almost cruel to let a loved one’s birthday pass without a card, a gift, a phone call or, if she could manage it, a party or at the very least a meal. This was why he usually lied to Lucy, pretending to have plans so as to avoid having to go all the way out to her house in Bromley and participate in a family dinner that she’d enjoy far more than he would. Not long ago, he’d happily have celebrated with a takeaway at his friends Nick and Ilsa’s, but Ilsa had suggested Robin accompany Strike, and as Strike had decided many weeks ago that Ilsa’s increasingly open attempts at matchmaking could only be successfully countered by a blanket refusal to cooperate, he’d pretended that he was going to Lucy’s instead. The one joyless hope Strike had for his thirty-ninth birthday was that Robin would have forgotten it, because, if she did, his own omission would be canceled out: they’d be quits.
He descended the metal stairs to the office on Friday morning and saw, to his surprise, two packages and four envelopes sitting beside the usual pile of mail on Pat’s desk. The envelopes were all of different colors. Apparently, friends and family had decided to make sure birthday greetings reached him in time for the weekend.
“Is it your birthday?” Pat asked in her deep, gravelly voice, still staring at her monitor and typing, electronic cigarette jammed between her teeth as usual.
“Tomorrow,” said Strike, picking up the cards. He recognized the handwriting on three of them, but not the fourth.
“Many happy returns,” grunted Pat, over the clacking of her keyboard. “You should’ve said.”
Some spirit of mischief prompted Strike to ask,
“Why? Would you’ve baked me a cake?”
“No,” said Pat indifferently. “Might’ve got you a card, though.”
“Lucky I didn’t say, then. One fewer tree’s died.”
“It wouldn’t have been a big card,” said Pat, unsmiling, her fingers still flying over the keyboard.
Grinning slightly, Strike removed himself, his cards and packages into the inner office, and later that evening took them upstairs with him, still unopened.
He woke on the twenty-third with his mind full of his trip to Greenwich with Robin later, and only remembered the significance of the day when he saw the presents and cards on the table. The packages contained a sweater from Ted and Joan, and a sweatshirt from Lucy. Ilsa, Dave Polworth and his half-brother Al had all sent joke cards which, while not actually making him laugh, were vaguely cheering.
He slipped the fourth card out of its envelope. It had a photograph of a bloodhound on the front, and Strike considered this for a second or two, wondering why it had been chosen. He’d never owned a dog, and while he had a mild preference for dogs over cats, having worked alongside a few in the military, he wouldn’t have said dog-loving was one of his salient characteristics. Flicking the card open, he saw the words:
Happy birthday Cormoran,
Best,
Jonny (Dad)
For a few moments, Strike merely looked at the words, his mind as blank as the rest of the card. The last time he’d seen his father’s writing, he’d been full of morphine after his leg had been blown off. As a child, he’d occasionally caught a glimpse of his father’s signature on legal documents sent to his mother. Then, he’d stared awestruck at the name, as though he were glimpsing an actual part of his father, as though the ink were blood, and solid proof that his father was a real human being, not a myth.
Quite suddenly, and with a force that shocked Strike, he found himself full of rage, rage on behalf of the small boy who would once have sold his soul to receive a birthday card from his father. He’d grown well beyond any desire to have contact with Jonny Rokeby, but he could still recall the acute pain his father’s continual and implacable absence had so often caused him as a child: while the primary class was making Father’s Day cards, for instance, or when strange adults questioned him about why he never saw Rokeby, or other children jeered at him, singing Deadbeats songs or telling him his mother had got pregnant with him purely to get Rokeby’s money. He remembered the longing that was almost an ache, always most acute around birthdays and Christmas, for his father to send something, or phone: anything, to show that he knew Strike was alive. Strike hated the memory of these fantasies more than he hated remembering the pain caused by their eternal unfulfillment, but most of all he hated remembering the hopeful lies he’d told him
self when, as a very young boy, he’d made excuses for his father, who probably didn’t know that the family had moved yet again, who’d sent things to the wrong address, who wanted to know him but simply couldn’t find him.
Where had Rokeby been when his son was a nobody? Where had Rokeby been every time Leda’s life came off the rails, and Ted and Joan rode, again, to the rescue? Where had he been on any of the thousands of occasions when his presence might have meant something real, and genuine, rather than an attempt to look good to the papers?
Rokeby knew literally nothing about his son except that he was a detective, and that explained the fucking bloodhound. Fuck you and fuck your fucking card. Strike tore the card in half, then into quarters, and threw the pieces into the bin. But for a disinclination to trigger the fire alarm, he might have put a match to them.
Anger pulsed like a current through Strike all morning. He hated his own rage, as it showed that Rokeby still had some emotional hold on him, and by the time he set out for Earl’s Court, where Robin was picking him up, he was not far off wishing that birthdays had never been invented.
Sitting in the Land Rover just outside the station entrance some forty-five minutes later, Robin watched Strike emerge onto the pavement, carrying a leather-bound notebook, and noted that he looked as grumpy as she’d ever seen him.
“Happy birthday,” she said, when he opened the passenger door. Strike immediately noticed the card and the small wrapped package lying on the dashboard.
Fuck.
“Cheers,” and climbed in beside her, looking even grumpier.
As Robin pulled out onto the road, she said,
“Is it turning thirty-nine that’s upset you, or has something else happened?”
Having no desire to talk about Rokeby, Strike decided an effort was required.
“No, I’m just knackered. I was up late last night, going through the last box of the Bamborough file.”
“I wanted to do that on Tuesday, but you wouldn’t let me!”
“You were owed time off,” said Strike shortly, tearing open the envelope of her card. “You’re still owed time off.”
“I know, but it would’ve been a lot more interesting than doing my ironing.”
Strike looked down at the front of Robin’s card, which featured a watercolor picture of St. Mawes. She must, he thought, have gone to some trouble to find it in London. “Nice,” he said, “thanks.”
Flipping it open, he read,
Many happy returns, love Robin x
She’d never put a kiss on any message to him before, and he liked it being there. Feeling slightly more cheerful, he unwrapped the small package that accompanied the card, and found inside a pair of replacement headphones of the kind Luke had broken while he’d been in St. Mawes over the summer.
“Ah, Robin, that’s—thanks. That’s great. I hadn’t replaced them, either.”
“I know,” said Robin, “I noticed.”
As Strike put her card back in its envelope, he reminded himself that he really did need to get her a decent Christmas present.
“Is that Bill Talbot’s secret notebook?” Robin asked, glancing sideways at the leather-bound book in Strike’s lap.
“The very same. I’ll show you after we’ve talked to Irene and Janice. Batshit crazy. Full of bizarre drawings and symbols.”
“What about the last box of police records? Anything interesting?” Robin asked.
“Yes, as it goes. A chunk of police notes from 1975 had got mixed in with a bunch of later stuff. There were a few interesting bits.
“For instance, the practice cleaner, Wilma, was sacked a couple of months after Margot disappeared, but for petty theft, not drinking, which is what Gupta told me. Small amounts of money disappearing out of people’s purses and pockets. I also found out a call was made to Margot’s marital home on Anna’s second birthday, from a woman claiming to be Margot.”
“Oh my God, that’s horrible,” said Robin. “A prank call?”
“Police thought so. They traced it to a phone box in Marylebone. Cynthia, the childminder-turned-second-wife, answered. The woman identified herself as Margot and told Cynthia to look after her daughter.”
“Did Cynthia think it was Margot?”
“She told police she was too shocked to really take in what the caller said. She thought it sounded a bit like her, but on balance it sounded more like someone imitating her.”
“What makes people do things like that?” Robin asked, in genuine perplexity.
“They’re shits,” said Strike. “There were also a bunch of alleged sightings of Margot after the day she disappeared, in the last box. They were all disproven, but I’ve made a list and I’ll email them to you. Mind if I smoke?”
“Carry on,” said Robin, and Strike wound down the window. “I actually emailed you a tiny bit of information last night, too. Very tiny. Remember Albert Shimmings, the local florist—”
“—whose van people thought they saw speeding away from Clerkenwell Green? Yeah. Did he leave a note confessing to murder?”
“Unfortunately not, but I’ve spoken to his eldest son, who says that his dad’s van definitely wasn’t in Clerkenwell at half past six that evening. It was waiting outside his clarinet teacher’s house in Camden, where his dad drove him every Friday. He says they told the police that at the time. His dad used to wait outside for him in the van and read spy novels.”
“Well, the clarinet lessons aren’t in the records, but both Talbot and Lawson believed Shimmings when they spoke to him. Good to have it confirmed, though,” he added, lest Robin think he was being dismissive of her routine work. “Well, that means there’s still a possibility the van was Dennis Creed’s, doesn’t it?”
Strike lit up a Benson & Hedges, exhaled out of the window, and said,
“There was some interesting material on these two women we’re about to meet, in that last box of notes. More stuff that came out when Lawson took over.”
“Really? I thought Irene had a dental appointment and Janice had house visits on the afternoon Margot disappeared?”
“Yeah, that’s what their original statements said,” said Strike, “and Talbot didn’t check either woman’s story. Took both at their word.”
“Presumably because he didn’t think a woman could be the Essex Butcher?”
“Exactly.”
Strike pulled his own notebook out of his coat pocket and opened it to the pages he’d scribbled on Tuesday.
“Irene’s first statement, which she gave to Talbot, said she’d had a grumbling toothache for a few days before Margot disappeared. Her friend Janice the nurse thought it might be an abscess, so Irene made an emergency appointment for three o’clock, leaving the practice at two-thirty. She and Janice were planning to go to the cinema that evening, but Irene’s face was sore and swollen after having a tooth removed, so when Janice phoned her to see how the dentist’s had gone, and to check whether she still wanted to go out that night, she said she’d rather stay at home.”
“No mobile phones,” mused Robin. “Different world.”
“Exactly what I thought when I was going over this,” said Strike. “These days Irene’s mates would’ve expected a minute-by-minute commentary. Selfies from the dental chair.
“Talbot gave his officers to understand that he’d personally contacted the dentist to check this story, but he hadn’t. Wouldn’t put it past him to have consulted a crystal ball.”
“Ha ha.”
“I’m not kidding. Wait till you see his notebook.”
Strike turned a page.
“Anyway, six months later, Lawson takes over the case and goes systematically back through every single witness and suspect in the file. Irene told the dentist story again, but half an hour after she left him, she panicked and asked to see him again. This time she admitted she’d lied.
“There’d never been any tooth pain. She hadn’t visited the dentist. She said she’d been forced to do a lot of unpaid overtime at the surgery and resented it
, and felt she was owed an afternoon off, so she faked toothache, pretended to have got an emergency appointment, then left the practice and went to the West End to do some shopping.
“She told Lawson that it was only when she got home—she was still living with her parents, incidentally—that it occurred to her that if she went out to meet Janice the nurse that evening, Janice might ask to see the place where the tooth had been extracted, or at least expect to see some swelling. So when Janice rang her to check they were still going to the cinema, she lied and said she didn’t feel up to it.
“Lawson gave Irene quite a hard time, judging from his notes. Didn’t she understand what a serious matter it was, lying to the police, people had been arrested for less, et cetera. He also put it to her that the new story showed she had no alibi for any point of the afternoon and evening, other than around half past six in the evening, when Janice rang her at home.”
“Where did Irene live?”
“Street called Corporation Row, which as it happens lies very close to the Three Kings, although not on the route Margot would have taken from the practice.
“Anyway, at the point alibis were mentioned, Irene became hysterical. She poured out a load of stuff about Margot having a lot of enemies, without being able to say who these enemies were, although she referred Lawson back to the anonymous letters Margot received.
“The next day, Irene went back to Lawson yet again, this time accompanied by her very angry father, who did her no favors by losing his temper at Lawson for daring to upset his daughter. In the course of this third interview, Irene presented Lawson with a receipt from Oxford Street, which was marked 3:10 p.m. on the day Margot disappeared. The receipt was for cash. Lawson probably took a lot of pleasure in telling Irene and her dad that all the receipt proved was that somebody had gone shopping on Oxford Street that day.”
“Still—a receipt for the right day, right time—”
“Could’ve been her mother’s. A friend’s.”
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 21