Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  “You had to make a delivery,” Strike went on, trying to jog Shanker’s memory. “Jiffy bag full of something—drugs, cash, I don’t know. You came round the squat looking for someone to drive you, urgently. I said I’d do it. We went to a strip club in Soho. It was called Teezers.”

  “Teezers, yeah,” said Bunsen. “Long gone, Teezers. Closed ten, fifteen year ago.”

  “When we got there, there was a group of men standing on the pavement, heading inside. One of them was a bald black guy—”

  “Your fucking memory,” said Shanker, amused. “You could do a stage act. ‘Bunsen, the Amazing Memory Man’—”

  “—and there was a big Latin-looking bloke with dyed black hair and sideburns. We pulled up, you wound down the window and he came over and put his hand on the door to talk to you. He had eyes like a basset hound and he was wearing a massive gold ring with a lion’s—”

  “Mucky Ricci,” said Shanker.

  “You remember him?”

  “Just said ’is name, Bunsen, d’in I?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. What was his real name, d’you know?”

  “Nico, Niccolo Ricci, but everyone called ’im ‘Mucky.’ Old-school villain. Pimp. ’E owned a few strip clubs, ran a couple of knocking shops. Real bit of old London, ’e was. Got his start as part of the Sabini gang, when ’e was a kid.”

  “How’re you spelling Ricci? R—I—C—C—I, right?”

  “What’s this about?”

  Strike tugged the copy of Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough? out of his coat pocket, turned to the photographs of the practice Christmas party and held it out to Shanker, who took it suspiciously. He squinted for a moment at the partial picture of the man with the lion ring, then passed the book back to Strike.

  “Well?” said Strike.

  “Yeah, looks like ’im. Where’s that?”

  “Clerkenwell. A doctors’ Christmas party.”

  Shanker looked mildly surprised.

  “Well, Clerkenwell, that was the old Sabini stamping ground, warn’t it? And I s’pose even gangsters need doctors sometimes.”

  “It was a party,” said Strike. “Not a surgery. Why would Mucky Ricci be at a doctors’ party?”

  “Dunno,” said Shanker. “Anyone need killing?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” said Strike. “I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman who was there that night.”

  Shanker looked sideways at him.

  “Mucky Ricci’s gaga,” he said quietly. “Old man now, innit.”

  “Still alive, though?”

  “Yer. ’E’s in an ’ome.”

  “How d’you know that?”

  “Done a bit o’ business wiv ’is eldest, Luca.”

  “Boys in the same line of work as their old man?”

  “Well, there ain’t no Little Italy gang any more, is there? But they’re villains, yeah,” said Shanker. Then he leaned across the table and said quietly, “Listen to me, Bunsen. You do not wanna screw wiv Mucky Ricci’s boys.”

  It was the first time Shanker had ever given Strike such a warning.

  “You go fuckin’ wiv their old man, you try pinnin’ anyfing on ’im, the Ricci boys’ll skin ya. Understand? They don’t fuckin’ care. They’ll torch your fuckin’ office. They’ll cut up your girl.”

  “Tell me about Mucky. Anything you know.”

  “Did you ’ear what I just said, Bunsen?”

  “Just tell me about him, for fuck’s sake.”

  Shanker scowled.

  “’Ookers. Porn. Drugs, but girls was ’is main thing. Same era as George Cornell, Jimmy Humphries, all those boys. That gold ring ’e wore, ’e used to say Danny the Lion gave it ’im. Danny Leo, the mob boss in New York. Claimed they were related. Dunno if it’s true.”

  “Ever run across anyone called Conti?” Strike asked. “Probably a bit younger than Ricci.”

  “Nope. But Luca Ricci’s a fuckin’ psycho,” said Shanker. “When did this bint disappear?”

  “1974,” said Strike.

  He expected Shanker to say “Nineteen seventy fucking four?,” to pour scorn on the likelihood of finding any kind of solution after all this time, but his old friend merely frowned at him, his clicking fingers recalling the relentless progress of the deathwatch beetle, and it occurred to the detective that Shanker knew more about old crimes and the long shadows they cast than many policemen.

  “Name of Margot Bamborough,” said Strike. “She vanished on her way to the pub. Nothing ever found, no handbag, door keys, nothing. Never seen again.”

  Shanker sipped his beer.

  “Professional job,” he said.

  “That occurred to me,” said Strike. “Hence—”

  “Fuck your fucking ‘hence,’” said Shanker fiercely. “If the bint was taken out by Mucky Ricci or any of his boys, she’s past fuckin’ savin,’ in’t she? I know you like bein’ the boy scout, mate, but the last guy who pissed off Luca Ricci, his wife opened the door few days later and got acid thrown in her face. Blind in one eye, now.

  “You wanna drop this, Bunsen. If Mucky Ricci’s the answer, you need to stop askin’ the question.”

  28

  Greatly thereat was Britomart dismayd,

  Ne in that stownd wist, how her selfe to beare…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  Somehow, Pat had managed to track down a vintage film projector. It had been promised for delivery at four, but Strike and Robin were still waiting for it at a quarter to six, at which time Robin told Strike she really did need to leave. She hadn’t yet packed for her trip home to Yorkshire, she wanted an early night before catching the train and, if she was honest, she was feeling insulted by Strike’s gift of unwrapped salted caramel chocolates, which he’d pulled hastily out of a Liberty bag when he saw her, and which she now suspected was the whole lousy reason he had forced her to come back to the office in the first place. As this had necessitated a long trip back to Denmark Street on a packed Tube, it was hard not to feel resentful about the time and trouble she had taken to find and wrap the DVD of two old Tom Waits concerts he’d mentioned wanting to watch, a few weeks previously. Robin had never heard of the singer: it had taken her some trouble to identify the man Strike had been talking about, and the concerts he’d never seen as those on No Visitors After Midnight. And in return, she got chocolates she was sure had been grabbed at random.

  She left Strike’s present behind, untouched, in Max’s kitchen, before boarding the crowded train to Harrogate next morning. As she traveled north in her mercifully pre-booked seat, Robin tried to tell herself that her feeling of emptiness was merely tiredness. Christmas at home would be a wonderful break. She’d be meeting her new niece for the first time; there’d be lie-ins and home-cooked food and hours in front of the telly.

  A toddler was shouting at the back of the carriage, his mother trying just as loudly to entertain and subdue him. Robin pulled out her iPod and put on headphones. She’d downloaded Joni Mitchell’s album, Court and Spark, which Oonagh had mentioned as Margot Bamborough’s favorite. Robin hadn’t yet had time to listen to it, or, indeed, to any other music, for weeks.

  But Court and Spark didn’t soothe or cheer her. She found it unsettling, unlike anything she had ever listened to before. Expecting melodies and hooks, Robin was disappointed: everything felt unfinished, left open, unresolved. A beautiful soprano voice tumbled and swooped over piano or guitar chords that never led to anything as mundane as a chorus that you could settle into, or tap your foot to. You couldn’t hum along, you couldn’t have joined in unless you, too, could sing like Mitchell, which Robin certainly couldn’t. The words were strange, and evoked responses she didn’t like: she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt the things Mitchell sang about, and this made her feel defensive, confused and sad: Love came to my door, with a sleeping roll and a madman’s soul…

  A few seconds into track three, she turned off the iPod and reached instead for the magazine she had brought with her. A
t the back of the carriage, the toddler was now howling.

  Robin’s mood of mild despondency persisted until she got off the train, but when she saw her mother standing on the platform, ready to drive her back to Masham, she was overtaken by a wave of genuine warmth. She hugged Linda, and for almost ten minutes afterward, while they wended their way, chatting, toward the car, passing a café out of which jangling Christmas music was emanating, even the dour gray Yorkshire skies and the car interior, which smelled of Rowntree the Labrador, felt comforting and cheery in their familiarity.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Linda said, when she had closed the driver’s door. Instead of turning the key in the ignition, Linda turned to Robin, looking almost fearful.

  A sickening jolt of panic turned Robin’s stomach upside down.

  “What’s happened?” she said.

  “It’s all right,” Linda said hastily, “everyone’s well. But I want you to know before we get back to Masham, in case you see them.”

  “See who?”

  “Matthew,” said Linda, “has brought… he’s brought that woman home with him. Sarah Shadlock. They’re staying with Geoffrey for Christmas.”

  “Oh,” said Robin. “Christ, Mum, I thought someone had died.”

  She hated the way Linda was looking at her. Though her insides had just grown cold, and the fragile happiness that had briefly kindled inside her had been snuffed out, she forced a smile and a tone of unconcern.

  “It’s fine. I knew. Her ex-fiancé called me. I should’ve guessed,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t, “they might be here for Christmas. Can we get home, please? I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

  “You knew? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  But Linda herself supplied the answer to that, as they drove. It neither soothed nor comforted Robin to have Linda storming about how outraged she’d been, when a neighbor told her that Matthew had been strolling hand in hand with Sarah through the middle of town. She didn’t feel comforted by strictures against her ex-husband’s morals and manners, nor did she appreciate having each family member’s reaction detailed to her (“Martin was all for punching him again”). Then Linda moved on to the divorce: what was going on? Why wasn’t it all settled yet? Did Robin honestly think mediation would work? Didn’t Matthew’s behavior, flaunting this woman in front of the whole of Masham, show how utterly lost to shame and reason he was? Why, oh why, hadn’t Robin agreed to let Harveys of Harrogate deal with it all, was she sure this London woman was up to it, because Corinne Maxwell had told Linda that when her daughter divorced without children it was all completely straightforward…

  But at least there was little Annabel Marie, was the conclusion of Linda’s monologue, as they turned onto Robin’s parents’ street.

  “Wait till you see her, Robin, just wait…”

  The front door opened before the car came to a halt. Jenny and Stephen were standing on the threshold, looking so excited that an onlooker might have suspected it was they who were about to see their baby daughter for the first time, not Robin. Realizing what was expected of her, Robin hitched an eager smile onto her face, and within minutes found herself sitting on the sofa in her parents’ living room, a warm little sleeping body in her arms, wrapped up in wool, surprisingly solid and heavy, and smelling of Johnson’s baby powder.

  “She’s gorgeous, Stephen,” Robin said, while Rowntree’s tail thumped against the coffee table. He was nosing at her, thrusting his head repeatedly under Robin’s hand, confused as to why he wasn’t receiving the fuss and love he was used to. “She’s gorgeous, Jenny,” Robin said, as her sister-in-law took photos of “Auntie Robin” meeting Annabel for the first time. “She’s gorgeous, Mum,” Robin said to Linda, who had come back with a tea tray and a craving to hear what Robin thought of their twenty-inch-long marvel.

  “Evens things out, doesn’t it, having another girl?” said Linda delightedly. Her anger at Matthew was over now: her granddaughter was everything.

  The sitting room was more cramped than usual, not only with Christmas tree and cards, but with baby equipment. A changing mat, a Moses basket, a pile of mysterious muslin cloths, a bag of nappies and an odd contraption that Jenny explained was a breast pump. Robin rhapsodized, smiled, laughed, ate biscuits, heard the story of the birth, admired some more, held her niece until she woke, then, after Jenny had taken back possession of the baby and, with a touch of new self-importance, settled herself down to breastfeed, said that she would nip upstairs and unpack.

  Robin carried her bag upstairs, her absence unnoticed and unregretted by those below, who were lost in adoration of the baby. Robin closed the door of her old room behind her, but instead of unpacking, lay down on her old bed. Facial muscles aching from all her forced smiling, she closed her eyes, and allowed herself the luxury of exhausted misery.

  29

  Thus warred he long time against his will,

  Till that through weakness he was forced at last

  To yield himself unto the mighty ill,

  Which, as a victor proud, ’gan ransack fast

  His inward parts and all his entrails waste…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  With three days to go before Christmas, Strike was forced to abandon the pretense that he didn’t have flu. Concluding that the only sensible course was to hole up in his attic flat while the virus passed through his system, he took himself to a packed Sainsbury’s where, feverish, sweating, breathing through his mouth and desperate to get away from the crowds and the canned carols, he grabbed enough food for a few days, and bore it back to his two rooms above the office.

  Joan took the news that he wouldn’t be joining the festivities in Cornwall predictably hard. She went so far as to suggest that it would be fine for him to come, as long as they sat at opposite ends of the dinner table, but to Strike’s relief, Ted overruled her. Strike didn’t know whether he was being paranoid, but he suspected Lucy didn’t believe he was genuinely ill. If she did, her tone suggested that he might have caught flu deliberately. He thought he heard a trace of accusation when she informed him that Joan was now entirely bald.

  By five o’clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Strike had developed a cough that made his lungs rattle and his ribs ache. Drowsing on his bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his prosthetic leg propped against a wall, he was woken abruptly by a loud noise. Footsteps seemed to be moving down the stairs, away from his attic door. A paroxysm of coughing seized him before he could call out to the person he thought had woken him. Struggling back into a sitting position to clear his lungs, he didn’t hear the second approach of footsteps until somebody knocked on his door. He greatly resented the effort it took to shout, “What?”

  “D’you need anything?” came Pat’s deep, gravelly voice.

  “No,” Strike shouted. The syllable emerged as a croak.

  “Have you got food?”

  “Yes.”

  “Painkillers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m leaving some things outside the door for you.” He heard her setting objects down. “There are a couple of presents. Eat the soup while it’s still hot. See you on the twenty-eighth.”

  Her footsteps were clanging down the metal stairs before he could respond.

  He wasn’t sure whether he’d imagined the mention of hot soup, but the possibility was enough to make him drag his crutches toward himself and make his way laboriously to the door. The chill of the stairwell added gooseflesh to his fever sweats. Pat had somehow managed to carry the old video projector upstairs for him, and he suspected that it was the sound of her setting this down that had woken him. Beside it lay the can of film from Gregory Talbot’s attic, a small pile of wrapped Christmas gifts, a handful of cards and two polystyrene tubs of hot chicken soup that he knew she must have walked to Chinatown to fetch. He felt quite pathetically grateful.

  Leaving the heavy projector and the can of film where they were, he pulled and prodded the Christmas gifts
and card across the floor into the flat with one of his crutches, then slowly bent down to pick up the tubs of soup.

  Before eating, he took his mobile from the bedside table and texted Pat:

  Thanks very much. Hope you have a good Christmas.

  He then wrapped the duvet around himself and ate the soup straight out of the tubs, tasting nothing. He’d hoped the hot liquid would soothe his raw throat, but the cough persisted, and once or twice he thought he was going to choke everything back up again. His intestines also seemed unsure whether they welcomed food. Having finished the two tubs, he settled back down beneath the duvet, sweating while he looked at the black sky outside, guts churning, and wondering why he wasn’t yet on the mend.

  After a night of intermittent dozing interrupted by prolonged coughing fits, Strike woke on Christmas morning to find his fever unabated, and sweaty sheets tangled about him. His normally noisy flat was unnaturally quiet. Tottenham Court Road was suddenly, weirdly devoid of traffic. He supposed most of the taxi drivers were at home with their families.

  Strike was not a self-pitying man, but lying alone in bed, coughing and sweating, his ribs sore and his fridge now virtually empty, he was unable to prevent his thoughts roaming back over Christmases past, especially those spent at Ted and Joan’s in St. Mawes, where everything proceeded as it did on the television and in story books, with turkey and crackers and stockings.

  Of course, today was far from the first Christmas he’d spent away from family and friends. There’d been a couple such in the army, when he’d eaten foil trays of tasteless turkey in field canteens, among camouflage-wearing colleagues wearing Santa hats. The structure he’d enjoyed in the military had then consoled him in the absence of other pleasures, but there was no camaraderie to sustain him today, only the dismal fact that he was alone, ill and one-legged, stuck up in a drafty attic, forced to endure the consequences of his own firm repudiation of any relationship that might offer support in moments of illness or sadness.