Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  Strike poured himself tea, settled back in his seat, and glowered at Elinor Dean’s closed door through the steam rising from plastic-tasting tea the color of mud. He was angry, he told himself, because he should have established a work rule that partners weren’t allowed to date subcontractors, and for another reason which he preferred not to examine, because he knew perfectly well what it was, and no good could come of brooding upon it.

  53

  Like three faire branches budding farre and wide,

  That from one roote deriu’d their vitall sap:

  And like that roote that doth her life diuide,

  Their mother was…

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  Seven hours later, in the cool, flat daylight of an overcast morning, Robin, who was back in her Land Rover, took a detour on her way to the café where she and Strike would be meeting the three Bayliss sisters.

  When Maya, the middle sister, had suggested meeting in Belgique in Wanstead, Robin had realized how close she’d have to drive to the Flats where Dennis Creed had disposed of his second-to-last known victim, twenty-seven-year-old hairdresser Susan Meyer.

  Half an hour ahead of the planned interview, Robin parked the Land Rover beside a stretch of shops on Aldersbrook Road, then crossed the street and headed up a short footpath, which led her to the reedy bank of the man-made Alexandra Lake, a wide stretch of water on which various wildfowl were bobbing. A couple of ducks came paddling hopefully toward Robin, but when she failed to produce bread or other treats, they glided away again, compact, self-sufficient, their onyx eyes scanning both water and bank for other possibilities.

  Thirty-nine years ago, Dennis Creed had driven to this lake under cover of night, and rolled the headless, handless corpse of Susan Meyer into it, bound up in black plastic and rope. Susan Meyer’s distinctive wedge cut and shy smile had earned her a prominent place on the cover of The Demon of Paradise Park.

  The milky sky looked as opaque as the shallow lake, which resembled jade silk in which the gliding wildfowl made rippling creases. Hands in her pockets, Robin looked out over the water and the rustling weeds, trying to imagine the scene when a park worker had spotted the black object in the water, which he’d assumed initially was a tarpaulin swollen with air, until he hooked it with a long pole, felt the grisly weight and made an instant connection (or so he told the television crew who arrived shortly after the police and ambulance) with the bodies that kept turning up in Epping Forest, barely ten miles away.

  Creed had abducted Susan exactly a month before Margot disappeared. Had they overlapped in Creed’s basement? If so, Creed had, for a brief period, held three women there simultaneously. Robin preferred not to think about what Andrea, or Margot, if she’d been there, must have felt on being dragged into Creed’s basement, seeing a fellow woman chained there, and knowing that she, too, would be reduced to that emaciated and broken-boned state before she died.

  Andrea Hooton was the last woman Creed was known to have killed, and he’d varied the pattern when it came to disposing of her body, driving eighty miles from his house in Liverpool Road to throw the corpse off Beachy Head. Both Epping Forest and Wanstead Flats had become too heavily patrolled by then, and in spite of Creed’s evident wish to make sure the Essex Butcher was credited with every kill, as evidenced by the secret store of press clippings he kept beneath the floorboards in his basement flat, he’d never wanted to be caught.

  Robin checked her watch: it was time to head to the interview with the Bayliss sisters. Walking back to the Land Rover, she pondered the divide between normalcy and insanity. On the surface, Creed had been far saner than Bill Talbot. Creed had left no half-crazed scribblings behind him to explain his thought processes; he’d never plotted the course of asteroids to guide him: his interviews with psychiatrists and police had been entirely lucid. Not for Creed the belief in signs and symbols, a secret language decipherable only by initiates, a refuge in mystery or magic. Dennis Creed had been a meticulous planner, a genius of misdirection in his neat little white van, dressed in the pink coat he’d stolen from Vi Cooper, and sometimes wearing a wig that, from a distance, to a drunk victim, gave his hazy form a feminine appearance just long enough for his large hands to close over a gasping mouth.

  When Robin arrived in the street where the café stood, she spotted Strike getting out of his BMW a short distance away from the entrance. Noticing the Land Rover in turn, Strike raised a hand in greeting and headed up the street toward her, while finishing what looked like a bacon and egg McMuffin, his chin stubbly, the shadows beneath his eyes purple.

  “Have I got time for a fag?” were the first words he spoke, checking his watch as Robin got down out of the car and slammed the door. “No,” he answered himself, with a sigh. “Ah well…”

  “You can take the lead on this interview,” he told Robin, as they headed together toward the café. “You’ve done all the legwork. I’ll take notes. Remind me what their names are?”

  “Eden’s the eldest. She’s a Labor councilor from Lewisham. Maya’s the middle one, and she’s deputy headmistress of a primary school. The youngest is Porschia Dagley, and she’s a social worker—”

  “—like her mother—”

  “Exactly, and she lives just up the road from here. I think we’ve come to her neck of the woods because she’s been ill, so the others didn’t want her to have to travel.”

  Robin pushed open the door of the café and led the way inside. The interior was sleekly modern, with a curved counter, a wooden floor and a bright orange feature wall. Close to the door at a table for six sat three black women. Robin found it easy to identify which sister was which, because of the photographs she’d seen on the family’s Facebook pages, and on the Lewisham Council website.

  Eden, the councilor, sat with her arms folded, a wavy bob casting a shadow over most of her face, so that only a carefully lipsticked, unsmiling plum mouth was clearly visible. She wore a well-tailored black jacket and her demeanor was suggestive of a businesswoman who’d been interrupted during an important meeting.

  Maya, the deputy headmistress, wore a cornflower blue sweater and jeans. A small silver cross hung around her neck. She was smaller in build than Eden, the darkest skinned and, in Robin’s opinion, the prettiest of the sisters. Her long, braided hair was tied back in a thick ponytail, she wore square-framed glasses over her large, wide-set eyes and her full mouth, with its naturally up-tilted corners, conveyed warmth. A leather handbag sat in Maya’s lap, and she was gripping it with both hands as though afraid it might otherwise escape.

  Porschia, the youngest sister and the social worker, was also the heaviest. Her hair had been cropped almost to her skull, doubtless because of her recent chemotherapy. She’d penciled in the eyebrows that were just beginning to grow back; they arched over hazel eyes that shone gold against her skin. Porschia was wearing a purple smock top with jeans and long beaded earrings, which swung like miniature chandeliers as she looked around at Strike and Robin. As they approached the table Robin spotted a small tattoo on the back of Porschia’s neck: the trident from the Barbadian flag. Robin knew that Eden and Maya were both well into their fifties, and that Porschia was forty-nine, but all three sisters could have passed for at least ten years younger than their real ages.

  Robin introduced herself and Strike. Hands were shaken, Eden unsmiling throughout, and the detectives sat down, Strike at the head of the table, Robin between him and Porschia, facing Maya and Eden. Everyone but Eden made labored small talk about the local area and the weather, until the waiter came to take their order. Once he’d left, Robin said,

  “Thanks very much for meeting us, we really do appreciate it. Would you mind if Cormoran takes notes?”

  Maya and Porschia shook their heads. Strike tugged his notebook out of his coat pocket and opened it.

  “As I said on the phone,” Robin began, “we’re really after background, building up a complete picture of Margot Bamborough’s life in the months—�
�

  “Could I ask a couple of questions?” interrupted Eden.

  “Of course,” said Robin politely, though expecting trouble.

  Eden swept her hair back out of her face, revealing ebony-dark eyes.

  “Did you two know there’s a guy phoning around everyone who was connected to St. John’s, saying he’s going to write a book about you investigating Bamborough’s disappearance?”

  Shit, thought Robin.

  “Would this be a man called Oakden?” asked Strike.

  “No, Carl Brice.”

  “It’s the same bloke,” said Strike.

  “Are you connected to him or—”

  “No,” said Strike, “and I’d strongly advise you not to talk to him.”

  “Yeah, we worked that out for ourselves,” said Eden, coolly. “But this means there’ll be publicity, won’t there?”

  Robin looked at Strike, who said,

  “If we solve the case, there’ll be publicity even without Oakden—or Brice, or whatever he’s calling himself these days—but that’s a big ‘if.’ To be frank, the odds are we’re not going to solve it, in which case I think Oakden’s going to find it very hard to sell any books, and whatever you tell us will never go any further.”

  “What if we know something that might help you solve the case, though?” asked Porschia, leaning forwards, so that she could look past Robin at Strike.

  There was an infinitesimal pause in which Robin could almost feel Strike’s interest sharpening, along with her own.

  “Depends what that information is,” Strike answered slowly. “It might be possible not to divulge where we got it, but if the source is important to getting a conviction…”

  There was a long pause. The air between the sisters seemed charged with silent communications.

  “Well?” said Porschia at last, on an interrogative note.

  “We did decide to,” Maya mumbled to Eden, who continued to sit in silence, arms folded.

  “OK, fine,” said Eden, with a don’t-blame-me-later inflection.

  The deputy headmistress reached absently for the little silver cross around her neck, and held it as she began to talk.

  “I need to explain a bit of background, first,” she said. “When we were kids—Eden and I were already teenagers, but Porschia was only nine—”

  “Eight,” Porschia corrected her.

  “Eight,” Maya said obediently, “our dad was convicted of—of rape and sent to prison.”

  “He didn’t do it, though,” said Eden.

  Robin reached automatically for her coffee cup and took a sip, so as to hide her face.

  “He didn’t, OK?” said Eden, watching Robin. “He had a white girlfriend for a couple of months. The whole of Clerkenwell knew. They’d been seen together in bars all over the place. He tried to end it, and she cried rape.”

  Robin’s stomach lurched as though the floor had tilted. She very much wanted this story to be untrue. The idea of any woman lying about rape was repugnant to her. She’d had to talk through every moment of her own assault in court. Her soft-spoken fifty-three-year-old rapist and would-be murderer had taken the stand afterward to explain to the jury how the twenty-year-old Robin had invited him into the stairwell of her hall of residence for sex. In his account, everything had been consensual: she’d whispered that she liked it rough, which had accounted for the heavy bruising around her neck, she’d enjoyed it so much she’d asked him back the following night, and yes (with a little laugh in the dock), of course he’d been surprised, nicely spoken young girl like her, coming on to him like that, out of nowhere…

  “Easy thing for a white woman to do to a black man,” said Eden, “’specially in 1972. Dad already had a record, because he’d got into a fight a few years before that. He went down for five years.”

  “Must’ve been hard on the family,” said Strike, not looking at Robin.

  “It was,” said Maya. “Very hard. The other kids at school… well, you know what kids are like…”

  “Dad had been bringing in most of the money,” said Porschia. “There were five of us, and Mum had never had much schooling. Before Dad got arrested, she’d been studying, trying to pass some exams, better herself. We were just about making ends meet while Dad was bringing in a wage, but once he was gone, we struggled.”

  “Our mum and her sister married two brothers,” said Maya. “Nine children between them. The families were really close, right up until Dad got arrested—but then everything changed. My Uncle Marcus went to court every day while Dad was on trial, but Mum wouldn’t go and Uncle Marcus was really angry at her.”

  “Well, he knew it would’ve made a big difference, if the judge had seen Dad had the family united behind him,” snapped Eden. “I went. I bunked off school to go. I knew he was innocent.”

  “Well, good for you,” said Porschia, though her tone was far from congratulatory, “but Mum didn’t want to sit in open court listening to her husband talk about how often he had sex with his girlfriend—”

  “That woman was trash,” said Eden curtly.

  “Dirty water does cool hot iron,” said Porschia, with a Bajan inflection. “His choice.”

  “So, anyway,” said Maya hastily, “the judge believed the woman, and Dad got put away. Mum never went to visit him inside, and she wouldn’t take me or Porschia or our brothers, either.”

  “I went,” piped up Eden again. “I got Uncle Marcus to take me. He was still our dad. Mum had no right to stop us seeing him.”

  “Yeah, so,” continued Maya, before Porschia could say anything, “Mum wanted a divorce, but she had no money for legal advice. So Dr. Bamborough put her in touch with this feminist lawyer, who’d give legal help to women in difficult circumstances, for a reduced fee. When Uncle Marcus told Dad that Mum had managed to get herself a lawyer, Dad wrote to her from prison, begging her to change her mind. He said he’d found God, that he loved her and he’d learned his lesson and all he wanted was his family.”

  Maya took a sip of her coffee.

  “About a week after Mum got Dad’s letter, she was cleaning Dr. Bamborough’s consulting room one evening after everyone had left, and she noticed something in the bin.”

  Maya unfastened the handbag she’d been holding on her lap, and took out a pale blue piece of heavily creased paper, which had clearly been crumpled up into a ball at some point in the past. She held it out to Robin, who laid it flat on the table so that Strike could read it, too.

  The faded handwriting was a distinctive mix of capitals and lower-case letters.

  LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE YOU CUNT OR I’LL MAKE SURE YOU GO TO HELL SLOW AND PAINFUL.

  Robin glanced sideways at Strike and saw her own, barely disguised astonishment mirrored there. Before either of them could say anything, a group of young women passed their table, forcing Strike to push his chair in. Chatting and giggling, the women sat down at the table behind Maya and Eden.

  “When Mum read that,” said Maya, speaking more quietly so that the newcomers couldn’t hear her, “she thought Dad had sent it. Not literally, because the prison censor would never have let that go out—she thought someone had done it for him.”

  “Specifically, Uncle Marcus,” said Eden, arms folded and expression pinched. “Uncle Marcus, who was a lay preacher and never used the c-word in his life.”

  “Mum took the note over to Uncle Marcus and Auntie Carmen’s,” said Maya, ignoring this interjection, “and asked Marcus straight out if he was behind it. He denied it, but Mum didn’t believe him. It was the mention of hell: Marcus was a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher back then—”

  “—and he didn’t believe Mum really wanted a divorce,” said Porschia. “He blamed Dr. Bamborough for persuading Mum to leave Dad, because, you know, Mum really needed a white woman to point out her life was shit. She’d never have noticed otherwise.”

  “Going for a cigarette, OK?” said Eden abruptly. She pushed herself up and walked out, her heels rapping on the wooden floorboards.

>   Both younger sisters seemed to exhale in relief with her departure.

  “She was Dad’s favorite,” Maya told Strike and Robin quietly, watching through the window as Eden took out a packet of Silk Cut, shook her hair out of her face and lit herself a cigarette. “She really loved him, even if he was a womanizer.”

  “And she never got on with Mum,” said Porschia. “Their rows would’ve woken the dead.”

  “In fairness,” said Maya, “them splitting up hit Eden hardest. She left school at sixteen, got herself a job at Marks & Spencer to help support—”

  “Mum never wanted her to drop out of school,” said Porschia. “That was Eden’s choice. Eden likes to claim it was a sacrifice she made for the family, but come on. She couldn’t wait to get out of school, because Mum put so much pressure on her to get good grades. She likes to claim she was a second mother to all of us, but that’s not how I remember it. I mostly remember her whacking merry hell out of me if I so much as looked at her wrong.”

  On the other side of the window, Eden stood smoking with her back to them.

  “The whole situation was a nightmare,” said Maya sadly. “Mum and Uncle Marcus never made it up, and with Mum and Carmen being sisters…”

  “Let’s just tell them now, while she can’t stick her oar in,” Porschia urged Maya, and turning to Strike and Robin, she said, “Auntie Carmen was helping Mum get the divorce, behind Uncle Marcus’s back.”

  “How?” asked Robin, as a waiter passed their table on the way to the group of women at the next table.

  “See, when the lawyer Dr. Bamborough had recommended told Mum what she charged, Mum knew she’d never be able to afford her, not even at the reduced rates,” said Porschia.

  “Mum came home afterward and cried,” said Maya, “because she was desperate to have the divorce done and dusted before Dad got out of jail. She knew otherwise he’d just move right back in and she’d be trapped. Anyway, a few days later, Dr. Bamborough asked her how things had gone with the lawyer, and Mum admitted she wasn’t going to go through with the divorce, for lack of funds, so,” Maya sighed, “Dr. Bamborough offered to pay the lawyer, in exchange for Mum doing a few hours a week cleaning the house out in Ham.”