Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  Think about something else.

  She checked her watch. Where was Barclay? True, Robin had arrived very early, and technically Barclay wasn’t late, but she didn’t like standing here alone, trying to distract herself from thoughts of what they were about to do.

  Theo had once stood almost exactly where Robin now was, watching the traffic roll up and down Clerkenwell Road, dark-haired Theo of the Kuchi earrings and the painful abdomen, waiting for the silver van that would take her away. Why Theo had never come forward afterward, why she’d never felt enough gratitude to the woman who’d seen her at short notice, at least to rule herself out of suspicion and stop Talbot haring after a delusion, remained a minor mystery. But of course, that assumed that Theo felt grateful. Nobody ever really knew what happened between a doctor and patient: it was the secular equivalent of the confession box. Robin’s thoughts had moved to Douthwaite when, at last, she spotted Barclay, who was approaching, carrying a holdall. When he got close enough, Robin heard the tools inside it clinking.

  “Havin’ a wee bit o’ déjà vu, here,” he said, coming to halt beside her. “Didn’t we once go diggin’ fer a body before?”

  “I don’t think this qualifies as digging,” said Robin.

  “What’s the latest?”

  “He’s gone out,” said Robin. “Strike says we’ve got to wait until he comes back.”

  “What’s in there?” asked Barclay, nodding at the carrier bag in Robin’s hand.

  “Chocolate biscuits,” said Robin.

  “Bribe?”

  “Basically.”

  “And has Strike—?”

  “Not yet. He’s in position. He wants us to…”

  Robin waited for a group of what looked like students to walk out of earshot.

  “… do our bit, first. Were you pleased,” Robin continued, still trying not to think about what they were about to do until it was absolutely necessary, “about the referendum result?”

  “Aye, but don’t kid yerself oan’, said Barclay darkly, “this isn’t finished. That stupid fucker Cameron’s playing right into the nats’ hands. ‘English votes for English laws,’ the day after Scotland decides to stay? You don’t fight fuckin’ nationalism with more fuckin’ nationalism. He wants tae get his head out of Farage’s arse—is this oor wee fella now?”

  Robin looked around. Silhouetted against the end of Albemarle Way was a man walking along with a strange, rolling gait, who was carrying two full carrier bags. He stopped at a door, set down his shopping, put his key in the lock, picked up his shopping bags, stepped over the threshold and vanished from sight.

  “That’s him,” said Robin, as her insides seemed to wobble. “Let’s go.”

  They walked side by side down the street to the dark blue front door.

  “He’s left the key in the lock,” said Barclay, pointing.

  Robin was about to the ring the bell when the door opened, and Samhain Athorn reappeared. Pale, big-eared and mousy-haired, he gaped slightly. He was wearing a Batman sweatshirt. Disconcerted to find two people on his doorstep, he blinked, then addressed Robin’s left shoulder.

  “I left the key.”

  He reached around to pull it out of the lock. As he made to close the door, Barclay dextrously inserted a foot.

  “You’re Samhain, aren’t you?” said Robin, smiling at him, while Samhain gaped. “We’re friends of Cormoran Strike’s. You were very helpful to him, a few months ago.”

  “I need to put the shopping away,” said Samhain. He tried to close the front door, but Barclay’s foot was in the way.

  “Could we come in?” asked Robin. “Just for a little while? We’d like to talk to you and your mum. You were so helpful, before, telling Cormoran about your Uncle Tudor—”

  “My Uncle Tudor’s dead,” said Samhain.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “He died in the hospital,” said Samhain.

  “Really?” said Robin.

  “My-Dad-Gwilherm died under the bridge,” said Samhain.

  “That’s so sad,” said Robin. “Could we come in, please, just for a moment? Cormoran wanted me to bring you these,” she added, pulling the tin of chocolate biscuits out of her bag. “As a thank you.”

  “What’s them?” asked Samhain, looking at the tin out of the corner of his eye.

  “Chocolate biscuits.”

  He took the tin out of her hand.

  “Yeah. You can come in,” he said, and turning his back, he marched up the dark interior stairs.

  With a glance at Barclay, Robin led the way inside. She heard her companion close the door behind her, and the clinking of the tools in his holdall. The staircase was steep, narrow and dark after daylight, the lightbulb overhead dead. When Robin reached the landing she saw, through the open door, a white-haired woman with big ears like Samhain’s, wiping the surfaces of a brown-tiled kitchen while Samhain, who had his back to her, eagerly peeled the plastic wrapper off the tin of chocolate biscuits.

  Deborah turned, her neat white plait sliding over her shoulder, to fix her dark eyes on the two strangers.

  “Hello, Mrs. Athorn,” said Robin, coming to a halt in the hall.

  “Are you from the social work department?” asked Deborah slowly. “I phoned Clare…”

  “We can help wi’ anythin’ Clare can,” said Barclay, before Robin could answer. “What’s the problem?”

  “Him downstairs is a bastard,” said Samhain, who was now digging busily in the tin of chocolate biscuits, and selecting the one wrapped in gold foil. “These are the best ones, in the shiny paper, that’s how you know.”

  “Is the man downstairs complaining again?” asked Robin, with a sudden upswell of excitement that bordered on panic.

  “Can we have a look at whut the problem is?” asked Barclay. “Where’s he think his ceilin’s crackin’?”

  Deborah pointed toward the sitting room.

  “I’ll have a wee look,” said Barclay confidently, and he set off toward the sitting room.

  “Don’t eat all of them, Sammy,” said Deborah, who’d returned to the methodical wiping of the kitchen sides.

  “They gave them to me, you silly woman,” said Samhain, his mouth full of chocolate.

  Robin followed, fighting a sense of utter unreality. Could what Strike suspected really be true?

  Two budgerigars were twittering in a cage in the corner of the small sitting room, which, like the hall, was carpeted in swirls of brown and orange. A crocheted blanket had been spread over the back of the sofa. Barclay was looking down at the almost completed jigsaw of unicorns leaping over a rainbow. Robin glanced around. The place was sparsely furnished. Apart from the sofa and the budgies’ cage, there was only a small armchair, a television set on top of which stood an urn, and a small shelving unit on which sat a few old paperbacks and some cheap ornaments. Her eyes lingered on the Egyptian symbol of eternal life painted on a patch of dirty green wall.

  She lies in a holy place.

  “Floorboards?” she murmured to Barclay.

  He shook his head, looked meaningfully down at the jigsaw of the unicorns, then pointed with his foot at the overlarge ottoman on which it lay.

  “Oh God, no,” whispered Robin, before she could stop herself. “You think?”

  “Otherwise the carpet would’ve had tae come up,” murmured Barclay. “Move furniture, take up floorboards… and would it make the ceilin’ crack, down below? An’ what aboot the smell?”

  Samhain now came ambling into the room, eating his second foil-wrapped biscuit.

  “D’you want a hot chocolate, or not?” he asked, looking at Robin’s knees.

  “Um… no, thank you,” said Robin, smiling at him.

  “Does he want a hot chocolate, or not?”

  “No thanks, mate,” said Barclay. “Can we move this jigsaw? Need tae have a look beneath it.”

  “Deborah don’t like her jigsaw touched,” said Samhain sternly.

  “We need to prove the man downstairs is lying, th
ough,” said Robin. “About his ceiling cracking.”

  “Deborah,” called Samhain. “They want to move your jigsaw.”

  He walked out of the room with his rocking gait, and his mother took his place at the door, eyeing Robin’s shoes as she said,

  “You can’t move my unicorns.”

  “We need to have a little look underneath it,” said Robin. “I promise we’ll take very good care of it, and not break it. We could move it…”

  She looked around, but there was no stretch of floor big enough to accommodate it.

  “In my bedroom, you can put it,” said Samhain, bobbing back into sight. “On my bed, they can put it, Deborah.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Barclay heartily, bending to pick it up.

  “Close it up first,” said Robin hastily, and she folded the wings of the jigsaw mat over the puzzle, containing all the pieces.

  “Good job,” said Barclay, and he carried the jigsaw mat carefully out through the sitting-room door, followed by Deborah, who looked both anxious and alarmed, and by the self-important Samhain, who seemed proud to have had his plan adopted by this new man in the flat.

  For a few seconds, Robin stood alone in the sitting room, looking down at the ottoman that was far too big for this small room. It had been covered with a cloth that Robin suspected dated from the sixties, being of thin, faded purple cotton, and carrying the design of a mandala. If a tall woman curled herself up, she might fit inside that ottoman, as long as she was thin, of course.

  I don’t want to look, Robin thought suddenly, panic rising again. I don’t want to see…

  But she had to look. She had to see. That was what she was there for.

  Barclay returned, followed by both an interested-looking Samhain and a troubled Deborah.

  “That doesn’t open,” said Deborah, pointing at the exposed ottoman. “You can’t open that. You leave that alone.”

  “I had my toys in there,” said Samhain. “Didn’t I, Deborah? Once I did. But My-Dad-Gwilherm didn’t want me to keep them there no more.”

  “You can’t open that,” repeated Deborah, now distressed. “Leave it, don’t touch that.”

  “Deborah,” said Robin quietly, walking toward the older woman, “we’ve got to find out why the ceiling downstairs is cracking. You know how the man downstairs is always complaining, and saying he’d like you and Samhain to move out?”

  “I don’t want to go,” said Deborah at once, and for a split-second her dark eyes almost met Robin’s, before darting back to the swirly carpet. “I don’t want to move. I’m going to ring Clare.”

  “No,” said Robin, moving quickly around Deborah and blocking her way back to the kitchen, with its old wall-mounted phone beside the fridge. She hoped Deborah hadn’t heard her panic. “We’re here instead of Clare, you see? To help you with the man downstairs. But we think—Sam and I—”

  “My-Dad-Gwilherm called me Sam,” said Samhain. “Didn’t he, Deborah?”

  “That’s nice,” said Robin, and she pointed at Barclay. “This man’s called Sam, too.”

  “Is his name Sam, is it?” said Samhain gleefully, and boldly he raised his eyes to Barclay’s face before looking away again, grinning. “Two Sams. Deborah! Two Sams!”

  Robin addressed the perplexed Deborah, who was now shifting from foot to foot in a manner reminiscent of her son’s rolling walk.

  “Sam and I want to sort this out, Deborah, so you don’t have any more trouble with the man downstairs.”

  “Gwilherm didn’t want that opened,” said Deborah, reaching nervously for the end of her white plait. “He didn’t want that opened, he wanted that kept shut.”

  “Gwilherm would want you and Samhain to be allowed to stay here, though, wouldn’t he?”

  Deborah put the end of her plait in her mouth and sucked at it, as though it was an ice lolly. Her dark eyes wandered as though in search of help.

  “I think,” said Robin gently, “it would be good if you and Samhain wait in his bedroom while we have a look at the ottoman.”

  “Knotty man,” said Samhain, and he cackled again. “Sam! Hey—Sam! Knotty man!”

  “Good one,” said Barclay, grinning.

  “Come on,” said Robin, sliding an arm around Deborah. “You wait in the bedroom with Samhain. You haven’t done anything wrong, we know that. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  As she led Deborah slowly across the landing, she heard Samhain say cheerily,

  “I’m staying here, though.”

  “No, mate,” Barclay replied, as Robin and Deborah entered Samhain’s tiny bedroom. Every inch of wall was covered in pictures of superheroes and gaming characters. Deborah’s gigantic jigsaw took up most of the bed. The floor around the PlayStation was littered with chocolate wrappers.

  “Look after yer mam and, after, I’ll teach ye a magic trick,” Barclay was saying.

  “My-Dad-Gwilherm could do magic!”

  “Aye, I know, I heard. That make it easy fer you tae do magic, if yer dad could do it, eh?”

  “We won’t be long,” Robin told Samhain’s frightened mother. “Just stay in here for now, all right? Please, Deborah?”

  Deborah simply blinked at her. Robin was particularly afraid of the woman trying to reach the phone on the kitchen wall, because she didn’t want to have to physically restrain her. Returning to the sitting room, she found Barclay still bargaining with Samhain.

  “Do it now,” Samhain was saying, grinning, looking from Barclay’s hands to his chin to his ear. “Go on, show me now.”

  “Sam can only do magic after we’ve done our job,” said Robin. “Samhain, will you wait in the bedroom with your mum, please?”

  “Go on, mate,” said Barclay. “Just fer a bit. Then I’ll teach ye the trick.”

  The smile faded off Samhain’s face.

  “Silly woman,” he said sulkily to Robin. “Stupid woman.”

  He walked out of the room, but instead of going into his bedroom, he made for the kitchen.

  “Shit,” Robin muttered, “don’t do anything yet, Sam—”

  Samhain reappeared, holding the tin of chocolate biscuits, walked into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

  “Now,” said Robin.

  “Stay by the door,” said Sam, “keep an eye on them.”

  Robin closed the sitting-room door, leaving a tiny crack through which she could spy on Samhain’s bedroom, and gave Barclay the thumbs up.

  He pulled the mandala covering off the ottoman, bent down, gripped the edge of the lid and heaved. The lid wouldn’t budge. He put all his strength into it, but still it didn’t shift. From Samhain’s room came the sound of raised voices. Deborah was telling Samhain not to eat any more chocolate biscuits.

  “It’s like—it’s locked—on the inside,” said Barclay, panting and letting go.

  He unzipped his holdall and, after some rummaging, pulled out a crowbar, which he wedged the end of into the crack separating the lid from the body of the ottoman. “Come—oan—you—fucker,” he gasped, as the end of the crowbar lost its grip and nearly hit Barclay in the face. “Somethin’s stickin’ it doon.”

  Robin peeked back at Samhain’s bedroom door. It remained closed. Mother and son were still arguing about the chocolate biscuits. The budgerigars chirruped. Beyond the window, Robin could see an airplane trail, a fuzzy white pipe cleaner stretched across the sky. Everyday things became so strange, when you were waiting for something dreadful to happen. Her heart was pounding fast.

  “Help me,” said Barclay through gritted teeth. He’d managed to get the end of the crowbar deeper into the crack in the ottoman. “It’s gonnae take two.”

  After another glance at Samhain’s closed door, Robin hurried over to Barclay and gripped the crowbar alongside him. Using all their weight and force, both pushed the handle toward the floor.

  “Jesus,” panted Robin. “What’s holding it?”

  “Where’s—Strike—when you need—”

  There was a loud crunchi
ng, cracking noise. The crowbar suddenly gave way as the lid of the ottoman opened. Robin turned and saw a cloud of dust rising into the air. Barclay pushed the lid up.

  The ottoman had been filled with concrete, which had stuck the lid down upon itself. The gray matter was lumpy and looked as though it might have been badly mixed. In two places, something smooth broke through the uneven, ashen surface: one resembling a few inches of walrus tusk, the other, a curved surface that hinted at a dark ivory globe. Then Robin saw, stuck to a bit of the concrete that had adhered to the lid of the ottoman, a few fair hairs.

  They heard footsteps on the landing. Barclay slammed the lid of the ottoman down as Samhain opened the door. He was followed by Deborah.

  “I’ll teach you that magic trick now,” said Barclay, walking toward Samhain. “Come in the kitchen, we’ll do it there.”

  The two men left. Deborah shuffled into the room, and picked up the faded purple throw that Robin had cast aside.

  “Did you open it?” she mumbled, eyes on the old carpet.

  “Yes,” said Robin, far more calmly than she felt. She sat down on the ottoman, even though she felt sacrilegious doing it. I’m sorry, Margot. I’m so sorry.

  “I need to make a phone call now, Deborah. Then I think we should all have some hot chocolate.”

  71

  Such is the face of falshood, such the sight

  Of fowle Duessa, when her borrowed light

  Is laid away, and counterfesaunce knowne.

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  A train came roaring and rattling along the Southeastern railway line. Strike, who was standing on the opposite side of the road, felt his mobile vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out, but for a few seconds the din was such that he couldn’t immediately hear Robin.

  “… found her.”

  “Say that again?” he shouted, as the train rumbled away.

  “We’ve—found—her. Inside the ottoman inside the sitting room. Concrete was poured in all around her, but we can see a bit of her skull and maybe a femur.”

  “Shit.”

  Strike had expected the presence of the body in the Athorns’ flat, but there was nothing routine, ever, about finding a dead human. “Concrete?” he repeated.