“Exactly. Don’t understand the sea, do they? Respect it, or stay well away, my dad would’ve said… Morning, Joan,” she said, coming into the room. “Hello, Cormoran.”
“Morning, Kerenza,” said Strike, getting to his feet. “I’ll get out of the way.”
“And how’re you feeling today, my love?” the nurse asked Joan.
“Not too bad,” said Joan. “I’m just a bit…”
She paused, to let her nephew pass out of earshot. As Strike closed the door on the two women, he heard more crunching footsteps on the gravel path outside. Ted, who was reading the local paper at the table, looked up.
“Who’s that, now?”
A moment later, Dave Polworth appeared at the glass panel in the back door, a large rucksack on his back. He entered, rainswept and grinning.
“Morning, Diddy,” he said, and they exchanged the handshake and hug that had become the standard greeting in their later years. “Morning, Ted.”
“What’re you doing here?” asked Ted.
Polworth swung his rucksack off, undid it and lifted out a couple of polythene-wrapped, frozen dishes onto the table.
“Penny baked a couple of casseroles. I’m gonna get some provisions in, wanted to know what you needed.”
The flame of pure, practical kindness that burned in Dave Polworth had never been more clearly visible to Strike, except perhaps on his very first day at primary school, when the diminutive Polworth had taken Strike under his protection.
“You’re a good lad,” said Ted, moved. “Say thanks very much to Penny, won’t you?”
“Yeah, she sent her love and all that,” said Polworth dismissively.
“Wanna keep me company while I have a smoke?” Strike asked him.
“Go on, then,” said Polworth.
“Use the shed,” suggested Ted.
So Strike and Polworth headed together across the waterlogged garden, heads bowed against the strong wind and rain, and entered Ted’s shed. Strike lit up with relief.
“You been on a diet?” asked Polworth, looking Strike up and down.
“Flu and food poisoning.”
“Oh, yeah, Lucy said you’d been ill.” Polworth jerked his head in the direction of Joan’s window. “How is she?”
“Not great,” said Strike.
“How long you down for?”
“Depends on the weather. Listen, seriously, I really appreciate everything you’ve been—”
“Shut up, you ponce.”
“Can I ask another favor?”
“Go on.”
“Persuade Ted to get a pint with you this lunchtime. He needs to get out of this house for a bit. He’ll do it if he knows I’m with her, but otherwise he won’t leave.”
“Consider it done,” said Polworth.
“You’re—”
“—a prince among men, yeah, I know I am. Arsenal through to the knockout stages, then?”
“Yeah,” said Strike. “Bayern Munich next, though.”
He’d missed watching his team qualify before Christmas, because he’d been tailing Shifty through the West End. The Champions League, which should have been a pleasure and a distraction, was failing to grip him as it usually did.
“Robin running things in London while you’re down here?”
“Yeah,” said Strike.
She’d texted him earlier, asking for a brief chat about the Bamborough case. He’d replied that he’d call her when he had a moment. He, too, had news on the case, but Margot Bamborough had been missing for nearly forty years and, like Kerenza the nurse, Strike was currently prioritizing the living.
When he’d finished his cigarette, they returned to the house to find Ted and Kerenza in conversation in the kitchen.
“She’d rather talk to you than to me today,” said Kerenza, smiling at Strike as she shrugged on her raincoat. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Ted.”
As she moved toward the back door, Polworth said,
“Ted, come and have a pint.”
“Oh, no, thanks, lad,” said Ted. “I’ll bide here just now.”
Kerenza stopped with her hand on the door knob.
“That’s a very good idea. Get a bit of fresh air, Ted—fresh water, today, I should say,” she added, as the rain clattered on the roof. “Bye-bye, now.”
She left. Ted required a little more persuasion, but finally agreed that he’d join Polworth for a sandwich at the Victory. Once they’d gone, Strike took the local paper off the table and carried it back into the sitting room.
He and Joan discussed the flooding, but the pictures of waves battering Mevagissey meant far less to her than they would have a couple of months ago. Strike could tell that Joan’s mind was on the personal, not the general.
“What does my horoscope say?” she asked, as he turned the page of the paper.
“I didn’t know you believed in that stuff, Joan.”
“Don’t know whether I do or not,” said Joan. “I always look, though.”
“You’re…” he said, trying to remember her birthday. He knew it was in the summer.
“Cancer,” she said, and then she gave a little laugh. “In more ways than one.”
Strike didn’t smile.
“‘Good time for shaking up your routine,’” he informed her, scanning her horoscope so he could censor out anything depressing, “‘so don’t dismiss new ideas out of hand. Jupiter retrograde encourages spiritual growth.’”
“Huh,” said Joan. After a short pause, she said, “I don’t think I’ll be here for my next birthday, Corm.”
The words hit him like a punch in the diaphragm.
“Don’t say that.”
“If I can’t say it to you, who can I say it to?”
Her eyes, which had always been a pale forget-me-not blue, were faded now. She’d never spoken to him like this before, as an equal. Always, she’d sought to stand slightly above him, so that from her perspective the six-foot-three soldier might still be her little boy.
“I can’t say it to Ted or Lucy, can I?” she said. “You know what they’re like.”
“Yeah,” he said, with difficulty.
“Afterward… you’ll look after Ted, won’t you? Make sure you see him. He does love you so
