“But he wouldn’t tell me anything about Brenner, which is who I’m really interested in. ‘I’ll need to think about that,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I want to go into that.’ I’ve called him twice so far. Both times he tried to divert the conversation back onto me, I dragged it back to Brenner, and he cut the call short, pretending he had something urgent to take care of. Both times, he promised to phone me back but didn’t.”
“You don’t think he’s recording the calls, do you?” asked Robin. “Trying to get stuff about you he can sell to the papers?”
“It occurred to me,” Strike admitted, tipping sugar into his coffee.
“Maybe I should talk to him next time?”
“Might not be a bad idea,” said Strike. “Anyway,” he took a gulp of coffee, “that’s all I’ve done on Bamborough since I got back. But I’m planning to drop in on Nurse Janice the moment I’ve got a couple of clear hours. She’ll be back from Dubai by now, and I want to know why she never mentioned she knew Paul Satchwell. Don’t think I’ll warn her I’m coming, this time. There’s something to be said for catching people unawares. So, what’s new your end?”
“Well,” said Robin, “Gloria Conti, or Jaubert, as she is these days, hasn’t answered Anna’s email.”
“Pity,” said Strike, frowning. “I thought she’d be more likely to talk to us if Anna asked.”
“So did I. I think it’s worth giving it another week, then getting Anna to prod her. The worst that can happen is another definite ‘no.’ In slightly better news, I’m supposed to be speaking to Amanda White, who’s now Amanda Laws, later today.”
“How much is that costing us?”
“Nothing. I appealed to her better nature,” said Robin, “and she pretended to be persuaded, but I can tell she’s quite enamored of the idea of publicity, and she likes the idea of you, and of getting her name in the papers again as the plucky schoolgirl who stuck to her woman-in-the-window story even when the police didn’t believe her. That’s in spite of the fact that her whole shtick, when I first contacted her, was that she didn’t want to go through all the stress of press interest again unless she got money out of it.”
“She still married?” asked Strike, taking his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Because she and Oakden sound like a good match. Mightn’t be a bad sideline for us, setting grifters up with each other.”
Robin laughed.
“So they can have dodgy children together, thus keeping us in business forever?”
Strike lit his cigarette, exhaled and then said,
“Not a perfect business plan. There’s no guarantee breeding two shits together will produce a third shit. I’ve known decent people who were raised by complete bastards, and vice versa.”
“You’re nature over nurture, are you?” asked Robin.
“Maybe,” said Strike. “My three nephews were all raised the same, weren’t they? And—”
“—one’s lovely, one’s a prick and one’s an arsehole,” said Robin.
Strike’s loud burst of laughter seemed to offend the harried-looking suited man who was hurrying past with a mobile pressed to his ear.
“Well remembered,” Strike said, still grinning as he watched the scowling man march out of sight. Lately he, too, had had moods where the sound of other people’s cheerfulness grated, but at this moment, with the sunshine, the good coffee and Robin beside him, he suddenly realized he was happier than he’d been in months.
“People are never raised the same way, though,” said Robin, “not even in the same house, with the same parents. Birth order matters, and all kinds of other things. Speaking of which, Wilma Bayliss’s daughter Maya has definitely agreed to talk to us. We’re trying to find a convenient date. I think I told you, the youngest sister is recovering from breast cancer, so I don’t want to hassle them.
“And there’s something else,” said Robin, feeling self-conscious.
Strike, who’d returned to his sandwich, saw, to his surprise, Robin drawing from her bag Talbot’s leather-bound notebook, which Strike had assumed was still in the locked filing cabinet in the office.
“I’ve been looking back through this.”
“Think I missed something, do you?” said Strike, through a mouthful of bread.
“No, I—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Perfectly possible. Nobody’s infallible.”
Sunshine was slowly making its way into Frith Street now, and the pages of the old notebook glowed yellow as Robin opened it.
“Well, it’s about Scorpio. You remember Scorpio?”
“The person whose death Margot might have been worried about?”
“Exactly. You thought Scorpio might be Steve Douthwaite’s married girlfriend, who killed herself.”
“I’m open to other theories,” said Strike. His sandwich finished, he brushed off his hands and took out his cigarettes. “The notes ask whether Aquarius confronted Pisces, don’t they? Which I assumed meant Margot confronted Douthwaite.”
In spite of his neutral tone, Strike resented remembering these star signs. The laborious and ultimately unrewarding task of working out which suspects and witnesses were represented by each astrological glyph had been far from his favorite bit of research.
“Well,” said Robin, taking out two folded photocopies, which she’d been keeping in the notebook, “I’ve been wondering… look at these.”
She passed the two documents to Strike, who opened them and saw copies of two birth certificates, one for Olive Satchwell, the other for Blanche Satchwell.
“Olive was Satchwell’s mother,” said Robin, as Strike, smoking, examined the documents. “And Blanche was his sister, who died aged ten—possibly with a pillow over her face.”
“If you’re expecting me to deduce their star signs from
