“She wasn’t Sagittarius under Schmidt,” said Robin, and Strike put the phone back up to his ear, “she was Scorpio—”
“—which Talbot thought fitted her better, because of the mole,” said Strike, with a sigh. “I should’ve gone back through all the identifications once you found out about Schmidt. We might’ve got here sooner.”
“What are we going to do about Douthwaite?”
“I’ll ring him,” said Strike, after a moment’s pause. “Now. Then I’ll call you back.”
His stomach rumbled as he called the Allardice boarding house in Skegness, and heard the familiar cross Scottish accent of Donna, Douthwaite’s wife.
“Oh Christ,” she said, when Strike identified himself. “What now?”
“Nothing to worry about,” lied Strike, who could hear a radio playing in the background. “Just wanted to double-check a couple of points.”
“Steve!” he heard her yell, away from the receiver. “It’s him!… What d’you mean, ‘Who?,’ who d’you bloody think?”
Strike heard footsteps and then Douthwaite, who sounded half-angry, half-scared.
“What d’you want?”
“I want to tell you what I think happened during your last appointment with Margot Bamborough,” said Strike.
He spoke for two minutes, and Douthwaite didn’t interrupt, though Strike knew he was still there, because of the distant sounds of the boarding house still reaching him over the line. When Strike had finished his reconstruction of Douthwaite’s final consultation, there was silence but for the distant radio, which was playing “Blame” by Calvin Harris.
So blame it on the night… don’t blame it on me…
“Well?” said Strike.
He knew Douthwaite didn’t want to confirm it. Douthwaite was a coward, a weak man who ran away from problems. He could have prevented further deaths had he had the courage to tell what he knew, but he’d been scared for his own skin, scared he’d be seen as complicit, stupid and shabby, in the eyes of newspaper readers. And so he’d run, but that had made things worse, and nightmarish consequences had ensued, and he’d run from those, too, barely admitting to himself what he feared, distracting himself with drink, with karaoke, with women. And now Strike was presenting him with a dreadful choice that was really no choice at all. Like Violet Cooper, Steve Douthwaite was facing a lifetime of opprobrium from the censorious public, and how much better would it have been if he’d come clean to Talbot forty years previously, when Margot Bamborough’s body could have been found quickly, and a killer could have been brought to justice before others had to die.
“Am I right?” Strike said.
“Yes,” said Douthwaite, at last.
“OK, well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go straight to your wife and tell her, before the press do it. There’s going to be no hiding from this one.”
“Shit,” said Douthwaite quietly.
“See you in court, then,” said Strike briskly, and he hung up, and called Robin straight back.
“He’s confirmed it.”
“Cormoran,” said Robin.
“I advised him to tell Donna—”
“Cormoran,” said Robin, again.
“What?”
“I think I know what M54 is.”
“Not—”
“—the motorway? No. M54 is a globular cluster—”
“A what?”
“A spherical cluster of stars.”
“Stars?” said Strike, with a sinking sensation. “Hang on—”
“Listen,” said Robin. “Creed thought he was being clever, but it only takes a Google search—”
“They haven’t got internet in there,” said Strike. “He was whining about it—”
“Well, M54 is a cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius,” said Robin.
“Not astrology again,” said Strike, closing his eyes. “Robin—”
“Listen to me. He said ‘You’ll find her where you find M54,’ right?”
“Yeah—”
“The constellation Sagittarius is also known as the Archer.”
“So?”
“Brian showed us the map, Strike! Dennis Creed was a regular visitor to the Archer Hotel in Islington in the early seventies, when he was delivering their dry cleaning. There was a well on the property, in the back garden. Boarded up, and now covered over with a conservatory.”
A pair of jolly men with matching beer bellies walked into the pub across the road. Strike barely registered them. He’d even forgotten to take drags of the cigarette burning between his fingers.
“Think this through,” said Robin in his ear. “Creed’s got a body he didn’t expect in the van, but he can’t take it to Epping Forest, because there was still an active crime scene there. They’d just found the remains of Vera Kenny. I don’t know why he didn’t take the body to the basement—”
“I do,” said Strike. “He’s just told me. He drove past the house and Vi Cooper was awake and at the window.”
“OK—right—so he’s got to empty the van before work. He knows his way around the Archer garden, and he knows there’s a back gate. He’s got tools in the back of the van, he could prize those boards up easily. Cormoran, I’m sure she’s in the old Archer well.”
There was a brief pause, then hot ash fell into Strike’s lap from his neglected cigarette.
“Bollocks—”
He flicked the end out of the window, earning himself a look of disapproval from a passing old woman pulling a tartan shopping trolley.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” he told Robin. “I’ll phone Tucker and tell him what’s just happened, including your deduction. You call George Layborn and tell him about the well at the Archer. The quicker the police search it, the better for the Tuckers, especially if the news leaks that Creed’s confessed.”
“OK, I’ll get on to that right—”
“Hang on, I haven’t finished,” said Strike. He’d closed his eyes now, and he was rubbing his temples as he thought through everything the agency needed to do, and quickly. “When you’ve spoken to Layborn, I want you to ring Barclay and tell him he’s going on a job with you, tomorrow morning. He can forget Miss Jones’s boyfriend for a few hours. Or, most probably, all day, if what I think’s going to happen happens.”
“What job are Barclay and I doing?” asked Robin.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Strike, opening his eyes again. “We’re up against the clock if Douthwaite talks to anyone.”
“So Barclay and I are…?”
“Finding Margot’s body,” said Strike. “Yes.”
There was a long silence. Strike’s stomach rumbled again.
