Robin sighed.
“The client’s going to be shattered.”
“So’s the mistress in Scotland,” said Strike. “That baby’s due any minute.”
“His taste’s amazingly consistent,” said Robin. “If you lined them up side by side, the Torquay wife, the Windsor wife and the mistress in Glasgow, they’d look like the same woman at twenty-year intervals.”
“Where are you planning to sleep?”
“Travelodge or a B&B,” said Robin, yawning again, “if I can find anything vacant at the height of the holiday season. I’d drive straight back to London overnight, but I’m exhausted. I’ve been awake since four, and that’s on top of a ten-hour day yesterday.”
“No driving and no sleeping in the car,” said Strike. “Get a room.”
“How’s Joan?” asked Robin. “We can handle the workload if you want to stay in Cornwall a bit longer.”
“She won’t sit still while we’re all there. Ted agrees she needs some quiet. I’ll come back down in a couple of weeks.”
“So, were you calling for an update on Tufty?”
“Actually, I was calling about something that just happened. I’ve just left the pub…”
In a few succinct sentences, Strike described the encounter with Margot Bamborough’s daughter.
“I’ve just looked her up,” he said. “Margot Bamborough, twenty-nine-year-old doctor, married, one-year-old daughter. Walked out of her GP practice in Clerkenwell at the end of a day’s work, said she was going to have a quick drink with a female friend before heading home. The pub was only five minutes’ walk away. The friend waited, but Margot never arrived and was never seen again.”
There was a pause. Robin, whose eyes were still fixed on the window of the pizza restaurant, said,
“And her daughter thinks you’re going to find out what happened, nearly four decades later?”
“She seemed to be putting a lot of store on the coincidence of spotting me in the boozer right after the medium told her she’d get a ‘leading.’”
“Hmm,” said Robin. “And what do you think the chances are of finding out what happened after this length of time?”
“Slim to non-existent,” admitted Strike. “On the other hand, the truth’s out there. People don’t just vaporize.”
Robin could hear a familiar note in his voice that indicated rumination on questions and possibilities.
“So you’re meeting the daughter again tomorrow?”
“Can’t hurt, can it?” said Strike.
Robin didn’t answer.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, with a trace of defensiveness. “Emotionally overwrought client—medium—situation ripe for exploitation.”
“I’m not suggesting you’d exploit it—”
“Might as well hear her out, then, mightn’t I? Unlike a lot of people, I wouldn’t take her money for nothing. And once I’d exhausted all avenues—”
“I know you,” said Robin. “The less you found out, the more interested you’d get.”
“Think I’d have her wife to deal with unless I got results within a reasonable period. They’re a gay couple,” he elaborated. “The wife’s a psychol—”
“Cormoran, I’ll call you back,” said Robin, and without waiting for his answer, she cut the call and dropped the mobile back onto the passenger seat.
Tufty had just ambled out of the restaurant, followed by his wife and sons. Smiling and talking, they turned their steps toward their car, which lay five behind where Robin sat in the Land Rover. Raising her camera, she took a burst of pictures as the family drew nearer.
By the time they passed the Land Rover, the camera was lying in her lap and Robin’s head was bowed over her phone, pretending to be texting. In the rear-view mirror she watched as the Tufty family got into their Range Rover and departed for the villa beside the sea.
Yawning yet again, Robin picked up her phone and called Strike back.
“Get everything you wanted?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Robin, checking the photographs one-handedly with the phone to her ear, “I’ve got a couple of clear ones of him and the boys. God, he’s got strong genes. All four kids have got his exact features.”
She put the camera back into her bag.
“You realize I’m only a couple of hours away from St. Mawes?”
“Nearer three,” said Strike.
“If you like—”
“You don’t want to drive all the way down here, then back to London. You’ve just told me you’re knackered.”
But Robin could tell that he liked the idea. He’d traveled down to Cornwall by train, taxi and ferry, because since he had lost a leg, long drives were neither easy nor particularly pleasurable.
“I’d like to meet this Anna. Then I could drive you back.”
“Well, if you’re sure, that’d be great,” said Strike, now sounding cheerful. “If we take her on, we should work the case together. There’d be a massive amount to sift through, cold case like this, and it sounds like you’ve wrapped up Tufty tonight.”
“Yep,” sighed Robin. “It’s all over except for the ruining of half a dozen lives.”
“You didn’t ruin anyone’s life,” said Strike bracingly. “He did that. What’s better: all three women find out now, or when he dies, with all the effing mess that’ll cause?”
“I know,” said Robin, yawning again. “So, do you want me to come to the house in St. M—”
His “no” was swift and firm.
“They—Anna and her partner—they’re in Falmouth. I’ll meet you there. It’s a shorter drive for you.”
“OK,” said Robin. “What time?”
“Could you manage half eleven?”
“Easily,” said Robin.
“I’ll text you a place to meet. Now go and get some sleep.”
As she turned the key in the ignition, Robin became conscious that her spirits had lifted considerably. As though a censorious jury were watching, among them Ilsa, Matthew and Charlotte Campbell, she consciously repressed her smile as she reversed out of the parking space.
4
Begotten by two fathers of one mother,
Though of contrarie natures each to other…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
Strike woke shortly before five the following morning. Light was already streaming through Joan’s thin curtains. Every night the horsehair sofa punished a different part of his body, and today he felt as though he had been punched in a kidney. He reached for his phone, noted the time, decided that he was too sore to fall back asleep, and raised himself to a sitting position.
After a minute spent
