The detective crossed the road, sat down on the low garden wall of the house opposite, lit a cigarette and asked: “Would it be worth coming up to Scotland for?”
“Depends what you want.”
“Old addresses — family connections — medical and psychiatric records couldn’t hurt. Brockbank was invalided out, what was it, 2003?”
“That’s right,” said Hardacre.
A noise behind Strike made him stand and turn: the owner of the wall on which he had been sitting was emptying rubbish into his dustbin. He was a small man of around sixty, and by the light of the streetlamp Strike saw his annoyed expression elide into a propitiatory smile as he took in Strike’s height and breadth. The detective strolled away, past semidetached houses whose leafy trees and hedges were rippling in the spring breeze. There would be bunting, soon, to celebrate the union of yet another couple. Robin’s wedding day would follow not long after.
“You won’t have much on Laing, I s’pose,” Strike said, his voice faintly interrogative. The Scot’s army career had been shorter than Brockbank’s.
“No — but Christ, he sounds a piece of work,” said Hardacre.
“Where’d he go after the Glasshouse?”
The Glasshouse was the military jail in Colchester, where all convicted military personnel were transferred before being placed in a civilian prison.
“HMP Elmley. We’ve got nothing on him after that; you’d need the probation service.”
“Yeah,” said Strike, exhaling smoke at the starry sky. He and Hardacre both knew that as he was no longer any kind of policeman, he had no more right than any other member of the public to access the probation service’s records. “Whereabouts in Scotland did he come from, Hardy?”
“Melrose. He put down his mother as next of kin when he joined up — I’ve looked him up.”
“Melrose,” repeated Strike thoughtfully.
He considered his two remaining clients: the moneyed idiot who got his kicks trying to prove he was a cuckold and the wealthy wife and mother who was paying Strike to gather evidence of the way her estranged husband was stalking their sons. The father was in Chicago and Platinum’s movements could surely go uncharted for twenty-four hours.
There remained, of course, the possibility that none of the men he suspected had anything to do with the leg, that everything was in his mind.
A harvest of limbs...
“How far from Edinburgh is Melrose?”
“’Bout an hour, hour and a half’s drive.”
Strike ground out his cigarette in the gutter.
“Hardy, I could come up Sunday night on the sleeper, nip into the office early, then drive down to Melrose, see whether Laing’s gone back to his family, or if they know where he is.”
“Nice one. I’ll pick you up at the station if you let me know when you’re getting in, Oggy. In fact,” Hardacre was gearing himself up for an act of generosity, “if it’s only a day trip you’re after, I’ll lend you my car.”
Strike did not immediately return to his curious friends and his cold curry. Smoking another cigarette, he strolled around the quiet street, thinking. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be attending a concert at the Southbank Centre with Elin on Sunday evening. She was keen to foster an interest in classical music that he had never pretended was more than lukewarm. He checked his watch. It was too late to ring and cancel now; he would need to remember to do so next day.
As he returned to the house, his thoughts drifted back to Robin. She spoke very little about the wedding that was now a mere two and a half months away. Hearing her tell Wardle about the disposable wedding cameras she had ordered had brought home to Strike how soon she would become Mrs. Matthew Cunliffe.
There’s still time, he thought. For what, he did not specify, even to himself.
12
... the writings done in blood.
Many men might think it a pleasant interlude to receive cash for following a pneumatic blonde around London, but Strike was becoming thoroughly bored of trailing Platinum. After hours hanging around Houghton Street, where the LSE’s glass and steel walkways occasionally revealed the part-time lap-dancer passing overhead on her way to the library, Strike followed her to Spearmint Rhino for her 4 p.m. shift. Here, he peeled away: Raven would call him if Platinum did anything that passed for untoward, and he was meeting Wardle at six.
He ate a sandwich in a shop near the pub chosen for their rendezvous. His mobile rang once, but on seeing that it was his sister, he let the call go to voicemail. He had a vague idea that it would soon be his nephew Jack’s birthday and he had no intention of going to his party, not after the last time, which he remembered mainly for the nosiness of Lucy’s fellow mothers and the ear-splitting screams of overexcited and tantrumming children.
The Old Blue Last stood at the top of Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, a snub-nosed, imposing three-story brick building curved like the prow of a boat. Within Strike’s memory, it had been a strip club and brotheclass="underline" an old school friend of his and Nick’s had allegedly lost his virginity there to a woman old enough to be his mother.
A sign just inside the doors announced the Old Blue Last’s rebirth as a music venue. From eight o’clock that evening, Strike saw, he would be able to enjoy live performances from the Islington Boys’ Club, Red Drapes, In Golden Tears and Neon Index. There was a wry twist to his mouth as he pushed his way into a dark wood-floored bar, where an enormous antique mirror behind the bar bore gilded letters advertising the pale ales of a previous age. Spherical glass lamps hung from the high ceiling, illuminating a crowd of young men and women, many of whom looked like students and most dressed with a trendiness that was beyond Strike.
Although she was in her soul a lover of stadium bands, his mother had taken him to many such venues in his youth, where bands containing her friends might scrape a gig or two before splitting up acrimoniously, re-forming and appearing at a different pub three months later. Strike found the Old Blue Last a surprising choice of meeting place for Wardle, who had previously only drunk with Strike in the Feathers, which was right beside Scotland Yard. The reason became clear when Strike joined the policeman, who was standing alone with a pint at the bar.
“The wife likes Islington Boys’ Club. She’s meeting me here after work.”
Strike had never met Wardle’s wife, and while he had never given the matter much thought, he would have guessed her to be a hybrid of Platinum (because Wardle’s eyes invariably followed fake tans and scanty clothing) and the only wife of a Met policeman that Strike knew, whose name was Helly and who was primarily interested in her children, her house and salacious gossip. The fact that Wardle’s wife liked an indie band of whom Strike had never heard, notwithstanding the fact that he was already predisposed to despise that very band, made him think that she must be a more interesting person than the one he had expected.
“What’ve you got?” Strike asked Wardle, having secured himself a pint from an increasingly busy barman. By unspoken consent they left the bar and took the last free table for two in the place.
“Forensics are in on the leg,” said Wardle as they sat down. “They reckon it came off a woman aged between midteens and midtwenties and that she was dead when it was cut off — but not long dead, looking at the clotting — and it was kept in a freezer in between cutting it off and handing it to your friend Robin.”
Midteens to midtwenties: by Strike’s calculations, Brittany Brockbank would be twenty-one now.
“Can’t they be any more precise on the age?”