The results were, to say the least, eclectic. Zoltan, he learned, was a Hungarian given name and also the name of a hand gesture, which had originated in a fifteen-year-old movie called Dude, Where’s My Car?
With a small snort, Strike looked up ‘John Baldwin’. The results were numerous and similarly diverse. However, now that he focused on the name, he had a strange feeling he’d seen it somewhere other than Twitter, though his recalcitrant brain refused to divulge where.
The names Lepine’s Disciple and Julius Evola were self-explanatory, Strike thought, but as he considered Scaramouche, he heard a phrase of music inside his head. Reflecting that he probably wasn’t the only person who thought of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ rather than a sixteenth-century clown when they heard the name Scaramouche.
Finally, he turned his attention to the last name: Max R, also known as @mreger#5.
‘We’re here,’ said Robin, as she turned into Battledean Road, but the words were barely out of her mouth when Strike said loudly,
‘Fuck.’
‘What?’ said Robin.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Strike, hastily entering the name Zoltan into Google again.
Robin continued along the road, which was lined on both sides with solidly built family homes that she guessed, from having house-hunted so recently, were worth well upwards of a million pounds. By luck, a parking space lay right outside the home of Grant and Heather Ledwell. Having parked the BMW, she turned again to Strike, who was still typing onto his phone, scanning the results and wearing an expression that she knew, from long experience, meant deep concentration.
They still had a few minutes before nine o’clock. Robin sat quietly, waiting for Strike to tell her what he was doing. At last he looked up.
‘What?’ Robin asked, certain, by the look on his face, that Strike had something important to tell her.
‘Think I’ve just cut some wire.’
‘What?’
Before Strike could answer, somebody rapped on the window beside Robin, making her jump.
Grant Ledwell was smiling in through the window, a wrapped bottle of wine in his hand, clearly keen to receive his important update.
104
Death’s black dust, being blown,
Infiltrated through every secret fold
Of this sealed letter by a puff of fate,
Dried up for ever the fresh-written ink…
‘I’ll explain once this is over,’ said Strike in an undertone.
‘Just been to the off-licence,’ said Grant, pointing to the bottle as Strike and Robin got out of the car. His sojourn in Oman had left him with a deep tan that was enhanced by the white shirt he was wearing with his jeans. Without the disguise of a suit jacket, a large paunch was revealed.
‘Heather and her mother have got through all my decent red. Oh,’ he exclaimed, as Strike moved around the front of the car and came fully into sight, with his crutches and his half-empty trouser leg. ‘You’ve – ah—’
‘Lost half a leg, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘It’ll probably turn up.’
Grant laughed uneasily. Robin, whose mind had still been on Strike’s peculiar comment about wire, was distracted by Grant’s clear discomfort at this obvious evidence of Strike’s disability. It made her feel no friendlier to Ledwell, towards whom she was already prejudiced, given what she considered his neglect of his eldest daughter and his niece.
‘Got a new addition to the family since I last saw you!’ he said, keeping his eyes averted from Strike as the three of them headed towards the front door.
‘Oh, has Heather had the baby?’ said Robin politely. ‘Congratulations!’
‘Yep, got my boy at last,’ said Grant. ‘Third time lucky!’
Apparently, thought Robin, her dislike deepening, Rachel no longer counted as one of Grant’s children.
‘What have you called him?’ she asked.
‘Ethan,’ said Grant. ‘It’s always been Heather’s favourite name. She’s liked it ever since Mission: Impossible.’
He opened the door onto a hallway decorated in beige and cream, and through a door into a large sitting and dining area where Heather and her mother were sitting. It was now Strike’s turn to avert his eyes, because Heather was feeding her new-born son, nine-tenths of her swollen breast exposed, the baby’s head, with its sparse covering of brown hair, cradled in her hand like a large potato. Two little girls in identical pink spotted pyjamas were curled up on the floor, playing with a pair of plastic ponies and riders. They looked up when their father entered with the two strangers, and both their mouths fell open at the sight of Strike’s pinned-up trouser leg. Their grandmother, who was short, with aggressively auburn hair, looked rather excited.
‘Oh, hello!’ said Heather cheerfully. ‘Excuse me. When he’s hungry, he’s hungry!’
‘I’ve read all about you,’ said Grant’s mother-in-law, drinking Strike in with greedy eyes. ‘I’ve been telling the girls about you. They wanted to stay up to see Daddy’s famous visitor!’
‘We’ll go through to the garden,’ said Grant, saving Strike from the necessity of making a response. Strike and Robin followed him into a large and very well-appointed kitchen full of stainless steel fixtures and fittings. The French doors were already open, and Robin saw that the garden was in fact a small paved area dotted with plants in pots, which surrounded a wooden table and chairs.
‘Either of you fancy a drink?’ Grant asked, getting himself a wine glass out of a wall cupboard. Both declined.
When the three of them had sat down at the table in the garden, and Grant had poured himself wine and taken a sip, Robin said, not particularly sincerely, because she actually thought it rather bland,
‘Lovely house.’
‘Thanks,’ said Grant, ‘but we won’t be here much longer. We’re clearing out. Relief, really, to have decided. We’re going back to Oman. Great schools for the kids, good expat community. We’ve still got friends over there. I can deal with all the film stuff remotely, there’s no need to stay in the UK for that. Anyway, Heather’s keen to go. She’s still worried about Anomie and all the crazy Ink Black Heart bastards.’
Plus Oman’s a nice fat tax haven, thought Strike.
Grant drank some wine, then said,
‘So: you’ve got an update for me?’
‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘We’re ninety per cent sure who Anomie is.’
We are? thought Robin, glancing at Strike.
‘Well, that’s bloody good news,’ said Grant heartily. ‘Who—?’
‘Can’t say until it’s proven,’ said Strike. ‘We could be had up for defamation. As a matter of fact, we’re missing a key bit of evidence, and wondered whether you could help.’
‘Me?’ said Grant, looking surprised.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve got a couple of questions, if that’s OK?’
‘Shoot,’ said Grant, although Robin thought a trace of wariness passed over the bulldog face, which looked leathery in the evening sun.
‘Firstly,’ said Strike, ‘that phone call with Edie you told me about. The one where she told you Blay wanted to ditch her from The Ink Black Heart?’