“That,” said Strike, “would be great. Thanks very much.”
He did not know whether he imagined a flirtatious glint in her eye. Possibly he was distracted by the smell of massage oil and his recent thoughts of warm, slippery bodies.
Twenty minutes later, having waited long enough for Mama to assume that relief had been sought and given, Strike left the Thai Orchid and crossed the road to where Robin was waiting in the car.
“Two hundred and thirty quid for an old mobile number,” he said as she pulled away from the curb and accelerated towards the town center. “I hope it’s bloody worth it. We’re looking for Adam and Eve Street—she says it’s just up here on the right—the café’s called Appleby’s. She’s going to meet me there in a bit.”
Robin found a parking space and they waited, discussing what Ingrid had said about Brockbank while eating the Danish pastries that Strike had stolen from the breakfast buffet. Robin was starting to appreciate why Strike was carrying extra weight. She had never before undertaken an investigation that lasted more than twenty-four hours. When every meal had to be sourced in passing shops and eaten on the move, you descended quickly to fast food and chocolate.
“That’s her,” said Strike forty minutes later, clambering out of the Land Rover and heading for the interior of Appleby’s. Robin watched the blonde approach, now in jeans and a fake-fur jacket. She had the body of a glamour model and Robin was reminded of Platinum. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen; neither Strike nor the girl reappeared.
“How long does it take to hand over a telephone number?” Robin asked the interior of the Land Rover crossly. She felt chilly in the car. “I thought you wanted to get on to Corby?”
He had told her nothing had happened, but you never knew. Perhaps it had. Perhaps the girl had covered Strike in oil and…
Robin drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She thought about Elin, and how she would feel if she knew what Strike had done that day. Then, with a slight jolt, she remembered that she had not checked her phone to see whether Matthew had been in contact again. She took it out of her coat pocket and saw no new messages. Since telling him she was definitely not going to his father’s birthday party, he had gone quiet.
The blonde and Strike emerged from the café. Ingrid did not seem to want to let Strike go. When he waved farewell she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then sashayed away. Strike caught Robin watching and got back into the car with a kind of bashful grimace.
“That looked interesting,” said Robin.
“Not really,” said Strike, showing her the number now keyed into his phone: NOEL BROCKBANK MOBILE. “She was just chatty.”
If Robin had been a male colleague he would have found it impossible not to add: “I was in there.” Ingrid had flirted shamelessly across the table, scrolling slowly through the contacts on her phone, wondering aloud whether she still had the number so that he started to feel anxious that she had nothing, asking him whether he had ever had a proper Thai massage, probing about what he wanted Noel for, about the cases he had solved, especially that of the beautiful dead model, which had first brought him to public notice, and finally insisting, with a warm smile, that he take her number too, “just in case.”
“D’you want to try Brockbank’s number now?” Robin asked, recalling Strike’s attention from the back view of Ingrid as she walked away.
“What? No. That wants thinking about. We might only have one shot if he picks up.” He checked his watch. “Let’s get going, I don’t want to be too late in Cor—”
The phone in his hand rang.
“Wardle,” said Strike.
He answered, putting the phone onto speaker so that Robin could listen.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve ID’d the body,” said Wardle. A note in his voice warned them that they were about to recognize a name. The tiny pause that followed allowed the image of that little girl with her small bird-like eyes to slide in panic through Strike’s mind.
“She’s called Kelsey Platt and she’s the girl who wrote to you for advice on how to cut off her leg. She was genuine. Sixteen years old.”
Equal amounts of relief and disbelief crashed over Strike. He groped for a pen, but Robin was already writing.
“She was doing a City and Guilds in childcare at some vocational college, which is where she met Oxana Voloshina. Kelsey usually lived in Finchley with her half-sister and the sister’s partner. She told them she was going away on a college placement for two weeks. They didn’t report her missing—they weren’t worried. She wasn’t expected back until tonight.
“Oxana says Kelsey didn’t get on with her sister and asked whether she could stay there for a couple of weeks, get some space. Looks like the girl had it all planned out, writing to you from that address. The sister’s a total mess, understandably. I can’t get much sense out of her yet, but she’s confirmed the handwriting on the letter was genuine and the thing the girl had about wanting to get rid of her leg didn’t seem to come as a total shock to her. We got DNA samples off the girl’s hairbrush. It matches. It’s her.”
With a creak of the passenger seat, Strike leaned closer to Robin to read her notes. She could smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes and a tiny whiff of sandalwood.
“There’s a partner living with the sister?” he asked. “A man?”
“You won’t pin it on him,” said Wardle, and Strike could tell that Wardle had already had a good try. “Forty-five, retired fireman, not in great nick. Knackered lungs and a watertight alibi for the weekend in question.”
“The weekend—?” began Robin.
“Kelsey left her sister’s on the night of April first. We know she must’ve died on the second or third—you got handed her leg on the fourth. Strike, I’m going to need you back in here for more questions. Routine, but we’re going to have to take a formal statement about those letters.”
There seemed little else to be said. After accepting Strike’s thanks for letting them know, Wardle rang off, leaving a silence that seemed to Robin to quiver with aftershocks.
28
… oh Debbie Denise was true to me,
She’d wait by the window, so patiently.
Blue Öyster Cult, “Debbie Denise”
Lyrics by Patti Smith
“This whole trip’s been a wasted detour. It isn’t Brittany. It can’t be Brockbank.”
Strike’s relief was stupendous. The colors of Adam and Eve Street seemed suddenly washed clean, the passersby brighter, more likable than they had been before he had taken the call. Brittany must, after all, be alive somewhere. This was not his fault. The leg had not been hers.
Robin said nothing. She could hear the triumph in Strike’s voice, feel his release. She, of course, had never met or seen Brittany Brockbank, and while she was glad the girl was safe, the fact remained that a girl had died in horrific circumstances. The guilt that had tumbled from Strike seemed to have fallen heavily into her own lap. She was the one who had skim-read Kelsey’s letter and simply filed it in the nutter drawer without response. Would it have made a difference, Robin wondered, if she had contacted Kelsey and advised her to get help? Or if Strike had called her and told her that he had lost his leg in battle, that whatever she had been told about his injury was a lie? Robin’s insides ached with regret.
“Are you sure?” she said aloud after a full minute’s silence, both of them lost in their own private thoughts.
“Sure about what?” asked Strike, turning to look at her.
“That it can’t be Brockbank.”
“If it’s not Brittany—” began Strike.
“You’ve just told me that girl—”
“Ingrid?”
“Ingrid,” said Robin, with a trace of impatience, “yes. You’ve just told me she says Brockbank’s obsessed with you. He holds you accountable for his brain damage and the loss of his family.”
Strike watched her, frowning, thinking.
“Everything I said last night abou
t the killer wanting to denigrate you and belittle your war record would sit comfortably with everything we know about Brockbank,” Robin went on, “and don’t you think that meeting this Kelsey and perhaps seeing the scarring on her leg that was like Brittany’s, or hearing that she wanted to get rid of it could have—I don’t know—triggered something in him? I mean,” said Robin tentatively, “we don’t know exactly how the brain damage—”
“He’s not that fucking brain damaged,” snapped Strike. “He was faking in the hospital. I know he was.”
Robin said nothing, but sat behind the wheel and watched shoppers moving up and down Adam and Eve Street. She envied them. Whatever their private preoccupations, they were unlikely to include mutilation and murder.
“You make some good points,” said Strike at last. Robin could tell that she had taken the edge off his private celebration. He checked his watch. “C’mon, we’d better get off to Corby if we’re going to do it today.”
The twelve miles between the two towns were swiftly covered. Robin guessed from his surly expression that Strike was mulling over their discussion about Brockbank. The road was nondescript, the surrounding countryside flat, hedgerows and occasional trees lining the route.
“So, Laing,” said Robin, trying to move Strike out of what seemed an uncomfortable reverie. “Remind me—?”
“Laing, yeah,” said Strike slowly.
She was right to think that he had been lost in thoughts of Brockbank. Now he forced himself to focus, to regroup.
“Well, Laing tied up his wife and used a knife on her; accused of rape twice that I know of, but never done for it—and he tried to bite half my face off in the boxing ring. Basically, a violent, devious bastard,” said Strike, “but, like I told you, his mother-in-law reckons he was ill when he got out of jail. She says he went to Gateshead, but he can’t have stayed there long if he was living in Corby with this woman in 2008,” he said, checking the map again for Lorraine MacNaughton’s road. “Right age, right time frame… we’ll see. If Lorraine’s not in, we’ll go back after five o’clock.”
Following Strike’s directions, Robin drove through the very center of Corby town, which proved to be a sprawl of concrete and brick dominated by a shopping center. A massive block of council offices, on which aerials bristled like iron moss, dominated the skyline. There was no central square, no ancient church and certainly no stilted, half-timbered grammar school. Corby had been planned to house its explosion of migrant workers in the 1940s and 1950s; many of the buildings had a cheerless, utilitarian air.
“Half the street names are Scottish,” said Robin as they passed Argyll Street and Montrose Street.
“Used to call it Little Scotland, didn’t they?” said Strike, noting a sign for Edinburgh House. He had heard that in its industrial heyday, Corby had had the largest Scottish population south of the border. Saltires and lions rampant fluttered from balconies of flats. “You can see why Laing might’ve felt more at home here than in Gateshead. Could’ve had contacts in the area.”
Five minutes later they found themselves in the old part of town, whose pretty stone buildings retained traces of the village that Corby had been before the steelworks arrived. Shortly afterwards they came upon Weldon Road, where Lorraine MacNaughton lived.
The houses stood in solid blocks of six, each pair a mirror image of the other, so that their front doors sat side by side and the layout of the windows was reversed. Carved into the stone lintel over each door was a name.
“That’s hers,” said Strike, pointing at Summerfield, which was twinned with Northfield.
Summerfield’s front garden had been covered in fine gravel. Northfield’s grass needed mowing, which reminded Robin of her own flat back in London.
“I think we’d both better go in,” Strike said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “She’ll probably be more comfortable with you there.”
The doorbell seemed to be out of order. Strike therefore rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles. An explosion of furious barking told them that the house had at least one living inhabitant. Then they heard a woman’s voice, angry but somehow ineffectual.
“Shh! Be quiet! Stop it! Shh! No!”
The door opened and Robin had just caught a glimpse of a hard-faced woman of around fifty when a rough-coated Jack Russell came pelting out, growling and barking with ferocity, and sank its teeth into Strike’s ankle. Fortunately for Strike, but less so for the Jack Russell, its teeth connected with steel. It yelped and Robin capitalized on its shock by stooping swiftly, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and lifting it up. So surprised was the dog at finding itself dangling in midair that it simply hung there.
“No biting,” said Robin.
Apparently deciding that a woman brave enough to pick it up was worthy of respect, the dog allowed her to take a firmer grip, twisted in midair and attempted to lick her hand.
“Sorry,” said the woman. “He was my mother’s. He’s a bloody nightmare. He likes you, look. Miracle.”
Her shoulder-length brown hair had gray roots. Deep marionette lines lay either side of a thin-lipped mouth. She was leaning on a stick, one of her ankles swollen and bandaged, the foot encased in a sandal that displayed yellowing toenails.
Strike introduced himself, then showed Lorraine his driving license and a business card.
“Are you Lorraine MacNaughton?”
“Yeah,” she said hesitantly. Her eyes flickered to Robin, who smiled reassuringly over the Jack Russell’s head. “You’re a—what did you say?”
“A detective,” said Strike, “and I was wondering whether you could tell me anything about Donald Laing. Telephone records show he was living here with you a couple of years ago.”
“Yeah, he was,” she said slowly.
“Is he still here?” Strike asked, although he knew the answer.
“No.”
Strike indicated Robin.
“Would it be all right if my colleague and I come in and ask you a few questions? We’re trying to find Mr. Laing.”
There was a pause. Lorraine chewed her inner lip, frowning. Robin cradled the Jack Russell, which was now enthusiastically licking her fingers where, no doubt, it could taste traces of Danish pastry. Strike’s torn trouser leg flapped in a light breeze.
“All right, come in,” said Lorraine, and she backed away on her crutches to admit them.
The frowzy front room smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke. There were countless old-ladyish touches: crocheted tissue-box covers, cheap frilled cushions and an array of fancily dressed teddy bears arranged on a polished sideboard. One wall was dominated by a painting of a saucer-eyed child dressed as a pierrot. Strike could no more imagine Donald Laing living here than he could visualize a bullock bedded down in the corner.
Once inside, the Jack Russell scrabbled to get down out of Robin’s arms, then started barking at Strike again.
“Oh, shut up,” groaned Lorraine. Sinking down onto the faded brown velvet sofa, she used both arms to lift her bandaged ankle back onto a leather pouffe, reached sideways to retrieve her packet of Superkings and lit up.
“I’m supposed to keep it raised,” she explained, cigarette waggling in her mouth as she picked up a full cut-glass ashtray and set it on her lap. “District nurse is in every day to change the dressings. Sit down.”
“What have you done?” asked Robin, squeezing past the coffee table to sit beside Lorraine on the sofa. The Jack Russell immediately jumped up beside her and, mercifully, stopped barking.
“I got a load of chip fat dropped on me,” said Lorraine. “At work.”
“Christ,” said Strike, settling himself in the armchair. “That must’ve been agony.”
“Yeah, it was. They say I’ll be off at least a month. Least it wasn’t far to go to casualty.”
Lorraine, it transpired, worked in the canteen of the local hospital.
“So what’s Donnie done?” Lorraine muttered, puffing smoke, once the subject of her injury had been thoroughly aired. “
Robbery again, is it?”
“Why do you say that?” asked Strike carefully.
“He robbed me,” she said.
Robin saw, now, that the brusqueness was a façade. Lorraine’s long cigarette trembled as she said it.
“When was this?” asked Strike.
“When he walked out. Took all my jewelry. Mum’s wedding ring, everything. He knew what that meant to me. She’d not been dead a year. Yeah, one day he just walks out of the house and never comes back. I called the police, I thought he’d had an accident. Then I realized my purse was empty and my jewelry was gone.”
The humiliation had not left her. Her sunken cheeks flushed as she said it.
Strike felt in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“I want to make sure we’re talking about the same man. Does this picture look familiar?”
He handed her one of the photographs Laing’s ex-mother-in-law had given him in Melrose. Big and broad in his blue and yellow kilt, with his dark ferret-like eyes and that low-sprouting crop of fox-red hair, Laing was standing outside a registry office. Rhona clung to his arm, less than half his width in what looked like a poorly fitting, possibly secondhand wedding gown.
Lorraine examined the photograph for what seemed like a very long time. At last she said:
“I think it’s him. It could be.”
“You can’t see it, but he had a big tattoo of a yellow rose on his left forearm,” said Strike.
“Yeah,” said Lorraine heavily. “That’s right. He did.”
She smoked, staring at the picture.
“He’d been married, had he?” she asked, with a slight quaver in her voice.
“Didn’t he tell you?” asked Robin.
“No. Told me he’d never been.”
“How did you meet him?” asked Robin.
“Pub,” said Lorraine. “He didn’t look much like that when I knew him.”
She turned in the direction of the sideboard behind her and made a vague attempt to get up.