“I can’t let you print anything out, Oggy,” said Hardacre as Strike sat down on the wheeled computer chair, “but you could take a picture of the screen. Coffee?”
“Tea, if you’ve got any. Cheers.”
Hardacre left the room, closing the door carefully behind him, and Strike took out his mobile to take pictures of the screen. When he was confident he had a decent likeness he scrolled down to see Brockbank’s full record, making a note of his date of birth and other personal details.
Brockbank had been born on Christmas Day in the year of Strike’s own birth. He had given a home address in Barrow-in-Furness when he had joined the army. Shortly before serving in Operation Granby — better known to the public as the first Gulf war — he had married a military widow with two daughters, one of them Brittany. His son had been born while he was serving in Bosnia.
Strike went through the record, making notes as he did so, all the way down to the life-changing injury that had put paid to Brockbank’s career. Hardacre reentered the room with two mugs and Strike muttered thanks as he continued to peruse the digital file. There was no mention in here of the crime of which Brockbank had been accused, which Strike and Hardacre had investigated and of which they both remained convinced that Brockbank was guilty. The fact that he had eluded justice was one of the biggest regrets of Strike’s military career. His most vivid memory of the man was Brockbank’s expression, feral in its wildness, as he launched himself at Strike bearing a broken beer bottle. He had been around Strike’s own size, perhaps even taller. The sound of Brockbank hitting the wall when Strike punched him had been, Hardacre said later, like a car ramming the side of the flimsy army accommodation.
“He’s drawing a nice fat military pension, I see,” muttered Strike, scribbling down the various locations to which it had been sent since Brockbank had left the military. He had gone home first: Barrow-in-Furness. Then Manchester, for a little under a year.
“Ha,” said Strike quietly. “So it was you, you bastard.”
Brockbank had left Manchester for Market Harborough, then returned to Barrow-in-Furness.
“What’s this here, Hardy?”
“Psych report,” said Hardacre, who had sat down on a low chair by the wall and was perusing a file of his own. “You shouldn’t be looking at that at all. Very careless of me to have left it up there.”
“Very,” agreed Strike, opening it.
However, the psychiatric report did not tell Strike much that he did not already know. Only once he had been hospitalized had it become clear that Brockbank was an alcoholic. There had been much debate among his doctors as to which of his symptoms could be attributed to alcohol, which to PTSD and which to his traumatic brain injuries. Strike had to Google some of the words as he went: aphasia — difficulty finding the right word; dysarthria — disordered speech; alexithymia — difficulty understanding or identifying one’s own emotions.
Forgetfulness had been very convenient to Brockbank around that time. How difficult would it have been for him to fake some of these classic symptoms?
“What they didn’t take into account,” said Strike, who had known and liked several other men with traumatic brain injury, “was that he was a cunt to start with.”
“True that,” said Hardacre, sipping his coffee while he worked.
Strike closed down Brockbank’s files and opened Laing’s. His photograph tallied exactly with Strike’s memories of the Borderer, who had been only twenty when they had first met: broad and pale, his hair growing low on his forehead, with the small, dark eyes of a ferret.
Strike had good recall of the details of Laing’s brief army career, which he himself had ended. Having taken a note of Laing’s mother’s address in Melrose, he skim-read the rest of the document and then opened the attached psychiatric report.
Strong indications of anti-social and borderline personality disorders... likely to present continuing risk of harm to others...
A loud knock on the office door caused Strike to close down the records on screen and get to his feet. Hardacre had barely reached the door when a severe-looking woman in a skirt suit appeared.
“Got anything for me on Timpson?” she barked at Hardacre, but she gave Strike a suspicious glare and he guessed that she had already been well aware of his presence.
“I’ll cut away now, Hardy,” he said at once. “Great to catch up.”
Hardacre introduced him briefly to the Warrant Officer, gave a potted version of his and Strike’s previous association and walked Strike out.
“I’ll be here late,” he said as they shook hands at the door. “Ring me when you know what time you’ll have the car back. Happy travels.”
As Strike made his way carefully down the stone stairs, it was impossible not to reflect that he could have been here, working alongside Hardacre, subject to the familiar routines and demands of the Special Investigation Branch. The army had wanted to keep him, even with his lower leg gone. He had never regretted his decision to leave, but this sudden, brief re-immersion in his old life gave rise to an inevitable nostalgia.
As he stepped out into the weak sunshine that was gleaming through a rupture in the thick clouds, he had never been more conscious of the change in his status. He was free, now, to walk away from the demands of unreasonable superiors and the confinement of a rock-bound office, but he had also been stripped of the might and status of the British Army. He was completely alone as he resumed what might well prove a wild goose chase, armed only with a few addresses, in pursuit of the man who had sent Robin a woman’s leg.
15
Where’s the man with the golden tattoo?
As Strike had expected, driving the Mini, even once he had made every possible adjustment to the seat, was extremely uncomfortable. The loss of his right foot meant that he operated the accelerator with his left. This required a tricky and uncomfortable angling of his body in such a cramped space. Not until he was out of the Scottish capital and safely on the quiet and straight A7 to Melrose did he feel able to turn his thoughts from the mechanics of driving the borrowed car to Private Donald Laing of the King’s Own Royal Borderers, whom he had first met eleven years previously in a boxing ring.
The encounter had happened by evening in a stark, dark sports hall that rang with the raucous cries of five hundred baying squaddies. He had been Corporal Cormoran Strike of the Royal Military Police then, fully fit, toned and muscled with two strong legs, ready to show what he could do in the Inter-Regimental Boxing Tournament. Laing’s supporters had outnumbered Strike’s by at least three to one. It was nothing personal. The military police were unpopular on principle. Watching a Red Cap being knocked senseless would be a satisfying end to a good night’s boxing. They were two big men and this would be the last bout of the night. The roar of the crowd had thundered through both fighters’ veins like a second pulse.
Strike remembered his opponent’s small black eyes and his bristle cut, which was the dark red of fox fur. A tattoo of a yellow rose spanned the length of his left forearm. His neck was thicker by far than his narrow jaw and his pale, hairless chest was muscled like a marble statue of Atlas, the freckles that peppered his arms and shoulders standing out like gnat bites on his white skin.
Four rounds and they were evenly matched, the younger man perhaps faster on his feet, Strike superior in technique.