Ahead stretched something in the nature of a high street, though to people used to London it had a very strange appearance: no cars, single-storey buildings, and a thoroughly sleepy air.
‘Right,’ said Strike, ‘de Leon’s mother lives on Rue des Laches, which is supposed to be close.’
He was wearing the pinched expression that told Robin he was already in a lot of pain. They headed a short distance up the road, which was really a dirt track, level though puddled, with stones protruding here and there. Only now did Robin fully appreciate the implications of a total lack of buses or taxis; they had a lot of walking ahead, because they’d arrived on the east of the island and their B&B lay to the south.
To her relief, the first wooden signpost they reached pointed them left, towards the Rue des Laches. They proceeded along a second track, with fields on one side and houses on the other, until Strike said,
‘That’s it, there.’
The low-roofed house was painted pale blue and looked rather shabby. A couple of bare-branched apple trees stood in the front garden. As Strike and Robin walked up the front path, a burly, bearded man rounded the corner of the building, pushing a wheelbarrow full of logs.
‘Morning,’ called Strike. ‘My name’s Cormoran Strike, this is Robin Ellacott, and we’re looking for Mrs de Leon.’
‘She’s gone over to St Peter Port,’ said the man suspiciously. ‘What d’you want with her?’
‘To ask her about her son, Danny.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said the man, setting down the handles of the wheelbarrow. His expression had hardened. ‘Why?’
‘Can I ask who—?’
‘I’m his brother,’ said the man. ‘Older brother. Richard de Leon.’
To Robin’s alarm, Richard now picked up one of the short logs in his wheelbarrow and, holding it in the grip of one hand, advanced on them slowly. She was reminded of Ian Griffiths bursting angrily out of his house in Ironbridge clutching his guitar, but the elder de Leon brother presented a very different calibre of threat. While shorter than Strike, his forearms were massive, and the broken veins in his face suggested long days of hard labour, out of doors.
‘What’s Danny to you?’ he said.
‘Just wanted to know whether you or your mother have heard from him lately,’ said Strike.
‘No,’ said Richard. ‘We haven’t.’
‘He hasn’t come home to Sark, then?’
‘No,’ said Richard. ‘He hasn’t.’
‘Have you heard from him lately?’
‘No,’ said Richard, for the third time. ‘He’s not here. Haven’t seen him, haven’t heard from him.’
‘For how long?’ asked Strike.
‘What d’you wanna know that for?’
‘We’re investigating an unidentified body,’ said Strike, reaching a hand into his pocket, but keeping his eyes on the log in Richard’s hand. ‘Friends of Danny’s in London are worried it was him. This is my card.’
De Leon all but snatched it from Strike’s hand and glared at it suspiciously.
‘“Private detective”?’ he said, with a snort, as though Strike had handed him a joke item.
‘That’s right,’ said Strike.
De Leon looked up at the detective with dark, bloodshot eyes. The resemblance between him and the fake-tanned, blond man who adorned the office corkboard was slight.
‘What’re you really after?’
‘I’ve just told you,’ said Strike. ‘If you say Danny’s not here—’
‘Not a matter of me saying it, he’s not,’ said Richard loudly. ‘You calling me a liar?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘I’m saying—’
‘He’s in London,’ said Richard. ‘All right? He went to London.’
‘And how long has it been since you heard from him?’
‘How’s that any of your business?’
‘Because if you’ve heard from him since last June, he can’t be the dead man we’re trying to identify,’ said Strike.
Richard de Leon glared up at Strike for several seconds before saying,
‘No. We ain’t heard from him since June.’
‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, thank—’
‘You stay away from my mother,’ said de Leon, and now Robin remembered Valentine Longcaster issuing a similar implied threat, about his younger sister. ‘You don’t go fucking near our mother, you hear me?’
‘I’d be hard put to go anywhere near her, seeing as she’s in Guernsey and I don’t know what she looks like,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for your help, though.’
He wasn’t certain the log in de Leon’s hand wouldn’t be deployed once they turned their backs, so Strike gestured at Robin to go first. Both regained the road without sustaining any injury from flung wood, but Richard de Leon continued to glare at them until they passed out of sight.
‘D’you believe him?’ said Robin quietly, as they headed back up the Rue de Laches.
‘Not sure,’ said Strike. ‘There were odd features about that conversation.’
‘I’d have expected a bit more concern, wouldn’t you? After hearing there’s a body out there that might be Danny?’
‘I would, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Didn’t blink, did he? Just wanted us to piss off.’
‘Maybe he and Danny don’t get on? Maybe he doesn’t care whether Danny’s alive or dead?’
‘Or he knows exactly where Danny is, and thinks we’re after him.’
‘Assassins sent by Oliver Branfoot?’
‘If that’s what he’s worried about, it means Danny and his brother are in each other’s complete confidence – which they might be, I s’pose,’ said Strike. ‘I tend to forget there are siblings who actually tell each other everything.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Robin.
‘Christ, no,’ said Strike. ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ admitted Robin, thinking of her disastrous Christmas.
‘Fancy something to eat while we plan next steps?’
They walked back to the Bel Air pub, which seemed the most likely place to find food, Strike’s limp becoming ever more pronounced. As Robin paused to pat the Golden Retriever that exited a small ice cream shop to greet them, she said,
‘Actually, I’ll see you in there. Something I forgot to bring – want to see if I can buy one.’
Wondering whether she was going to call Murphy, Strike proceeded alone past the pub’s bathrooms, which lay on the opposite side of a small yard, and were labelled Men/Hommes and Women/Femmes, and entered the Bel Air.
A few locals were watching horse-racing on the large flatscreen in the front room, which was carpeted in red. The pub made Strike think of his old Cornish local, the Victory, having a distinctly nautical air that extended, in the second of two rooms, to a bar fashioned out of a wooden rowing boat. He bought himself a pint, enquired about food, was informed that pizzas were all that were on offer, ordered two, then went and sat down, with relief, at a table in the corner, beside a wall full of framed old music posters, featuring not only the Beatles and Bowie, but his father’s band, the Deadbeats.
Robin, meanwhile, was walking up the main street, the Avenue. Barring a shop selling silver jewellery, nearly everything was closed, but at last she spotted a kind of general store, which was open and which seemed to provide everything from basic household goods to greetings cards and toys. She was just about to enter when, glancing left, she saw a large figure walking towards her, and recognised Richard de Leon. Catching sight of Robin, he turned hastily and strode back towards the Rue des Laches.