He fended her off, trying not to be rougher than he had to be, his nostrils full of the smell of her; it was as though she hadn’t washed in months.
‘It’s me – Cormoran Strike – you wanted to meet me – fuck’s sake,’ he said, catching hold of the hand doing most of the punching, ‘it’s me, you’ve been calling me for weeks!’
The sense of his words seemed to have penetrated: she stopped fighting and he let go of her at once, not wanting to be accused of assault. He looked down at the gun to check whether it was loaded, and saw at once it was a replica, and an unconvincing one at that. Shoving it into his pocket, he held out a hand.
‘Get up. You’ll catch your death of cold, sitting under here. We can get some food.’
‘Fuck off,’ she said fiercely. ‘Ah’m stayin’ here.’
‘Why?’
‘Ah want tae. Ah’ve got people aftae me.’
As Strike knew for a fact that Rena was of interest to MI5, he couldn’t attribute the belief entirely to Gatesheadery.
‘Well, it’s good to finally meet you,’ he said.
She squinted up at him and he thought she seemed half-intrigued, half-suspicious.
‘Are ye really him, are ye? The detective?’
‘I am, yeah,’ said Strike.
‘They told me not tae speak tae ye.’
‘I know,’ said Strike. ‘They think I want to make trouble. I don’t. I’m just trying to find out what happened to Niall Semple.’
‘Ah thought you were tryna find mah brother?’
Shit.
He’d seen Rena’s tweet saying that she didn’t believe her brother, Ben, was dead, of course, but he’d hoped the truth might have sunk in over the succeeding two years. This situation, he knew, would require very careful handling, because he had no idea whether the brain-damaged Niall Semple had fed her false hope that her brother was still alive.
‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ he said, in what was supposed to be an encouraging tone.
‘Naw,’ she said again, still squinting up at him in the semi-darkness, and then, ‘ye were army, weren’tcha? Ah seen online.’
‘I was in the army, yeah,’ said Strike.
‘Ah dunnae believe in armies, Ah dunnae think we should even fuckin’ have them, Ah seen what goes on.’
Long exposure to people in the grip of addictions and mental health issues during Strike’s childhood had taught him that unless you enjoyed rapidly escalating conflict and ugly scenes, calm agreement, wherever possible, was the best policy.
‘Yeah, bad stuff goes on,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we just walk a bit?’
Rena ignored this suggestion. Her blonde hair was in dreadlocks and Strike wouldn’t have been surprised to see insects crawling in it. He didn’t blame her for the physical state she was in, but he wondered what the psychiatric facility had been doing, letting her go, however convenient it was to him that they’d done so.
‘Ah think it was here he meant,’ said Rena, gesturing at the bridge.
‘Who, Niall?’
‘Aye. He said he’d left stuff for me. More stuff. Mebbe hid behind the bricks?’ she said, looking vaguely upwards.
‘Yeah, you told me he gave you something when you met,’ said Strike. ‘What was it?’
‘Ah’m not givin’ it tae ye,’ she said, seized with suspicion again.
‘I’m not after it,’ Strike assured her. ‘I was just interested, because you told me about it.’
‘Ah nivver.’
‘Must’ve imagined that, then,’ he said placatingly. ‘Come on, let’s walk a bit. We can come back here. Aren’t you hungry?’
‘Ye’re not workin’ fer the fuckin’ security service fuckers now, are ye?’
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘They aren’t happy with me. They don’t want me meeting you.’
‘Aye, Ah know tha’,’ she said. ‘’Cause o’ what Ah might say.’
‘It’s getting cold. Why don’t we walk a bit?’
She picked disconsolately at her thumbnail for a moment or two, then said,
‘Aye, all righ’.’
She got up and hauled up her rucksack, too.
‘D’you want me to carry that?’ Strike asked as she swung it over her shoulders.
‘Naw… ye’ve only go’ one leg, have ye?’
‘One and a half,’ said Strike, and he raised his right trouser leg to show Rena the metal rod that served as his ankle.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Have ye got any fags?’
‘No,’ said Strike, as they set off along the canal bank. ‘I’m vaping these days.’
‘Whut’re they like, them things?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Not as good as smoking.’
‘Huh,’ said Rena, in what seemed to be mild amusement.
‘Did you meet Niall in the Engineer?’ Strike asked.
‘Aye.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘He jus’ told me he was off tae make up fur Ben. Find him.’
‘Really?’ said Strike.
‘Aye. Tha’s why them fuckers dunnae want me tae talk. They left mah bruther over there wi’ no way o’ gettin’ back an’ they don’ wan’ annyone to know it.’
Night was falling rapidly now. Strike wasn’t finding the towpath particularly easy on his right leg.
‘Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?’ he asked.
She looked sideways at him through the gloaming.
‘Aye, all righ’.’ she said.
She seemed to have left her hostility beneath the shadowy bridge, a state of affairs Strike hoped would last. They returned to the steps down which he’d descended and climbed up to the street together, Strike’s knee and hamstring aching, then entered the Engineer.
He thought he saw misgivings on the face of the bar staff when he entered with the very smelly and dirty Rena, but nobody prevented the pair taking a table beside the window in the red-walled room, although a middle-aged couple wrinkled their noses ostentatiously as Rena passed them.
‘Ah cannae remember anything before Ah was six,’ Rena announced once seated, apropos of nothing.
‘Really?’ said Strike. He had long experience of random, disconnected statements from the mentally fragile.
‘Aye,’ said Rena, picking at her fingers again. ‘Tha’s when our parents died.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Strike. ‘How did they die?’
‘In an earthquake, in Turkey, when they wuz on holiday. Izmit. ’Cept Ah dunnae think they were mah real parents. Ah can remember a blonde woman, an’ the woman that died wuz dark.’
Strike wondered whether the earthquake story was true. Repeated traumatic losses might well account for Rena’s mental problems, but he was also reminded of a woman he hadn’t thought about in years, whom he’d met as a child in one of the grimmer squats to which his mother had dragged him and Lucy. She’d had broken teeth and a manic glare, and had told anyone who’d listen she was the illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret and her first paramour, Peter Townsend, that she could prove it with times, dates and her earliest memories, which included a woman in a tiara sobbing over her crib.
They both ordered a drink, Rena requesting a pint of beer.
‘See,’ said Rena, once again without prompting, and ignoring the menu the barmaid had set in front of her, ‘he give me this.’
She groped under her layers of dirty clothing and freed a silver necklace. It bore an odd pendant: a chequerboard square.
‘Niall gave that to you, did he?’ said Strike, eyeing the thing.
‘Aye. He said it wuz magic,’ said Rena. ‘Fur protection. He give it me when we met. An’ he wuz gonnae give me more. He told me. At the bridge.’