Such thoughts were distracting Strike from the vicar’s words, though not the throbbing in his left ear. He’d needed microsurgery to reattach it, because it had been almost completely cut off. He had a dim memory of someone saying he might lose the whole thing, and a slightly clearer memory of laughing when a nurse suggested he could still have cosmetic surgery, if he was worried about the appearance.
This wasn’t the first time Strike had turned up at a church service injured, but even so, he felt his ear bandage was unreasonably conspicuous. The bruising to his face – nobody had been swift enough to catch him when he’d fainted in Griffiths’ sitting room, meaning he’d slammed face first into the floor – hadn’t yet faded completely, either, which added to the impression of a man who’d decided to participate in a cage fight before driving on to the funeral.
The vicar concluded his remarks. Strike was tall enough to see the coffin being lowered, even though three rows of people stood between him and the grave. Jade was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief, flanked by her twin and her mother.
At last, the committal was over. Strike had just set off back to his car when his phone rang. He’d hoped it would be Robin, but it was Wardle. As Strike knew Wardle to be in contact with Iverson, the redhead on the murder investigation team, he took the call.
‘They’ve found the Wolves weights,’ said Wardle without preamble. ‘And a pair of human hands.’
‘Petts Wood?’
‘Yeah, yesterday evening. They’re still searching.’
An enormous wave of relief washed over Strike at this news. Even as he’d been driving along towards Hereford this morning he’d been plagued with doubts about whether Tyler Powell would be identified, and Griffiths’ hand in his death proven.
‘Sapphire’s talking,’ said Wardle, ‘a lot. Griffiths picked her up in London, kept her in a shitty room with two other underage girls, regularly visited by Wade King, Todd and assorted others, then moved her north to Ironbridge, where the shit-heels we met took turns.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike in disgust. ‘Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know whether Griffiths forced her to impersonate a couple of young women over the phone, would you?’
‘He did, yeah,’ said Wardle, who sounded surprised. ‘How did you—?’
‘Robin realised. She got calls from two girls, a supposed great-niece of Dilys Powell’s, and a girl called Zeta we never traced. Both times they were feeding her misinformation about Tyler Powell and trying to find out what we knew. One of those times, the girl got local names wrong.’
‘Ah,’ said Wardle. ‘Well, they’ve found about six different burner phones so far in Griffiths’ house, plus a curly wig and a ruby necklace hidden in a case on top of a wardrobe.’
‘Jesus, Iverson’s not shy about sharing information, is she?’ said Strike, surprised. ‘I’d’ve thought she’d have kept her mouth shut after the way they went after Murphy for helping us.’
‘She, ah… we had a drink last night,’ said Wardle, with a tone of embarrassed constraint that told Strike all he needed to know. Susan Iverson, he guessed, was in the same mood he’d been when he’d accepted Bijou Watkins’ suggestion of a drink over a year previously: in search of ego-salving distraction, her hopes of Murphy irrevocably dashed. Possibly, Strike thought, with a sagging of his spirits, the rebound onto Wardle meant Robin and Murphy were now, at last, definitely engaged. Instead of saying any of this, he asked,
‘Any ID on the body under the floor yet? Anyone contacted Belgium for Jolanda’s DNA?’
‘They’re doing it today, apparently. Oh, and that real music producer bloke, Osgood? They’ve retrieved his deleted emails.’
‘And?’
‘A cousin of Sofia Medina’s contacted him from Spain. Medina had told the girl she and her music producer boyfriend were going to play a joke on someone who’d double-crossed him.’
‘Did said trick involve him hiding a load of silver and robbing a shitty flat?’
‘Apparently,’ said Wardle.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike again.
‘I hear Quincy Jones is never happier than when breaking into silver shops,’ said Wardle, and, glum though he felt, Strike laughed. It was the first time in a long time he’d heard Wardle make anything close to a joke. Sex definitely cheered a man up… perhaps Strike, like Wardle, should start cutting his losses…
Call ended, he continued towards his BMW until a loud, husky voice called him by name. Turning, he saw Jade Semple, whose hand he’d briefly pressed as he headed into the church.
‘Will you come to the reception?’ she said breathlessly.
‘Yeah, of course,’ said Strike, though he’d far rather not have done.
So he drove to the hotel and joined the mourners flocking like morose crows in a large function room decorated in blue, where there were many circular tables but nowhere near enough chairs. A buffet was laid out along the length of one wall, but nobody was yet eating. Deciding the chairs should be left for the elderly and immediate family, feeling self-conscious and conspicuous because of his bandaged ear and slightly regretting not having brought painkillers with him, Strike bought himself a low-alcohol beer and headed towards an exterior smoking area, spotting the distinguished-looking Ralph Lawrence in the distance as he did so. The latter gave Strike a slight nod which the detective reciprocated: a gesture appropriate both for their degree of acquaintanceship, and the mixture of dislike and respect Strike suspected both felt for each other.
Once outside, having a good pretext and unable to resist the impulse, Strike called Robin.
‘Hi,’ he said, when she answered. ‘Where are you?’
‘In the back of a taxi,’ said Robin. ‘I should be at the hotel in ten minutes.’
She was currently travelling along a road in Sardinia fringed with palm trees, beneath a clear blue sky. As she’d flown into the capital, Cagliari, she’d felt as though she’d entered the Raoul Dufy print over her mantelpiece: glittering sea, pastel-coloured houses, hot sun on her skin. She knew her interlude on the island would be very short, which made the beauty of the place and the glorious weather bittersweet. At best, this was only a temporary reprieve from the myriad problems that remained behind her in gloomy grey London: she felt strangely as she had in the hospital, after her ectopic pregnancy; the same sense of unreality seemed to lie over everything.
‘Is the funeral over?’ she asked.
‘Just finished,’ said Strike. ‘Jade wanted me to come to the wake. I’m calling because Wardle just got an update from the murder investigation team.’
‘They’re still talking to us?’ said Robin, in surprise.
‘One of them is,’ said Strike, choosing not to give details. ‘Anyway…’
Robin’s reaction, when Strike had finished passing on Iverson’s information, wasn’t as celebratory as her partner had expected.
‘If I’d only twigged sooner,’ Robin sighed, staring out at the glittering sea to her left. ‘If I’d realised the same girl was calling me…’