‘Not vaping any more?’ Strike asked, watching enviously as she lit up.
‘I’ll probably go back to it,’ said Jade, taking a deep drag of her Marlboro and blowing the smoke at the sky, ‘but I’m allowed a fuckin’ cigarette today, i’n I?’
‘Definitely,’ said Strike.
‘That silver necklace was Niall’s mum’s. ’Is dad bought it years ago, in Oman. Why’d ’e give it to Rena, not me?’
‘I think,’ said Strike, ‘to make up for something. Guilt, that he survived when her brother didn’t? And he thought it was protective.’
‘So why’d ’e wanna protect ’er, not me?’ insisted Jade, mascara streaking her face as she wept.
‘Because he knew she was in trouble and had no family, now that Ben was dead?’ suggested Strike.
Jade wept, her cigarette burned slowly downwards, and Strike wished he could take it from her and finish it. At last, Jade said,
‘You know that code, on the briefcase ’e filled wiv bricks? Know what it was?’
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘My due date, for the baby I lost. So… so it must’ve meant somefing to ’im, mustn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘It must… there were only bricks inside the briefcase, I heard?’
‘Bricks an’ stuff ’e’d written, all wrapped up in polyfene, but they told me nobody could read it. Waterlogged. I dunno if that’s true… maybe it was a le’er to me?’
‘Maybe,’ said Strike.
He personally would have bet that Semple had written what he’d believed to be the truth about his E Squadron mission, whatever that had been. He saw no other reason for him to leave hints behind him as to where he and his information could be found, or for its suppression, waterlogged or not.
‘Sometimes you wan’ someone so bad, even when you know it’s wrong an’ it’s not gonna work, but you still wan’ ’em, y’know?’ said Jade, in a choked voice.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, and Charlotte smiled sardonically in his mind’s eye.
‘We weren’ no good for each ovver, but we still wan’ed it. Couldn’ get out of it. We wasn’ compa’ible, I know what ev’ryone said, an’ fine, they was righ’, but we did – I did love ’im,’ she whispered. ‘I really did. I always fel’ like I couldn’ get at ’im. Like, if I could just get into ’im… but I couldn’.’
Strike thought of the belief he’d long ago abandoned, that he could somehow tinker with Charlotte, and fix her, and make her whole and happy.
‘You all right, babe?’ said a wary voice behind them.
The man with the ginger moustache Strike had glimpsed in Crieff had come to collect Jade.
‘Yeah,’ she croaked, getting to her feet again. ‘’M fine… see ya,’ she said to Strike, and Ginger Moustache led her away, with a suspicious glance back at the large man with the bandaged ear.
Strike watched as Jade was absorbed by the crowd. This time, he didn’t return to the function room. Once certain that nobody was looking at him through the glass door, he returned to his car.
125
When shall I be dead and rid
Of the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother’s curse?
The Hotel Serenità was even more beautiful in reality than on Instagram: a large building of weathered yellow stone, which had once been a country estate. Having paid the driver, Robin crossed the air-conditioned lobby with an assumed air of confidence, heading straight through it to an exterior area where she could see a few people enjoying lunch. She intended to order a meal, and then start making enquiries of the staff.
But that wasn’t necessary. Robin had barely been seated for two minutes when a round-faced, short-necked young man whose blond hair had been bleached nearly white in the Sardinian sun appeared, to offer her a menu written in English, and enquire whether he could get her a drink before she ordered.
‘Rupert,’ said Robin. Even though she’d expected him to be here, his sudden physical materialisation had come as a shock.
Fleetwood’s round face became suddenly slack with what Robin guessed was the culmination of months of dread.
‘My name’s Robin Ellacott,’ she said. ‘I’m a private—’
‘I know who you are,’ he said, in his deep, bass voice. ‘Oh Christ – she’s not here, is she?’
‘Decima?’ said Robin. ‘No, she’s in the UK.’
‘Does she—?’
‘She knows you’re working for a Clairmont hotel, but she doesn’t know which one. I guessed you were here. I knew Tish Benton came here out of season, and I thought she’d probably come to visit you.’
Fleetwood stared at her, frozen to the spot.
‘I’m not here to cause you trouble, Rupert,’ said Robin quietly, because a family at a nearby table were watching the waiter, intrigued by his strange, slack-jawed behaviour. ‘I just want to talk to you. When d’you get a break?’
She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then, with an air of hopelessness, he muttered,
‘Three.’
‘Could we talk then, please? I promise I won’t contact anyone before then.’
He assented with a miserable nod.
So, at three o’clock, Robin and Rupert Fleetwood met on a shady terrace with a canopy of bright pink bougainvillea that was just coming into flower. Fleetwood brought coffees for both of them with him, but seemed unable to meet Robin’s eye. When she’d thanked him he nodded, then added sugar to his own without looking at her.
‘How is she?’ he said, staring at the surface of the coffee he was stirring.
‘Not great,’ said Robin.
‘I tried to… I called your partner.’
‘I know,’ said Robin.
‘So she’d know I was alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘but that was even more painful to her than the idea you were dead. She couldn’t understand why you’d just have left her like that, especially when she was pregnant.’
Rupert dropped his spoon with a tiny clang that reminded Robin of the brick hitting the Murdoch silver.
‘Did she have an abortion?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘You’ve got a son.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, putting his face in his hands.
‘He’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘He was born without problems.’
After a while it became clear that Rupert was crying, not loudly, like Danny de Leon or Murphy, but soundlessly, his shoulders quaking.
‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘I think I know why you left.’
‘You can’t,’ came his muffled voice.
‘I think I can,’ said Robin. The pair of ’em looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee together – just imagine the moon-faced children. ‘You found out Decima’s your half-sister.’
He looked up, his tear-stained face aghast.
‘How—?’
‘I read a magazine interview with Cosima and saw she’d taken a DNA test. Then I realised you all look a bit alike,’ said Robin. ‘Dino, Decima and you.’
Rupert wiped his face roughly on his white waiter’s sleeve, but tears were still leaking out of his eyes. He had, Robin thought, a very likeable face; not precisely handsome, but better-looking in person than he’d been in the photo she and Strike had been showing people connected to William Wright.
‘How did you find out?’ she asked.
After wiping his face a second time on his sleeve, Fleetwood reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, took out a packet of Marlboro Lights, lit one, and said croakily,