Throwing the banana skin into the bin, he headed back to the inner office.
Charlotte’s swerve from kindliness to vehement recrimination and threats came as no surprise to Strike, who’d endured her mood swings for years. Clever, funny and often endearing, Charlotte was also capable of fathomless spite, not to mention a self-destructive recklessness that had led her to sever relationships on a whim or to take extreme physical risks. Various psychiatrists and therapists had had their say over the years, each trying to corral her unpredictability and unhappiness into some neat medical classification. She’d been prescribed drugs, ricocheted between counsellors and been admitted to therapeutic facilities, yet Strike knew something in Charlotte herself had stubbornly resisted help. She’d always insisted that nothing the medical or psychiatric profession offered would ever, or could ever, help her. Only Strike could do that, she’d insisted time and again: only Strike could save her from herself.
Without realising it, he’d sat down in Robin’s chair instead of his own, facing the board on which he’d pinned the notes and pictures related to the UHC case, but thinking about Charlotte. He well remembered the night on the barge owned by one of her friends, the vicious row that had erupted after Charlotte had consumed a bottle and a half of wine, and the hasty departure of the rest of the intoxicated party, who’d left Strike alone to deal with a knife-wielding Charlotte who was threatening to stab herself. He’d disarmed her physically, and in the process she’d slipped over onto the floor. Ever afterwards, when she lost her temper, she’d claimed he’d thrown her. Doubtless if he’d listened to the third message he’d have been accused of other assaults, of infidelity and cruelty: in Charlotte’s telling, whenever she was drunk or angry, he was a monster of unparalleled sadism.
Six years since the relationship had ended for good, Strike had come to see that the unfixable problem between them was that he and Charlotte could never agree what reality was. She disputed everything: times, dates and events, who’d said what, how rows started, whether they were together or had broken up when he’d had other relationships. He still didn’t know whether the miscarriage she claimed she’d had shortly before they parted forever had been reaclass="underline" she’d never shown him proof of pregnancy, and the shifting dates might have suggested either that she wasn’t sure who the father was, or that the whole thing was imaginary. Sitting here today, he asked himself how he, whose entire professional life was an endless quest for truth, could have endured it all for so long.
With a grimace, Strike got to his feet yet again, picked up his notebook and pen and approached the board on the wall, willing himself to focus, because the following morning he’d be heading up to HMP Bedford to interview Jordan Reaney. His eyes travelled back up the left-hand column to the picture of Cherie Gittins, whose spell at Chapman Farm had overlapped with that of Reaney. After a few moments’ contemplation of her pictures, he called Pat through to the inner office.
‘You’ve got a daughter, right?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Pat, frowning.
‘How old is she?’
‘The hell are you asking me that for?’ said Pat, her simian face turning red. Strike, who’d never seen her blush before, had no idea what had engendered this strange reaction. Wondering whether she could possibly have imagined he had dishonourable designs on her daughter, whom he’d never met, he said,
‘I’m trying to get access to this woman’s Facebook profile. It’s set to private and she hasn’t accepted my follow request. I thought, if your daughter’s already on Facebook, with an established history, she might have a better chance. Another mother might seem less—’
‘My daughter’s not on Facebook.’
‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Sorry,’ he added, though he wasn’t sure why he was apologising.
Strike had the impression Pat wanted to say something else, but after a few seconds, she returned to the outer office. The tapping of computer keys resumed shortly afterwards.
Still puzzled by her reaction, he turned back to the board, eyes now on the pictures in the right-hand column, which featured four people who’d lived at Chapman Farm and met unnatural deaths.
At the top was an old news clipping about the death of Paul Draper, which Strike had found a couple of days earlier. Headlined ‘Couple Sentenced for Killing of “Modern Slave”’, the article detailed how Draper had been sleeping rough when a couple offered him a bed for the night. Both of his putative rescuers had previous convictions for violence, and had set Draper to doing building work for them, forcing him to sleep in their shed. Draper’s death six months later had occurred during a beating. His starved and partially burned body had been discovered on a nearby building site. The detective had had no success in tracing any living relative of Draper, whose picture showed a timid-looking, moon-faced youth of nineteen with short, wispy hair.
Strike’s gaze now moved to the Polaroids Robin had sent from Chapman Farm, showing the naked foursome in pig masks. The hair of the male being sodomised by the tattooed man might possibly be Draper’s, although given the age of the Polaroids, it was impossible to be certain.
Beneath Draper’s picture was the only photo of Kevin Pirbright Strike had been able to find, again taken from the news report of his murder. It showed a pale, apologetic-looking young man whose skin was pitted with acne scars. Beside the picture of Kevin was that of the murder scene. For the umpteenth time, Strike stared at that bit of gouged-out wall, and the single word ‘pigs’ that remained.
The last two pictures on the board were the oldest: those of Jonathan Wace’s first wife, Jennifer, and of Daiyu.
Jennifer Wace’s teased and permed hairstyle reminded Strike of the girls he’d known during his school days in the mid-eighties, but she’d been a very attractive woman. Nothing Strike had found out so far contradicted her daughter’s belief that her drowning had been a complete accident.
Lastly, he turned his attention to the picture of Daiyu. Rabbity-faced, with her overbite and her missing tooth, she beamed out of the blurry newsprint picture at the detective: dead at seven years old, on the same beach as Jennifer Wace.
He turned from the board and reached for his phone again. He’d already made multiple fruitless attempts to contact the Heatons, who’d witnessed Cherie running screaming up the beach after Daiyu’s drowning. Nevertheless, more in hope than expectation, he called their number again.
To his amazement, the phone was answered after three rings.
‘Hello?’ said a female voice.
‘Hi,’ said Strike, ‘is this Mrs Heaton?’
‘No, iss me, Gillian,’ said the woman, who had a strong Norfolk accent. ‘Who’s this?’
‘I’m trying to contact Mr and Mrs Heaton,’ said Strike. ‘Have they sold their house?’
‘No,’ said Gillian, ‘I’m jus’ here waterin’ the plants. They’re still in Spain. Who’s this?’ she asked again.
‘My name’s Cormoran Strike. I’m a private detective, and I was wondering whether I could speak—’
‘Strike?’ said the woman on the end of the line. ‘You’re not him who got that strangler?’
‘That’s me. I was hoping to speak to Mr and Mrs Heaton about the drowning of a little girl in 1995. They were witnesses at the inquest.’
‘Blimey, yeah,’ said Gillian. ‘I remember that. We’re old friends.’
‘Are they likely to be back in the country soon? I’d rather speak to them in person, but if they can’t—’
‘Well, Leonard broke his leg, see,’ said Gillian, ‘so they stopped out in Fuengirola a bit longer. They’ve got a place out there. He’s getting better, though. Shelley reckons they’ll be back in a couple of weeks.’