‘Bloody well done,’ said Strike. ‘Sure you don’t want to see a doctor?’
‘Doe, I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll be happy to see the back of this case,’ said Strike. ‘Midge is right, the client’s a pain in the arse. S’pose she’ll get her multi-million settlement now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Shah. ‘New case, den? Ob the waiting list?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘Even wid the Franks being a three-perdon job now?’
‘Heard about the snake, did you?’
‘Yeah, Barglay dold be.’
‘Well, they’re not a three-person job any more. Back to two.’
‘How gum?’
‘Because I’m having the third party watched by a couple of cash-in-hand blokes,’ said Strike. ‘They don’t often play on the side of the angels, but they’re experienced at surveillance – usually casing places to rob. It’s costing me a fortune, but I want to prove Patterson’s behind it. That fucker will rue the day he tried this on me.’
‘Wadz hid problem wid you, anyway?’
‘It pisses him off I’m better than him,’ said Strike.
Dev laughed but stopped abruptly, wincing.
‘I owe you a new phone,’ said Strike. ‘Give me the receipt and I’ll reimburse you. You should get home and rest up. Send me that picture and I’ll call Bigfoot’s wife when I get back to the office.’
A sudden thought now occurred to Strike.
‘How old’s your wife?’
‘Wad?’ said Shah, looking up.
‘I’ve been trying to track down a thirty-eight-year-old woman, for the UHC case,’ said Strike. ‘She’s used at least three aliases that I know of. Where do women that age hang out online, d’you know?’
‘Bubsned, probably,’ said Shah.
‘What?’
‘Bub – fuggit – Mumsnet,’ said Dev, enunciating with difficulty. ‘Aisha’d alwayd on dere. Or Fadeboog.’
‘Mumsnet and Facebook,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, good thinking. I’ll try them.’
He arrived back at the office half an hour later to find Pat there alone, restocking the fridge with milk, the radio playing hits of the sixties.
‘Dev’s just got punched in the face by Bigfoot,’ said Strike, hanging up his coat.
‘What?’ croaked Pat, glaring at Strike as though he was personally responsible.
‘He’s fine,’ Strike added, moving past her to the kettle. ‘Going home to ice his nose. Who’s next on the waiting list?’
‘That weirdo with the mother.’
‘They all have mothers, don’t they?’ said Strike, dropping a teabag into a mug.
‘This one wants his mother watched,’ said Pat. ‘Thinks she’s frittering away his inheritance on a toyboy.’
‘Ah, right. If you pull the file for me, I’ll give him a ring. Has Littlejohn showed his face in here today?’
‘No,’ said Pat, stiffening.
‘Has he called?’
‘No.’
‘Let me know if he does either. I’ll be through here. Don’t worry about interrupting me, I’ll just be trying to find a needle in a haystack on Facebook and Mumsnet.’
Once settled at his desk, Strike made his two phone calls. Bigfoot’s wife was gratifyingly ecstatic to see concrete evidence of her wealthy husband’s infidelity. The man who wanted his mother’s movement’s watched, and who had an upper-class accent so pronounced Strike found it hard to believe he wasn’t putting it on, was also delighted to hear from the detective.
‘Ay was thinkin’ of gettin’ in touch with Patters’ns if I didn’t hyar from yeh soon.’
‘You don’t want to use them, they’re shit,’ said Strike, and was rewarded with a surprised guffaw.
Having asked Pat to email the newest client a contract, Strike returned to his desk, opened the notebook in which he’d written every possible combination of the first names and surnames he knew Cherie Gittins had used in youth, logged into Facebook using a fake profile, and began his methodical search.
As he’d expected, the problem wasn’t too few results, but too many. There were multiple results for every name he tried, not only in Britain, but also in Australia, New Zealand and America. Wishing he could hire people to do this donkey work for him, rather than pay two of Shanker’s criminal mates to watch Littlejohn, he followed – or, in the case of private accounts, sent follower requests to – every woman whose photo might plausibly be that of a thirty-eight-year-old Cherie Gittins.
Two and a half hours, three mugs of tea and a sandwich later, Strike came across a Facebook account set to private with the name Carrie Curtis Woods. He’d included ‘Carrie’ in his search as a shortened version of ‘Carine’. As the double surname was unhyphenated, he suspected the account owner would be American rather than English, but the photograph had caught his attention. The smiling woman had the same curly blonde hair and insipid prettiness of the first picture of Cherie he’d found. In the picture, she was cuddling two young girls Strike supposed were her daughters.
Strike had just sent a follow request to Curtis Woods when the music in the outer office ceased abruptly. He heard a male voice. After a moment or two, the phone on Strike’s desk rang.
‘What’s up?’
‘There’s a Barry Saxon here to see you.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Strike.
‘He says he’s met you. Says he knows an Abigail Glover.’
‘Oh,’ said Strike, closing Facebook, as the memory of a glowering, bearded man presented itself: Baz, of the Forester pub. ‘OK. Give me a minute, then send him in.’
49
Nine in the third place means…
A goat butts against a hedge
And gets its horns entangled.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike rose and went to the noticeboard on the wall, where he’d pinned various items relating to the UHC case, and folded the wooden wings to conceal the Polaroids of teenagers in pig masks and the photo of Kevin Pirbright’s bedroom. He’d just sat down when the door opened, and Barry Saxon entered.
Strike judged him to be around forty. He had very small, deep-set hazel eyes with large pouches beneath them, and his hair and beard looked as though their owner spent a lot of time caring for them. He came to a halt before Strike, with his hands in his jeans pockets, feet planted wide apart.
‘You weren’ Terry, then,’ he said, squinting at the detective.
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘How did you find that out?’
‘Ab told Patrick, an’ ’e told me.’
With an effort, Strike recalled that Patrick was Abigail Glover’s lodger.
‘Does Abigail know you’re here?’
‘Not bloody likely,’ said Saxon, with a slight snort.
‘D’you want to sit down?’
Saxon cast a suspicious look at the chair where Robin usually sat, before taking his hands out of his pockets and doing as invited.
He and Saxon might only have been in direct contact for less than two minutes, but Strike thought he knew what kind of man was sitting opposite him. Saxon’s attempt to scupper what he’d thought was Abigail’s date with ‘Terry’, coupled with his present attitude of smouldering resentment, reminded Strike of an estranged husband who was one of the few clients he’d ever turned down. In that case, Strike had been convinced that if he located the man’s ex-wife, who he claimed was unreasonably resisting all contact in spite of the fact that there were unspecified things that needed ‘sorting out’, he’d have been enabling an act of revenge, and possibly violence. While that particular man had worn a Savile Row suit as opposed to a tight red checked shirt with buttons that strained across his torso, Strike thought he recognised in Saxon the same barely veiled thirst for vengeance.