I can feel the presence of the Drowned Prophet all around me. If anything happens to me, she’ll have done it.
Kevin
Letters from Sir Colin and Lady Edensor to their son William
14 December 2015
Dear Will,
The doctors have now given Mum 3 months to live. I’m begging you to contact us. Mum’s tormented by the idea that she might never see you again.
Dad
14 December 2015
Darling Will,
I’m dying. Please, Will, let me see you. This is my dying wish. Please, Will. I can’t bear to leave this world without seeing you again. Will, I love you so very much and I always, always will. If I could hug you one more time I’d die happy.
Mum xxxxxxxxx
2 January 2016
Dear Will,
Mum died yesterday. The doctors thought she had longer. If you’re interested in attending her funeral, let me know.
Dad
PART ONE
Ching/The Well
THE WELL. The town may be changed,
But the well cannot be changed.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
1
… the superior man is careful of his words
And temperate in eating and drinking.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
February 2016
Private detective Cormoran Strike was standing in the corner of a small, stuffy, crowded marquee with a wailing baby in his arms. Heavy rain was falling onto the canvas above, its irregular drumbeat audible even over the chatter of guests and his newly baptised godson’s screams. The heater at Strike’s back was pumping out too much warmth, but he couldn’t move, because three blonde women, all of whom were around forty and holding plastic glasses of champagne, had him trapped while taking it in turns to shout questions about his most newsworthy cases. Strike had agreed to hold the baby ‘for a mo’ while the baby’s mother went to the bathroom, but she’d been gone for what felt like an hour.
‘When,’ asked the tallest of the blondes loudly, ‘did you realise it wasn’t suicide?’
‘Took a while,’ Strike shouted back, full of resentment that one of these women wasn’t offering to hold the baby. Surely they knew some arcane female trick that would soothe him? He tried gently bouncing the child up and down in his arms. It shrieked still more bitterly.
Behind the blondes stood a brunette in a shocking pink dress, who Strike had noticed back at the church. She’d talked and giggled loudly from her pew before the service had started, and had drawn a lot of attention to herself by saying ‘aww’ loudly while the holy water was being poured over the sleeping baby’s head, so that half the congregation was looking at her, rather than towards the font. Their eyes now met. Hers were a bright sea-blue, and expertly made up so that they stood out like aquamarines against her olive skin and long dark brown hair. Strike broke eye contact first. Just as the lopsided fascinator and slow reactions of the proud grandmother told Strike she’d already drunk too much, so that glance had told him that the woman in pink was trouble.
‘And the Shacklewell Ripper,’ said the bespectacled blonde, ‘did you actually physically catch him?’
No, I did it all telepathically.
‘Sorry,’ said Strike, because he’d just glimpsed Ilsa, his godson’s mother, through the French doors leading into the kitchen. ‘Need to give him back to his mum.’
He manoeuvred past the disappointed blondes and the woman in pink and headed out of the marquee, his fellow guests parting before him as though the baby’s wails were a siren.
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Corm,’ said fair-haired, bespectacled Ilsa Herbert. She was leaning up against the side talking to Strike’s detective partner Robin Ellacott, and Robin’s boyfriend, CID officer Ryan Murphy. ‘Give him here, he needs a feed. Come with me,’ she added to Robin, ‘we can talk – couldn’t grab me a glass of water, could you, please?’
Fucking great, thought Strike, watching Robin walk away to fill a glass at the sink, leaving him alone with Ryan Murphy who, like Strike, was well over six feet tall. There, the resemblance ended. Unlike the private detective, who resembled a broken-nosed Beethoven, with dark, tightly curling hair and a naturally surly expression, Murphy was classically good looking, with high cheekbones and wavy light brown hair.
Before either man could find a subject of conversation, they were joined by Strike’s old friend Nick Herbert, a gastroenterologist, and father of the baby who’d just been assaulting Strike’s eardrums. Nick, whose sandy hair had begun receding in his twenties, was now half bald.
‘So, how’s it feel to have renounced Satan?’ Nick asked Strike.
‘Bit of a wrench, obviously,’ said the detective, ‘but we had a good run.’
Murphy laughed, and so did somebody else, right behind Strike. He turned: the woman in pink had followed him out of the marquee. Strike’s late Aunt Joan would have thought the pink dress inappropriate for a christening: a clinging, wraparound affair with a low V neckline and a hemline that showed a lot of tanned leg.
‘I was going to offer to hold the baby,’ she said in a loud, slightly husky voice, smiling up at Strike, who noticed Murphy’s gaze sliding down to the woman’s cleavage and back up to her eyes. ‘I love babies. But then you left.’
‘Wonder what you’re supposed to do with a christening cake?’ said Nick, contemplating the large, uncut slab of iced fruitcake that lay on the island in the middle of the kitchen, topped with a blue teddy bear.
‘Eat it?’ suggested Strike, who was hungry. He’d had only a couple of sandwiches before Ilsa had handed him the baby and, as far as he could see, his fellow guests had demolished most of the available food while he’d been trapped in the marquee. Again, the woman in pink laughed.
‘Yeah, but are there supposed to be pictures taken first, or what?’ said Nick.
‘Pictures,’ said the woman in pink, ‘definitely.’
‘We’ll have to wait, then,’ said Nick. Looking Strike up and down through his wire-rimmed glasses, he asked, ‘How much have you lost now?’
‘Three stone,’ said Strike.
‘Good going,’ said Murphy, slim and fit in his single-breasted suit.
Fuck off, you smug bastard.
2
Six in the fifth place means…
The companion bites his way through the wrappings.
If one goes to him,
How could it be a mistake?
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin was sitting on the end of the double bed in the marital bedroom. The room, which was decorated in shades of blue, was tidy except for two drawers lying open at the base of the wardrobe. Robin had been acquainted with the Herberts long enough to know Nick would have left them like this: it was one of his wife’s perennial complaints that he neither pushed in drawers nor closed cupboard doors.
Lawyer Ilsa was currently settled in a rocking chair in the corner, the baby already gulping greedily at her breast. As she came from a farming family, Robin was unfazed by the snuffling noises the baby was making. Strike would have found them vaguely indecent.
‘It makes you so damn thirsty,’ said Ilsa, who’d just gulped down most of her glass of water. Having handed Robin the empty glass she added, ‘I think my mum’s drunk.’
‘I know. I’ve never met anyone happier to be a grandmother,’ said Robin.
‘True,’ sighed Ilsa. ‘Bloody Bijou, though.’
‘Bloody what?’
‘The loud woman in pink! You must’ve noticed her, her tits are virtually hanging out of her dress. I detest her,’ said Ilsa vehemently, ‘she’s got to be the centre of attention all the bloody time. She was in the room when I invited two other people at her chambers, and she just assumed I meant her, too, and I couldn’t think of any way of telling her no.’
‘Her name’s Bijou?’ said Robin incredulously. ‘As in residence?’
‘As in man-hungry pain in the arse. Her real name’s Belinda,’ said Ilsa, who then affected a booming, sultry voice, ‘“but everyone calls me Bijou”.’
‘Why do they?’
‘Because she tells them to,’ said Ilsa crossly, and Robin laughed. ‘She’s having an affair with a married QC, and I hope to God I don’t meet him in court any time soon, because she’s told us way too much about what they get up to in bed. She’s quite open about trying to get pregnant by him, to get him to leave his wife… but maybe I’m bitter… well, I am bitter. I don’t need women who’re size eight around me, right now. This is a size sixteen,’ she said, looking down at her navy dress. ‘I’ve never been this big in my life.’
‘You’ve just given birth and you look absolutely lovely,’ said Robin firmly. ‘Everyone’s been saying so.’
‘See, this is why I like you, Robin,’ said Ilsa, wincing slightly at the enthusiastic sucking of her son. ‘How’re things going with Ryan?’
‘Good,’ said Robin.
‘What’s it been now? Seven months?’
‘Eight,’ said Robin.
‘Hm,’ said Ilsa, now smiling down at her baby.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Corm’s hating it. His face when you and Ryan were holding hands outside the church. And I notice Corm’s lost a ton of weight.’
‘He had to,’ said Robin, ‘because his leg got so bad last year.’
‘If you say so… Ryan doesn’t drink at all?’
‘No, I told you: he’s an alcoholic. Sober two years.’
‘Ah… well, he seems nice. He wants kids,’ added Ilsa, shooting a glance at her friend. ‘He was telling me so, earlier.’
‘We’re hardly going to start trying for a baby when we’ve known each other barely eight months, Ilsa.’
‘Corm’s never wanted kids.’
Robin ignored this comment. She knew perfectly well that Ilsa and Nick had hoped for several years that she and Strike would become more to each other than detective partners and best friends.