The Running Grave — страница 59 из 179

‘Because if you had, you wouldn’t be the only one,’ said Strike. He was now intrigued: Pat had never before shown the slightest inclination to pull her punches when judging anyone: client, employee or, indeed, Strike himself.

‘He’s fine. Doing the job OK, isn’t he?’

Before Strike could answer, the phone on Pat’s desk rang.

‘Oh, hello Ryan,’ she said, her tone far warmer.

Strike decided it was time to leave, and did so, closing the glass door quietly behind him.

The next few days yielded little progress in the UHC case. There was no word from Shanker on a possible interview with Jordan Reaney. Cherie Gittins remained unfindable on every database Strike consulted. Of the witnesses to Cherie and Daiyu’s early morning swim, the café owner who’d seen Cherie taking the child down to the beach while carrying towels had died five years previously. He’d tried to contact Mr and Mrs Heaton, who’d seen the hysterical Cherie running up the beach after Daiyu disappeared beneath the waves, and who were still living at an address in Cromer, but nobody ever answered their landline, no matter what time of day Strike tried it. He toyed with the idea of driving on to Cromer after visiting Garvestone Hall, but as the agency was already stretched with its current cases, and he was already planning to go down to Cornwall later in the week, he decided against sacrificing another few hours on the road merely to find an unoccupied house.

His drive to Norfolk on a sunny Tuesday morning was uneventful until, on a flat, straight stretch of the A11, Midge called him about the most recently acquired case on the agency’s books, a case of presumed marital infidelity in which the husband wanted the wife watched. The client had been taken on so recently that no nickname had been assigned to either client or target, although Strike understood who Midge was talking about when she said without preamble,

‘I’ve caught Mrs What’s-Her-Name in the act.’

‘Already?’

‘Yeah. Got pictures of her coming out of the lover’s flat this morning. Visiting her mother, my arse. Maybe I should’ve strung it out a bit. We’re not going to make much out of this one.’

‘Good word of mouth, though,’ said Strike.

‘Shall I get Pat to notify the next on the waiting list?’

‘Let’s give it a week,’ said Strike, after a sight hesitation. ‘The Frank job needs twice the manpower now we know it’s both of them. Listen, Midge, while I’ve got you – is there anything up with Pat and Littlejohn?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘There hasn’t been a row or anything?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘She was a bit odd when I asked her what she thought of him, this morning.’

‘Well, she doesn’t like him,’ said Midge. ‘None of us do,’ she added, with her usual candour.

‘I’m putting out feelers for a replacement,’ said Strike, which was true: he’d emailed several contacts in both the police and the army for possible candidates the previous evening. ‘OK, good work on Mrs Thing. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He drove on through the relentlessly flat landscape, which was having its usual lowering effect on his mood. The Aylmerton Community had forever tainted Norfolk in his mind; he found no beauty in the seeming immensity of the sky pressing down upon the level earth, nor for its occasional windmills and marshy wetlands.

His satnav guided him along a series of narrow, winding country lanes, until he finally saw his first signpost to Garvestone. Three hours after he’d left London, he entered the tiny village, passing a square-towered church, school and village hall in rapid succession and finding himself out the other side barely three minutes later. A quarter of a mile beyond Garvestone he spotted a wooden sign directing him up a track to his right to the hall. Shortly thereafter, he was driving through the open gates towards what had once been home to the Stolen Prophet.

38

Six at the top…

Not light but darkness.

First he climbed up to heaven,

Then he plunged into the depths of the earth.

The I Ching or Book of Changes




The drive was bordered with high hedges, so Strike saw little of the surrounding gardens until he reached the gravel forecourt in front of the hall, which was an irregular but impressive building of grey-blue stone, with Gothic windows and a front door of solid oak reached by a flight of stone steps. He paused for a few seconds after leaving the car to take in the immaculate green lawns, the topiary lions and the water garden glimmering in the distance. Then a door creaked and a croaky but powerful male voice said,

‘Hello thah!’

An elderly man had come out of the house and now stood leaning on a mahogany stick at the top of the stone steps to the front door. He was wearing a shirt under his tweed blazer, and the blue and maroon regimental tie of the Grenadier Guards. Beside him stood an immensely fat yellow Labrador, wagging its tail but evidently deciding to wait for the newcomer to climb the steps rather than descend to greet him.

‘Can’t get down the damn steps any more without help, sorry!’

‘No problem,’ Strike said, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he approached the front door. ‘Colonel Graves, I presume?’

‘How d’yeh do?’ said Graves, shaking hands. He had a thick white moustache and a slight overbite, faintly reminiscent of a rabbit or, if you were being unkind, of the standard impersonation of an upper-class twit. The eyes blinking behind the lenses of his steel-rimmed glasses were milky with cataracts, and a large, flesh-coloured hearing aid protruded from one ear.

‘Come in, come in – here, Gunga Din,’ he added. Strike took the last exhortation to be an invitation to the fat Labrador now sniffing at the hems of his trousers, rather than himself.

Colonel Graves shuffled along ahead of Strike into a large hall, cane thudding loudly on the dark polished floorboards, the panting Labrador bringing up the rear. Victorian oil portraits of what Strike didn’t doubt were ancestors looked down upon the two men and the dog. The place had an aged, serene beauty enhanced by the light flooding through a large leaded window over the stairs.

‘Beautiful house,’ said Strike.

‘M’grandfather bought it. Beerocracy. Brewery’s long gone, though. Graves Stout, ever heard of it?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Went out of business in 1953. Still got a couple of bottles in the cellar. Nasty stuff. M’father made us drink it. Foundation of the family’s fortune and what have yah. Hyar we are,’ said the colonel, by now panting as loudly as his dog as he pushed open a door.

They entered a large drawing room of homely upper-class comfort, with deep sofas and armchairs of faded chintz, more leaded windows looking out onto the splendid gardens and a dog’s bed made of tweed, into which the Labrador flopped with an air of having had more than his day’s worth of exercise.

Three people were sitting around a low table laden with tea things and what looked like a home-baked Victoria sponge. In an armchair sat an elderly woman with thin white hair, who was dressed in navy blue and pearls. Her hands were trembling so much that Strike wondered whether she had Parkinson’s disease. A couple in their late forties were sitting side by side on the sofa. The balding man’s heavy eyebrows and prominent Roman nose gave him the look of an eagle. His tie, unless he was pretending to be something he wasn’t, which Strike thought unlikely in this context, proclaimed that he’d once been a Royal Marine. His wife, who was plump and blonde, was wearing a pink cashmere sweater and a tweed skirt. Her bobbed hair was tied back in a velvet bow, a style Strike hadn’t seen since the eighties, while her ruddy, broken-veined cheeks suggested a life led largely out of doors.

‘M’wife, Barbara,’ said Colonel Graves, ‘our daughter, Phillipa, and her husband, Nicholas.’

‘Good morning,’ said Strike.

‘Hello,’ said Mrs Graves. Phillipa merely nodded at Strike, unsmiling. Nicholas made no sound or gesture of welcome.

‘Siddown,’ said the colonel, gesturing Strike to an armchair opposite the sofa. He himself lowered himself slowly into a high-backed chair with a grunt of relief.

‘How d’you take your tea?’ Mrs Graves asked.

‘Strong, please.’

‘Good man,’ barked the colonel. ‘Can’t stand weak tea.’

‘I’ll do it, Mummy,’ said Phillipa, and indeed, Mrs Graves’ hands were trembling so much, Strike thought it advisable she didn’t handle boiling water.

‘Cake?’ the unsmiling Phillipa asked him, once she’d passed his tea.

‘I’d love some,’ said Strike. Sod the diet.

Once everyone had been served, and Phillipa had sat down again, Strike said,

‘Well, I’m very grateful for this chance to talk to you. I understand this can’t be easy.’

‘We’ve been assured you’re not a sleaze hound,’ said Nicholas.

‘Good to know,’ said Strike drily.

‘No offence,’ said Nicholas, though his manner was that of a man who didn’t particularly mind being offensive and might even pride herself on it, ‘but we thought it important to check you out.’

‘Do we have your assurance we’re not going to be dragged into the tabloids?’ said Phillipa.

‘You do seem to make a habit of popping up there,’ said Nicholas.

Strike could have pointed out that he’d never given the press an interview, that most of the journalistic interest he’d aroused had been due to solving criminal cases, and that it was hardly within his control whether the press became interested in his investigation. Instead he said,

‘At the moment, the risk of press interest is slight to non-existent.’

‘But you think it might all be dragged up?’ Phillipa pressed him. ‘Because our children don’t know anything about all this. They think their uncle died of natural causes.’