As she turned onto the A40, Strike’s ambiguous utterance brought to Robin a sudden, vivid mental image: of Strike, with his hairy bulk and his one and a half legs, entangled with Elin, blonde and alabaster against pure white sheets… she was sure that Elin’s sheets would be white and Nordic and clean. She probably had somebody to do her laundry. Elin was too upper middle class, too wealthy, to iron her own duvet covers in front of the TV in a cramped sitting room in Ealing.
“How about Matthew?” Strike asked her as they moved out onto the motorway. “How’d that go?”
“Fine,” said Robin.
“Bollocks,” said Strike.
Though another laugh escaped her, Robin was half inclined to resent his demand for more information when she was given so little about Elin.
“Well, he wants to get back together.”
“Course he does,” said Strike.
“Why ‘of course’?”
“If I’m not allowed to fish, you aren’t.”
Robin was not sure what to say to that, though it gave her a small glow of pleasure. She thought it might be the very first time that Strike had ever given any indication that he saw her as a woman, and she silently filed away the exchange to pore over later, in solitude.
“He apologized and kept asking me to put my ring back on,” Robin said. Residual loyalty to Matthew prevented her mentioning the crying, the begging. “But I…”
Her voice trailed away, and although Strike wanted to hear more, he asked no further questions, but pulled down the window and smoked another cigarette.
They stopped for a coffee at Hilton Park Services. Robin went to the bathroom while Strike queued for coffees in Burger King. In front of the mirror she checked her mobile. As she had expected, a message from Matthew was waiting, but the tone was no longer pleading and conciliatory.
If you sleep with him, we’re over for good. You might think it’ll make things even but it’s not like for like. Sarah was a long time ago, we were kids and I didn’t do it to hurt you. Think about what you’re throwing away, Robin. I love you.
“Sorry,” Robin muttered, moving aside to allow an impatient girl access to the hand-dryer.
She read Matthew’s text again. A satisfying gush of anger obliterated the mingled pity and pain engendered by that morning’s pursuit. Here, she thought, was the authentic Matthew: if you sleep with him, we’re over for good. So he did not really believe that she had meant it when she took off her ring and told him she no longer wished to marry him? It would be over “for good” only when he, Matthew, said so? It’s not like for like. Her infidelity would be worse than his by definition. To him, her journey north was simply an exercise in retaliation: a dead woman and a killer loose mere pretext for feminine spite.
Screw you, she thought, ramming the mobile back into her pocket as she returned to the café, where Strike sat eating a double Croissan’Wich with sausage and bacon.
Strike noted her flushed face, her tense jaw, and guessed that Matthew had been in touch.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” said Robin and then, before he could ask anything else, “So are you going to tell me about Brockbank?”
The question came out a little more aggressively than she had intended. The tone of Matthew’s text had riled her, as had the fact that it had raised in her mind the question of where she and Strike were actually going to sleep that night.
“If you want,” said Strike mildly.
He drew his phone out of his pocket, brought up the picture of Brockbank that he had taken from Hardacre’s computer and passed it across the table to Robin.
Robin contemplated the long, swarthy face beneath its dense dark hair, which was unusual, but not unattractive. As though he had read her mind, Strike said:
“He’s uglier now. That was taken when he’d just joined up. One of his eye sockets is caved in and he’s got a cauliflower ear.”
“How tall is he?” asked Robin, remembering the courier standing over her in his leathers, his mirrored visor.
“My height or bigger.”
“You said you met him in the army?”
“Yep,” said Strike.
She thought for a few seconds that he was not going to tell her anything more, until she realized that he was merely waiting for an elderly couple, who were dithering about where to sit, to pass out of earshot. When they had gone Strike said:
“He was a major, Seventh Armoured Brigade. He married a dead colleague’s widow. She had two small daughters. Then they had one of their own, a boy.”
The facts flowed, having just reread Brockbank’s file, but in truth Strike had never forgotten them. It had been one of those cases that stayed with you.
“The eldest stepdaughter was called Brittany. When she was twelve, Brittany disclosed sexual abuse to a school friend in Germany. The friend told her mother, who reported it. We were called in—I didn’t interview her personally, that was a female officer. I just saw the tape.”
What had crucified him was how grown-up she had tried to be, how together. She was terrified of what would happen to the family now she had blabbed, and was trying to take it back.
No, of course she hadn’t told Sophie that he had threatened to kill her little sister if she told on him! No, Sophie wasn’t lying, exactly—it had been a joke, that was all. She’d asked Sophie how to stop yourself having a baby because—because she’d been curious, everyone wanted to know stuff like that. Of course he hadn’t said he’d carve up her mum in little pieces if she told—the thing about her leg? Oh, that—well, that was a joke, too—it was all joking—he told her she had scars on her leg because he’d nearly cut her leg off when she was little, but her mum had walked in and seen him. He’d said he did it because she’d trodden on his flowerbeds when she was a toddler, but of course it was a joke—ask her mum. She’d got stuck in some barbed wire, that was all, and badly cut trying to pull herself free. They could ask her mum. He hadn’t cut her. He’d never cut her, not Daddy.
The involuntary expression she had made when forcing herself to say “Daddy” was with Strike still: she had looked like a child trying to swallow cold tripe, under threat of punishment. Twelve years old and she had learned life was only bearable for her family if she shut up and took whatever he wanted to do without complaint.
Strike had taken against Mrs. Brockbank from their first interview. She had been thin and over made-up, a victim, no doubt, in her way, but it seemed to Strike that she had voluntarily jettisoned Brittany to save the other two children, that she turned two blind eyes to the long absences from the house of her husband and eldest child, that her determination not to know was tantamount to collaboration. Brockbank had told Brittany that he would strangle both her mother and her sister if she ever spoke about what he did to her in the car when he took her on lengthy excursions into nearby woods, into dark alleyways. He would cut all of them up into little bits and bury them in the garden. Then he’d take Ryan—Brockbank’s small son, the only family member whom he seemed to value—and go where no one would ever find them.
“It was a joke, just a joke. I didn’t mean any of it.”
Thin fingers twisting, her glasses lopsided, her legs not long enough for her feet to reach the floor. She was still refusing point blank to be physically examined when Strike and Hardacre went to Brockbank’s house to bring him in.
“He was pissed when we got there. I told him why we’d come and he came at me with a broken bottle.
“I knocked him out,” said Strike without bravado, “but I shouldn’t’ve touched him. I didn’t need to.”
He had never admitted this out loud before, even though Hardacre (who had backed him to the hilt in the subsequent inquiry) had known it as well.
“If he came at you with a bottle—”
“I could’ve got the bottle off him without decking him.”
“You said he was big—”
“He was pretty pissed. I could’ve managed him without punching him. Hardacre was there,
it was two on one.
“Truth is, I was glad he came at me. I wanted to punch him. Right hook, literally knocked him senseless—which is how he got away with it.”
“Got away with—”
“Got off,” said Strike. “Got clean away.”
“How?”
Strike drank more coffee, his eyes unfocused, remembering.
“He was hospitalized after I hit him because he had a massive epileptic seizure when he came out of the concussion. Traumatic brain injury.”
“Oh God,” said Robin.
“He needed emergency surgery to stop the bleeding from his brain. He kept having fits. They diagnosed TBI, PTSD and alcoholism. Unfit to stand trial. Lawyers came stampeding in. I was put on an assault charge.
“Luckily, my legal team found out that, the weekend before I hit him, he’d played rugby. They dug around a bit and found out he’d taken a knee to the head from an eighteen-stone Welshman and been stretchered off the field. A junior medic had missed the bleeding from his ear because he was covered in mud and bruises, and just told him to go home and take it easy. As it turned out, they’d missed a basal skull fracture, which my legal team found out when they got doctors to look at the post-match X-ray. The skull fracture had been done by a Welsh forward, not me.
“Even so, if I hadn’t had Hardy as a witness to the fact that he’d come at me with the bottle, I’d have been in it up to my neck. In the end, they accepted that I’d acted in self-defense. I couldn’t have known his skull was already cracked, or how much damage I’d do by punching him.
“Meanwhile, they found child porn on his computer. Brittany’s story tallied with frequent sightings of her being driven out, alone, by her stepfather. Her teacher was interviewed and said she was getting more and more withdrawn at school.
“Two years he’d been assaulting her and warning her he’d kill her, her mother and her sister if she told anyone. He had her convinced that he’d already tried to cut her leg off once. She had scarring all around her shin. He’d told her he was just sawing it off when the mother came in and stopped him. In her interview, the mother said the scarring was from an accident when she was a toddler.”
Robin said nothing. Both hands were over her mouth and her eyes were wide. Strike’s expression was frightening.
“He lay in hospital while they tried to get his fits under control, and whenever anyone tried to interview him he faked confusion and amnesia. He had lawyers swarming all over him, smelling a big fat payout: medical neglect, assault. He claimed he’d been a victim of abuse himself, that the child porn was just a symptom of his mental issues, his alcoholism. Brittany was insisting she’d made everything up, the mother was screaming to everyone that Brockbank had never laid a finger on any of the kids, that he was a perfect father, that she’d lost one husband and now she was going to lose another. Top brass just wanted the accusation to go away.
“He was invalided out,” said Strike, his dark eyes meeting Robin’s blue-gray ones. “He got off scot-free, with a payout and pension to boot, and off he went, Brittany in tow.”
24
Step into a world of strangers
Into a sea of unknowns…
Blue Öyster Cult, “Hammer Back”
The rattling Land Rover devoured the miles with stoic competence, but the journey north had begun to seem interminably long before the first signs to Barrow-in-Furness appeared. The map had not adequately conveyed how far away the seaport was, how isolated. Barrow-in-Furness was not destined to be passed through, or visited incidentally; an end unto itself, it constituted a geographical cul-de-sac.
Through the southernmost reaches of the Lake District they traveled, past rolling fields of sheep, dry stone walls and picturesque hamlets that reminded Robin of her Yorkshire home, through Ulverston (“Birthplace of Stan Laurel”), until they achieved their first glimpse of a wide estuary that hinted at their approach to the coast. At last, past midday, they found themselves in an unlovely industrial estate, the road flanked by warehouses and factories, which marked the periphery of the town.
“We’ll grab something to eat before we go to Brockbank’s,” said Strike, who had been examining a map of Barrow for the past five minutes. He disdained using electronic devices to navigate on the basis that you did not need to wait for paper to download, nor did the information disappear under adverse conditions. “There’s a car park up here. Take a left at the roundabout.”
They passed a battered side entrance to Craven Park, home ground of the Barrow Raiders. Strike, whose eyes were peeled for a sighting of Brockbank, drank in the distinct character of the place. He had expected, Cornish-born as he was, to be able to see the sea, to taste it, but they might have been miles inland for all he could tell. The initial impression was of a gigantic out-of-town retail center, where the garish façades of high-street outlets confronted them on all sides, except that here and there, standing proud and incongruous between the DIY stores and pizza restaurants, were architectural gems that spoke of a prosperous industrial past. The art deco customs house had been turned into a restaurant. A Victorian technical college embellished with classical figures bore the legend Labor Omnia Vincit. A little further and they came across rows and rows of terraced housing, the kind of cityscape Lowry painted, the hive where workers lived.
“Never seen so many pubs,” said Strike as Robin turned into the car park. He fancied a beer, but with Labor Omnia Vincit in mind, agreed to Robin’s suggestion of a quick bite to eat in a nearby café.
The April day was bright, but the breeze carried with it a chill off the unseen sea.
“Not overselling themselves, are they?” he muttered as he saw the name of the café: The Last Resort. It stood opposite Second Chance, which sold old clothing, and a flourishing pawnbroker’s. Notwithstanding its unpropitious name, The Last Resort was cozy and clean, full of chattering old ladies, and they returned to the car park feeling pleasantly well fed.
“His house won’t be easy to watch if no one’s home,” said Strike, showing Robin the map when they were back in the Land Rover. “It’s in a dead straight dead end. Nowhere to lurk.”
“Has it occurred to you,” said Robin, not entirely flippantly, as they drove away, “that Holly is Noel? That he’s had a sex change?”
“If he has, he’ll be a cinch to find,” said Strike. “Six foot eight in high heels, with a cauliflower ear. Take a right here,” he added as they passed a nightclub called Skint. “Christ, they tell it like it is in Barrow, don’t they?”
Ahead, a gigantic cream building with the name BAE SYSTEMS on it blocked any view of the seafront. The edifice was windowless and seemed to stretch a mile across, blank, faceless, intimidating.
“I think Holly’s going to turn out to be a sister, or maybe a new wife,” said Strike. “Hang a left… she’s the same age as him. Right, we’re looking for Stanley Road… we’re going to end up right by BAE Systems, by the look of it.”
As Strike had said, Stanley Road ran in a straight line with houses on one side and a high brick wall topped with barbed wire on the other. Beyond this uncompromising barrier rose the strangely sinister factory building, white and windowless, intimidating in its sheer size.
“‘Nuclear Site Boundary’?” Robin read from a sign on the wall, slowing the Land Rover to a crawl as they proceeded up the road.
“Building submarines,” said Strike, looking up at the barbed wire. “Police warnings everywhere—look.”
The cul-de-sac was deserted. It terminated in a small parking area beside a children’s play park. As she parked, Robin noticed a number of objects stuck in the barbed wire on top of the wall. The ball had undoubtedly landed there by accident, but there was also a small pink doll’s pushchair, tangled up and irretrievable. The sight of it gave her an uncomfortable feeling: somebody had deliberately thrown that out of reach.
“What are you getting out for?” asked Strike, coming around the back of the vehicle.
“I was—”
“I’ll d
eal with Brockbank, if he’s in there,” said Strike, lighting up. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”
Robin got back into the Land Rover.
“Try not to punch him, won’t you?” she muttered at Strike’s retreating figure as he walked with a slight limp towards the house, his knee stiff from the journey.
Some of the houses had clean windows and ornaments neatly arranged behind the glass; others had net curtains in various states of cleanliness. A few were shabby and, on the evidence of grimy interior windowsills, dirty. Strike had almost reached a maroon door when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. Robin noticed that a group of men in blue overalls and hard hats had appeared at the end of the street. Was one of them Brockbank? Was that why Strike had stopped?
No. He was merely taking a phone call. Turning his back on both the door and the men, he moved slowly back towards Robin, his stride no longer purposeful but with the aimless ramble of a man intent only on the voice in his ear.
One of the men in the overalls was tall, dark and bearded. Had Strike seen him? Robin slipped out of the Land Rover again and, on pretext of texting, took several photographs of the workmen, zooming in on them as closely as she could. They turned a corner and walked out of sight.
Strike had paused ten yards away from her, smoking and listening to the person talking on his mobile. A gray-haired woman was squinting at the pair of them from an upstairs window of the nearest house. Thinking to allay her suspicions, Robin turned away from the houses and took a picture of the huge nuclear facility, playing the tourist.
“That was Wardle,” said Strike, coming up behind her. He looked grim. “The body isn’t Oxana Voloshina’s.”
“How do they know?” asked Robin, stunned.
“Oxana’s been home in Donetsk for three weeks. Family wedding—they haven’t spoken to her personally, but they’ve talked to her mother on the phone and she says Oxana’s there. Meanwhile, the landlady’s recovered enough to tell police that she was especially shocked when she found the body because she thought Oxana had gone back to Ukraine for a holiday. She also mentioned that the head didn’t look very like her.”