Page 110 of Troubled Blood

Paul Satchwell

After a few months, Talbot’s mental state clearly deteriorated, judging by his notes, which become progressively more detached from reality.

Toward the end of the notebook he goes back to the other two horned signs of the zodiac, Aries and Taurus, presumably because he’s still fixated on the devil. As stated above, Wilma comes in for a lot of unfounded suspicion, but he also goes to the trouble of calculating Satchwell’s complete birth horoscope, which means he must have got a birth time from him. Probably means nothing, but strange that he went back to Satchwell and spent this much time on his birth chart, which he didn’t do for any other suspect. Talbot highlights aspects of the chart that supposedly indicate aggression, dishonesty and neuroses. Talbot also keeps noting that various parts of Satchwell’s chart are “same as AC” without explanation.

Roy Phipps and Irene Hickson

As mentioned above, the signs Talbot uses for Roy Phipps and Irene Hickson (who was then Irene Bull) haven’t ever been used in astrology and seem to be inventions of Talbot’s.

Roy’s symbol looks like a headless stickman. Exactly what it’s supposed to represent I can’t find out—presumably a constellation? Quotations about snakes recur around Roy’s name.

Irene’s invented sign looks like a big fish and—

The kitchen door opened again. Robin looked around. It was Linda again.

“You still here?” she said, still with a slight sense of disapproval.

“No,” said Robin, “I’m upstairs.”

Linda’s smile was reluctant. As she took more mugs from the cupboard, she asked,

“D’you want another tea?”

“No thanks,” said Robin, closing her laptop. She’d decided to finish reading Strike’s document in her room. Maybe she was imagining it, but Linda seemed to be making more noise than usual.

“He’s got you working over Christmas as well, then?” said Linda.

For the past four days, Robin had suspected that her mother wanted to talk to her about Strike. The looks she’d seen on her surprised family’s faces yesterday had told her why. However, she felt under no obligation to make it easy for Linda to interrogate her.

“As well as what?” asked Robin.

“You know what I mean,” said Linda. “Christmas. I’d have thought you were owed time off.”

“I get time off,” said Robin.

She took her empty mug over to the sink. Rowntree now struggled to his feet and Robin let him out of the back door, feeling the icy air on every bit of exposed skin. Over the garden hedge she could see the sun turning the horizon green as it made its way steadily up through the icy heavens.

“Is he seeing anyone?” Linda asked. “Strike?”

“He sees lots of people,” said Robin, willfully obtuse. “It’s part of the job.”

“You know what I mean,” said Linda.

“Why the interest?”

She expected her mother to back off, but was surprised.

“I think you know why,” she said, turning to face her daughter.

Robin was furious to find herself blushing. She was a twenty-nine-year-old woman. At that very moment, her mobile emitted a beep on the kitchen table. She was convinced that it would be Strike texting her, and so, apparently, was Linda, who, being nearer, picked up the phone to hand it to Robin, glancing at the sender’s name as she did so.

It wasn’t Strike. It was Saul Morris. He’d written:

Hope you’re not having as shit a Christmas as I am.

Robin wouldn’t normally have answered. Resentment at her family, and something else, something she didn’t particularly want to admit to, made her text back, while Linda watched:

Depends how shit yours is. Mine’s fairly shit.

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