Page 200 of Troubled Blood

She’d learned the trick from Strike. Stay calm, but assertive. Make them worry what else you’ve got.

Satchwell turned back, his one uncovered eye hard as flint. No trace of flirtation remained, no attempt to patronize her. She was an equal now; an adversary.

“Why don’t you sit down?” said Robin. “This won’t take long.”

After a slight hesitation, Satchwell eased himself back into his seat. His hoary head now blocked the stuffed deer head that hung on the brick wall behind him. From Robin’s point of view, the horns appeared to rise directly out of the white hair that fell in limp curls to his shoulders.

“Margot Bamborough knew something about you that you didn’t want to get out,” said Robin. “Didn’t she?”

He glared at her.

“The pillow dream?” said Robin.

Every line of his face hardened, turning him vulpine. The sunburned chest, wrinkled beneath its white hair, caved as he exhaled.

“Told someone, did she? Who?” Before Robin could answer, he said, “’Er husband, I suppose? Or that fucking Irish girl, was it?”

His jaws worked, chewing nothing.

“I should never ’ave told her,” he said. “That’s what you do when you’re drunk and you’re in love, or whatever the fuck we were. Then I ’ad it playing on my mind for years that she was gonna…”

The sentence ended in silence.

“Did she mention it, when you met again?” asked Robin, feeling her way, pretending she knew more than she did.

“She asked after my poor mother,” said Satchwell. “I fort at the time, are you ’aving a go? But I don’t think she was. Maybe she’d learned better, being a doctor, maybe she’d changed her views. She’ll have seen people like Blanche. A life not worth living.

“Anyway,” he said, leaning forwards slightly, “I still think it was a dream. All right? I was six years old. I dreamed it. And even if it wasn’t a dream, they’re both dead and gone now and nobody can say no different. My old mum died in ’89. You can’t get ’er for anything now, poor cow. Single mother, trying to cope with us all on ’er own. It’s merciful,” said Satchwell, “putting someone out of their misery. A mercy.”

He got up, drained beneath his tan, his face sagging, turned and walked away, but at the moment he was about to disappear he suddenly turned and tottered back to her, his jaw working.

“I think,” he said, with as much malevolence as he could muster, “you’re a nasty little bitch.”

He left for good this time.

Robin’s heart rate was barely raised. Her dominant emotion was elation. Pushing her unappetizing ramekins aside, she pulled the little metal bucket he’d left behind toward her, and finished the artist’s chips.

48

Sir Artegall, long hauing since,

Taken in hand th’exploit…

To him assynd, her high beheast to doo,

To the sea shore he gan his way apply…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Joan’s funeral service finished with the hymn most beloved of sailors, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” While the congregation sang the familiar words, Ted, Strike, Dave Polworth and three of Ted’s comrades in the lifeboat service shouldered the coffin back down the aisle of the simple cream-walled church, with its wooden beams and its stained-glass windows depicting purple-robed St. Maudez, for whom both village and church were named. Flanked by an island tower and a seal on a rock, the saint watched the coffin-bearers pass out of the church.

O Savior, whose almighty word

The winds and waves submissive heard,

Who walked upon the foaming deep,

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