Page 226 of Troubled Blood

“‘Margot confronted Pisces.’ It’d be a hell of a thing to accuse a child of—”

“Maybe she never confronted him at all. The confrontation might have been something Talbot suspected, or imagined. Either way—”

“—it’s suggestive, yeah. It is suggestive…” Strike let out a slight groan. “We’re going to have to interview bloody Oakden, aren’t we? There’s a bit of a hotspot developing around that little grouping, isn’t there? Brenner and the Oakdens, outward respectability—”

“—inward poison. Remember? That’s what Oonagh Kennedy said about Dorothy.”

The detectives sat for a moment or two, watching Elinor Dean’s front door, which remained closed, her dark garden silent and still.

“How many murders,” Robin asked, “d’you think go undetected?”

“Clue’s in the question, isn’t it? ‘Undetected’—impossible to know. But yeah, it’s those quiet, domestic deaths you wonder about. Vulnerable people picked off by their own families, and everyone thinking it was ill health—”

“—or a mercy that they’ve gone,” said Robin.

“Some deaths are a mercy,” said Strike.

And with these words, in both of their mind’s eyes rose an image of horror. Strike was remembering the corpse of Sergeant Gary Topley, lying on the dusty road in Afghanistan, eyes wide open, his body missing from the waist down. The vision had recurred in Strike’s nightmares ever since he’d seen it, and occasionally, in these dreams, Gary talked to him, lying in the dust. It was always a comfort to remember, on waking, that Gary’s consciousness had been snuffed out instantly, that his wide-open eyes and puzzled expression showed that death had claimed him before his brain could register agony or terror.

But in Robin’s mind there was a picture of something she wasn’t sure had ever happened. She was imagining Margot Bamborough chained to a radiator (I whip her face and breasts), pleading for her life (the strategy is laughably transparent), and suffering torments (it could be raised to an ecstasy of pain, and then it knew it lived, and stood tremulously on the edge of the abyss, begging, screaming, begging for mercy).

“You know,” said Robin, talking partly to break the silence and dispel that mental image, “I’d quite like to find a picture of Dorothy’s mother, Maud.”

“Why?”

“For confirmation, because—I don’t think I told you, look…”

She flicked backward in the notebook to the page littered with water signs. In small writing beneath a picture of a scorpion were the words “MOLE (Adams).”

“Is that a new sign?” asked Strike. “The Mole?”

“No,” said Robin, smiling, “Talbot’s alluding to the fact that the astrologer Evangeline Adams said the true Scorpio often has a birthmark, or a prominent mole. I’ve read her book, got it second hand.”

There was a pause.

“What?” said Strike, because Robin was looking at him expectantly.

“I was waiting for you to jeer.”

“I lost the will to jeer some way back,” said Strike. “You realize we’re supposed to have solved this case in approximately fourteen weeks’ time?”

“I know,” sighed Robin. She picked up her mobile to check the time, and out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw yet another text from Morris. “Well, we’re meeting the Bayliss sisters later. Maybe they’ll have something useful to tell us… are you sure you want to interview them with me? I’d be fine to do it alone. You’re going to be really tired after sitting here all night.”

“I’ll sleep on the train to Truro afterward,” said Strike. “You got any plans for Easter Sunday?”

“No,” said Robin. “Mum wanted me to go home but…”

Strike wondered what the silent sequel to the sentence was, and whether she’d made plans with someone else, and didn’t want to tell him about it. Morris, for instance.

“OK, I swear this is the last thing I’m going to bring up from Talbot’s notebook,” Robin said, “but I want to flag something up before we meet the Baylisses.”

“Go on.”

“You said yourself, he seemed racist, from his notes.”

“‘Black phantom,’” Strike quoted, “yeah.”

“And ‘Black Moon Lilith—’”

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