Page 8 of Troubled Blood

“There are two boys,” Robin continued, because Strike’s stunned silence continued unabated, “students, both in their late teens and both the absolute spit of him. One of them came off his motorbike yesterday—I got all this out of the neighbor—he’s got his arm in a cast and looks quite bruised and cut up. Tufty must’ve got news of the accident, so he came haring down here instead of going to Scotland.

“Tufty goes by the name of Edward Campion down here, not John—turns out John’s his middle name, I’ve been searching the online records. He and the first wife and sons live in a really nice villa, view of the sea, massive garden.”

“Bloody hell,” said Strike. “So our pregnant friend in Glasgow—”

“—is the least of Mrs.-Campion-in-Windsor’s worries,” said Robin. “He’s leading a triple life. Two wives and a mistress.”

“And he looks like a balding baboon. There’s hope for all of us. Did you say he’s having dinner right now?”

“Pizza with the wife and kids. I’m parked outside. I didn’t manage to get pictures of him with the sons earlier, and I want to, because they’re a total giveaway. Mini-Tuftys, just like the two in Windsor. Where d’you think he’s been pretending to have been?”

“Oil rig?” suggested Strike. “Abroad? Middle East? Maybe that’s why he’s so keen on keeping his tan topped up.”

Robin sighed.

“The client’s going to be shattered.”

“So’s the mistress in Scotland,” said Strike. “That baby’s due any minute.”

“His taste’s amazingly consistent,” said Robin. “If you lined them up side by side, the Torquay wife, the Windsor wife and the mistress in Glasgow, they’d look like the same woman at twenty-year intervals.”

“Where are you planning to sleep?”

“Travelodge or a B&B,” said Robin, yawning again, “if I can find anything vacant at the height of the holiday season. I’d drive straight back to London overnight, but I’m exhausted. I’ve been awake since four, and that’s on top of a ten-hour day yesterday.”

“No driving and no sleeping in the car,” said Strike. “Get a room.”

“How’s Joan?” asked Robin. “We can handle the workload if you want to stay in Cornwall a bit longer.”

“She won’t sit still while we’re all there. Ted agrees she needs some quiet. I’ll come back down in a couple of weeks.”

“So, were you calling for an update on Tufty?”

“Actually, I was calling about something that just happened. I’ve just left the pub…”

In a few succinct sentences, Strike described the encounter with Margot Bamborough’s daughter.

“I’ve just looked her up,” he said. “Margot Bamborough, twenty-nine-year-old doctor, married, one-year-old daughter. Walked out of her GP practice in Clerkenwell at the end of a day’s work, said she was going to have a quick drink with a female friend before heading home. The pub was only five minutes’ walk away. The friend waited, but Margot never arrived and was never seen again.”

There was a pause. Robin, whose eyes were still fixed on the window of the pizza restaurant, said,

“And her daughter thinks you’re going to find out what happened, nearly four decades later?”

“She seemed to be putting a lot of store on the coincidence of spotting me in the boozer right after the medium told her she’d get a ‘leading.’”

“Hmm,” said Robin. “And what do you think the chances are of finding out what happened after this length of time?”

“Slim to non-existent,” admitted Strike. “On the other hand, the truth’s out there. People don’t just vaporize.”

Robin could hear a familiar note in his voice that indicated rumination on questions and possibilities.

“So you’re meeting the daughter again tomorrow?”

“Can’t hurt, can it?” said Strike.

Robin didn’t answer.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, with a trace of defensive­ness. “Emotionally overwrought client—medium—situation ripe for exploitation.”

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