Page 97 of Troubled Blood

“Cormoran Strike Detective Agency.”

Robin tried not to smile as Strike dropped back into his chair. There was a knock on the door, and Pat stuck her head inside,

“Morning. Got a Gregory Talbot on hold for you.”

“Put him through,” said Strike. “Please,” he added, detecting a martial look in Pat’s eye, “and close the door.”

She did so. A moment later, the phone rang on the partners’ desk and Strike switched it to speakerphone.

“Hi, Gregory, Strike here.”

“Yes, hello,” said Gregory, who sounded anxious.

“What can I do for you?”

“Er, well, you know how we were clearing out the loft?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“Well, yesterday I unpacked an old box,” said Gregory, sounding tense, “and I found something hidden under Dad’s commendations and his uniform—”

“Not hidden,” said a querulous female voice in the background.

“I didn’t know it was there,” said Gregory. “And now my mother—”

“Let me talk to him,” said the woman in the background.

“My mother would like to talk to you,” said Gregory, sounding exasperated.

A defiant, elderly female voice replaced Gregory’s.

“Is this Mr. Strike?”

“It is.”

“Gregory’s told you all about how the police treated Bill at the end?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“He could have kept working once he got treatment for his thyroid, but they didn’t let him. He’d given them everything, the force was his life. Greg says he’s given you Bill’s notes?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“Well, after Bill died I found this can in a box in the shed and it had the Creed mark on it—you’ve read the notes, you know Bill used a special symbol for Creed?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“I couldn’t take everything with me into sheltered accommodation, they give you virtually no storage space, so I put it into the boxes to go in Greg and Alice’s attic. I quite forgot it was there until Greg started looking through his dad’s things yesterday. The police have made it quite clear they weren’t interested in Bill’s theories, but Greg says you are, so you should have it.”

Gregory came back on the line. They heard movement that seemed to indicate that Gregory was moving away from his mother. A door closed.

“It’s a can containing a reel of old 16mm film,” he told Strike, his mouth close to the receiver. “Mum doesn’t know what’s on there. I haven’t got a camera to run it, but I’ve held a bit up to the light and… it looks like a dirty movie. I was worried about putting it out for the binmen—”

Given that the Talbots were fostering children, Strike understood his qualms.

“If we give it to you—I wonder—”

“You’d rather we didn’t say where we got it?” Strike said, eyes on Robin’s. “I can’t see why we’d need to.”

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