Page 237 of Troubled Blood

“Goodbye, Corm,” said Kerenza, her freckled face kindly as ever. “I’m not coming for lunch.”

“Great,” said Strike, “no, sorry, I mean—thanks for coming, Kerenza, Joan was so fond of you.”

When Kerenza had finally got into her Mini, and the family’s cars were driving away, Strike pulled out his phone again.

Never forget that I loved you goodbye blues x

Strike called the number. After a few rings, it went to voicemail.

“Charlotte, it’s me,” said Strike. “I’m going to keep ringing till you pick up.”

He hung up and dialed again. The number went to voicemail for a second time.

Strike began to walk, because his anxiety required action. The streets around the harbor weren’t busy. Most people would be sitting down to Easter lunch. Over and again he dialed Charlotte’s number, but she didn’t answer.

It was as though a wire was tightening around his skull. His neck was rigid with tension. From second to second his feelings fluctuated between rage, resentment, frustration and fear. She’d always been an expert manipulator. She’d also narrowly escaped death by her own hand, twice.

The phone might be going unanswered because she was already dead. There could be sporting guns at the Castle of Croy, where her husband’s family had lived for generations. There’d be heavy-duty medications at the clinic: she might have stockpiled them. She might even have taken a razor blade to herself, as she’d once tried to do during one of her and Strike’s more vicious rows.

After calling the number for the tenth time, Strike came to a halt, looking out over the railings at the pitiless sea, which breathed no consolation as it rushed to and then retreated from the shore. Memories of Joan, and the way she’d clung so fiercely to life, flooded his mind: his anxiety about Charlotte was laced with fury, for throwing life away.

And then his phone rang.

“Where are you?” he almost shouted.

“Bluey?”

She sounded drunk, or very stoned.

“Where are you?”

“… told you,” she mumbled. “Bluey, d’you ’member…”

“Charlotte, WHERE ARE YOU?”

“Told you, S’monds…”

He turned and began to half-run, half-hobble back the way he’d come: there was an old-fashioned red telephone box twenty yards back, and with his free hand he was already pulling coins from his trouser pocket.

“Are you in your room? Where are you?”

The telephone box smelled urinous, of cigarette butts and dirt from a thousand silt-clogged soles.

“C’n see sky… Bluey, I’m so…”

She was still mumbling, her breathing slow.

“One one eight, one one eight?” said a cheery voice through the receiver in his left hand.

“Symonds House, it’s a residential psychiatric clinic in Kent.”

“Shall I connect—”

“Yes, connect me… Charlotte, are you still there? Talk to me. Where are you?”

But she didn’t answer. Her breathing was loud and becoming guttural.

“Symonds House,” said a bright female voice in his other ear.

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