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Troubled Blood
Part Four - 31
The Faerie Queene
Strike’s gastric upset added days to his illness, and he spent New Year’s Eve in bed, reliant on takeaway pizzas but hardly able to touch them when they arrived. For the first time in his life he didn’t fancy chocolate, because the truffles he’d consumed after his out-of-date chicken had been the first things to reappear during his prolonged vomiting. The only enjoyable thing he did was to watch the DVD of Tom Waits’s No Visitors After Midnight, the taped concerts Robin had bought him for Christmas, which he finally unwrapped on New Year’s Day. His text thanking her elicited a short “you’re welcome.”
By the time he felt fit enough to travel down to Cornwall, clutching his belated Christmas gifts, Strike had lost over a stone, and this was the first thing an anxious Joan commented on when he finally appeared at her house in St. Mawes, full of apologies for his absence at Christmas.
Troubled Blood
Part Four - 31
“What are you doing? I can fetch anything you want—”
“I was going to show you where I hide the chocolate biscuits. If Ted knows, he scoffs the lot, and the doctor’s worried about his blood pressure. What were you reading? I know that look. You were angry.”
He didn’t know whether her new appreciation for honesty would stretch as far as his father, but somehow, with the wind and rain whipping around them, an air of the confessional had descended upon the house. He told her about the text.