Why Dave Polworth, pocket don of the class, had decided to befriend the new boy had never been satisfactorily explained, even to Strike. It couldn’t have been out of fear of Strike’s size, because Dave’s two best friends were hefty fishermen’s sons, and Dave was in any case notorious as a fighter whose viciousness was inversely proportional to his height. By the end of that first day Polworth had become both friend and champion, making it his business to impress upon their classmates all the reasons that Strike was worthy of their respect: he was a Cornishman born, a nephew to Ted Nancarrow of the local lifeguard, he didn’t know where his mum was and it wasn’t his fault if he spoke funny.
Ill as Strike’s aunt was, much as she had enjoyed having her nephew to stay for a whole week and even though he’d be leaving the following morning, Joan had virtually pushed him out of the house to celebrate “Little Dave’s” birthday that evening. She placed immense value on old ties and delighted in the fact that Strike and Dave Polworth were still mates, all these years later. Joan counted the fact of their friendship as proof that she’d been right to send him to school over his feckless mother’s wishes and proof that Cornwall was Strike’s true home, no matter how widely he might have wandered since, and even though he was currently London-based.
Polworth took a long pull on his fourth pint and said, with a sharp glance over his shoulder at the dark woman and her blonde friend, who were still watching Strike,
“Effing emmets.”
“And where would your garden be,” asked Strike, “without tourists?”
“Be ansom,” said Polworth promptly. “We get a ton of local visitors, plenty of repeat business.”
Polworth had recently resigned from a managerial position in an engineering firm in Bristol to work as head gardener in a large public garden a short distance along the coast. A qualified diver, an accomplished surfer, a competitor in Ironman competitions, Polworth had been relentlessly physical and restless since childhood, and time and office work hadn’t tamed him.
“No regrets, then?” Strike asked.
“Fuck, no,” said Polworth fervently. “Needed to get my hands dirty again. Need to get back outside. Forty next year. Now or never.”
Polworth had applied for the new job without telling his wife what he was doing. Having been offered the position, he’d quit his job and gone home to announce the fait accompli to his family.
“Penny come round, has she?” Strike asked.
“Still tells me once a week she wants a divorce,” Polworth answered indifferently. “But it was better to present her with the fact, than argue the toss for five years. It’s all worked out great. Kids love the new school, Penny’s company let her transfer to the office in the Big City,” by which Polworth meant Truro, not London. “She’s happy. Just doesn’t want to admit it.”
Strike privately doubted the truth of this statement. A disregard for inconvenient facts tended to march hand in hand with Polworth’s love of risk and romantic causes. However, Strike had problems enough of his own without worrying about Polworth’s, so he raised his fresh pint and said, hoping to keep Polworth’s mind off politics:
“Well, many happy returns, mate.”
“Cheers,” said Polworth, toasting him back. “What d’you reckon to Arsenal’s chances, then? Gonna qualify?”
Strike shrugged, because he feared that discussing the likelihood of his London football club securing a place in the Champions League would lead back to a lack of Cornish loyalties.
“How’s your love life?” Polworth asked, trying a different tack.
“Non-existent,” said Strike.
Polworth grinned.
“Joanie reckons you’re gonna end up with your business partner. That Robin girl.”
“Is that right?” said Strike.
“Told me all about it when I was round there, weekend before last. While I was fixing their Sky Box.”
“They didn’t tell me you’d done that,” said Strike, again tipping his pint toward Polworth. “That was good of you, mate, cheers.”
If he’d hoped to deflect his friend, he was unsuccessful.
“Both of ’em. Her and Ted,” said Polworth, “both of ’em reckon it’s Robin.”
And when Strike said nothing, Polworth pressed him, “Nothing going on, then?”
“No,” said Strike.
“How come?” asked Polworth, frowning again. As with Cornish independence, Strike was refusing to embrace an obvious and desirable objective. “She’s a looker. Seen her in the paper. Maybe not on a par with Milady Berserko,” Polworth acknowledged. It was the nickname he had long ago bestowed on Strike’s ex-fiancée. “But on the other hand, she’s not a fucking nutcase, is she, Diddy?”
Strike laughed.
“Lucy likes her,” said Polworth. “Says you’d be perfect together.”
“When were you talking to Lucy about my love life?” asked Strike, with a touch less complaisance.
“Month or so ago,” said Polworth. “She brought her boys down for the weekend and we had them all over for a barbecue.”
Strike drank and said nothing.
“You get on great, she says,” said Polworth, watching him.
“Yeah, we do,” said Strike.
Polworth waited, eyebrows raised and looking expectant.
“It’d fuck everything up,” said Strike. “I’m not risking the agency.”
“Right,” said Polworth. “Tempted, though?”
There was a short pause. Strike carefully kept his gaze averted from the dark woman and her companion, who he was sure were discussing him.
“There might’ve been moments,” he admitted, “when it crossed my mind. But she’s going through a nasty divorce, we spend half our lives together as it is and I like having her as a business partner.”
Given their longstanding friendship, the fact that they’d already clashed over politics and that it was Polworth’s birthday, he was trying not to let any hint of resentment at this line of questioning show. Every married person he knew seemed desperate to chivvy others into matrimony, no matter how poor an advertisement they themselves were for the institution. The Polworths, for instance, seemed to exist in a permanent state of mutual animosity. Strike had more often heard Penny refer to her husband as “that twat” than by his name, and many was the night when Polworth had regaled his friends in happy detail of the ways in which he’d managed to pursue his own ambitions and interests at the expense of, or over the protests of, his wife. Both seemed happiest and most relaxed in the company of their own sex, and on those rare occasions when Strike had enjoyed hospitality at their home, the gatherings always seemed to follow a pattern of natural segregation, the women congregating in one area of the home, the men in another.
“And what happens when Robin wants kids?” asked Polworth.
“Don’t think she’s does,” said Strike. “She likes the job.”
“They all say that,” said Polworth dismissively. “What age is she now?”
“Ten years younger than us.”
“She’ll want kids,” said Polworth confidently. “They all do. And it happens quicker for women. They’re up against the clock.”