Page 369 of The Hallmarked Man
She picked disconsolately at her thumbnail for a moment or two, then said,
‘Aye, all righ’.’
She got up and hauled up her rucksack, too.
‘D’you want me to carry that?’ Strike asked as she swung it over her shoulders.
‘Naw… ye’ve only go’ one leg, have ye?’
‘One and a half,’ said Strike, and he raised his right trouser leg to show Rena the metal rod that served as his ankle.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Have ye got any fags?’
‘No,’ said Strike, as they set off along the canal bank. ‘I’m vaping these days.’
‘Whut’re they like, them things?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Not as good as smoking.’
‘Huh,’ said Rena, in what seemed to be mild amusement.
‘Did you meet Niall in the Engineer?’ Strike asked.
‘Aye.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘He jus’ told me he was off tae make up fur Ben. Find him.’
‘Really?’ said Strike.
‘Aye. Tha’s why them fuckers dunnae want me tae talk. They left mah bruther over there wi’ no way o’ gettin’ back an’ they don’ wan’ annyone to know it.’
Night was falling rapidly now. Strike wasn’t finding the towpath particularly easy on his right leg.
‘Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?’ he asked.
She looked sideways at him through the gloaming.
‘Aye, all righ’.’ she said.
She seemed to have left her hostility beneath the shadowy bridge, a state of affairs Strike hoped would last. They returned to the steps down which he’d descended and climbed up to the street together, Strike’s knee and hamstring aching, then entered the Engineer.
He thought he saw misgivings on the face of the bar staff when he entered with the very smelly and dirty Rena, but nobody prevented the pair taking a table beside the window in the red-walled room, although a middle-aged couple wrinkled their noses ostentatiously as Rena passed them.
‘Ah cannae remember anything before Ah was six,’ Rena announced once seated, apropos of nothing.
‘Really?’ said Strike. He had long experience of random, disconnected statements from the mentally fragile.
‘Aye,’ said Rena, picking at her fingers again. ‘Tha’s when our parents died.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Strike. ‘How did they die?’
‘In an earthquake, in Turkey, when they wuz on holiday. Izmit. ’Cept Ah dunnae think they were mah real parents. Ah can remember a blonde woman, an’ the woman that died wuz dark.’
Strike wondered whether the earthquake story was true. Repeated traumatic losses might well account for Rena’s mental problems, but he was also reminded of a woman he hadn’t thought about in years, whom he’d met as a child in one of the grimmer squats to which his mother had dragged him and Lucy. She’d had broken teeth and a manic glare, and had told anyone who’d listen she was the illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret and her first paramour, Peter Townsend, that she could prove it with times, dates and her earliest memories, which included a woman in a tiara sobbing over her crib.
They both ordered a drink, Rena requesting a pint of beer.
