Forgetfulness had been very convenient to Brockbank around that time. How difficult would it have been for him to fake some of these classic symptoms?

“What they didn’t take into account,” said Strike, who had known and liked several other men with traumatic brain injury, “was that he was a cunt to start with.”

“True that,” said Hardacre, sipping his coffee while he worked.

Strike closed down Brockbank’s files and opened Laing’s. His photograph tallied exactly with Strike’s memories of the Borderer, who had been only twenty when they had first met: broad and pale, his hair growing low on his forehead, with the small, dark eyes of a ferret.

Strike had good recall of the details of Laing’s brief army career, which he himself had ended. Having taken a note of Laing’s mother’s address in Melrose, he skim-read the rest of the document and then opened the attached psychiatric report.

Strong indications of anti-social and borderline personality disorders… likely to present continuing risk of harm to others…

A loud knock on the office door caused Strike to close down the records on screen and get to his feet. Hardacre had barely reached the door when a severe-looking woman in a skirt suit appeared.

“Got anything for me on Timpson?” she barked at Hardacre, but she gave Strike a suspicious glare and he guessed that she had already been well aware of his presence.

“I’ll cut away now, Hardy,” he said at once. “Great to catch up.”

Hardacre introduced him briefly to the Warrant Officer, gave a potted version of his and Strike’s previous association and walked Strike out.

“I’ll be here late,” he said as they shook hands at the door. “Ring me when you know what time you’ll have the car back. Happy travels.”

As Strike made his way carefully down the stone stairs, it was impossible not to reflect that he could have been here, working alongside Hardacre, subject to the familiar routines and demands of the Special Investigation Branch. The army had wanted to keep him, even with his lower leg gone. He had never regretted his decision to leave, but this sudden, brief re-immersion in his old life gave rise to an inevitable nostalgia.

As he stepped out into the weak sunshine that was gleaming through a rupture in the thick clouds, he had never been more conscious of the change in his status. He was free, now, to walk away from the demands of unreasonable superiors and the confinement of a rock-bound office, but he had also been stripped of the might and status of the British Army. He was completely alone as he resumed what might well prove a wild goose chase, armed only with a few addresses, in pursuit of the man who had sent Robin a woman’s leg.

15

Where’s the man with the golden tattoo?

Blue Öyster Cult, “Power Underneath Despair”

As Strike had expected, driving the Mini, even once he had made every possible adjustment to the seat, was extremely uncomfortable. The loss of his right foot meant that he operated the accelerator with his left. This required a tricky and uncomfortable angling of his body in such a cramped space. Not until he was out of the Scottish capital and safely on the quiet and straight A7 to Melrose did he feel able to turn his thoughts from the mechanics of driving the borrowed car to Private Donald Laing of the King’s Own Royal Borderers, whom he had first met eleven years previously in a boxing ring.