Tara’s latent maternal instinct had finally awoken with the arrival of Sacha, who was the product of her third marriage. Tara had doted on her only son, perfectly content to see her own features in masculine form, and he’d become the only person the hedonistic, profoundly self-centred Tara cared about as much as herself. In consequence, Sacha was the only person in Charlotte’s drink- and drug-riven family who could sincerely say that he’d had an entirely happy upbringing.
This wasn’t, of course, Sacha’s fault and Strike didn’t blame him for it. His grudge sprang from the way Sacha had behaved once he was old enough to notice Tara’s callousness towards his sister. Sacha was the only living soul who might have been able to intervene to some effect, yet Charlotte’s suicide attempts and spells in mental health facilities had always gone unacknowledged by her half-brother, who’d never visited her, never called, and never referred to any of them after they’d passed. When Charlotte was well, Sacha was delighted to socialise with her, because she was a witty and ornamental asset to any gathering. Otherwise, as far as Sacha was concerned, Charlotte might as well not have existed.
There’d been one occasion, and one only, on which Strike had appealed to the younger man for assistance. Notwithstanding her frequent diatribes against the place, Charlotte had been determined to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a large party at Heberley House. Strike had foreseen myriad possibilities for drama and conflict in trying to stage the event at Heberley, and had tried to persuade Charlotte that a party in London, or even a weekend away with him, would be preferable, but to no avail. Charlotte wanted champagne and canapés, two hundred people in black tie crammed into the ballroom, pictures taken on the sweeping staircase and lanterns hung in the trees of the deer park, and Strike’s lack of enthusiasm for the plan was taken, inevitably, as a drag and a slight. Maybe some remnant of the neglected, unloved child Charlotte had once been was trying to prove to herself that she had worth in the eyes of her family, or perhaps she was deliberately setting up a situation in which an implosion would occur. Strike had become familiar, by then, with the dangerous part of Charlotte that sometimes sought to wound herself as deeply, and on as grand a scale, as possible.
Two months of entirely predictable conflict with Tara prior to the party had culminated in Tara countermanding half of the arrangements and announcing that she’d be spending the day of the event in St Moritz with her son. Unaware that Tara had dropped this bombshell by voicemail, Strike, who’d been on leave from the army at the time, had returned to Charlotte’s flat after a pint with his old friend Nick to find no sign of his girlfriend, but the black lace dress she’d been planning to wear to her Heberley party lying in shreds on the bedroom floor, and smears of blood in the bathroom sink. She wasn’t answering her phone, nor did she return that night. The following morning, unable to reach any other family member, he’d called Sacha.
When he answered his mobile, Sacha was in a first-class lounge at Heathrow, among the jet set crowd with whom Tara ran. The information that his sister had gone missing, leaving bloodstains and a ripped-up dress behind her, hadn’t made the slightest dent in Sacha’s good humour. Though speaking to a man ten years older than himself and with far broader life experience, the twenty-year-old Sacha had adopted a world-weary tone as he told Strike that Tara’s therapist had advised her that a little tough love was in order where his sister was concerned. The best thing Strike could do, Sacha had said, while the laughter of Tara and friends rang in the background, was to ignore this obvious bid for attention, and before Strike could tell Sacha exactly what he thought of him and his mother, the young man had hung up.