Self-disgust and a bleak fatalism had Strike in their grip tonight. It seemed far more likely than it had three days previously that he was, in fact, the father of Bijou’s child. The insurmountable distance between himself and the only woman he wanted was going to be counterbalanced by a tightening of the unwanted bond with a woman he’d never even liked. Wouldn’t that be a fucking funny cosmic joke? He, with his lifelong resentment of a father who’d begotten him accidentally, who’d had to be forced into the most perfunctory parental obligations by a DNA test, now shackled to his own unwanted kid?
Seven years of missed opportunities with Robin; he’d be tallying them up for ever, as a miser counts his pennies. He’d fucked it all up, and it was over: she was going to move in with Murphy, and marry him, and have his kids, and leave the agency, and he, like the gigantic prick that he was, would have to live with it, because he’d been too late to act, too late to recognise what was bloody obvious, and he deserved this misery, deserved the hopelessness engulfing him, because he’d been an arrogant fuckwit who thought she was there for the taking if he chose…
At a quarter to midnight the train lurched off, taking Strike towards an interview he’d arranged purely to have an excuse for dinner with Robin. A second whisky didn’t do much except make him sweat. He struggled out of his coat and wrenched open the cabin window, then lay down on the lower bunk, balancing a plastic cup of whisky on his chest, and thinking about the email in which Robin had finally acknowledged she and Murphy were moving in together, which he was well on the way to knowing off by heart.
He couldn’t, as far as he could see, do much, right this moment, to improve relations – not that he imagined there was any chance of resuscitating what had always perhaps been a futile hope of romance, but he didn’t want to lose her as a business partner or, worse, a friend. If it was his refusal to put surveillance on Albie Simpson-White that had angered her, he couldn’t do anything about it tonight, because there was nobody available to follow the man. He was similarly stymied if the root cause of her sudden coldness was that Murphy had had an outbreak of jealousy. On the other hand, if the problem
Reata had been born in Sweden in 1972 to an unwed mother and an unknown father, and was left orphaned at the age of ten when her alcoholic mother died. She’d then bounced between foster homes until running away in 1988. Having travelled to Switzerland with a friend, where the two of them had been employed as ‘chalet cleaner girls’, she’d given birth to her own daughter, Jolanda, in 1993 with, as the website put it, ‘again the father unknown’.
Repeated mention of accidentally conceived daughters was doing nothing to raise Strike’s spirits. However, he read on.
Reata had intended to put her baby up for adoption, but changed her mind when the little girl was born. Shortly after giving birth, she’d met Belgian Elias Maes, who was thirty-nine. The pair began a relationship and Reata and Jolanda had moved to Liège, to live with Maes.
The relationship with Maes was violent and difficult and both partners were large alcohol drinkers. Maes accused Lindvall of being a mother neglectful and both were accusing the others of infidelities. Neighbours said Maes complained about Jolanda’s behaving and could be unkind to Jolanda. Lindvall and Maes parted for six months in 1998, then were reunited.
On 20th June 1998 Reata and Jolanda disappeared. Concerned friends have contacted the police. Maes, who was absent for business, was arrested when he returned, on suspicion of their abduction or killing. He was released later without charges.
In spite of appeals public, no sign is found of Lindvall or her daughter. Maes was still covered in suspicion and in 1999 he relocated to Antwerp.
In early 2000, police received a tip and searched the woods close to the Lac d’Ougrée. Fragments of human bone and old clothings were recovered. Analysis DNA proved human remains belonged to Reata and Jolanda.
Maes was arrested again. Belgian feminist groups campaigned outside the courtroom for the duration of the criminal trial. In March 2001, Maes was found guilty of the murders of Reata and Jolanda Lindvall, and given two life sentences.