The Running Grave полностью

‘We’ve lost the funniest, cleverest, most original woman any of us knew,’ said Campbell’s half-brother, actor Sacha Legard, in a separate statement. ‘I’m just one of the heartbroken people who loved her, struggling to comprehend the fact that we’ll never hear her laugh again. Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.’

The younger daughter of broadcaster Sir Anthony Campbell and model Tara Clairmont, Campbell married Jago Ross, Viscount of Croy, in 2011. The couple had twins before divorcing last year. Prior to her marriage she was the long-term girlfriend of private detective Cormoran Strike, eldest son of rock star Jonny Rokeby. More recently Campbell dated Landon Dormer, American billionaire scion of the Dormer hotel empire, but the relationship ended ten days ago with Campbell’s arrest for assault. Friends of Dormer assert that he required stitches to his face after an altercation at Dormer’s Fitzrovia apartment.

Campbell, who first made news when she ran away from Cheltenham Ladies’ College aged 14, gained a degree in Classics at Oxford before becoming a regular fixture on the London social scene. Described as ‘mercurial and mesmerising’ by Vogue, she worked intermittently as a model and fashion writer, and spent several spells in rehab during the 90s and 00s. In 2014 she was admitted to the controversial Symonds House, a private psychiatric and addiction clinic, from which she was hospitalised after what was later described as an accidental overdose.

Campbell’s body is believed to have been discovered by a cleaner yesterday morning at her Mayfair flat.

Blood thudded in Strike’s ears. He scrolled slowly back up the article.

Two pictures accompanied the piece: the first showed Charlotte in academic gown alongside her parents on her graduation day at Oxford in the nineties. Strike remembered seeing the picture in the press while stationed in Germany with the military police. Unbeknownst to Sir Anthony and his wife, Tara, both of whom had loathed Strike, he and Charlotte had already resumed their affair at long distance.

The second picture showed Charlotte smiling into the camera, wearing a heavy, emerald-studded choker. This was a publicity still for a jewellery collection, and the irrelevant thought flashed through his numb brain that the designer, whom he’d briefly dated, would surely be glad it had been used.

‘Fuck,’ he muttered, pushing himself up on his pillows. ‘Fuck.’

Shock was battling a heavy sense of absolute inevitability. The final hand had been played and Charlotte had been wiped out, with nothing more to bet and nowhere to find credit. She must have done it right after calling him. Had one of the voicemail messages he’d deleted made her intentions explicit? After threatening to go to Robin and tell her what Strike really was, had Charlotte broken down and pleaded with him to contact her once more? Had she threatened (as she’d done so many times before) to kill herself if he didn’t give her what she wanted?

Mechanically, Strike opened the other texts he’d been sent. He could have predicted all of them except Dave Polworth’s. Dave had always loathed Charlotte, and had often told Strike he was a fool to keep taking her back.

Bit of a fucker this, Diddy.

These were the exact words Polworth had spoken on first visiting Strike in Selly Oak Military Hospital, following Strike’s loss of half a leg.