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He senuine anxiety that he would have to payto ask her to telephone the office of Freddie Bestigui again, and to begin a search through online telephone directories for Rochelle Onifade’s Kilburn-based aunt Instead he said:

“OK, we’ll vacate the pre to check out a place called Vashti this , before I meet Bristow Maybe it’d look more natural if we both went”

“Vashti? The boutique?” said Robin, at once

“Yeah You know it, do you?”

It was Robin’s turn to sazines: it epitolamour to her; a place where fashion editors found ite to show their readers, pieces that would have cost Robin six months’ salary

“I know of it,” she said

He took down her trench coat and handed it to her

“We’ll pretend you’reme pick out a present for my wife”

“What’s the death-threat man’s problem?” asked Robin, as they sat side by side on the Tube “Who is he?”

She had suppressed her curiosity about Jonny Rokeby, and about the dark beauty who had fled Strike’s building on her first day at work, and the camp bed they never mentioned; but she was surely entitled to ask questions about the death threats It was she, after all, who had so far slit open three pink envelopes, and read the unpleasant and violent outpourings scrawled between ga kittens Strike never even looked at them

“He’s called Brian Mathers,” said Strike “He caht his as sleeping around He wanted her followed, so I put her under surveillance for a month Very ordinary woman: plain, fru carpet warehouse Spent her weekdays in a poky little office with three feo every Thursday, did the weekly shop on Fridays at Tesco, and on Saturdays went to the local Rotary Club with her husband”

“When did he think she was sleeping around?” asked Robin

Their pale reflections were swaying in the opaque black ; drained of color in the harsh overhead light, Robin looked older, yet ethereal, and Strike craggier, uglier

“Thursday nights”

“And was she?”

“No, she really was going to bingo with her friend Maggie, but all four Thursdays that I watched her, she made herself deliberately late hoie One night she went into a pub and had a to tiht she waited in her car at the end of their street for forty-fivearound the corner”

“Why?” asked Robin, as the train rattled loudly through a lengthy tunnel

“Well that’s the question, isn’t it? Proving so hi to inject a bit of excitee? Every Thursday, just a bit of unexplained time

“He’s a twitchy bugger, and he’d sed the bait all right It was driving hi a lover once a week, that her friend Maggie was covering for her He’d tried following her hio on those occasions because she kneatching”

“So you told him the truth?”

“Yeah, I did He didn’t believeabout everyone being in a conspiracy against him Refused to pay my bill

“I orried he was going to end up doing her an injury, which here Imistake I phoned her and told her he’d paid , and that her husband was heading for breaking point For her own sake, she ought to be careful how far she pushed hi up on me

“Well, he was checking her ularly He saw my number, and drew the obvious conclusion”

“That you’d told her he was having her watched?”

“No, that I had been seduced by her charms and was her new lover”

Robin clapped her hands over her hed

“Are your clients usually a bit ain

“He is, but they’re usually just stressed”

“I was thinking about John Bristow,” Robin said hesitantly “His girlfriend thinks he’s deluded And you thought he ht be a bit…you know…didn’t you?” she asked “We heard,” she added, a little shah the door The bit about ‘arists’ ”

“Right,” said Strike “Well…I ed my mind”

“What do you ray-blue eyes wide The train was jolting to a halt; figures were flashing past the s, beco he’s not—that he ht—that there really was a…?”

“This is our stop”

The white-painted boutique they sought stood on soe in London, in Conduit Street, close to the junction with New Bond Street To Strike, its colorful s displayed a multitudinous mess of life’s unnecessities Here were beaded cushions and scented candles in silver pots; slivers of artistically draped chiffon; gaudy kaftans worn by faceless liness; all spread against a pop-art backdrop, in a gaudy celebration of consuine Tansy Bestigui and Ursula May in here, exas of alligator skin with a pleasureless deteret their es

Beside hi at thedisplay, but only di at A job offer had been , by telephone, while Strike was s downstairs, just before Temporary Solutions had called Every time she contemplated the offer, which she would have to accept or decline within the next two days, she felt a jab of so to persuade herself was pleasure, but increasingly suspected was dread

She ought to take it There was reed she ought to aim for The offices were smart and well placed for the West End She and Mattheould be able to lunch together The ehted

“How did the interview go on Friday?” asked Strike, squinting at a sequined coat he found obscenely unattractive

“Quite well, I think,” said Robin vaguely

She recalled the exciteo when Strike had hinted that there ht, after all, have been a killer Was he serious? Robin noted that he was now staring hard at this ht be able to tell hi important, and this was surely (for a ht in Matthew’s voice) a pose adopted for effect, or show Matthew kept hinting that Strike was so a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tas

Robin reflected that if she took the huht never know (unless she saw it, one day, on the news) how this investigation turned out To prove, to solve, to catch, to protect: these were things worth doing; iht her so this way, but she could not help herself

Strike had turned his back on Vashti, and was looking at soaze, Robin saas fixed on the red letter box standing outside Russell and Bro at them across the road

“OK, let’s go,” said Strike, turning back to her “Don’t forget, you’refor my wife”

“But what are we trying to find out?”

?

??What Lula Landry and her friend Rochelle Onifade got up to in there, on the day before Landry died They met here, for fifteen o, and they h”

The ground floor of Vashti was devoted to clothing; a sign pointing up the wooden stairs indicated that a café and “lifestyle” were housed above A feo steel clothes racks; all of the, clean, freshly blow-dried hair The assistants were an eclectic bunch; their clothing eccentric, their hairstyles outré One of the a display of hats

To Strike’s surprise, Robin irl

“Hi,” she said brightly “There’s a fabulous sequined coat in your middle onder whether I could try it on?”

The assistant had a audily painted eyes and no eyebrows

“Yeah, no probs,” she said

As it turned out, however, she had lied: retrieving the coat from the as distinctly problematic It needed to be taken off the led fro; ten inal assistant had called two of her colleagues into thedisplay to help her Robin,to Strike, picking out an assortment of dresses and belts By the time the sequined coat was carried out from the , all three assistants involved in its retrieval seemed somehow invested in its future, and all acco to help her carry the pile of extras she had chosen, the other two bearing the coat