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5
“I’M SO SORRY HE HASN’T got back to you,” Robin told the caller, seven miles away in the office “Mr Strike’s incredibly busy at the moment Let me take your name and number, and I’ll make sure he phones you this afternoon”
“Oh, there’s no need for that,” said the woman She had a pleasant, cultivated voice with a faint suspicion of hoarseness, as though her laugh would be sexy and bold “I don’t really need to speak to hie for me? I wanted to warn hi; it isn’t the way I’d have chosen…Well, anyway Could you please just tell hio Ross? I didn’t want hio’s parents have gone and put it in the bloody Ti”
“Oh All right,” said Robin, her mind suddenly paralyzed like her pen
“Thanks very much—Robin, did you say? Thanks ’Bye”
Charlotte rang off first Robin replaced the receiver in slowacutely anxious She did not want to deliver this news She h she were delivering an assault on Strike’s determination to keep his private life under wraps, on his firm avoidance of the subject of the boxes of possessions, the ca
Robin pondered her options She could forget to relay the et her to do her own dirty work (as Robin put it to herself) What, though, if Strike refused to call, and soe whether Strike and his ex (girlfriend? fiancée? wife?) had legions of mutual friends If she and Matthew ever split up, if he beca in her chest to even think of it), all her closest friends and family would feel involved, and would undoubtedly stampede to tell her; she would, she supposed, prefer to be forewarned in as low-key and private a way as possible
When she heard Strike ascending the stair nearly an hour later, apparently talking on his ood spirits, Robin experienced a sharp stab of panic to the stoh she were about to sit an exalass door, and she saw that he was not holding aunder his breath, she felt even worse
“Fuck yo’a boxed electric fan in his arms “Afternoon”
“Hello”
“Thought we could use this It’s stuffy in here”
“Yes, that would be good”
“Just heard Deeby Macc playing in the shop,” Strike infor off his jacket ‘So and Ferrari, Fuck yo’ meds and fuck Johari’ Wonder who Johari was So a feud with, d’you think?”
“No,” said Robin, wishing that he was not so cheerful “It’s a psychological term The JohariIt’s all to do with hoe know ourselves, and hoell other people know us”
Strike paused in the act of hanging up his jacket and stared at her
“You didn’t get that out of Heat azine”
“No I was doing psychology at university I dropped out”
She felt, obscurely, that itfield to tell hi the bad news
“You dropped out of university?” He seemed uncharacteristically interested “That’s a coincidence I did, too So why ‘fuck Johari’?”
“Deeby Macc had therapy in prison He becaot that bit out of the papers,” she added
“You’re a mine of useful information”
She experienced another elevator-drop in the pit of her stomach
“There was a call, when you were out From a Charlotte Campbell”
He looked up quickly, frowning
“She asked aze slid sideways, to hover o Ross”
Her eyes were drawn, irresistibly, back to his face, and she felt a horrible chill
One of the earliest and most vivid me had been put down She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted Confused by her parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as hisin the silence that preceded his awful screauish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother
Strike did not speak immediately Then he said, with palpable difficulty:
“Right Thanks”
He walked into the inner office, and closed the door
Robin sat back down at her desk, feeling like an executioner She could not settle to anything She considered knocking on the door again, and offering a cup of tea, but decided against For five lancing regularly at the closed inner door, until it opened again, and she jumped, and pretended to be busy at the keyboard
“Robin, I’ to nip out,” he said
“OK”
“If I’m not back at five, you can lock up”
“Yes, of course”
“See you tomorrow”
He took down his jacket, and left with a purposeful tread that did not deceive her
The roadworks were spreading like a lesion; every day there was an extension of the mayhem, and of the temporary structures to protect pedestrians and enable theh the devastation Strike noticed none of it He walked auto wooden boards to the Tottenhae
Like the Ordnance Arms, it was empty but for one other drinker; an old ht a pint of Dooainst the wall, almost beneath the sentimental Victorian maid who scattered rosebuds, sweet and silly and sih his beer was medicine, without pleasure, intent on the result
Jago Ross Shehiether Even Charlotte, with all hersure-handed skill, could not have e Ross on the sly, while swearing undying love to Strike
This put a very different light on the bombshell she had dropped on him a month before the end, and the refusal to show hi dates, and the sudden conclusion of it all
Jago Ross had been married once already He had kids; Charlotte had heard on the grapevine that he was drinking hard She had laughed with Strike about her lucky escape of so many years before; she had expressed pity for his wife
Strike bought a second pint, and then a third He wanted to drown the io and find her, to bellow, to rao Ross’s jaw
He had not eaten at the Ordnance Ar ti It took him barely an hour of steady, solitary, determined beer consumption to become properly drunk
Initially, when the sliure appeared at his table, he told it thickly that it had the wrongtable
“No I haven’t,” said Robin firht?”
She left hi, which she had placed on the stool It was coly familiar, brown, a little sh
abby She usually hung it up on a coat peg in the office He gave it a friendly smile, and drank to it
Up at the bar, the bar, said to Robin: “I think he’s had enough”
“That’s hardly my fault,” she retorted
She had looked for Strike in the Intrepid Fox, which was nearest to the office, in Molly Moggs, the Spice of Life and the Ca to try
“Whassamatter?” Strike asked her, when she sat down
“Nothing’s the er “I just wanted to make sure you’re OK”
“Yez’m fine,” said Strike, and then, with an effort at clarity, “I yam fine”
“Good”
“Jus’ celebratin’his eleventh pint in an unsteady toast “She shou’ never’ve left’m Never,” he said, loudly and clearly, “have Left The Hon’ble Jago Ross Who is’n outstanding cunt”
He virtually shouted the last word There were more people in the pub than when Strike had arrived, andhim wary looks even before he shouted The scale of hi eyelids and his bellicose expression, had ensured a so zone around him; people skirted his table on the way to the bathrooh it was three times the size
“Shall we take a walk?” Robin suggested “Get so to eat?”
“D’you knohat?” he said, leaning forwards with his elbows on the table, al over his pint “D’you knohat, Robin?”
“What?” she said, holding his beer steady She was suddenly possessed of a strong desire to giggle Many of their fellow drinkers atching them
“Y’re a very nice girl,” said Strike “Y’are Y’re a very nice p’son I’ve noticed,” he said, nodding solemnly “Yes ’Ve noticed that”
“Thank you,” she said, sh
He sat back in his seat, closed his eyes and said: