He turned and walked away, leaving Robin to hurry back out into the sunshine to rejoin Strike, who she presumed would be waiting impatiently in the Land Rover.
She was wrong. He was still standing beside the car’s bonnet, while Izzy, who was standing very close to him, talked rapidly in an undertone. When she heard Robin’s feet on the gravel behind her, Izzy took a step backwards with what, to Robin, seemed a slightly guilty, embarrassed air.
“Lovely to see you again,” Izzy said, kissing Robin on both cheeks, as though this had been a simple social call. “And you’ll ring me, won’t you?” she said to Strike.
“Yep, I’ll keep you updated,” he said, moving around to the passenger seat.
Neither Strike nor Robin spoke as she turned the car around. Izzy waved them off, a slightly pathetic figure in her loose shirt dress. Strike raised a hand to her as they took the bend in the drive that hid her from their sight.
Trying not to upset the skittish stallions, Robin drove at a snail’s pace. Glancing left, Strike saw that the injured horse had been removed from the field, but in spite of Robin’s best intentions, as the noisy old car lurched past its field, the black stallion took off again.
“Who d’you reckon,” said Strike, watching the horse plunge and buck, “first took a look at something like that and thought, ‘I should get on its back’?”
“There’s an old saying,” said Robin, trying to steer around the worst of the potholes, “‘the horse is your mirror.’ People say dogs resemble their owners, but I think it’s truer of horses.”
“Making Kinvara highly strung and prone to lash out on slight provocation? Sounds about right. Turn right here. I want to get a look at Steda Cottage.”
A bare two minutes later, he said:
“Here. Go up here.”
The track to Steda Cottage was so overgrown that Robin had missed it entirely the first time they had passed it. It led deep into the woodland that lay hard up against the gardens of Chiswell House, but unfortunately, the Land Rover was only able to proceed for ten yards before the track became impassable by car. Robin cut the engine, privately worried about how Strike was going to manage a barely discernible path of earth and fallen leaves, overgrown with brambles and nettles, but as he was already getting out, she followed suit, slamming the driver’s door behind her.
The ground was slippery, the tree canopy so dense that the track was in deep shade, dank and moist. A pungent, green, bitter smell filled their nostrils, and the air was alive with the rustle of birds and small creatures whose habitat was being rudely invaded.
“So,” said Strike, as they struggled through the bushes and weeds. “Christopher Barrowclough-Burns. That’s a new name.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Robin.
Strike looked sideways at her, grinning, and immediately tripped on a root, remaining upright at some cost to his sore knee.
“
“‘Christopher didn’t promise anything about the pictures,’” quoted Robin promptly. “He’s a civil servant who mentored Aamir Mallik at the Foreign Office. Fizzy just told me.”
“We’re back to ‘a man of your habits,’ aren’t we?”
Neither spoke for a short spell as they concentrated on a particularly treacherous stretch of path where whip-like branches clung willingly to fabric and skin. Robin’s skin was a pale, dappled green in the sun filtered by the ceiling of leaves above them.
“See any more of Raphael, after I went outside?”
“Er—yes, actually,” said Robin, feeling slightly self-conscious. “He came out of the sitting room as I was coming out of the loo.”
“Didn’t think he’d pass up another chance of talking to you,” said Strike.
“It wasn’t like that,” Robin said untruthfully, remembering the remark about masked orgies. “Izzy whispering anything interesting, back there?” she asked.
Amused by the reciprocal jab, Strike took his eyes off the path, thereby failing to spot a muddy stump. He tripped for a second time, this time saving himself from a painful fall by grabbing a tree covered in a prickly climbing plant.
“
“Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” he said, angry with himself, examining the palm that was now full of thorns and starting to pull them out with his teeth. He heard a loud snap of wood behind him and turned to see Robin holding out a fallen branch, which she had broken to make a rough walking stick.
“Use this.”
“I don’t—” he began, but catching sight of her stern expression, he gave in. “Thanks.”
They set off again, Strike finding the stick more useful than he wanted to admit.
“Izzy was just trying to convince me that Kinvara could have sneaked back to Oxfordshire, after bumping off Chiswell between six and seven in the morning. I don’t know whether she realizes there are multiple witnesses to every stage of Kinvara’s journey from Ebury Street. The police probably haven’t gone into detail with the family yet, but I think, once the penny drops that Kinvara can’t have done it in person, Izzy’ll start suggesting she hired a hitman. What did you make of Raphael’s various outbursts?”
