For the first time all day, Robin’s own troubles were entirely eclipsed by something else, something monstrous. Jasper Chiswell’s had been the first body she had seen outside the comforting, sanitized context of the hospital and the funeral parlor. Even the memory of the shrink-wrapped turnip head with its dark, gasping cavity for a mouth paled beside the prospect of earth and worms, a decaying blanket and a child’s rotting bones.
“Cormoran, if you think there’s genuinely a child buried in the dell, we should be telling the police.”
“I might, if I thought Billy’s psychiatrists would vouch for him, but they won’t. I had a long talk with them after the interview. They can’t say one hundred percent that the child strangling
“They think he’s making it up?”
“Not in the normal sense. They think it’s a delusion or, at best, that he misinterpreted something he saw when he was very young. Maybe even something on TV. It would be consistent with his overall symptoms. I think myself there’s unlikely to be anything down there, but it would be good to know for sure.
“Anyway, how’s your day been? Any news?”
“What?” Robin repeated numbly. “Oh—yes. I’m meeting Raphael for a drink at seven o’clock.”
“Excellent work,” said Strike. “Where?”
“Place called Nam something… Nam Long Le Shaker?”
“The place in Chelsea?” said Strike. “I was there, a long time ago. Not the best evening I’ve ever had.”
“And Tegan Butcher rang back. She’s a bit of a fan of yours, by the sound of it.”
“Just what this case needs, another mentally disturbed witness.”
“Tasteless,” said Robin, trying to sound amused. “Anyway, she’s living with her mum in Woolstone and working at a bar at Newbury Racecourse. She says she doesn’t want to meet us in the village because her mum won’t like her getting mixed up with us, so she wonders whether we could come and see her at Newbury.”
“How far’s that from Woolstone?”
“Twenty miles or so?”
“All right,” said Strike, “how about we take the Land Rover out to Newbury to interview Tegan and then maybe swing by the dell, just for another look?”
“Um… yes, OK,” said Robin, her mind racing over the logistics of having to return to Albury Street for the Land Rover. She had left it behind because parking places required a permit on Vanessa’s street. “When?”
“Whenever Tegan can see us, but ideally this week. Sooner the better.”
“OK,” said Robin, thinking of the tentative plans she had made to view rooms over the next couple of days.
“Everything all right, Robin?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Ring me when you’ve spoken to Raphael then, OK?”
“Will do,” said Robin, glad to end the call. “Speak later.”
58
Henrik Ibsen,
Nam Long Le Shaker had the feeling of a decadent, colonial-era bar. Dimly lit, with leafy plants and assorted paintings and prints of beautiful women, the décor mixed Vietnamese and European styles. When Robin entered the restaurant at five past seven, she found Raphael leaning up against the bar, wearing a dark suit and tieless white shirt, already halfway down a drink and talking to the long-haired beauty who stood in front of a glittering wall of bottles.
“Hi,” said Robin.
“Hello,” he responded with a trace of coolness, and then, “Your eyes are different. Were they that color at Chiswell House?”
“Blue?” asked Robin, shrugging off the coat she had worn because she felt shivery, even though the evening was warm. “Yes.”
“S’pose I didn’t notice because half the bloody lightbulbs are missing. What are you drinking?”
Robin hesitated. She ought not to drink while conducting an interview, but at the same time, she suddenly craved alcohol. Before she could decide, Raphael said with a slight edge in his voice:
“Been undercover again today, have we?”
“Why d’you ask?”
“Your wedding ring’s gone again.”
“Were your eyes this sharp in the office?” asked Robin, and he grinned, reminding her why she had liked him, even against her will.
“I noticed your glasses were fake, remember?” he said. “I thought at the time you were trying to be taken seriously, because you were too pretty for politics. So these,” he indicated his deep brown eyes, “may be sharp, but this,” he tapped his head, “not so much.”
“I’ll have a glass of red,” said Robin, smiling, “and I’ll pay, obviously.”
“If this is all on Mr. Strike, let’s have dinner,” said Raphael at once. “I’m starving and skint.”
“Really?”
After a day of trawling through the available rooms for rent on her agency salary, she was not in the mood to hear the Chiswell definition of poverty again.
“Yeah, really, little though you might believe it,” said Raphael, with a slightly acid smile, and Robin suspected he knew what she had been thinking. “Seriously, are we eating, or what?”
“Fine,” said Robin, who had barely touched food all day, “let’s eat.”
