‘There’s always a slight chance,’ said Strike, backtracking shamelessly. ‘We haven’t promised Decima we’ll prove it was Fleetwood in the vault. We’ll be giving her closure if we prove it was someone else.’
‘Until she starts imagining Rupert was the victim of another unsolved murder.’
‘If her delusion survives us proving Fleetwood wasn’t William Wright, I’m happy to be the bastard who tells her she’s in the grip of a morbid fixation.’
‘You don’t think it might be kinder to do that right now?’
‘Look, there
‘OK,’ said Robin, writing herself a reminder.
‘I’ve also emailed Fleetwood’s drug-dealing ex-housemate, Zacharias Lorimer, but no response so far. I’ll give him a few more days, because I’m not wasting money calling Kenya if he’s just going to tell me to piss off. Haven’t tried Sacha Legard and Valentine Longcaster yet. Probably have to send Sacha a message through his agent.’
‘What’s he like?’ asked Robin, who’d been unable to suppress a small frisson at the mention of Charlotte’s Oscar-nominated half-brother.
‘Like someone who’d benefit hugely from being punched in the face.’
‘Strike!’
‘You haven’t met him.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘His whole life’s been laid out for him on a golden platter; everything he wanted, from birth. His parents worshipped the ground he walked on and he takes it for granted everyone else feels the same.’
‘And that clearly
‘No. Well,’ Strike conceded, ‘a bit. Doesn’t mean I want him dead.’
‘God above, I should hope not!’ said Robin, half-amused, half-shocked. ‘D’you usually want people you dislike dead?’
‘Some of them,’ said Strike, thinking of Jeff Whittaker, his mother’s second husband. ‘If I heard Mitch Patterson had dropped dead in the dock, I’d probably celebrate with a pint. Rather see him in the clink, though.’
Until a few months previously, ex-policeman Mitch Patterson had headed up the rival detective agency for which Kim Cochran had been working. There’d never been any love lost between Patterson and Strike, and in the course of attempting to bring down Strike and Robin’s business, Patterson had found himself arrested for the illegal bugging of a top barrister’s office.
‘The trial starts next week,’ said Robin.
‘I know, I’m looking forward to that more than Christmas. You know, thinking about it,’ Strike said, feigning a sudden thought, ‘if anyone’s going to talk to Sacha Legard, it might have to be you.’
‘Why? You’re the one who knows him.’
‘Yeah, that’s the problem. I assume he knows what Charlotte’s suicide note said, which means he won’t be very well disposed to me at the moment. Although, come to think of it, that probably extends to you, too.’
Robin felt a hot explosion in the pit of her stomach; she didn’t know whether panic or pleasure predominated, but she was afraid she was going red.
Strike noted the blush and waited to see whether Robin ignored what had just been said, or responded to it for the first time. Looking down at her soup, she said,
‘Sacha can’t blame you for what she wrote in that note. She was… the papers said she’d taken a load of drink and drugs…’
‘She knew exactly what she was saying. She’d said it all to me before, sober.’
This was news to Robin. Before she could muster a response, Strike’s mobile rang, and Robin seized the opportunity to get away from the table by muttering,
‘Need the loo.’
Annoyed by the interruption, which he considered extremely ill-timed, Strike answered his phone.
‘Hi,’ said Midge, ‘I’m just letting you know, Kim and I’ve swapped jobs this evening. She’ll do the Dorchester with you.’
‘Why?’ said Strike, frowning.
‘She thinks Plug clocked her yesterday, so she’d rather he doesn’t see her again today.’
‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
He hung up, still annoyed. He’d hoped to do the Dorchester job with Robin – sitting in the bar, both of them dressed up to infiltrate a charity ball, might have been exactly the right setting for the declaration he intended to make – but unfortunately, Robin was due the night off.
Meanwhile, an agitated Robin was inside a cubicle in the Ladies, asking herself what the hell Strike was playing at, bringing up Charlotte’s suicide note again. Knowing her work partner as well as she did, two possibilities occurred to her. Either he was making straightforward statements of fact untinged with embarrassment, referring to the note purely because it might indeed colour Charlotte’s half-brother’s attitude to him and Robin, or…
