‘Linda,’ said Strike, off the top of his head, then wondered why the hell the first name to spring to his lips was that of Robin’s mother, who detested him.
‘Is she a detective too?’
‘No, she works in a shop.’
‘Sure she does,’ sneered Nina.
‘People
‘I know that,
Strike wished he still had a drink, and wished even more that Nina would sod off. Didn’t she want to dance with her fiancé, who was now staggering around to ‘Rockabye’?
‘Still at Roper Chard?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Actually,’ she added, with a slightly snide laugh, ‘if they knew I was talking to you, they’d want me to offer a deal on your memoir.’
‘There won’t be a memoir,’ said Strike.
‘I didn’t think so,’ snorted Nina. ‘Not a truthful one, anyway.’
Strike’s ego wasn’t sufficiently enlarged to believe that this degree of anger could be accounted for by a very brief liaison, six years previously.
‘What’s that mean?’ he asked.
‘It
‘How did I do that?’ asked Strike.
‘Never mind,’ spat Nina.
Strike spotted Kim wending her way back towards him.
‘Linda,’ said Strike, before Kim could speak, ‘this is Nina. Nina, Linda.’
‘Hi,’ said Kim brightly. ‘How do you know Cormoran?’
‘We fucked twice, a few years ago,’ said Nina, leaving Strike to deplore the tendency of the upper classes to call a spade a spade.
‘Oh,’ said Kim, without a flicker of discomposure. ‘He’s good, isn’t he? Speaking of which, Corm, I’d rather be doing that. Let’s go.’
She linked her arm through Strike’s.
‘Night,’ said Strike to Nina, as he and Kim walked away.
Kim unlinked her arm from his just as Strike was about to pull away.
‘Got her, bang to rights,’ she told Strike, and held out her mobile to show him the photo she’d just taken.
Two women, one in purple, the other in gold, were closely entwined in a passionate kiss, leaning up against a tiled bathroom wall.
‘The woman in gold is Lady Violet,’ said Kim triumphantly. ‘Dominic Culpepper’s wife.’
Strike called Robin on Saturday morning to give her two bits of news, neither of them particularly welcome.
‘Barclay was arrested last night.’
‘Shit!’ said Robin, freezing with a mug of coffee halfway to her mouth.
‘Yeah. He got taken by surprise by two men who found him trying to get inside that bloody compound Plug was visiting, north of Ipswich. Barclay managed to get onto the roof of a building from which – allegedly – there have been thefts of agricultural tools. So he’s been fucking fingerprinted and the police are going to recognise him if he goes sneaking around there again.’
‘What did he say he was doing?’
‘Said he climbed on the roof for a bet. Pretended to be pissed.’
Against her will, because it would be highly inconvenient if Barclay ended up in court, Robin laughed.
‘Glad someone finds it funny,’ said Strike.
‘Could he see anything from the roof, before he got dragged off it?’
‘No, he said the place was in total darkness, but there are dogs. That’s what tipped off the blokes who dragged him down, the guard dogs barking. Hope to fuck he’s not charged.
‘But in slightly better news, Kim’s cracked Mr A’s case,’ Strike went on. Having explained about the taking of the photograph in the Dorchester bathroom, he said, ‘… so you can take tomorrow off.’
‘Great,’ said Robin, trying to sound enthusiastic while imagining Kim’s smug self-satisfaction.
