He was still reading when he heard a knock on the outer glass door. Swearing under his breath, because he supposed somebody had come to the wrong door, Strike heaved himself up.
‘Hi,’ said Kim Cochran, the agency’s latest hire, when Strike opened up. ‘I was hoping you’d be back.’
Kim, who’d left the Metropolitan Police a year previously, had worked for a rival detective agency until it had gone out of business. She was pertly pretty, always well groomed, and, with her short brunette hair and alert brown eyes, reminded Strike of a small bird.
‘I’ve got news on Plug,’ she said.
‘Ah, right,’ said Strike, wondering why she couldn’t have texted it, rather than turning up in person. ‘Come through.’
The nickname ‘Plug’ derived from its owner’s resemblance to the character in the Bash Street Kids comic strip. He was, by common agreement, the ugliest man the agency had ever been hired to investigate, having very large ears, a pronounced overbite, buck teeth and an uncoordinated lankiness. Aside from boasting a multitude of past criminal misdemeanours, mostly involving soft drugs and petty theft, Plug was also the lone parent of a scrawny teenaged son, who looked perpetually downtrodden and miserable.
Father and son had recently vacated their cramped flat in Haringey and moved, uninvited, into the Camberwell house of Plug’s mother, who had rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s. According to Plug’s well-to-do uncle, who’d hired the detective agency, Plug was not only verbally abusive to the old lady, he was gradually draining her of her life savings, and nobody in the family had yet found a legal way of stopping Plug helping himself to his mother’s money, or dislodging him from her home. The aim in hiring private detectives was to find something for which Plug could be arrested.
The Plug case made a change from the run-of-the-mill adultery cases the agency undertook for wealthy clients; it was pleasant, all felt, to be trying to stop an undeniable villain and protect a fragile old lady. Unfortunately, Plug hadn’t yet been detected in any criminal activity whatsoever.
‘He’s just met a guy at Tufnell Park station,’ said Kim, ‘and handed over a big wodge of cash. I got video.’
She held out her phone and there, sure enough, was the astoundingly ugly Plug, passing over what looked like a roll of fifty pound notes to a man with many hand tattoos.
‘What’s weird is, he didn’t get anything back,’ said Kim. ‘I was hoping to see drugs or something.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, watching the video. Having handed over the money in furtive fashion, Plug simply turned and slouched away.
‘Might be payment for services rendered, of course,’ said Kim.
‘What did he do after this?’
‘Went back to his mum’s. Dev’s taken over, so I s’pose’ – Kim yawned – ‘sorry – we’ll find out whether Plug gets any funny deliveries this evening.’
She stretched, raising her arms to the sky and arching her back. Strike looked quickly back at the rota. She was wearing a snugly fitting black sweater.
‘Stiff,’ she said, dropping her arms back to her sides. ‘Too many hours in the car this week. Got any fun weekend plans?’
‘Work,’ said Strike, eyes on the rota. ‘Going to have to cover some of Robin’s stuff, now she’s off sick.’
‘I’m happy to do some of it, if you like,’ said Kim. ‘I haven’t got much on this weekend.’
‘That’s good of you,’ said Strike, looking back at her. ‘It’s a bit tricky otherwise, because Barclay’s away tomorrow and Monday.’
‘I like to keep busy. How was Cornwall?’
‘It was… you know,’ said Strike, eyes back on the rota.
‘Was he old, your uncle?’
‘Nearly eighty.’
‘Still. Never easy when they go.’
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘And you had to drive out to that Mullins woman as soon as you got back, too. How was she, by the way?’
‘Fine,’ said Strike, trying to inject a note of finality into his voice.
Kim took the hint and stood up. She was good at taking the hint.
‘I’ll be off, then. Email me the hours you need me this weekend, and I’ll be there.’
‘Thanks,’ said Strike. ‘Appreciate it.’
Kim left. After another twenty minutes fiddling with the rota, his eyes itching with tiredness, Strike locked up the office and headed upstairs to his attic flat, to make himself a solitary dinner.
He did his best to ignore the mounting pain in his hamstring while cooking himself a steak and vegetables, but his deepening depression was harder to dismiss. After sitting down at his small Formica table, his thoughts moved to the dilemma that had been dominating his thoughts for many months now, latterly becoming acute, and in no way diminished by his miserable interlude in Cornwall. He’d discussed the matter with nobody because he wanted neither advice nor comfort. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, there’d been quite enough unwelcome interest in the subject already.