Just as he was settling in for what was likely to be an evening spent in his BMW, the front door of the house opened, and Strike’s target emerged alone, bundled up against the cold in a thick black jacket. To Strike’s displeasure, Plug didn’t get into his car, but set off on foot, giving the detective no choice but to follow suit.
Wishing he’d had the foresight to bring gloves, Strike followed Plug along Peckham High Street. He soon revised his initial guess that Plug was going to get a takeaway, because the man kept walking, eventually disappearing beneath the archway of Queen’s Road Peckham station.
On the platform, Plug approached a second man, who was stockily built, with an air of barely repressed aggression and an almost shaven head.
Strike’s suspicions about Plug’s regular trips to the compound outside Ipswich, the businesslike associations with other rough-looking men and the strange episode of the creature in the shed were as far as ever from being proven. This was the first time he’d been in a situation where he might be able to listen in on the man’s conversation, so he muted his mobile, and ambled closer to the twosome, whose conversation was currently desultory, and conducted in low voices.
‘Wossee offerin’?’
‘Grand,’ said Plug.
‘Worf more.’
‘’S’what I told him. She’s got a lot more in ’er.’
The two men fell silent, both looking truculent. It was hard to tell whether they disliked each other or were bosom friends; they belonged to that category of Englishman whose love and hatred bore almost identical faces.
The train arrived and Strike followed the men into the carriage. It was crowded, so it didn’t seem unnatural for him to choose a seat near them, pretending to be texting, but actually making notes on as much of the conversation as he could hear.
‘’Eard you ’ad trouble up Ipswich.’
‘Not trouble. People, ’s’all. But they ain’ bin back.’
The train moved off. Strike strained his ears.
‘Gaz’s bitch might do it.’
‘Fuck that,’ said Plug.
‘She’s lookin’ good.’
‘If you wanna waste your money,’ sneered Plug.
The train rattled on towards London Bridge.
56
A. E. Housman
Robin had chased along passages and searched crowded escalators, but found no sign of Jim Todd. It probably wasn’t the first time he’d been spotted upskirting, and maybe he had strategies for such contingencies, had hiding places in his favourite Circle Line stations, and knew the quickest ways to escape above ground. Shortly after she’d given up looking for him, Robin saw the young man who’d also spotted what Todd was up to, and the teenaged girls, now tearful and agitated, talking to an Underground official, but Robin knew nothing would be done. The crime was too commonplace and Todd was gone. What was the woman in the navy blue uniform supposed to do about it?
With a stitch in her side from all the running she’d just done, Robin leaned up against the tiled wall of the station platform, watching Saturday-night drinkers and diners pass, and imagined the snide comments Kim was going to make when she heard that Robin had lost Todd at Barbican, just as she’d lost Plug in Victoria station. Then – because it had been preying on her mind for hours now, and even the revelation of what Todd was up to, riding the Circle Line for days at a time, couldn’t drive it out of her head – she thought about Strike and Bijou.
She had an excuse to call him, now. Strike had the evening off, so he was probably at home. She’d tell him about Todd’s upskirting, then slip in a casual question about why Bijou was calling the office. She’d tell him Shah had been worried about it, frame the whole thing as a personnel matter. Thus resolved, Robin returned to the escalator and, in spite of her stitch, walked up it, keen to call Strike sooner rather than later.
Out on dark Aldersgate Street, she rang Strike, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left no message, but tried again, with the same result.
Something that was worse than anxiety pierced her. It was Saturday night. Where was he, with his phone turned off? Robin watched the passing traffic for a few more seconds, then turned and headed back into the station, and as she descended the escalator, she remembered the night Strike had come over to the flat to hear what Murphy had to tell them about Jason Knowles, and how he’d said ‘I’m meeting Bijou’. Perhaps that hadn’t been a joke. Perhaps he