While he hadn’t yet heard any concrete indications, Strike feared that Murphy might be planning a proposal. Murphy and Robin’s relationship appeared to be as strong as ever, and both were clearly of a marrying disposition, given that each of them already had an ex-spouse. Robin was in her thirties, and might even be thinking of children. She’d seemed ambivalent on that subject the only time it had ever been mentioned between her and Strike, but that had been a while ago, before she’d met her handsome CID officer. After their last big case, and Robin’s long and traumatic spell undercover, she might well feel now was the time to take a career break. These fears added urgency to Strike’s predicament. He needed to speak up before Murphy went ring shopping, or Robin announced she’d be needing maternity leave.
‘Never let the other chap change your game plan,’ Ted had once told Strike, though they’d been speaking of boxing, rather than romance. ‘Stick to your own, and play to your strengths.’
And what were Strike’s strengths, in this particular case? Undoubtedly, the agency that he and Robin had built together, which he was almost certain meant as much to her as it did to him. Their work offered opportunities, although lately not enough of them, to spend a lot of time together. So many missed chances, thought Strike bitterly: overnight stays, shared meals and long car journeys, and he, like the stupid prick he was, had prided himself on not letting his attraction overmaster him, and what was the upshot? He was sitting here alone with the dregs of a pint and a throbbing leg, while Murphy was probably at Robin’s flat, racking up points by bringing flowers and heating up soup.
Bored by his own misery, he got to his feet again and washed his dinner things. Brooding would do no good whatsoever: what was needed was decisive action.
It seemed to Strike that the wraith of Edward Nancarrow nodded approvingly at this conclusion, so having finished the washing-up, he replaced the photographs and two hats in the shoe box and then, after a second’s deliberation, placed the old fisherman’s priest on the windowsill, the only ornament, if it could be so called, he’d ever put on display.
7
A. E. Housman
Robin was discharged from hospital on Sunday morning, with advice to take paracetamol and ibuprofen as needed, refrain from strenuous exercise and resume normal activities only after a further three days’ rest. She’d slept badly again, not because of noise this time, but because she’d dreamed, repeatedly, that she was back in the box into which she’d been locked overnight at Chapman Farm. These nightmares had plagued her over the last couple of months, but she’d told nobody about them, nor about the waves of panic that slid over her unpredictably, especially in crowded spaces, nor about the fact that unless Murphy was spending the night with her, she slept with her bedside lamp on. Robin knew what happened when she told people she was struggling mentally: they told her to stop doing her job. Strike had once or twice suggested her taking more leave after those intense months undercover, but Robin didn’t want a holiday: she wanted to be busy, to bury herself in investigation, to fill up her restless mind with other people’s problems.
She took a taxi back to her flat with a thudding pain in her lower right side that painkillers had dulled without removing. In spite of what she’d told Murphy, whose gang shooting case was keeping him at work, about being fine alone, Robin felt weepy, and infuriated with herself for being so.
But she’d been back inside her flat barely ten minutes when the man upstairs turned on music which, as usual, was very loud. Robin listened to the pulsing bassline, too sore and tired to go upstairs and ask him to turn it down, but feeling more strongly than ever that she’d like to cry. Instead, she went to fetch her laptop. She’d just opened it when her mobile rang and she saw her mother’s number again.
Mentally bracing herself, Robin answered.
‘Hi Mum. Sorry I didn’t call you back yesterday,’ she said, before Linda could ask. ‘I was working.’
‘I thought you must be,’ said Linda, whose voice sounded thickened.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘I just wanted to let you know… we had to put Rowntree down.’
‘Oh no,’ said Robin. ‘Oh Mum, I’m sorry.’
The family’s chocolate Labrador had been old, but Robin had loved him. She felt the still-unshed tears of the last few days sting her eyes. Linda, meanwhile, was clearly crying.