He watched, blank faced, as men were burned, shot, beheaded and drowned. The filming was expert: Daesh wanted the world to know precisely how terrifyingly devoid of human empathy they were. Corpses were thrown by jeering masked men into a deep natural abyss in north Syria called al-Hota. Strike’s Arabic was too rudimentary to understand what they were saying, but they appeared to be making a game of it, trying to dislodge a corpse stuck on a ledge with a second man’s body. He’d seen al-Hota once, many years before. Local legends were told of the monster that lived in its depths.
Feeling vaguely sickened, he closed down his laptop at exactly the moment his mobile rang. Wardle was calling him.
‘Heads-up,’ said the ex-policeman, who sounded rather perplexed. ‘She’s about to ring the office doorbell.’
‘Who is?’ said Strike, confused.
The bell rang in the outer office.
98
A. E. Housman
‘I’m sure she hasn’t clocked me,’ said Wardle, who sounded worried.
Strike turned off Tom Waits, headed out of the inner office, closing the dividing door behind him so as to conceal the whisky, the books and the plans of Wild Court.
‘How did she get here?’ he asked.
‘Cab,’ said Wardle. ‘Got out on Charing Cross Road – I thought it might be coincidence, but—’
The doorbell rang a second time.
‘I might need you to follow her after she’s left,’ said Strike, ‘so hang around.’
He ended the call, then pressed the button on the intercom.
‘Strike,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said a female voice. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘buzzing you in now.’
He turned on the light in the outer office. While waiting for his unexpected guest to appear, Strike saw movement out of the corner of his eye: the ugly black goldfish with the knobbly growth on its head was floating at the water’s surface, flapping its fins helplessly, belly upwards.
The silhouette of Mrs Two-Times appeared on the landing. Strike opened the glass door.
‘Have a seat,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she said in a tight voice, walking past him and sitting down on the sofa.
As might have been expected from a woman who spent most of her days shopping for clothes, having manicures and blow dries, she was immaculately dressed and groomed, wearing a coat made of what looked like satin, a form-fitting cream dress and high, strappy black heels. Yet she wasn’t quite as good-looking up close as she appeared at a distance. Her features were small and undistinguished, but she was living testimony to what money, skill and good taste can do for a woman’s appearance: her figure disciplined through diet, her expensively streaked, caramel-coloured hair flattering her skin, her eyes expertly made up to appear twice their natural size.
‘I found out this morning he’s paying you to follow me,’ she said, still in a tight little voice. ‘I recognised the bank account number.’
‘Really?’ said Strike, who could tell denials would be pointless. ‘How?’
‘I used to be his PA. He made me check the standing order to you, once. I made a note of the bank account number. That was when he was with that foreign girl.’
‘The Russian,’ said Strike. ‘Yes.’
‘I wondered whether he’d do it to me, too. Does he
‘I don’t know,’ said Strike, which was true, as far as it went. He wasn’t about to mention his theory about her husband’s sexual peculiarities. ‘I’ve assured him you haven’t given any sign of infidelity.’
‘Hm,’ she said, her eyes travelling over the office before coming back to rest on Strike, her gaze calculating. ‘OK, well, I’ve been trying to think what to do.’
Strike, who detected a threatening undertone in these words, moved behind Pat’s desk and sat down in her computer chair.
‘I
‘Ah,’ said Strike.
‘Escorts,’ she said. ‘I recognise that bank account, too. There’s a place he’s always liked; he’s been using it for years. That’s why he’s always happy for me to go out with my friends.’
The question of why she’d married such a man had barely surfaced in Strike’s mind before he answered it himself. The designer clothes, the immaculate hair, the long lunches, the giggling exchanges with handsome waiters: presumably these sweetened the strange deal she’d made.
‘He’s kind of well known in his field,’ she said, now examining her perfectly manicured nails. ‘I could cause a lot of trouble for him, if I dragged you into it. It’d mean loads of publicity and he wouldn’t be able to use you to spy on his girlfriends any more, would he?’
Strike’s feeling of foreboding intensified.