‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Corm,’ said fair-haired, bespectacled Ilsa Herbert. She was leaning up against the side talking to Strike’s detective partner Robin Ellacott, and Robin’s boyfriend, CID officer Ryan Murphy. ‘Give him here, he needs a feed. Come with me,’ she added to Robin, ‘we can talk – couldn’t grab me a glass of water, could you, please?’
Before either man could find a subject of conversation, they were joined by Strike’s old friend Nick Herbert, a gastroenterologist, and father of the baby who’d just been assaulting Strike’s eardrums. Nick, whose sandy hair had begun receding in his twenties, was now half bald.
‘So, how’s it feel to have renounced Satan?’ Nick asked Strike.
‘Bit of a wrench, obviously,’ said the detective, ‘but we had a good run.’
Murphy laughed, and so did somebody else, right behind Strike. He turned: the woman in pink had followed him out of the marquee. Strike’s late Aunt Joan would have thought the pink dress inappropriate for a christening: a clinging, wraparound affair with a low V neckline and a hemline that showed a lot of tanned leg.
‘I was going to offer to hold the baby,’ she said in a loud, slightly husky voice, smiling up at Strike, who noticed Murphy’s gaze sliding down to the woman’s cleavage and back up to her eyes. ‘I
‘Wonder what you’re supposed to do with a christening cake?’ said Nick, contemplating the large, uncut slab of iced fruitcake that lay on the island in the middle of the kitchen, topped with a blue teddy bear.
‘Eat it?’ suggested Strike, who was hungry. He’d had only a couple of sandwiches before Ilsa had handed him the baby and, as far as he could see, his fellow guests had demolished most of the available food while he’d been trapped in the marquee. Again, the woman in pink laughed.
‘Yeah, but are there supposed to be pictures taken first, or what?’ said Nick.
‘Pictures,’ said the woman in pink, ‘definitely.’
‘We’ll have to wait, then,’ said Nick. Looking Strike up and down through his wire-rimmed glasses, he asked, ‘How much have you lost now?’
‘Three stone,’ said Strike.
‘Good going,’ said Murphy, slim and fit in his single-breasted suit.
Robin was sitting on the end of the double bed in the marital bedroom. The room, which was decorated in shades of blue, was tidy except for two drawers lying open at the base of the wardrobe. Robin had been acquainted with the Herberts long enough to know Nick would have left them like this: it was one of his wife’s perennial complaints that he neither pushed in drawers nor closed cupboard doors.
Lawyer Ilsa was currently settled in a rocking chair in the corner, the baby already gulping greedily at her breast. As she came from a farming family, Robin was unfazed by the snuffling noises the baby was making. Strike would have found them vaguely indecent.
‘It makes you so damn thirsty,’ said Ilsa, who’d just gulped down most of her glass of water. Having handed Robin the empty glass she added, ‘I think my mum’s drunk.’
‘I know. I’ve never met anyone happier to be a grandmother,’ said Robin.
‘True,’ sighed Ilsa. ‘
‘Bloody what?’
‘The loud woman in pink! You must’ve noticed her, her tits are virtually hanging out of her dress. I
‘Her name’s Bijou?’ said Robin incredulously. ‘As in residence?’
‘As in man-hungry pain in the arse. Her real name’s Belinda,’ said Ilsa, who then affected a booming, sultry voice, ‘“but everyone calls me Bijou”.’
‘Why do they?’
