Robin drank a few mouthfuls of soup as though she hadn’t seen food for days, but after a couple of minutes she laid down her spoon and pushed the bowl onto the bedside table.
‘Is it all right if I just…?’
Drawing her legs up onto the bed, she fell sideways onto the pillow and was instantly asleep.
Strike got carefully off the bed so as not to wake her and moved to an armchair, no longer grinning. He was worried: Robin seemed far more fragile than any of her letters had suggested and through the ripped portion of her tracksuit trousers he could see raw skin on her right knee, which looked as though she’d been walking on it. He supposed he should have anticipated the dramatic weight loss and the profound exhaustion, but the hysteria, the unbridled fear, the strange reaction to the view of the hot tub, the ominous fragments of information, all added up to something more serious than he’d expected. What the fuck was ‘the box’ she’d been locked in? And why did she say the only alternative to getting punched in the face had been coerced sex with their client’s son? He knew his partner to be physically brave; indeed, there’d been more than one occasion on which he’d have called her recklessly so. Had he not had confidence in her, he’d never have let her go undercover at Chapman Farm, but now he felt he should have put one of the men in there instead, should have overruled Robin’s request to do the job.
The sound of a car made Strike get to his feet and peer through the curtains.
‘Robin,’ he said quietly, moving back to the bed, ‘the police are here.’
She remained asleep, so he tentatively shook her shoulder, at which she woke with a start and looked wildly at him, as though he was a stranger.
‘Police,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘right… OK…’
She struggled back into a sitting position. Strike went to open the door.
The two Norfolk officers were both male: one older, balding and stolid, the other young, skinny and watchful, and they spent a full eighty minutes taking Robin’s statement. Strike couldn’t blame them for wanting as full an account as possible of what Robin was alleging, given that pursuing an investigation would mean securing a warrant to gain entry to a compound owned by a wealthy, highly litigious organisation. Nevertheless, and even though he himself would have acted similarly under the circumstances, he was irritated by the slow, methodical questioning and the painstaking clarification of every minute detail.
‘Yes, on the top floor,’ said Robin, for the third time. ‘End of the corridor.’
‘And what’s Jacob’s surname?’
‘It should be either Wace or Birpright… Pirbright, sorry,’ said Robin, who was struggling to remain alert. ‘I don’t know which – but those are his parents’ surnames.’
Strike could see the men’s eyes travelling from her ripped tracksuit with its UHC logo to the bruising on her face. Doubtless her story seemed very strange to them: she’d admitted being punched in the jaw, but said she didn’t want to press charges, had brushed off enquiries about the injury to her knee, kept insisting that she simply wanted them to rescue the child who was dying in an upstairs room, behind double doors carved with dragons. They’d cast suspicious looks in Strike’s direction: was the large man watching the interview in silence responsible for the bruising? Robin’s explanation that she was a private detective from the Strike and Ellacott agency in London had been treated, if not with overt suspicion, then with a certain reserve: the impression given was that this would all need verifying, and that what might be accepted without question in the capital would by no means be taken at face value in Norfolk.
At last, the officers appeared to feel there was no more to be gleaned tonight, and took their leave. Having seen them out into the car park, Strike returned to the room to find Robin eating the sandwich she’d temporarily abandoned.
‘Listen,’ said Strike, ‘this was the only free room. You can have the bed, I’ll put two chairs together or something.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Robin. ‘I’m with Ryan, you’re with… whassername?… Bougie…’
‘True,’ said Strike, after a slight hesitation.
‘So we can share the bed,’ said Robin.
‘Murphy’s in Spain,’ said Strike, slightly resentful he had to mention the man.
‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘He said in his last l…’ She yawned ‘… letter.’
After finishing her sandwich, she said,
‘You haven’t got anything I can sleep in, have you?’
‘Got a T-shirt,’ said Strike, pulling it out of his kit bag.
‘Thanks… I really want a shower.’
Robin got to her feet and headed into the bathroom, taking Strike’s T-shirt with her.
