Robin let out a shriek of pain; Strike yelled ‘Oi!’ and stood up; Ed also attempted to stand, but his weak leg gave way; Sir Colin said,
‘You’ve got this
With the two brothers yelling at each other so loudly nobody else could hear themselves speak, Robin left the table to grab some kitchen roll, which she ran under the cold tap then pressed beneath her shirt to relieve the burning on her skin.
‘Be quiet – BE QUIET!’ shouted Sir Colin, getting to his feet. ‘Miss Ellacott, I’m so sorry – are you…?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ said Robin, who, preferring not to mop hot coffee off her breasts with four men watching, turned her back on them.
James, who didn’t seem to have realised he was responsible for the large black stain across Robin’s cream shirt, began again.
‘As far as
‘Not going to apologise, then?’ snarled Strike.
‘It’s not
‘You’ve just thrown boiling coffee all over my partner!’
‘What?’
‘I’m fine,’ lied Robin.
Having bathed the smarting area with cold kitchen roll, she put the wad into the bin and returned to the table, her wet shirt clinging to her. Taking her jacket off the back of her chair, she pulled it back on, silently reflecting that she’d now been injured by two Edensor sons; perhaps Ed would make it a hat trick before she left the house, and smash her round the head with his walking stick.
‘I’m sorry,’ said James, taken aback. ‘I genuinely – I didn’t mean to do that…’
‘Will didn’t mean to do what he’s done, either,’ said Robin, feeling that if she had to get scalded, the least she was owed was to be able to capitalise on it. ‘He did a really stupid, careless thing, and he knows it, but he never meant to hurt anyone.’
‘I want this girl Lin found,’ said Sir Colin in a low voice, before James could respond. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it, James. I want her found. And after that…’
He looked at Strike.
‘I’m prepared to fund another three months of investigation into Daiyu Wace’s death. If you can prove it was suspicious, that she’s not the deity they’ve turned her into, that might help Will – but if you haven’t found out anything after three months, we’ll drop it. In the meantime, please thank your office manager for looking after Will, and… we’ll keep our eyes open for that Vauxhall Corsa.’
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Robin. ‘No Corsa.’
She’d been checking her rear-view mirror far more often than usual all the way back to London, and was certain they hadn’t been followed.
‘Maybe you should ring the Edensors and say it was a false alarm?’ she suggested.
‘Whoever was in that Corsa might’ve realised we’d seen them,’ Strike replied. ‘I still think the Edensors need to keep their eyes peeled… You can charge the dry-cleaning on that shirt to the agency,’ he added. He hadn’t liked to mention it, but the BMW now smelled strongly of coffee.
‘No dry-cleaner on earth’s going to get this out,’ said Robin, ‘and the accountant wouldn’t let me charge it, anyway.’
‘Then charge it to the busi—’
‘It’s old, and it was cheap when it was new. I don’t care.’
‘I do,’ said Strike. ‘Careless arsehole.’
Robin might have reminded Strike he’d once almost broken her nose when she’d tried to stop him punching a suspect, but decided against.
They parted at the garage where Strike kept his BMW. As Robin hadn’t said anything more about what she was up to that evening, Strike was confirmed in his view that it had something to do with Murphy, and set off back to the office in an irritable mood he chose to attribute to James Edensor’s barely veiled accusation that the agency was financially exploiting his father. Robin, meanwhile, headed straight to Oxford Street, where she bought a cheap new shirt, changed in a department store bathroom, then sprayed herself liberally with a perfume tester to get rid of the coffee smell, because she had no time to go home and change before she met Prudence.
