‘I’m only back to file these notes. Could you tell Strike they’re in here when he gets back, if I’m already gone? He might want to look over them.’
Robin had just met the agency’s newest client, a professional cricketer, at his Chelsea flat. She’d expected the interview to last an hour, but it had gone on for two.
‘Will do. What’s he like, then, the new bloke?’ asked Pat, e-cigarette between her teeth. The man in question was tall, blond and good looking, and Pat had evinced a certain disappointment that he wasn’t going to have his preliminary interview at the office, but at home.
‘Er,’ said Robin who, in addition to not gossiping about Strike behind his back, also tried not to criticise clients in front of Pat. ‘Well, he didn’t like McCabes. That’s why he’s come back to us.’
In fact, she’d found the South African cricketer, who Strike had called an ‘arsehole’ after one phone conversation, an unpleasant combination of arrogant and inappropriately flirtatious, especially as his girlfriend had been lurking in the kitchen all through the interview. He’d given the impression he took it for granted that he was the best-looking man Robin had seen in a long while, and had made it clear he didn’t consider her entirely unworthy of notice. Robin had to assume the stunning brunette who’d seen her out of the flat at the end of the interview either took him at his own valuation, or enjoyed the gorgeous flat and the Bugatti too much to complain.
‘Is he as handsome in person?’ asked Pat, watching as Robin placed her notes inside the file, then scribbled the cricketer’s name on the front.
‘If you like that sort of thing,’ said Robin, as the glass door opened.
‘Sort of thing’s that?’ asked Strike, entering in his suit, his tie loosened and his vape pen in his hand.
‘Blond cricketers,’ said Robin, looking round. Her partner looked tired and downtrodden.
‘Ah,’ grunted Strike, hanging up his jacket. ‘Was he as much of an arsehole in person as he was on the phone?’
Seeing as the not-bitching-about-clients-in-front-of-Pat ship had now set sail full speed out of the harbour, Robin asked,
‘How bad was he on the phone?’
‘A good eight point five out of ten,’ said Strike.
‘Then he’s the same in person.’
‘Fancy updating me before you leave?’ said Strike, checking his watch. He knew Robin was due to take some long-overdue leave today. ‘Unless you need to get going?’
‘No, I’m waiting for Ryan,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve got time.’
They entered the inner office and Strike closed the door. The board on the wall that so recently had been covered in the UHC pictures and notes was empty again. The Polaroids were with the police, and the rest had been added to the case file, which was locked in the safe, pending its use in the forthcoming court case. Jacob’s body had now been identified, and the accusation of child abuse against Robin had at long last been dropped; the weekend away with Murphy was at least partly in celebration of this fact. Even Robin could see how much happier and healthier she looked in the mirror, now that this weight had been lifted off her.
‘So,’ said Robin, sitting down, ‘he thinks his estranged wife is having an affair with a married
‘Which journalist?’
‘Dominic Culpepper,’ said Robin.
‘Married now, then, is he?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘to a Lady Violet somebody. Well, Lady Violet Culpepper, now.’
‘Should be juicy, when it breaks,’ said Strike, unsmiling. Depression was radiating from him as the smell of cigarette smoke had, before he’d embarked on his health kick.
‘Are you all right?’ Robin asked.
‘What?’ said Strike, though he’d heard her. ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’
But in reality, he’d called her into the inner office because he wanted her company as long as he could get it. Robin wondered whether she dared ask, and decided she did.
‘Pat told me you were meeting Charlotte’s sister.’
‘Did she?’ said Strike, though without rancour.
‘Did she ask to see you, or—?’
‘Yeah, she asked to see me,’ said Strike.
There was a short silence.
‘She wanted to meet me right after Charlotte died, but I couldn’t,’ said Strike. ‘Then she closed up shop and went off to the country with her kids for a month.’
‘I’m sorry, Cormoran,’ said Robin quietly.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Strike, with a slight shrug. ‘I gave her what she was after, I think.’
‘What was that?’
‘Dunno,’ said Strike, examining his vape pen. ‘Reassurance nobody could’ve stopped it happening? Except me,’ he added. ‘I could’ve.’
Robin felt desperately sorry for him, and knew it must have shown on her face, because when he glanced up at her he said,
‘I wouldn’t change anything.’
‘Right,’ said Robin, unsure of what else to say.
‘She called here,’ said Strike, dropping his gaze back to the vape pen in his hand, which he was turning over and over. ‘Three times, on the night she did it. I knew who it was and I didn’t answer. Then I listened to the messages and deleted them.’
‘You couldn’t have known—’
