The Running Grave полностью

He looked down at the cellophaned tuna in his hand. He remembered the cleavage. He’d given up smoking and takeaways. Robin was cooking dinner for Ryan Murphy.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

Nine at the beginning means:

The footprints run crisscross.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The extreme taciturnity of Clive Littlejohn, the agency’s newest subcontractor, was starting to grate on people other than Robin.

‘There’s something wrong wi’ him,’ Littlejohn’s fellow subcontractor, Barclay, told Robin on Wednesday morning, as both sat watching the entrance to a block of flats in Bexleyheath from Barclay’s car.

‘Better him than Morris or Nutley,’ said Robin, loyally parroting Strike’s line.

‘That’s a low fuckin’ bar,’ said Barclay.

‘He’s doing the job OK,’ said Robin.

‘He just fuckin’ stares,’ said Barclay. ‘Doesn’t blink. Like a fuckin’ lizard.’

‘I’m pretty sure lizards blink,’ said Robin. ‘Wait – is that one of them?’

‘No,’ said Barclay, leaning forwards to squint through the windscreen at a man who’d just exited the building. ‘He’s fatter than ours.’

Inside the block of flats they were watching lived two brothers in their forties who, unfortunately for the agency’s newest investigation, closely resembled each other. One of them – a few days’ surveillance hadn’t yet identified which – was stalking an actress called Tasha Mayo. The police weren’t taking the matter seriously enough for the client, who was starting to become, in her own words, ‘freaked out’. A series of trivial incidents, at first merely irksome, had lately turned sinister with the posting of a dead bird through the woman’s letter box, and then with the gluing up of the keyhole on her front door.

‘I mean, I know the police are overstretched,’ Tasha had told Robin, while the latter was taking down the details of the case at the office. ‘I get that, and I know there’s been no direct threat, but I’ve told them who I think’s doing it, I’ve given them a physical description and where he lives and everything, because he’s told me most of his life story in segments. He’s always hanging around the stage door and I’ve signed about fifteen posters and bits of paper. Things turned nasty when I told him I hadn’t got time for another selfie. And he keeps turning up places I go. I just want it to stop. Someone keyed my car last night. I’ve had enough. I need you to catch him in the act.’

This wasn’t the first stalking case the agency had tackled, but none had yet involved dead birds, and Robin, who felt sympathetic towards the client, was hoping to catch the perpetrator sooner rather than later.

‘Midge fancies her,’ said Barclay, watching the suspect’s window.

‘Who, Tasha Mayo?’

‘Aye. Did ye see that film she was in, about those two Victorian lesbians?’

‘No. Was it good?’

‘Fuckin’ dreadful,’ said Barclay. ‘Hour and a half of poetry and gardening. The wife loved it. I didn’t, because apparently I’m an insensitive prick.’

Robin laughed.

‘Midge could be in with a shot,’ Barclay went on. ‘Tasha Mayo’s bisexual.’

‘Is she?’

‘According to the wife. That’d be the wife’s specialist subject on Mastermind: sex lives o’ the stars. She’s a walking fuckin’ encyclopaedia on it.’

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Barclay, still staring up at the fourth floor, asked,

‘Why aren’t they working for a living?’

‘No idea,’ said Robin.

‘Be handy if we could nail them on a benefits scam. Nice bit o’ community service. He wouldn’t have time tae go after her, then.’

‘Community service would end eventually,’ said Robin, sipping her coffee. ‘Trouble is, I don’t know how you stop someone being obsessed.’

‘Punch them?’ suggested Barclay, and after a moment’s thought he added, ‘D’ye think Littlejohn’d say something if I punched him?’

‘Maybe try and find a topic of mutual interest first,’ said Robin.

‘It’s fuckin’ bizarre,’ said Barclay, ‘never talking. Just sitting there.’

‘That’s one of them,’ Robin said, replacing her coffee in the cupholder.

A man had just left the building, walking with his hands in his pockets. Like his brother, he had an unusually high forehead, which was why Barclay had nicknamed the pair the Frankenstein brothers, which had been swiftly abbreviated to Frank One and Frank Two. Shabbily dressed in an old windcheater, jeans and trainers, he was heading, Robin guessed, towards the station.

‘OK, I’ll take him,’ she said, picking up the backpack she usually took on surveillance, ‘and you can stay here and watch the other one.’

‘Aye, all right,’ said Barclay. ‘Good luck.’

Robin, who was wearing a beanie hat to cover her distinctive new haircut, followed Frank One on foot to Bexleyheath station and, after a short wait, got into the same train compartment, where she kept him under covert observation from several seats away.

After a couple of minutes, Robin’s mobile rang and she saw Strike’s number.

‘Morning. Where are you?’

‘With one of the Franks,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re heading into London.’