For the next couple of days, Strike and Robin communicated only by matter-of-fact texts, with neither jokes nor extraneous chat. Robin was more annoyed with herself for dwelling on the door slamming and the accusation that she’d been gossiping with Ilsa behind her partner’s back than she was at Strike for doing either of these two things.
Strike, who knew he’d behaved unreasonably, made no apology. However, a nagging sense of self-recrimination was added to his irritation at Ilsa, and both were intensified by his second date with Bijou.
He’d known he was making a mistake within five minutes of meeting her again. While she’d roared with laughter at her own anecdotes and talked loudly about top QCs who fancied her, he’d sat in near silence, asking himself what the hell he was playing at. Determined at least to get what he’d come for, he left her flat a few hours later with a faint feeling of self-disgust and a strong desire never to set eyes on her again. The only small consolation was that his hamstring hadn’t suffered this time, because he’d indicated a preference for being horizontal while having sex.
While it was hardly the first time Strike had slept with a woman he wasn’t in love with, never before had he screwed someone he actively disliked. The whole episode, which he now considered firmly closed, had intensified rather than alleviated his low mood, forcing him back up against his feelings for Robin.
Little did Strike know that Robin and Murphy’s relationship had suffered its first serious blow, a fact that Robin had no intention whatsoever of sharing with her business partner.
The row happened on Wednesday evening in a bar near Piccadilly Circus. Robin, who was due to leave for Coventry at five o’clock the following morning, hadn’t really fancied a mid-week trip to the cinema in the first place. However, as Murphy had already bought the tickets, she felt she couldn’t object. He seemed determined not to slide into a pattern whereby they merely met at each other’s flats for food and sex. Robin guessed this was due to a fear of taking her for granted or getting into a rut, which she’d deduced, from oblique comments, had been a complaint of his ex-wife’s.
The trigger for their argument was a casual remark of Robin’s about her planned stay at Chapman Farm. It then became clear that Murphy was labouring under a misapprehension. He’d thought she’d only be gone for seven days if she managed to be recruited, and was shocked to discover that, in reality, she’d committed to an open-ended undercover job that might last several weeks. Murphy was nettled that Robin hadn’t explained the situation fully, while Robin was irate at the fact he hadn’t listened properly. It might not be Murphy’s fault that he was bringing back unpleasant memories of her ex-husband’s assumed right to dictate the limits of her professional commitment, but the comparison was unavoidable, given that Murphy seemed to think Strike had pressured Robin into doing this onerous job, and she hadn’t been assertive enough to refuse.
‘I happen to
‘Why?’
‘Because it might take so long,’ said Robin, lying by omission.
‘And he’s going to miss you, is that what you’re saying?’
‘You know what, Ryan?
Indifferent to the curious looks of a group of girls standing nearby, who’d been casting the handsome Murphy sidelong glances, Robin dragged her coat back on.
‘I’m going home. I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to drive to Coventry, anyway.’
‘Robin—’
But she was already striding towards the door.
Murphy caught up with her a hundred yards down the road. His apology, which was fulsome, was made within sight of the cupid-topped Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain where her ex-husband had proposed, which did nothing to dispel Robin’s sense of
Nevertheless, Robin’s mood remained low as she set off north in her old Land Rover the following morning. Yet again, she’d been forced to face the difficulty of reconciling any kind of normal personal life with her chosen line of work. She’d thought it might be easier with Ryan, given his profession, but here she was again, justifying commitments she knew he wouldn’t have given a second thought to, had he been the one making them.
