“What kind of news?”
“About the leg,” said Robin. “Strike met Wardle last night — the Met officer.”
“Oh,” said Linda and silence fell between them until their tea arrived.
Linda had ordered a Fat Rascal, one of Bettys’ large scones. She finished buttering it before she asked:
“You and Cormoran are going to try and find out who sent that leg yourselves, are you?”
Something in her mother’s tone made Robin proceed warily.
“We’re interested in what the police are doing, that’s all.”
“Ah,” said Linda, chewing, watching Robin.
Robin felt guilty for being irritable. The wedding dress was expensive and she had not been appreciative.
“Sorry for being snappy.”
“That’s all right.”
“It’s just, Matthew’s on my case all the time about working for Cormoran.”
“Yes, we heard something about that last night.”
“Oh God, Mum, I’m sorry!”
Robin had thought they’d kept the row quiet enough not to wake her parents. They had argued on the way up to Masham, suspended hostilities while having supper with her parents, then resumed the argument in the living room after Linda and Michael had gone to bed.
“Cormoran’s name came up a lot, didn’t it? I assume Matthew’s—?”
“He’s not worried,” said Robin.
Matthew determinedly treated Robin’s work as a kind of joke, but when forced to take it seriously — when, for instance, somebody sent her a severed leg — he became angry rather than concerned.
“Well, if he’s not worried, he should be,” said Linda. “Somebody sent you part of a dead woman, Robin. It’s not so long ago that Matt called us to say you were in hospital with concussion. I’m not telling you to resign!” she added, refusing to be cowed by Robin’s reproachful expression. “I know this is what you want! Anyway” — she forced the larger half of her Fat Rascal into Robin’s unresisting hand — “I wasn’t going to ask whether Matt was worried. I was going to ask whether he was jealous.”
Robin sipped her strong Bettys Blend tea. Vaguely she contemplated taking some of these tea bags back to the office. There was nothing as good as this in Ealing Waitrose. Strike liked his tea strong.
“Yes, Matt’s jealous,” she said at last.
“I’m assuming he’s got no reason?”
“Of course not!” said Robin hotly. She felt betrayed. Her mother was always on her side, always—
“There’s no need to get fired up,” said Linda, unruffled. “I wasn’t suggesting you’d done anything you shouldn’t.”
“Well, good,” said Robin, eating the scone without noticing it. “Because I haven’t. He’s my boss, that’s all.”
“And your friend,” suggested Linda, “judging by the way you talk about him.”
“Yes,” said Robin, but honesty compelled her to add, “it’s not like a normal friendship, though.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t like talking about personal stuff. Blood out of a stone.”
Except for one notorious evening — barely mentioned between them since — when Strike had got so drunk he could hardly stand, voluntary information about his private life had been virtually nonexistent.
“You get on well, though?”
“Yeah, really well.”
“A lot of men find it hard to hear how well their other halves get on with other men.”
“What am I supposed to do, only ever work with women?”
“No,” said Linda. “I’m just saying: Matthew obviously feels threatened.”
Robin sometimes suspected that her mother regretted the fact that her daughter had not had more boyfriends before committing herself to Matthew. She and Linda were close; she was Linda’s only daughter. Now, with the tearoom clattering and tinkling around them, Robin realized that she was afraid that Linda might tell her it wasn’t too late to back out of the wedding if she wanted to. Tired and low though she was, and in spite of the fact that they had had several rocky months, she knew that she loved Matthew. The dress was made, the church was booked, the reception almost paid for. She must plow on, now, and get to the finishing line.
“I don’t fancy Strike. Anyway, he’s in a relationship: he’s seeing Elin Toft. She’s a presenter on Radio Three.”
She hoped that this information would distract her mother, an enthusiastic devourer of radio programs while cooking and gardening.
“Elin Toft? Is she that very beautiful blonde girl who was on the telly talking about Romantic composers the other night?” asked Linda.
“Probably,” said Robin, with a pronounced lack of enthusiasm, and in spite of the fact that her diversionary tactic had been successful, she changed the subject. “So you’re getting rid of the Land Rover?”
“Yes. We’ll get nothing for it, obviously. Scrap, maybe... unless,” said Linda, struck by a sudden thought, “you and Matthew want it? It’s got a year’s tax left on it and it always scrapes through its MOT somehow.”
Robin chewed her scone, thinking. Matthew moaned constantly about their lack of car, a deficiency he attributed to her low salary. His sister’s husband’s A3 Cabriolet caused him almost physical pangs of envy. Robin knew he would feel very differently about a battered old Land Rover with its permanent smell of wet dog and wellington boots, but at one o’clock that morning in the family sitting room, Matthew had listed his estimates of the salary of all their contemporaries, concluding with a flourish that Robin’s pay lay right at the bottom of the league table. With a sudden spurt of malice, she imagined herself telling her fiancé, “But we’ve got the Land Rover, Matt, there’s no point trying to save for an Audi now!”
“It could be really useful for work,” she said aloud, “if we need to go outside London. Strike won’t need to hire a car.”
“Mm,” said Linda, apparently absently, but with her eyes fixed on Robin’s face.
They drove home to find Matthew laying the table with his future father-in-law. He was usually more helpful in the kitchen at her parents’ house than at home with Robin.
“How’s the dress looking?” he asked in what Robin supposed was an attempt at conciliation.
“All right,” said Robin.
“Is it bad luck to tell me about it?” he said and then, when she did not smile, “I bet you look beautiful, anyway.”
Softening, she reached out a hand and he winked, squeezing her fingers. Then Linda plonked a dish of mashed potato on the table between them and told him that she had given them the old Land Rover.
“What?” said Matthew, his face a study in dismay.
“You’re always saying you want a car,” said Robin, defensive on her mother’s behalf.
“Yeah, but — the Land Rover, in London?”
“Why not?”
“It’ll ruin his image,” said her brother Martin, who had just entered the room with the newspaper in his hand; he had been examining the runners for that afternoon’s Grand National. “Suit you down to the ground, though, Rob. I can just see you and Hopalong, off-roading to murder scenes.”
Matthew’s square jaw tightened.
“Shut up, Martin,” snapped Robin, glaring at her younger brother as she sat down at the table. “And I’d love to see you call Strike Hopalong to his face,” she added.
“He’d probably laugh,” said Martin airily.
“Because you’re peers?” said Robin, her tone brittle. “Both of you with your stunning war records, risking life and limb?”
Martin was the only one of the four Ellacott siblings who had not attended university, and the only one who still lived with their parents. He was always touchy at the slightest hint that he underachieved.
“The fuck’s that supposed to mean — I should be in the army?” he demanded, firing up.