However, she cried later, alone in the bedroom that was thick with relics of their shared past: the fluffy elephant he had given her on their first Valentine’s Day together — he had not been so suave in those days; she could remember him turning red as he had produced it — and the jewelry box he had given her for her twenty-first. Then there were all the photographs showing them beaming during holidays in Greece and Spain, and dressed up at Matthew’s sister’s wedding. The biggest picture of the lot showed them arm in arm on Matthew’s graduation day. He was in his academic gown and Robin stood beside him in a summer dress, beaming as she celebrated an achievement of which she had been robbed by a man in a gorilla mask.
31
Nighttime flowers, evening roses,
Bless this garden that never closes.
Robin’s mood was buoyed next day by the glorious spring morning that greeted her outside her front door. She did not forget to remain aware of her surroundings as she traveled by Tube towards Tottenham Court Road, but saw no sign of any large man in a beanie hat. What leapt to the eye on her morning commute was the mounting journalistic excitement about the royal wedding. Kate Middleton seemed to be on the front of virtually every newspaper held by her fellow travelers. It made Robin hyperaware all over again of that naked, sensitive place on her third finger where an engagement ring had sat for a year. However, excited as she was about sharing the results of her solo investigative work with Strike, Robin refused to be downcast.
She had just left Tottenham Court Road station when she heard a man shout her name. For a split second she feared an ambush by Matthew, then Strike appeared, forging a path through the crowd, backpack on his shoulder. Robin deduced that he had spent the night with Elin.
“Morning. Good weekend?” he asked. Then, before she could answer: “Sorry. No. Crap weekend, obviously.”
“Bits of it were all right,” said Robin as they wended their way through the usual obstacle course of barriers and holes in the road.
“What have you got?” Strike asked loudly over the interminable drills.
“Sorry?” she shouted.
“What. Have. You. Found. Out?”
“How do you know I’ve found anything out?”
“You’ve got that look,” he said. “The look you get when you’re dying to tell me something.”
She grinned.
“I need a computer to show you.”
They turned the corner into Denmark Street. A man dressed all in black stood outside their office door, holding a gigantic bunch of red roses.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” breathed Robin.
A spasm of fear receded: her mind had momentarily edited out the armful of blooms and seen only the man in black — but it wasn’t the courier, of course. This, she saw as they approached him, was a youth with long hair, an Interflora deliveryman wearing no helmet. Strike doubted the boy had ever handed over fifty red roses to a less enthusiastic recipient.
“His father’s put him up to this,” Robin said darkly, as Strike held open the door for her and she pushed her way inside, being none too gentle with the quivering floral display. “‘All women love roses,’ he’ll have said. That’s all it takes — a bunch of bloody flowers.”
Strike followed her up the metal staircase, amused but careful not to show it. He unlocked the office door and Robin crossed to her desk and dropped the roses unceremoniously onto it, where they quivered in their beribboned polythene bag of greenish water. There was a card. She did not want to open it in front of Strike.
“Well?” he asked, hanging his backpack on the peg beside the door. “What have you found out?”
Before Robin could say a word there was a rap on the door. Wardle’s shape was easily recognizable through the frosted glass: his wavy hair, his leather jacket.
“I was in the area. Not too early, is it? Bloke downstairs let me in.”
Wardle’s eyes traveled immediately to the roses on Robin’s desk.
“Birthday?”
“No,” she said shortly. “Do either of you want coffee?”
“I’ll do it,” said Strike, moving over to the kettle and still speaking to Robin. “Wardle’s got some stuff to show us.”
Robin’s spirits sank: was the policeman about to preempt her? Why hadn’t she called Strike on Saturday night, when she’d found it?
Wardle sat down on the mock-leather sofa that always emitted loud farting noises whenever anyone over a certain weight sat on it. Clearly startled, the policeman repositioned himself gingerly and opened a folder.
“It turns out Kelsey was posting on a website for other people who wanted to get limbs taken off,” Wardle told Robin.
Robin sat down in her usual seat behind her desk. The roses impeded her view of the policeman; she picked them up impatiently and deposited them on the floor beside her.
“She mentioned Strike,” Wardle went on. “Asked if anyone else knew anything about him.”
“Was she using the name Nowheretoturn?” asked Robin, trying to keep her voice casual. Wardle looked up, astonished, and Strike turned, a coffee spoon suspended in midair.
“Yeah, she was,” said the policeman, staring. “How the hell did you know that?”
“I found that message board last weekend,” said Robin. “I thought Nowheretoturn might be the girl who wrote the letter.”
“Christ,” said Wardle, looking from Robin to Strike. “We should offer her a job.”
“She’s got a job,” said Strike. “Go on. Kelsey was posting...”
“Yeah, well, she ended up exchanging email addresses with these two. Nothing particularly helpful, but we’re looking to establish whether they actually met her — you know, in Real Life,” said Wardle.
Strange, thought Strike, how that phrase — so prevalent in childhood to differentiate between the fantasy world of play and the dull adult world of fact — had now come to signify the life that a person had outside the internet. He handed Wardle and Robin their coffees, then went through to his inner office to fetch a chair, preferring not to share the farting sofa with Wardle.
When he returned, Wardle was showing Robin printed screenshots of the Facebook pages of two people.
She examined each of them carefully, then passed them on to Strike. One was a thick-set young woman with a round, pale face, bobbed black hair and glasses. The other was a light-haired man in his twenties with lopsided eyes.
“She blogs about being ‘transabled,’ whatever the fuck that is, and he’s all over message boards asking for help in hacking bits off himself. Both of them have got serious issues, if you ask me. Recognize either of them?”
Strike shook his head, as did Robin. Wardle sighed and took the pictures back.
“Long shot.”
“What about other men she’s been knocking around with? Any boys or lecturers at college?” asked Strike, thinking of the questions that had occurred to him on Saturday.
“Well, the sister says Kelsey claimed to have a mysterious boyfriend they were never allowed to meet. Hazel doesn’t believe he existed. We’ve spoken to a couple of Kelsey’s college friends and none of them ever saw a boyfriend, but we’re following it up.
“Speaking of Hazel,” Wardle went on, picking up his coffee and drinking some before continuing, “I’ve said I’ll pass on a message. She’d like to meet you.”