She was not going to beg. She had emptied the inbox of twelve spam emails before he spoke again, his voice heavy.
“All right.”
“All right what?” she asked, looking around cautiously.
“All right... you’re back at work.”
She beamed. He did not return the smile.
“Oh, cheer up,” she said, getting to her feet and moving around the desk.
For one crazy moment Strike thought she might be about to hug him, she looked so happy (and with the protective ring back on her finger, perhaps he had become a safely huggable figure, a de-sexed noncompetitor), but she was merely heading for the kettle.
“I’ve got a lead,” she told him.
“Yeah?” he said, still struggling to make sense of the new situation. (What was he going to ask her to do that wasn’t too dangerous? Where could he send her?)
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve made contact with one of the people on the BIID forum who was talking to Kelsey.”
Yawning widely, Strike dropped down into the fake-leather sofa, which made its usual flatulent noises under his weight, and tried to remember whom she was talking about. He was so sleep-deprived that his usually capacious and accurate memory was becoming unreliable.
“The... bloke or the woman?” he asked, with the vague remembrance of the photographs Wardle had shown them.
“The man,” said Robin, pouring boiling water onto tea bags.
For the first time in their relationship Strike found himself relishing an opportunity to undermine her.
“So you’ve been going onto websites without telling me? Playing games with a bunch of anonymous punters without knowing who you’re messing with?”
“I told you I’d been on there!” said Robin indignantly. “I saw Kelsey asking questions about you on a message board, remember? She was calling herself Nowheretoturn. I told you all this when Wardle was here. He was impressed,” she added.
“He’s also way ahead of you,” said Strike. “He’s questioned both of those people she was talking to online. It’s a dead end. They never met her. He’s working on a guy called Devotee now, who was trying to meet women off the site.”
“I already know about Devotee.”
“How?”
“He asked to see my picture and when I didn’t send it, he went quiet—”
“So you’ve been flirting with these nutters, have you?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Robin impatiently, “I’ve been pretending I’ve got the same disorder they have, it’s hardly flirting — and I don’t think Devotee’s anything to worry about.”
She passed Strike a mug of tea, which was precisely his preferred shade of creosote. Perversely, this aggravated rather than soothed him.
“So you don’t think Devotee’s anything to worry about? What are you basing that on?”
“I’ve been doing some research into acrotomophiliacs ever since that letter came in addressed to you — the man who was fixated on your leg, remember? As paraphilias go, it’s hardly ever associated with violence. I think Devotee’s much more likely to be masturbating over his keyboard at the idea of all the wannabes.”
Unable to think of any response to this, Strike drank some tea.
“Anyway,” said Robin (his lack of thanks for his tea had rankled), “the guy Kelsey was talking to online — he wants to be an amputee too — lied to Wardle.”
“What do you mean, he lied?”
“He did meet Kelsey in real life.”
“Yeah?” said Strike, determinedly casual. “How do you know that?”
“He’s told me all about it. He was terrified when the Met contacted him — none of his family or his friends knows about his obsession with getting rid of his leg — so he panicked and said he’d never met Kelsey. He was afraid that if he admitted he had, there would be publicity and he’d have to give evidence in court.
“Anyway, once I’d convinced him that I am who I am, that I’m not a journalist or a policewoman—”
“You told him the truth?”
“Yes, which was the best thing I could have done, because once he was convinced I was really me, he agreed to meet.”
“And what makes you think he’s genuinely going to meet you?” asked Strike.
“Because we’ve got leverage with him that the police haven’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like,” she said coldly, wishing that she could have returned a different answer, “you. Jason’s absolutely desperate to meet you.”
“Me?” said Strike, completely thrown. “Why?”
“Because he believes you cut your leg off yourself.”
“What?”
“Kelsey convinced him that you did it yourself. He wants to know how.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Strike, “is he mentally ill? Of course he is,” he answered himself immediately. “Of course he’s mentally ill. He wants to cut his fucking leg off. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Well, you know, there’s debate about whether BIID is a mental illness or some kind of brain abnormality,” said Robin. “When you scan the brain of someone suffering—”
“Whatever,” said Strike, waving the topic away. “What makes you think this nutter’s got anything useful—?”
“He met Kelsey,” said Robin impatiently, “who must have told him why she was so convinced you were one of them. He’s nineteen years old, he works in an Asda in Leeds, he’s got an aunt in London and he’s going to come down, stay with her and meet me. We’re trying to find a date. He needs to find out when he can get the time off.
“Look, he’s two removes from the person who convinced Kelsey you were a voluntary amputee,” she went on, both disappointed and annoyed by Strike’s lack of enthusiasm for the results of her solo work, but still holding out a faint hope that he would stop being so tetchy and critical, “and that person is almost certainly the killer!”
Strike drank more tea, allowing what she had told him to percolate slowly through his exhausted brain. Her reasoning was sound. Persuading Jason to meet her was a significant achievement. He ought to offer praise. Instead he sat in silence, drinking his tea.
“If you think I should call Wardle and pass this over to him—” said Robin, her resentment palpable.
“No,” said Strike, and the haste with which he answered gave Robin some small satisfaction. “Until we’ve heard what he’s... we won’t waste Wardle’s time. We’ll let him know once we’ve heard what this Jason’s got. When did you say he’s coming to London?”
“He’s trying to get time off; I don’t know yet.”
“One of us could go up to Leeds and meet him.”
“He wants to come down. He’s trying to keep all this away from anyone who knows him.”
“OK,” said Strike gruffly, rubbing his bloodshot eyes and trying to formulate a plan that would keep Robin simultaneously busy and out of harm’s way. “You keep the pressure on him, then, and start ringing round those numbers, see whether you can get a lead on Brockbank.”
“I’ve already started doing that,” she said and he heard the latent rebelliousness, the imminent insistence that she wanted to be back on the street.
“And,” said Strike, thinking fast, “I want you to stake out Wollaston Close.”
“Looking for Laing?”
“Exactly. Keep a low profile, don’t stay there after dark and if you see the beanie bloke you get out of there or set off your bloody rape alarm. Preferably both.”
Even Strike’s surliness could not douse Robin’s delight that she was back on board, a fully equal partner in the business.
She could not know that Strike believed and hoped that he was sending her up a dead end. By day and by night he had watched the entrances to the small block of flats, shifting position regularly, using night-vision goggles to scan the balconies and windows. Nothing he had seen indicated that Laing was lurking within: no broad shadow moving behind a curtain, no hint of a low-growing hairline or dark ferret-like eyes, no massive figure swaying along on crutches or (because Strike took nothing for granted when it came to Donald Laing) swaggering along like the ex-boxer he was. Every man who had passed in and out of the building had been scrutinized by Strike for a hint of resemblance to Laing’s JustGiving photograph or to the faceless figure in the beanie hat, and none of them had come close to a match.