Entirely by chance, she looked up from a pair of feather and bead earrings as Stephanie, whom Strike had accurately described, came out of the door beside the chip shop. Pale, red-eyed and blinking in the bright light like an albino rabbit, Stephanie leaned on the chip-shop door, toppled inside and proceeded to the counter. Before Robin could collect her wits, Stephanie had brushed past her holding a can of Coke and gone back into the building through the white door.
Shit.
“Nothing,” she told Strike on the phone an hour later. “She’s still in there. I didn’t have a chance to do anything. She was in and out in about three minutes.”
“Stick with it,” said Strike. “She might come out again. At least we know she’s awake.”
“Any luck with Laing?”
“Not while I was there, but I’ve had to come back to the office. Big news: Two-Times has forgiven me. He’s just left. We need the money — I could hardly refuse.”
“Oh, for God’s sake — how can he have another girlfriend already?” asked Robin.
“He hasn’t. He wants me to check out some new lap-dancer he’s flirting with, see whether she’s already in a relationship.”
“Why doesn’t he just ask her?”
“He has. She says she isn’t seeing anyone, but women are devious, cheating scum, Robin, you know that.”
“Oh yes, of course,” sighed Robin. “I forgot. Listen, I’ve had an idea about Br — Wait, something’s happening.”
“Everything all right?” he asked sharply.
“Fine... hang on...”
A transit van had rolled up in front of her. Keeping the mobile to her ear, Robin ambled around it, trying to see what was going on. As far as she could make out, the driver had a crew cut, but the sun on the windscreen dazzled her eyes, obscuring his features. Stephanie had appeared on the pavement. Arms wrapped tightly around herself, she trooped across the street and climbed into the back of the van. Robin stepped back to allow it to pass, pretending to talk into her mobile. Her eyes met those of the driver; they were dark and hooded.
“She’s gone, got in the back of an old van,” she told Strike. “The driver didn’t look like Whittaker. Could’ve been mixed race or Mediterranean. Hard to see.”
“Well, we know Stephanie’s on the game. She’s probably off to earn Whittaker some money.”
Robin tried not to resent his matter-of-fact tone. He had, she reminded herself, freed Stephanie from Whittaker’s stranglehold with a punch to the gut. She paused, looking into a newsagent’s window. Royal wedding ephemera was still very much in evidence. A Union Jack was hanging on the wall behind the Asian man at the till.
“What do you want me to do? I could go and cover Wollaston Close for you, if you’re off after Two-Times’ new girl. It makes — oof,” she gasped.
She had turned to walk away and collided with a tall man sporting a goatee, who swore at her.
“Sorry,” she gasped automatically as the man shoved his way past her into the newsagent’s.
“What just happened?” asked Strike.
“Nothing — I bumped into someone — listen, I’m going to go to Wollaston Close,” she said.
“All right,” said Strike after a perceptible pause, “but if Laing turns up, just try and get a picture. Don’t go anywhere near him.”
“I wasn’t intending to,” said Robin.
“Call me if there’s any news. Or even if there isn’t.”
The brief spurt of enthusiasm she had felt at the prospect of going back to Wollaston Close had faded by the time she had reached Catford station. She was not sure why she felt suddenly downcast and anxious. Perhaps she was hungry. Determined to break herself of the chocolate habit that was jeopardizing her ability to fit into the altered wedding dress, she bought herself an unappetizing-looking energy bar before boarding the train.
Chewing the sawdusty slab as the train carried her towards Elephant and Castle, she found herself absentmindedly rubbing her ribs where she had collided with the large man in the goatee. Being sworn at by random people was the price you paid for living in London, of course; she could not ever remember a stranger swearing at her in Masham, not even once.
Something made her suddenly look all around her, but there did not seem to be any large man in her vicinity, neither in the sparsely occupied carriage nor peering at her from the neighboring ones. Now she came to think of it, she had jettisoned some of her habitual vigilance that morning, lulled by the familiarity of Catford Broadway, distracted by her thoughts of Brockbank and Zahara. She wondered whether she would have noticed somebody else there, watching her... but that, surely, was paranoia. Matthew had dropped her off in the Land Rover that morning; how could the killer have followed her to Catford unless he had been waiting in some kind of vehicle at Hastings Road?
Nevertheless, she thought, she must guard against complacency. When she got off the train she noticed a tall dark man walking a little behind her, and deliberately stopped to let him pass. He did not give her a second look. I’m definitely being paranoid, she thought, dropping the unfinished energy bar into a bin.
It was half past one before she reached the forecourt of Wollaston Close, the Strata building looming over the shabby old flats like an emissary from the future. The long sundress and the old denim jacket that had fitted in so well in the market in Catford felt a little studentish here. Yet again pretending to be on her mobile, Robin looked casually upwards and her heart gave a little skip.
Something had changed. The curtains had been pulled back.
Hyperaware now, she maintained her course in case he was looking out of the window, intending to find a place in shadow where she could keep an eye on his balcony. So intent was she on finding the perfect place to lurk, and on maintaining the appearance of a natural conversation, that she had no attention to spare for where she was treading.
“No!” Robin squealed as her right foot skidded out from under her, her left became caught in the hem of her long skirt and she slid into an undignified half-splits before toppling sideways and dropping her mobile.
“Oh bugger,” she moaned. Whatever she had slipped in looked like vomit or even diarrhea: some was clinging to her dress, to her sandal, and she had grazed her hand on landing, but it was the precise identity of the thick, yellow-brown, glutinous lumpy stuff that worried her most.
Somewhere in her vicinity a man burst out laughing. Cross and humiliated, she tried to get up without spreading the muck further over her clothes and shoes and did not look immediately for the source of the jeering noise.
“Sorry, hen,” said a soft Scottish voice right behind her. She looked around sharply and several volts of electricity seemed to pass through her.
In spite of the warmth of the day, he was wearing a windstopper hat with long earflaps, a red and black check jacket and jeans. A pair of metal crutches supported most of his substantial weight as he looked down at her, still grinning. Deep pockmarks disfigured his pale cheeks, his chin and the pouches beneath his small, dark eyes. The flesh on his thick neck spilled over his collar.
A plastic bag containing what looked like a few groceries hung from one hand. She could just see the tattooed dagger tip that she knew ran through a yellow rose higher on his forearm. The drops of tattooed blood running down his wrist looked like injuries.
“Ye’ll need a tap,” he said, grinning broadly as he pointed at her foot and the hem of her dress, “and a scrubbing brush.”