Robin didn’t feel particularly amused, but Izzy appeared not to notice, lost in her own thoughts.
“You never know, it could be the making of them, Papa and Raff,” she said hopefully, then checked her watch.
“Better return some calls,” she sighed, setting down her coffee mug, but as she reached for her phone she froze, fingers on the receiver as a sing-song male voice rang out in the corridor beyond the closed door.
“That’s him! Winn!”
“Well, here I go,” said Robin, snatching up her box file again.
“Good luck!” whispered Izzy.
Emerging into the corridor, Robin saw Winn standing in the doorway of his office, apparently talking to Aamir, who was inside. Winn was holding a folder with orange lettering on it saying “The Level Playing Field.” At the sound of Robin’s footsteps, he turned to face her.
“Well, hello there,” he said with a Cardiff lilt, stepping back into the corridor.
His gaze dribbled down Robin’s neck, fell onto her breasts, then up again to her mouth and her eyes. Robin knew him from that single look. She had met plenty of them in offices, the type who watched you in a way that made you feel clumsy and self-conscious, who would place a hand in the small of the back as they sidled behind you or ushered you through doors, who peered over your shoulder on the excuse of reading your monitor and made chancy little comments on your clothes that progressed to comments on your figure during after-work drinks. They cried “joke!” if you got angry, and became aggressive in the face of complaints.
“Where d’you fit in, then?” asked Geraint, making the question sound salacious.
“I’m interning for Uncle Jasper,” said Robin, smiling brightly.
“Uncle Jasper?”
“Jasper Chiswell, yes,” said Robin, pronouncing the name, as the Chiswells did themselves, “Chizzle.” “He’s my godfather. Venetia Hall,” said Robin, holding out her hand.
Everything about Winn seemed faintly amphibian, down to his damp palm. He was less like a gecko in the flesh, she thought, and more like a frog, with a pronounced potbelly and spindly arms and legs, his thinning hair rather greasy.
“And how did it come about that you’re Jasper’s goddaughter?”
“Oh, Uncle Jasper and Daddy are old friends,” said Robin, who had a full backstory prepared.
“Army?”
“Land management,” said Robin, sticking to her prearranged story.
“Ah,” said Geraint; then, “Lovely hair. Is it natural?”
“Yes,” said Robin.
His eyes slid down her body again. It cost Robin an effort to keep smiling at him. At last, gushing and giggling until her check muscles ached, agreeing that she would indeed give him a shout should she need any assistance, Robin walked on down the corridor. She could feel him watching her until she turned out of sight.
Just as Strike had felt after discovering Jimmy Knight’s litigious habits, Robin was sure that she had just gained a valuable insight into Winn’s weakness. In her experience, men like Geraint were astoundingly prone to believe that their scattergun sexual advances were appreciated and even reciprocated. She had spent no inconsiderable part of her temping career trying to rebuff and avoid such men, all of whom saw lubricious invitations in the merest pleasantry, and for whom youth and inexperience were an irresistible temptation.
How far, she asked herself, was she prepared to go in her quest to find out things to Winn’s discredit? Walking with sham purpose through endless corridors to support her pretense of having papers to deliver, Robin pictured herself leaning over his desk while the inconvenient Aamir was elsewhere, breasts at eye-level, asking for help and advice, giggling at smutty jokes.
Then, with a sudden, dreadful lurch of imagination she saw, clearly, Winn’s lunge, saw the sweaty face swooping for her, its lipless mouth agape, felt hands gripping her arms, pinning them to her sides, felt the potbelly press itself into her, squashing her backwards into a filing cabinet…
The endless green of carpet and chairs, the dark wood arches and the square panels seemed to blur and contract as Winn’s imagined pass became an attack. She pushed through the door ahead as though she could physically force herself past her panic…
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“Bit overwhelming the first time you see it, eh?”
The man sounded kindly and not very young.
“Yes,” said Robin, barely knowing what she said. Breathe.
“Temporary, eh?” And then, “You all right, dear?”
“Asthma,” said Robin.
She had used the excuse before. It gave her an excuse to stop, to breathe deeply, to re-anchor herself to reality.
“Got an inhaler?” asked the elderly steward in concern.
He wore a frock coat, white tie and tails and an ornate badge of office. In his unexpected grandeur, Robin thought wildly of the white rabbit, popping up in the middle of madness.
“I left it in my office. I’ll be fine. Just need a second…”
She had blundered into a blaze of gold and color that was increasing her feeling of oppression. The Members’ Lobby, that familiar, ornate, Victorian-gothic chamber she had seen on television, stood right outside the Commons, and on the periphery of her vision loomed four gigantic bronze statues of previous prime ministers—Thatcher, Atlee, Lloyd George and Churchill—while busts of all the others lined the walls. They appeared to Robin like severed heads and the gilding, with its intricate tracery and richly colored embellishments, danced around her, jeering at her inability to cope with its ornate beauty.
She heard the scraping of a chair’s legs. The steward had brought her a seat and was asking a colleague to fetch a glass of water.
“Thank you… thank you…” said Robin numbly, feeling inadequate, ashamed and embarrassed. Strike must never know about this. He would send her home, tell her she wasn’t fit to do the job. Nor must she tell Matthew, who treated these episodes as shameful, inevitable consequences of her stupidity in continuing surveillance work.
The steward talked to her kindly while she recovered and within a few minutes she was able to respond appropriately to his well-intentioned patter. While her breathing returned to normal, he told her the tale of how Edward Heath’s bust had begun to turn green on the arrival of the full-sized Thatcher statue beside him, and how it had had to be treated to turn it back to its dark brown bronze.
Robin laughed politely, got to her feet and handed him the empty glass with renewed thanks.
What treatment would it take, she wondered as she set off again, to return her to what she had once been?
14
… how happy I should feel if I could succeed in bringing a little light into all this murky ugliness.
Strike rose early on Tuesday morning. After showering, putting on his prosthesis and dressing, he filled a thermos with dark brown tea, took the sandwiches he had made the previous evening out of the fridge, stowed them in a carrier bag along with two packets of Club biscuits, chewing gum and a few bags of salt and vinegar crisps, then headed out into the sunrise and off to the garage where he kept his BMW. He had an appointment for a haircut at half past twelve, with Jimmy Knight’s ex-wife, in Manchester.