Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Mind you, they’re a bunch o’ bampots, CORE. He might be talkin’ about benefit cuts. That’s as good as murder to this lot. Not that I think too much of Chiswell’s politics meself, Strike.”
“Seen any sign of Billy? Jimmy’s brother?”
“Nothin’. Naebody’s mentioned him, neither.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“And no sign of Jimmy nipping off to Oxfordshire?”
“Not on my watch.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“All right,” said Strike. “Keep digging. Let me know if you get anything.”
He rang off, jabbed at his phone’s screen and brought up Lucy’s call, instead.
“Lucy, hi,” he said impatiently. “Bit busy now, can I—?”
But as she began to talk, his expression became blank. Before she had finished gasping out the reason for her call, he had grabbed his door keys and was scrabbling for his crutches.
25
We shall try if we cannot make you powerless to do any harm.
Strike’s text requesting an update reached Robin at ten to nine, as she arrived in the corridor where Izzy and Winn’s offices lay. So keen was she to see what he had to say that she stopped dead in the middle of the deserted passage to read it.
“Oh shit,” she murmured, reading that the Sun was becoming ever more interested in Chiswell. Leaning up against the wall of the corridor with its curved stone jambs, every oak door shut, she braced herself to call Strike back.
They had not spoken since she had refused to tail Jimmy. When she had phoned him on Monday to apologize directly, Lorelei had answered.
“Oh, hi, Robin, it’s me!”
One of the awful things about Lorelei was that she was likable. For reasons Robin preferred not to explore, she would have much preferred Lorelei to be unpleasant.
“He’s in the shower, sorry! He’s been here all weekend, he did his knee in following somebody. He won’t tell me the details, but I suppose you know! He had to call me from the street, it was dreadful, he couldn’t stand up. I got a cabbie to take me there and paid him to help me get Corm upstairs. He can’t wear the prosthesis, he’s on crutches…”
“Just tell him I was checking in,” said Robin, her stomach like ice. “Nothing important.”
Robin had replayed the conversation several times in her head since. There had been an unmistakably proprietorial note in Lorelei’s voice as she talked about Strike. It had been Lorelei whom he had called when he was in trouble (well, of course it was. What was he going to do, call you in Oxfordshire?), Lorelei in whose flat he had spent the rest of the weekend (they’re dating, where else was he going to go?), Lorelei who was looking after him, consoling him and, perhaps, uniting with him in abuse of Robin, without whom this injury might not have happened.
And now she had to call Strike and tell him that, five days on, she had no useful information. Winn’s office, which had been so conveniently accessible when she had started work two weeks ago, was now carefully locked up whenever Geraint and Aamir had to leave it. Robin was sure that this was Aamir’s doing, that he had become suspicious of her after the incidents of the dropped bangle, and of Raphael calling loud attention to her eavesdropping on Aamir’s phone call.
“Post.”
Robin whirled around to see the cart trundling towards her, pushed by a genial gray-haired man.
“I’ll take anything for Chiswell and Winn. We’re having a meeting,” Robin heard herself say. The postman handed over a stack of letters, along with a box with a clear cellophane window, through which Robin saw a life-size and very realistic plastic fetus. The legend across the top read: It Is Legal To Murder Me.
“Oh God, that’s horrible,” said Robin.
The postman chortled.
“That’s nothing compared to some of what they get,” he said comfortably. “Remember the white powder that was on the news? Anthrax, they claimed. Proper hoo-hah, that was. Oh, and I delivered a turd in a box once. Couldn’t smell it through all the wrapping. The baby’s for Winn, not Chiswell. She’s the pro-choice one. Enjoying it here, are you?” he said, showing a disposition for chat.
“Loving it,” Robin said, whose attention had been caught by one of the envelopes she had so rashly taken. “Excuse me.”
Turning her back on Izzy’s office, she hurried past the postman, and five minutes later emerged onto the Terrace Café, which sat on the bank of the Thames. It was separated from the river by a low stone wall, which was punctuated with black iron lamps. To the left and right stood Westminster and Lambeth bridges respectively, the former painted the green of the seats in the House of Commons, the latter, scarlet like those in the House of Lords. On the opposite bank rose the white façade of County Hall, while between palace and hall rolled the broad Thames, its oily surface lucent gray over muddy depths.
Sitting down out of earshot of the few early morning coffee drinkers, Robin turned her attention to one of the letters addressed to Geraint Winn that she had so recklessly taken from the postman. The sender’s name and address had been carefully inscribed on the reverse of the envelope in a shaky cursive: Sir Kevin Rodgers, 16 The Elms, Fleetwood, Kent, and she happened to know, due to her extensive background reading on the Winns’ charity, that the elderly Sir Kevin, who had won a silver at the hurdles in the 1956 Olympics, was one of the Level Playing Field’s trustees.
What things, Robin asked herself, did people feel the need to put in writing these days, when phone calls and emails were so much easier and faster?
Using her mobile, she found a number for Sir Kevin and Lady Rodgers at the correct address. They were old enough, she thought, to still use a landline. Taking a fortifying gulp of coffee, she texted Strike back:
Following a lead, will call asap.
She then turned off caller ID on her mobile, took out a pen and the notebook in which she had written Sir Kevin’s number and punched in the digits.
An elderly woman answered within three rings. Robin affected what she was afraid was a poor Welsh accent.
“Could I speak to Sir Kevin, please?”
“Is that Della?”
“Is Sir Kevin there?” asked Robin again, a little louder. She had been hoping to avoid actually claiming to be a government minister.
“Kevin!” called the woman. “Kevin! It’s Della!”
There was a noise of shuffling that made Robin think of tartan bedroom slippers.
“Hello?”
“Kevin, Geraint’s just got your letter,” said Robin, wincing as her accent wobbled somewhere between Cardiff and Lahore.
“Sorry, Della, what?” said the man feebly.
He seemed to be deaf, which was both help and hindrance. Robin spoke more loudly, enunciating as clearly as she could. Sir Kevin grasped what she was saying on her third attempt.
“I told Geraint I’d have to resign unless he took urgent steps,” he said miserably. “You’re an old friend, Della, and it was—it is—a worthy cause, but I have to think of my own position. I did warn him.”
“But why, Kevin?” said Robin, picking up her pen.
“Hasn’t he shown you my letter?”
“No,” said Robin truthfully, pen poised.
“Oh dear,” said Sir Kevin weakly. “Well, for one thing… twenty-five thousand pounds unaccounted for is a serious matter.”
“What else?” asked Robin, making rapid notes.
“What’s that?”