The last line brought back uncomfortable thoughts of Bijou Watkins, but before Strike could sink further into gloom, his mobile rang again.
‘Strike.’
‘Ah’ve got tae get out of here,’ said a weak Glaswegian voice.
‘Barclay?’ said Strike, frowning. ‘You all right?’
‘Ah’m fucked. Ye’ll have tae get someone else fer Plug.’
‘Have you been bloody spotted again?’
‘Naw, Ah’ve ate a fuckin’ prawn…’
‘You’ve what?’
‘Ate… a fuckin’ prawn… the fuckin’ sandwich mustae bin mislabelled… fuck…’
Strike heard retching.
‘What are you, allergic?’
‘Aye, Ah’m fuckin’ allergic,’ came Barclay’s weak response. ‘I need tae get tae a fuckin’ bog…’
‘All right, I’ll take over Plug,’ said Strike. ‘Where is he?’
Barclay retched again then gasped,
‘Camberwell. At his mum’s.’
‘Right, you get away,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘Sure you don’t need—?’
‘Naw, the wife’s comin’… I cannae drive like—’
The call terminated as Barclay began to vomit again.
54
A man may be a good sort of man in general, and yet a very bad man in particular: good in the Lodge and bad in the world; good in public, and bad in his family; good at home, and bad on a journey…
Robin was still tailing Jim Todd, who’d got off the first train at Liverpool Street and changed on to the Circle Line, which, for reasons so far undiscovered, appeared to be by far his favourite.
Todd remained on the new train for nearly an hour, intermittently playing the game on his phone and glancing around at the surrounding passengers. Once or twice he shifted seat, although Robin couldn’t see why he’d done so. He didn’t appear to have spotted her, but as a precaution she made small changes to her appearance every now and then while Todd was looking away: putting on the pair of clear-lensed glasses she kept for exactly this kind of situation, taking off her beanie hat and turning it the other way out, so that the red fleece showed rather than the black. She also changed position, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing: anything to stop him realising there was another person in this carriage who seemed to enjoy going round in circles just as much as he did.
All the time Robin was doing these things, and watching Todd, she kept feeling little ripples of anxiety about Strike and Bijou Watkins. It was absurd to think there was still something going on between them, wasn’t it? Bijou was pregnant by another man…
Aldgate… Tower Hill… Monument…
Yet Strike had form on hiding things about his sex life, as Robin knew only too well…
Gloucester Road… High Street Kensington… Notting Hill Gate…
Bijou was pregnant. Their affair had been a year ago, hadn’t it? Perhaps not quite a year… and there was that horrible thing Ilsa had told Robin, when trying to persuade her to talk to Strike about the ill-advised affair… about the lengths to which Bijou had gone, to try and get pregnant by her married lover… Strike didn’t want children, he’d always been clear about that…
Baker Street… Great Portland Street… Euston Square…
The train’s doors opened and closed. A gaggle of teenaged girls entered the compartment, clutching their high street purchases, chatting and laughing. Robin watched them, feeling suddenly old in her practical layers of clothing. Two of the girls were barelegged, their flesh mottled beneath the miniskirts not even an icy January day would scare them out of wearing.
Todd stood up. Robin altered her own position, the better to keep watching him in case he was about to get off the train. Todd was now clinging to a hand strap, still looking at his phone.
Farringdon…
An elderly woman rose from her seat right beside the teenaged girls and moved slowly towards the doors, to be ready when they opened. With surprising speed for such a rotund man, Todd took the vacated seat. Now he was positioned right in front of the mottled, miniskirted legs, his small feet crossed, his head bent over his phone, seemingly intent on his game.
Barbican…
And seconds before she saw the proof, Robin realised why Jim Todd liked to ride the Circle Line for hours, and she knew why none of the other subcontractors had yet spotted him doing it: because opportunities would be rare in the bitter winter months…
He stealthily extended his phone so that it was underneath the skirt of the miniskirted girl standing with her legs apart for balance. Robin made an involuntary movement, and either this, or some sense that he was being watched, caused Todd to look round, straight into Robin’s eyes.
‘OI!’
Robin wasn’t the only person who’d seen it: a tall black man wearing gigantic headphones was pointing.
‘I SAW THAT, YOU FUCKING NONCE!’
The man in headphones tripped over a neighbour’s rucksack as he lunged for the cleaner and Robin was blocked on one side by the agitated teenaged girls, one of whom was saying fearfully, ‘What did he do? What did he do?’ and, on another, by a clutch of people craning their heads to see what the commotion was. Todd was already at the door as the train pulled into Barbican station; he plunged out into the crowd waiting to board and disappeared from sight.
‘Excuse me – excuse me!’ Robin said loudly, trying to pass. Finally managing to fight her way out of the door, she looked frantically up and down the platform, but Todd was nowhere to be seen.
55
He had the elemental heartlessness of the savage, which recognises no sufferings but its own…
Strike had arrived outside Plug’s mother’s house in Vestry Road to take over from the stricken Barclay. The sun had set and the puddle of pinkish vomit in the gutter he’d noticed when he arrived had faded into darkness.
Just as he was settling in for what was likely to be an evening spent in his BMW, the front door of the house opened, and Strike’s target emerged alone, bundled up against the cold in a thick black jacket. To Strike’s displeasure, Plug didn’t get into his car, but set off on foot, giving the detective no choice but to follow suit.
Wishing he’d had the foresight to bring gloves, Strike followed Plug along Peckham High Street. He soon revised his initial guess that Plug was going to get a takeaway, because the man kept walking, eventually disappearing beneath the archway of Queen’s Road Peckham station.
On the platform, Plug approached a second man, who was stockily built, with an air of barely repressed aggression and an almost shaven head.
Strike’s suspicions about Plug’s regular trips to the compound outside Ipswich, the businesslike associations with other rough-looking men and the strange episode of the creature in the shed were as far as ever from being proven. This was the first time he’d been in a situation where he might be able to listen in on the man’s conversation, so he muted his mobile, and ambled closer to the twosome, whose conversation was currently desultory, and conducted in low voices.
‘Wossee offerin’?’
‘Grand,’ said Plug.
‘Worf more.’