‘I said from the start she might not be relevant, and for the record, she was Swedish, not Belgian—’
‘My point—’
‘I understand your point, thanks, weak leak though I am, and if we’re talking about missing the point: has it occurred to you that both times I’ve been threatened, I’ve been trying to talk to people about Rupert Fleetwood?’
‘Both times you were threatened, it was in places it was easy to get to you without getting caught,’ said Strike. ‘How would the men following you have known who you were off to speak to? You’ve just told me gorilla mask guy tailed you from your flat!’
‘OK,’ said Robin, returning to the offensive, ‘explain this: why would a porn star go and work in a masonic silver shop?’
‘Set up,’ said Strike.
‘Set up, how? By who?’
‘What if what was meant to have happened to Knowles genuinely happened to de Lion? What if he thought he was going to help nick a load of silver? Just because Branfoot’s a shit doesn’t mean de Lion was an angel. We know nothing about him, he could be a crook himself. What if Oz and Medina lured de Lion to Ramsay Silver, telling him he’d be able to make a hundred grand off the back of it? Then the taking of the Murdoch silver makes sense – it was to make this look like a burglary and incidental murder, when in fact it was a murder and incidental robbery.’
‘And where’s the silver now?’
‘I don’t bloody know, anywhere! Buried in the woods. Some anonymous lock up. Branfoot’s minted, he doesn’t need it.’
‘I can’t help noticing,’ said Robin, her tone now steely, ‘that your attitude to the Met and your attitude to the SAS are somewhat different.’
‘What?’ said Strike, thrown.
‘Freemason Niall Semple couldn’t possibly be involved in a theft of masonic silver, because he’s the best of the best, speaks fluent Arabic and navigates by the stars, whereas Freemason Malcolm Truman—’
‘Truman and Branfoot are in the same fucking lodge! Why’s Branfoot after us? Why the sudden interest in the private detective business?’
‘Maybe his wife’s having him tailed and he found out! Maybe the papers are sniffing around him, because of all the rumours about his sex life!’
‘You told me, at the beginning of this case, it didn’t matter if Murphy—’
‘This isn’t about Ryan!’ Robin said, her anger fuelled by the knowledge that she was at least partly lying. ‘What’s it going to do to our Met contacts, if we start trying to discredit policemen?’
‘The Met’ve already put Truman on gardening leave, they’d probably be delighted to have a reason to bloody sack him! If you think Wardle, Layborn and Ekwensi would stop talking to us because we helped the force get rid of a proper wrong ’un, you’ve got a lower opinion of them than I have!’
‘It’s your attitude I’m talking about – totally prepared to believe the worst of the police, whereas—’
‘There are plenty of cunts in the army, as I should know, because I was bloody in it—’
‘You said you were going to “go in hard” on Branfoot – you think he’ll keep his mouth shut, if you start insinuating—?’
‘Murphy know we’ve got pictures of the body, by any chance?’ asked Strike. ‘Hacked off about it, is he?’
Robin felt the blood rush to her face again.
‘That’s not—’
‘Oh, isn’t it?’
Incensed, Robin got to her feet.
‘I need to get back down the road. I’m tired and I need time to prepare for Fyola Fay.’
‘You’re not going to wait for your food?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ snapped Robin, drawing her car keys out of her pocket, the sight of which made Strike say,
‘I’m buying a new fucking Land Rover.’
‘What?’
‘Plain English, isn’t it? We need a new Land Rover. You can’t keep hiring cars, the business can’t—’
‘I’ll get something else, I just haven’t found anything I can aff—’
‘Which is why—’
‘I can’t take a loan of that size from you,’ said Robin.
‘Then don’t,’ said Strike. ‘The business will own the Land Rover, but you’ll be driving it, so find something appropriate and send me the details.’
‘Fine,’ said Robin, her voice icy.
She turned and walked away, but before Strike could begin to process what had just happened, Robin had turned again and was striding back to the table.
‘I forgot,’ she said, which was a far bigger lie than the claim she wasn’t hungry. ‘There’s another thing.’
‘What?’
‘Dev told me Bijou Watkins called the office. What did she want?’
For a split second, Strike looked just as stunned as she’d expected. Then he said,
‘She wanted some advice.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Robin, glaring down at him. ‘Advice on…?’
‘She thinks Honbold’s playing around on her,’ invented Strike.
‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah. I told her to contact someone else. Said I didn’t want the job.’
‘So I can tell Dev there won’t be any more bad press about you and women?’
‘I’ll tell him myself,’ said Strike.
‘Great,’ said Robin, ‘because we don’t want to lose Dev. See you at the office.’
She walked away and this time, didn’t turn or look back.
The barmaid now reappeared with two large plates of food.
‘Oh,’ she said, watching Robin marching away up the street. ‘Do you—?’
‘I’ll eat them both,’ growled Strike, shifting his notebook out of the way.
PART SIX
There was silver there without a doubt, and the many thin veins they came across lured them on with constant hope of mighty pockets and deposits of which these were but the flying indications.
69
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.
So that was that, thought Robin: Strike had lied to her face. He who berated her for not immediately informing him of a minor incident (for the purposes of her present resentment, it suited Robin to minimise the impact on her of the gorilla-faced, dagger-waving stalker) was deliberately concealing a further risk to the agency of scandal and press intrusion (and it suited her to attribute all her rage and hurt to this, rather than investigate the weight in the pit of her stomach, which grew heavier every time she thought of Strike as a father).
As she and Barclay entered Wycliffe Road in the latter’s car early the following morning, Robin had yet another source of aggravation: a smarting right eye, from which tears kept leaking. The previous evening she’d chopped up a lot of very hot chilli peppers in her kitchen, and evidently she hadn’t washed her hands thoroughly enough afterwards, because in touching her eyelid she’d inflamed her tear ducts. The chilli-chopping had been part of a project she didn’t intend to tell Murphy about, firstly, because he still didn’t know about either the man in Harrods, or the one with the masonic dagger, and secondly, because it was illegal to carry or use pepper spray in the UK. Nevertheless, Robin felt a little safer this morning, knowing that she was carrying a potent mixture of chillies, cayenne pepper, garlic and vinegar in a clear plastic spray-bottle in her handbag. She’d worry about the legal consequences later, if she had to use it. The internet had advocated the spray as a way to repel garden pests, but she might be on flimsy legal ground should she claim she was carrying it around in her handbag for the benefit of three pot plants she’d left at home. Nevertheless, if Robin had any choice in the matter, no more men would seize her by the neck from behind without suffering consequences, nor would any of them get near enough to her to wave even blunt daggers in her face.