Cosima, as Robin had already discovered, wasn’t an easy person to engage in conversation. The twenty-one-year-old lived with her parents in a large house in Belgravia, five minutes’ walk from her father’s club, Dino’s. Judging by Cosima’s Instagram account, which had twenty thousand followers, her primary occupation was socialising and taking selfies, with occasional modelling jobs on the side. Thin, with long, baby-fine blonde hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion and colt-like legs, Cosima posted pictures to her Instagram at least twice a day, sometimes trying on different outfits in her walk-in wardrobe, but usually posing with friends in various trendy restaurants and clubs. She also spent a lot of time at Dino’s.
The primary difficulty in getting within questioning distance of Cosima was the thick cordon of people constantly surrounding her. The girl was either at home, surrounded by uniformed staff, or amusing herself with large groups of friends in places where entrance required a great deal of money, or membership. When she travelled, it was by Uber or in one of the family’s cars, with a chauffeur, so she was free to drink. She never seemed to walk anywhere, unlike her father, whose invariable routine was to leave his house at precisely midday, stride briskly to Dino’s for lunch, and stay there until the early hours of the following morning.
Dino Longcaster was a tall, heavy man, always impeccably suited, with a dark complexion and pronounced eyebags. His unusually large, round head, with its slicked-back dark grey hair, resembled a cannonball, and his default expression was one of boredom bordering on disdain. Knowing how he’d bullied Rupert Fleetwood, Robin found it almost pleasurable to dislike the man to whom she’d never spoken, seeing superciliousness in everything from the cast of his face to his perfectly knotted half-Windsor.
Robin spent the next few hours waiting for Cosima to emerge, but was finally forced to leave without having glimpsed her, for her evening off with Murphy.
He’d booked them a table at his favourite gastropub in Wanstead, the Duke, which at least meant Robin didn’t need to go home first to change. She touched up her make-up on the Tube, and emerged into the chilly night, checking regularly behind her that she wasn’t being followed, as she now did every time she was alone in the dark.
She’d gone only twenty yards when her mobile rang. It was her mother again. Robin suspected she was about to hear news that wouldn’t cheer her up.
‘Hi Mum.’
‘Oh, Robin,’ groaned Linda.
‘What’s happened?’ said Robin in panic.
‘We think they’ve split up. Martin and Carmen. He won’t talk about it, but he’s slept here the last three nights.’
‘Oh God,’ said Robin, again glancing over her shoulder; the street was empty. ‘So Carmen’s alone at home with an ill baby?’
‘He’s not really ill, but yes, she’s all alone with him. I don’t know what to do. She’s never seemed very keen on us, and I called this afternoon to offer help, but she didn’t pick up.’
There was nothing Robin could say or do to fix this situation, but she listened patiently until a beeping in her ear told her another caller was waiting.
‘Mum, I’m really sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll ring tomorrow.’
Switching calls, she said,
‘Robin Ellacott.’
‘Hello,’ said a timid, girlish voice. ‘This is Zeta.’
For a few steps, the exhausted Robin couldn’t for the life of her recall who Zeta was.
‘I… I don’t understand how you got my number,’ said the girl.
‘Oh,’ said Robin, as the realisation hit her: Zeta, the girl to whom Tyler Powell had allegedly done some harmful thing in Ironbridge. ‘Your friend Chloe Griffiths gave it to me.’
‘Oh,’ squeaked Zeta. ‘I… I wish she hadn’t.’
‘I was only calling for background,’ said Robin, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Nothing you tell me will be passed on.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Zeta asked in trepidation.
‘Chloe told me you’d had a bad experience with Tyler,’ said Robin.
‘I don’t want you to tell the police!’
‘I won’t,’ Robin reassured her hastily.
‘Because I haven’t got any proof! He’ll just say he didn’t!’
‘I understand. I’d still like to know what happened.’
‘Well… I was really drunk in the Jockey & Horse. The pub. And I was talking about Anne-Marie, and Hugo, and the crash – you know about that?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘I don’t want trouble. I don’t want Tyler coming back to… to get me, or anything.’
‘I won’t tell the police,’ Robin reassured her again.
‘Well, Tyler was there and I didn’t realise. Someone must have told him what I was saying and he came up to me, and he was really angry. And a week after, when I was walking home up Wellsey Road, in the dark, a car came up onto the pavement. It missed me by, like, a few centimetres.’
‘Could you see who was driving?’
‘No, the headlights were too bright.’
‘But you think it was Tyler?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you recognise his car?’
‘No, but he works in a garage. He could’ve borrowed any of them cars.’
‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘What exactly had you been saying about the crash, Zeta?’
‘The same everyone was saying. Tyler used to boast about sato – sabotaging cars if he didn’t like the people who brought them in his garage. Everyone knew.’
‘I see,’ said Robin.
‘Don’t tell the police,’ said Zeta.
‘I won’t,’ said Robin. ‘D’you—?’
‘Bye then.’
Zeta hung up.
A great listlessness rolled over Robin as she walked on. She was sick of bullying, callous, deviant men, but she had to show Murphy a cheerful face when she arrived in the pub for what was supposed to be a celebration of their offer on the house being accepted, because it wasn’t Murphy’s fault if Tyler Powell used his driving prowess to terrify young women, or if Lord Oliver Branfoot and Dino Longcaster enjoyed humiliating those less rich and influential than themselves, or if Craig Wheaton policed his girlfriend’s emails and texts. It couldn’t be laid at Murphy’s door that Niall Semple had abandoned his new bride shortly after her miscarriage, or that Jim Todd had raped a schoolgirl, that Larry McGee was so addicted to porn he couldn’t stop watching it, even at work, or that an unidentified man, or men, were using Robin’s own rape to intimidate her. Checking over her shoulder yet again, and touching the homemade pepper spray in her bag for reassurance, Robin reminded herself that millions of males, Murphy, her own father and brothers among them, weren’t depraved, violent or sadistic, but kind and decent people. The trouble was that kind and decent men rarely cropped up in criminal cases. Her job, she knew, was in danger of warping her worldview, and she thought how nice it would be to take some time off, to get away from bitterly cold and dark London, and not have to think about the grubby underbellies of men’s lives – but not yet. Not now. There was too much to do.
Murphy was already sitting at a wooden table with a pint in front of him when Robin entered the pub.
‘You look gorgeous,’ he told her.
‘You’re a liar,’ said Robin, kissing him. ‘I look like I feel. Wrecked.’
Having been on her feet all day it was a relief to sit down, and Robin ordered a glass of wine hoping, as with the whisky on Christmas Eve, that it would make her feel more celebratory.
‘Listen,’ said Murphy, once they’d toasted the new house, and Robin had taken a large gulp of wine, ‘I’m not having a go here, all right?’