‘First time for me,’ said Strike.
‘Nah, I won’t,’ said Wardle, waving away the offer of whisky as Strike raised the bottle. ‘I was doing a bit too much of that, alone, a few months back. I’ve knocked it on the head for a while.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike, pouring himself a treble. ‘Good for you.’
‘Is that fish all right?’ said Wardle, looking at the gasping black lump at the surface of the tank.
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘Mash up a pea,’ said Wardle.
‘What?’
‘It’s probably gulped down too much air at the top. Greedy little bastards, goldfish. Scoop it out and feed it a mashed pea. Sometimes works.’
‘The hell d’you know that?’
‘My niece keeps fish. Three different tanks in her bedroom. Just got on to Bettas.’
Having no idea what Bettas were, and zero interest, Strike sat back down in Pat’s computer chair and said,
‘So how long’ve you been off the booze?’
‘Since the night after you came over for that curry. Funnily enough, it was you mentioning me working here. Made me think about… you know… making some changes. I could do a coffee, though,’ said Wardle. ‘Got any decaff?’
‘If we have, it’ll be in one of those cupboards,’ said Strike, who’d never knowingly drunk decaffeinated coffee in his life. As he gulped down more whisky, his mobile buzzed and he looked down to see a text from Midge.
Plug’s gone home. No stabbing tonight.
‘What?’ he said, under the vague impression that Wardle had just said something.
‘I said, “did you hear Murphy’s fallen off the wagon?”’
Wardle had found some decaffeinated coffee and was now making it. Strike, whose heart rate had just increased as though he’d broken into a sprint, said, trying to mask the interest in his voice,
‘You told me someone thought he might be drinking again.’
‘Yeah, well, they were right, he is. He was caught necking vodka at his desk. He’s in a shitload of trouble, one way or another. Probably smarm his way out of it, though,’ said Wardle with a curling lip. ‘Iverson still thinks he’s fucking misunderstood.’
‘Iverson,’ repeated Strike. His brain felt sluggish.
‘The woman on the silver vault case. The one he groped a few years back.’
‘Oh. Yeah. I met her. Redhead.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wardle, as the kettle came to a boil. ‘What’re you going to say if Murphy gets kicked out and wants to come and work here?’
‘Cross that bridge when I get to it,’ said Strike.
‘Probably try and persuade Robin to leave and set up Ellacott and Murphy, Inc with him, if you don’t take him on,’ said Wardle, his back still to Strike. ‘Or Murphy and Murphy, if he gets his way.’
‘What?’ said Strike again.
Wardle headed back to the sofa holding his coffee.
‘He’s gonna propose.’
‘That a guess?’ said Strike sharply. ‘Or d’you know?’
‘He told Iverson the other week, and she told me, when I told her I was starting work here,’ said Wardle. ‘He probably told her he was going to pop the question to get her to back off. Looked like she was gonna cry when she told me.’
‘Right,’ said Strike, who felt as though he’d turned to ice from the neck downwards. ‘Ring bought and everything, is it?’
‘Dunno,’ said Wardle, taking a sip of coffee.
Mainly because he was afraid his expression might give away his thoughts, Strike turned back to his phone. Midge had texted a second time.
got pictures of his co-conspirators
Strike, who had a blank whine in his ears, typed back great, then had to say ‘what?’ again, because Wardle had definitely just spoken.
‘That Kim Cochran. Heard something very interesting about her the other day. Reason she left the force.’
‘Yeah?’ said Strike, still thinking about Murphy and Robin. ‘Well, she’s not my concern any more.’
Whether because Wardle had noticed his colleague’s abstraction or not, he said,
‘So what d’you want me to do, start following Two-Times tomorrow?’
‘Need to think it through,’ said Strike, forcing himself to concentrate. ‘We’ll have to maintain a pretence of following the wife, because he’ll ask me if he doesn’t see anyone around when he joins her.’
They discussed the ramifications of this double-agent job until Wardle, coffee finished, said he might as well get an early night. Strike, desperate to be alone, told him to leave his mug; he’d wash it with his whisky glass.
When Wardle had left, Strike remained sitting where he was. As he was now forced to recognise, he’d retained a slender hope that in spite of Robin’s talk of egg freezing, something might yet happen to prise her and Murphy apart. But if a proposal was in the offing…
He remembered the sapphire ring that had adorned Robin’s third finger when she’d first started work for him, when she’d occupied the space Pat did now. The ring had represented a hard, blue full stop: nothing doing. She’d married Matthew, in spite of his previous infidelity and what Strike privately thought of as his general cuntery, and it had taken a second, still more blatant, infidelity to blow the marriage apart, but Murphy, alas, seemed faithful… he’s been great… I can’t fault him… he wants me, whether or not I can have kids… he’s been really kind since it happened…
Strike got to his feet, realising he wasn’t quite steady on them any more, and returned to the inner office. In shutting down various open tabs on his computer he accidentally turned Waits back on.
He slapped the music off, shut down his computer, turned out the light, then returned to the outer office, where he washed Wardle’s mug and his own glass.
He was on the point of turning out the second light when his eye fell again on the gasping black goldfish at the top of the tank, flailing and gulping pathetically, belly up, its sufferings, if Wardle was to be believed, entirely self-inflicted. Finger on the light switch, swaying slightly where he stood, Strike stared at it, imagining finding it dead and motionless in the morning, floating where it was now fighting for life. Its two tank mates, one silver, one gold, drifted serenely below, indifferent to its plight. The black fish was exceptionally ugly; close to an abomination. It was an added insult that it bore his name.
‘Fine, you stupid little fucker,’ he muttered, and he headed none too steadily towards the stairway to the attic, unsure whether he had any frozen peas, but prepared – nonplussed to find himself doing it, yet with a vague desire to set something to rights, even as everything else turned to shit around him – to check.
99
… perfect honesty, which ought to be the common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds.
Several things happened in quick succession the following morning to thoroughly destabilise Robin.
Firstly, she was woken at six a.m. by a call from Barclay to tell her she needn’t bother tailing Mrs Two-Times, because the woman was spending the day at a spa with some girlfriends, which Two-Times had forgotten to tell the agency. Robin was delighted to have an unexpectedly free Saturday, which she intended to spend on sleep and laundry.