But Robin understood why, whatever the man’s personal absurdities, he’d aggravate her brother’s latent insecurities. Martin had neither savings nor property, and had never stuck with jobs, or indeed anything that required sustained hard work.
‘Mart,’ said Robin gently, ‘are you sure you’re not imagining this?’
‘Why did she chuck me out?’ demanded Martin, with characteristic lack of logic.
‘Maybe because you kicked your son’s present out of the window and accused her of shagging a skip hire-outer who thinks he’s King Arthur,’ suggested Robin, which surprised a reluctant snort out of her brother.
It was odd to sit here with Martin and realise that he’d chosen to come to her, rather than any other member of the family. Possibly he’d simply flown to the furthest spare bed he thought he could get, but Robin couldn’t escape the not particularly flattering suspicion that he saw her as more of a kindred spirit than he’d ever done before, pursuing a strange, intermittently dangerous career of which their mother disapproved, with a failed marriage behind her, and her house-buying on hold, unlike happily married father-of-two Stephen, and Jonathan the graduate, with his conventional new job in brand management. But then Robin remembered a very drunk Martin taking a swing at her ex-husband, on their wedding day, and she laughed again.
‘Just remembering you nearly thumping Matthew.’
‘Ah,’ said Martin, and he grinned properly this time. ‘He’s a real fucking tosser.’
‘He is,’ Robin agreed. ‘Not as big a tosser as the bloke you’re worried about, though. Listen… I think you should call Carmen and apologise.’
‘I’m not fucking—’
‘I really don’t think she’s done anything wrong, Martin.’
Robin knew her brother too well to press him; he was incurably contrarian and would do the right thing in his own time, or not at all. She got up from the sofa.
‘I’ll make us something to eat.’
She’d just opened her fridge to scan the paltry contents when, struck by a sudden thought, she returned to the sitting room.
‘Mart, did you just say that Excalibur man put the logo on his weights?’
‘Yeah, he puts it on fucking everything,’ said Martin.
‘You can put custom designs on weights?’
‘If you’re the kind of prick who likes that sort of thing. Why?’
‘No reason,’ said Robin. She returned to the kitchen.
113
And so it was fated that, one day, after patiently picking round a great piece of rock till it was loosened from its ages-old bed, he felt it tremble under his hand, and leaning his weight against it, it disappeared into space beyond.
Robin left Martin asleep on the sofa bed in the sitting room the following morning and headed for the office. There was something she wanted to say to Strike face to face, so she forced herself to drive into town, checking her rear-view mirror constantly, and feeling shaky and exposed during the short walk to Denmark Street.
Arriving shortly after nine, she found Pat already at her desk, and Wardle talking to Strike in the inner office.
‘Didn’t we have three fish in there?’ Robin asked Pat as she hung up her coat, because the large black fish and the smaller gold one appeared to have lost a companion.
‘Travolta died,’ grunted Pat. ‘He says he found him floating when he got in this morning.’
‘Travolta?’
‘Yeah, we had Cormoran, Robin and Travolta. Yours is the only one that hasn’t given any trouble. Makes sense,’ added Pat darkly.
Strike emerged from the inner office, unshaven and looking exhausted.
‘Morning,’ he said to Robin. ‘You missed a real shit show last night. I was just telling Wardle…’
She followed him into the inner office, where Wardle stood, arms folded, leaning against the wall.
‘We intercepted Plug, two mates and his son as they were heading for the front door of fifteen Carnival Street,’ said Strike. ‘They jumped to the conclusion we were allied with the dog killer and pulled out knives. Long story short, Shah got stabbed in the leg.’
Robin gasped; the speech she’d been about to make to Strike fled her mind.
‘Is he OK?’
‘Ish. He was let out of hospital this morning but the wound’s deep. Barclay restrained Plug, and I took down his biggest mate, but the third guy scarpered. We managed to persuade Plug’s son to stay put, though, poor little bastard. You weren’t lying about half his face being chewed off, were you?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I think he’s going to be scarred for life – in more ways than one. Where is he now?’
‘With his great-uncle and his gran,’ said Strike. ‘With luck, Plug’ll get a long stretch inside and the boy’ll now have a fighting chance at a normal life. Anyway, we had to give statements to the police and it’s bloody lucky we had plenty of photographic evidence to prove we’ve been tailing Plug for months, or I think we’d have been done for assault, which, as we know, the Met would bloody love. And we’re down one man, maybe permanently.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Robin.
‘I think there’s a possibility we’re going to lose Shah to Navabi.’
‘What?’ said Robin, horrified. ‘Dev wouldn’t leave!’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that. He and I had an argument last night while we were waiting for Plug to make his move. He had all Kim’s arguments down pat. We shouldn’t have taken the silver vault case, we were exploiting Decima, “colluding in covering up her baby”, going on jaunts round the country, et cetera. I think old mates at the Met have been telling him he works for a proper wrong ’un. He also thinks I sexually harassed Kim.’
‘Wh—?’
‘She’ll have told him so,’ said Strike wearily. ‘She and Navabi seem very keen on fucking with me. Have they tried to poach either of you yet?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I suppose I should feel offended.’
‘I’ll talk to Shah about bloody Cochran,’ said Wardle, scowling. ‘I’ll tell him exactly who she is. I told you before, she caused trouble on every single job she worked. Fucking liability.’
‘That’d be helpful, cheers,’ said Strike, rubbing his eyes, which were stinging with tiredness, ‘and while you’re at it, you can tell Shah the silver vault case continues, and I’m paying for it out of my own pocket.’
‘What?’ said Robin, her spirits lifting immeasurably at this news.
‘I’d better go,’ said Wardle. ‘I’m on that cheating civil servant in half an hour.’
When Wardle had closed the dividing door behind him, Strike looked up at Robin said,
‘What’re you looking so happy about?’
‘You mean it? The silver vault case continues?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘I’ll contribute financially, too. You can’t bear all the expenses; you won’t have anything left of your inheritance at this rate.’
‘I don’t need it for anything,’ said Strike indifferently.
‘Don’t you ever want to buy a place?’
‘What for? Nothing’d be as convenient as the flat,’ said Strike.
He might have said that if Robin wanted to move in with him, he was more than happy to start house-hunting, but naturally didn’t.
‘Why’re you so pleased we’re keeping it going?’ he asked.
‘Because – don’t yell, all right?’ said Robin.
‘What’s happened?’ said Strike ominously.