She walked past him into the inner office, and he closed the door on Pat, who still had the receiver pressed to her chest.
‘Robertson’s going to write it up, with a complete denial from me,’ said Strike, who was breathing as though he’d just done what he really wanted to do, which was to beat Culpepper into a purée. ‘Says he’ll put in a bit of “the Cormoran Strike I know”, mention the UHC, the Shacklewell Ripper, public service, grateful clients…’
‘Great,’ said Robin.
Neither was looking the other in the eye. Robin could hear Pat’s voice rising and falling in the outer office again. Strike moved to the window and looked down through the Venetian blinds into Denmark Street.
‘And he said he was going to call off – yeah, he has.’
Down in the street, the older journalist had just taken a phone call, presumably from Robertson. He then moved to tell the younger man that there was no point hanging around, because Strike had made the only comment he was prepared to give, to their colleague.
‘Right,’ said Strike, not looking at Robin as he sat down, but pulling his notes on the silver vault case towards him, ‘I’ve got news on Larry McGee. I spoke to his daughter last night.’
His adrenaline levels were refusing to drop; vivid mental images of punching Dominic Culpepper so hard his teeth splintered kept recurring. The idea of telling Robin how he felt about her had, naturally, fled: there were imperfect moments for such a declaration, and then there were times when speaking would be outright lunacy, and Strike would have been hard-pressed to imagine a less auspicious occasion than having just been forced to explain how badly he’d treated another woman, then taken Robin’s advice on how best to fight an accusation of harassment of a sex worker.
‘So,’ he said, trying to focus on the notes he’d taken while speaking to McGee’s daughter, ‘there was nothing fishy about the death. Post-mortem revealed myocardial infarction related to poorly managed diabetes. Basically, the security guy at Gibsons was right: he really let himself go after being sacked.’
‘Was McGee on good terms with his daughter?’ asked Robin, who was also attempting to sound businesslike.
‘She hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years. First she knew he was dead was the police knocking on her door. From what she told me, he wasn’t a loveable guy; walked out on her mother when she was six, always looking to make a bit of easy money, creepy around women, got sacked from a previous job for allegedly feeling up a co-worker. I asked if she knew why he’d think he was coming into money and she had no idea, said nobody in the family had much to leave, especially to him. I asked if she thought he’d ever have nicked stuff from work, or colluded in a robbery, and she said she’d easily believe it of him. They cremated him and left the ashes at the crematorium,’ Strike added. ‘Said nobody in the family wanted to handle them. Anyway’ – he flicked back in his notes – ‘did you read my email about Jim Todd?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘You think he might’ve known McGee outside work?’
‘I’m not convinced his “who was he?” was a slip of the tongue, nor am I convinced Todd wasn’t the one who accessed “Abused and Accused” at work,’ said Strike. ‘He got antsy when I mentioned it and given how slack they are in that shop generally, I’m not taking Todd’s word for it that he couldn’t get online in there. From what he told me about his living arrangements, I doubt he’s got a computer at home. Calling Wright a “silly tit” for looking stuff like that up at work could’ve been self-recrimination. People slip up that way. So, what d’you think about putting some surveillance on him?’
‘I agree in principle,’ said Robin, ‘but we haven’t really got the manpower, have we?’
‘Well, we need to try and make it work, because I want him checked out. It’ll have occurred to you, I’m sure, that given the state of Pamela’s eyesight, the identification of Wright as Knowles rests largely on Jim Todd.’
‘It had occurred to me, yes,’ said Robin, who didn’t much appreciate the roughness of her partner’s tone. It wasn’t her fault that he’d slept with a journalist’s cousin.
‘Anyway,’ Strike said, ‘I read your notes on Albie Simpson-White. You think he knows more than he’s admitting.’
‘I do,’ said Robin. ‘That thing about Rupert having no choice but to leave Decima and “sometimes you’re better off not knowing things” – I want to know what that meant.’
‘That Fleetwood’s got another girlfriend pregnant?’ suggested Strike dismissively.
Robin was further annoyed by this reaction. She’d listened politely to Strike’s speculation about Jim Todd, after all.
‘But he said Rupert really loved Decima, and made him sound quite responsible and level-headed in general—’
‘If “responsible” and “level-headed” means knocking up your girlfriend, nicking a massive bit of silver from her father, then scarpering, Simpson-White needs a new fucking dictionary,’ said Strike, and Robin surmised, correctly, that in Strike’s current mood there was little point in trying to persuade him to take a kinder view of Rupert Fleetwood, so instead she said,
‘Well, if we had enough subcontractors, I’d suggest putting surveillance on Albie, too, because I think there’s an outside chance he’d lead us straight to Rupert. I know Decima doesn’t want us to find him alive, but—’
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘She doesn’t. I called her yesterday because I wanted to check with her about what we found out about Wright in St George’s Avenue, and she made it good and clear the only thing she wants to hear is that he’s dead.’
He brought the notes of his conversation with Decima to the top of the pile in front of him and redoubled his effort to concentrate.
‘I asked if Rupert ever did weights, and Decima said he looks after himself, likes the gym, and she could imagine him doing weights if he didn’t have access to a cross-trainer. As far as she’s aware, he’s never done jujitsu, but he did a bit of wrestling at school. She never saw him smoke dope but knows he has, in the past. I asked whether he knew how to handle a gun and she said, yes, a rifle, because his expensive Swiss boarding school had a shooting club, and then I asked whether he knew or had ever mentioned a woman called Rita or Rita Linda. Also no. Then I asked her whether he was ambidextrous.’
‘What?’ said Robin blankly. ‘Why?’
‘Because before phoning her, I went back through everything we’ve got so far, including the footage you got from Bullen & Co.’
‘But it’s useless,’ said Robin, who’d already looked at the three minutes of film. ‘Wright’s obscured nearly all the time he’s in there.’
‘Yeah, but on a second watch, I noticed something. Come here and I’ll show you.’
So Robin wheeled her chair round to Strike’s side of the partners’ desk. As she did so, Robin felt the mobile in her pocket vibrate, and suspected Pat had just sent her Jonny Rokeby’s message. Now feeling as though she was concealing a small but powerful explosive device on her person, she watched Strike bring up the clip of black and white film, which was far clearer and sharper than that from Ramsay Silver. The wide-angled camera looked down on the whole of Bullen & Co, which had a very large crate sitting close to the entrance and a couple of browsers. A man in a cravat, who Robin took to be Pamela’s husband, was scribbling at the desk.
‘Here he comes,’ said Strike.
Short and powerful-looking, wearing his full beard and glasses, Wright appeared temporarily unobscured, though unfortunately scratching the side of his face, before the largest of the browsing customers blocked him. He was holding a black and silver bag in one hand. Pamela’s husband picked up the bit of paper on which he’d been writing and advanced on Wright.