His partner’s Christmas Day response to his foray into truly imaginative gift-giving had given Strike hope. She must have understood what he was implicitly telling her when she examined those silver charms, all of them freighted with memories and private jokes, mustn’t she? Didn’t opening his present in the early hours of Christmas Day indicate an unusual eagerness to know what he’d given her? The five kisses that had followed her thank you, the use of the word ‘love’ – admittedly followed by ‘it’ rather than ‘you’ – could this be the behaviour of a woman trying to keep a man firmly at arm’s length? And where had Murphy been, while Robin was typing in all those ‘x’s? Was it too much to hope for that they’d had an argument?
Such ruminations enabled Strike to endure the long, unproductive hours watching Plug with good grace. However, on arrival back in cold, deserted Denmark Street at three a.m., his pleasant musings were rudely interrupted.
A large, still wet letter ‘G’ had been painted in scarlet on the street door of the office. Strike stood contemplating it for a full minute, dismissing within seconds the possibility that he was looking at the tag of some drunken graffiti artist. No other door in Denmark Street had been so decorated, and it seemed far too much of a coincidence that anyone should have randomly slapped up the one letter of the alphabet that had recently acquired an ominous double meaning for the agency on the upper floors.
Was he supposed to take this ‘G’ to symbolise the letter emblazoned in the middle of the square and compasses of Freemasonry’s most identifiable sign? Had it been chosen because an eye of providence or an acacia tree would have required more artistry? Or was this a message for Robin, who’d been Witness G in the trial of her rapist and would-be killer?
Inwardly cursing the necessity, Strike hauled himself upstairs to his attic flat, dug out cleaning materials, and returned to the street to remove the letter, though, having no white spirit, he was able only to render what had been there illegible, leaving a large red smear. The door would definitely need repainting before the landlord next saw it.
It was four before Strike finally removed his prosthesis, wondering whether he should tell Robin what had happened. He didn’t want to drag up her rape again. Was this, perhaps, an obvious case of least said, soonest mended?
Only as he connected his mobile to its charging lead did he notice that he’d received a voicemail message at some point overnight, and play it.
‘’S is Valentine Longcaster,’ said a slurred, upper-class voice, against a background of clatter and chatter. ‘I’ve got all your fuckin’ messages. I’ve got nothing to fuckin’ say to you. Do’s all a favour an’ make your new year’s fucking resolution gassing yourself.’
Strike set his alarm, yawned and got into bed. Valentine’s response to the emails Strike had sent him wasn’t a surprise. Several times, when full of drink, cocaine or both, Valentine had informed rooms full of people that this, pointing at Charlotte, was his favourite fucking person in the world. It seemed that, unlike the determinedly oblivious Sacha, Valentine wasn’t prepared to pretend he’d forgotten the contents of Charlotte’s suicide note, in which she’d blamed Strike’s refusal to pick up the phone for the planned overdose, and the slitting of her wrists in her bath.
His phone buzzed. He picked it up to see a text from Jade Semple.
all rightg you can come on the q17hb ut don’t tell noone because they djnat woant me talking to you
Great, Strike texted back, with a shrewd idea who ‘they’, who didn’t want her to talk to him, might be. See you on the seventeenth.
He lay back down to sleep, thinking that the year had, after all, started on a positive note, and already planning strategic manoeuvres that had nothing whatsoever to do with the missing Niall Semple.
43
The stars have not dealt me the worst they can do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.
Several days after returning from Masham and having worked almost non-stop since, Robin still felt as she had done ever since she’d unwrapped Strike’s bracelet: anxious and guilty. Her nervousness resembled the state in which a person waited for exam results, or the outcome of medical tests. When, from time to time, her unruly subconscious made suggestions as to what she might be anticipating, or dreading – she wasn’t sure which – she quelled them as best she could.
Strike’s bracelet was now hidden inside her only evening bag in her wardrobe, but it was hard to forget what she’d drunkenly thought on first examining it. Moreover, she knew that if another woman had shown her the bracelet, and explained the significance of the charms, she’d have responded, ‘I think he might be trying to tell you he’s in love with you.’ What man would give a present so intimate, so full of meaning only two people could understand, without knowing how it might be interpreted?
Yet the gift had been given by Cormoran Strike, he who voluntarily lived in two rooms over his office, alone and self-sufficient. Yes, the recent references to Charlotte’s suicide note might suggest a desire to open a conversation they’d only once before come close to having, while eating curry at the office, when Strike had told her she was his best friend, and she’d thought he might be about to say more, to acknowledge what both of them, she remained convinced, had felt on the day they’d hugged at Robin’s wedding, when she could have sworn he’d considered asking her to run away with him, and leave Matthew standing on the dancefloor…
But he hadn’t spoken at the wedding, had he? Nor in the office, over whisky and curry. In the midst of her guilty deliberations about what might be going on inside Strike’s head, Robin kept bumping back against the conclusion she’d reached in the bathroom of the Prince of Wales pub: that Strike, whether consciously or unconsciously, was playing some kind of game intended to weaken her ties to Murphy, lest she contemplate leaving the agency for a more settled existence.
The thing she’d thought, when sitting, drunk, on her parents’ bathroom floor, felt like a betrayal of the man with whom she was now supposed to be setting up house. She loved Murphy, didn’t she? She’d certainly told him so, and she thought – knew – she did. Barring his two recent cobra strikes of anger, one born of stress, one of jealousy, and both entwined with his own history of drinking and the failure of his marriage, they hardly ever argued. He was kind and intelligent, and she couldn’t have asked more of him in the aftermath of the ectopic pregnancy. He’d never expressed an opinion on how much she earned, or complained about the old Land Rover, or what everyone else seemed to see as her rackety career. Their now-resumed sex life was far more enjoyable than the one Robin had had with Matthew, because Murphy seemed to actually care whether Robin was enjoying herself, whereas Matthew, she realised in retrospect, had mostly wanted applause. He was generous, too: she was currently wearing the opal earrings he’d bought her for Christmas, which matched the pendant her parents had given her for her thirtieth. Most importantly of all, Murphy was open and honest. He didn’t play games, didn’t lie, didn’t compartmentalise his life so that Robin didn’t really know where she stood.
So she owed him similar honesty and transparency, didn’t she? Yet she was increasingly feeling as she supposed unfaithful spouses must do as their lies snowballed and they were kept in a constant state of alertness for the slip that might lead to discovery. If Murphy found out she and Strike were interviewing relatives of other possible William Wrights, he’d know they were investigating the body in the vault, not just trying to find the missing Rupert.