Robin sat down again and said,
‘So: the couple in the Peugeot. You don’t think—?’
‘Oz and Medina?’ said Strike, trying to concentrate (he thought he could count on Kim not telling Robin anything about Bijou – Kim, he was certain, would like nothing better than to think she and Strike had a slightly sordid secret that excluded his partner). ‘Got to be a chance.’
Robin picked up the photograph that showed the footprint in the blood around the corpse’s head.
‘That looks small for a man’s foot, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I thought so, too,’ said Strike.
‘And it was under the body.’
‘Great. I mean, yeah,’ said Strike, still struggling to focus.
‘The mutilation, the sash – it looks like very deliberate staging,’ said Robin. ‘Why didn’t they get rid of the footprint?’
‘Maybe they didn’t notice it, then moved the body over it, while they were mutilating him.’
‘You know, if Medina was driving that Peugeot to pick Oz up after the killing, she might not have seen blood on him,’ said Robin. ‘Whoever did it waited for livor mortis to start setting in before they got started cutting the body up…’
Robin’s phone now buzzed, and she saw a text from her brother Stephen.
‘Everything OK?’ Strike asked, in response to Robin’s look of shock.
‘Yes, fine, my sister-in-law’s just had an emergency Caesarean… God above, the baby was nearly eleven pounds.’
‘Same as me,’ said Strike, still striving to sound normal.
‘When have you had an emergency Caesarean?’ said Robin.
‘No, I was nearly eleven pounds. It’s how I got my name.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘“Cormoran”. He was a Cornish giant. My mother said she was going to call me that, as a joke, my aunt took her seriously and said she couldn’t, so of course that’s what I got called, to piss off Joan.’
‘They’re calling him “Barnaby”,’ said Robin, looking at the picture of her new nephew, who was bright red, swaddled in a hospital towel, with a sumo wrestler’s indignant face. ‘Born on Friday the thirteenth.’
‘Who was?’ said Strike.
‘My nephew. Today’s Friday—’
‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, of course.’
He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he thought that might well change, after today.
49
Oh, many a month before I learn
Will find me starting still
And listening, as the days return,
For him that never will.
Strike’s conscience was whispering that he ought to tell Robin exactly what fresh, unforeseen calamity had descended upon him, that he had to warn her that another deluge of tabloid smut might be about to engulf them. However, after the story about the call girl, and his forced admission that he’d slept with Nina Lascelles, not to mention Robin’s rape being made public on the back of his newsworthy love life, Strike didn’t much fancy adding to the already unsavoury heap of circumstances in his disfavour that there was a remote chance – please, God, a fucking remote chance – he’d fathered a child with a woman he detested. A primitive sense of self-interest therefore shouted conscience down: he’d fix things without Robin ever having to know.
At a quarter past twelve, the two partners left the office for lunch in Dean Street. The day was cold and bright, the sun overhead a dazzling platinum coin trying to burn its way through the cloud cover. Trying to dissemble his new state of acute anxiety, Strike said,
‘Looks like we can rule out Wright being killed in a fight that got out of hand. Someone stoved in the back of his head while he had his back turned. That was no accident.’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘which must make it more likely the mutilation, the masonic sash and the hallmark were planned, pre-murder.’
‘How many people would you say know A. H. Murdoch’s hallmark?’
‘Not many,’ said Robin, ‘but the Salem Cross is a masonic symbol, too.’
‘True,’ said Strike. He remembered the scarlet letter ‘G’ that had been painted on the office street door at New Year. ‘Any luck finding a new Land Rover?’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘they’re all way out of my price range, even second hand… have we had any more calls from that Scottish Gateshead, by the way? The Golden Fleece person?’
‘Nothing since New Year,’ said Strike.
His mobile rang. He tugged it out of his pocket, saw that Pat was calling him. Afraid that Bijou, who no longer had his mobile number, was trying to reach him at the office, he switched his phone to mute.
‘Lucy,’ he said to Robin. ‘I’ll call her back. On that subject… we’ve just sold Ted and Joan’s house. I was thinking: the business could pay for part of a Land Rover, and I could loan you the rest.’
‘Wh—? You can’t do that!’
‘Yeah, I can. The money’s just going to sit in my account, I haven’t got any use for it at the moment.’
Robin’s immediate thought was of Murphy, and what he’d think of her taking a loan of this size from Cormoran Strike. He was bound to see it as another bond between them, another commitment of the type she’d never yet made to him. And yet she felt strangely vulnerable and bereft without her own car, her own means of – the word ‘escape’ rose in her mind, and was dismissed.
Quo Vadis, the large black-fronted restaurant and private members’ club where Decima had booked lunch, was now within view. Realising she hadn’t yet responded to what, by any standard, was a very generous offer, Robin said,
‘Strike, thank you, but you can’t. It’s too much.’
‘You need your own car and I don’t think any business manager would advise us to keep hiring them for you.’
‘But—’
‘The Land Rover was bloody handy, ’specially for long journeys and trips outside London.’
‘But even second hand, they cost—’
‘I know what they cost. We’ll see how much the accountant’ll let you charge against the business and I’ll make up the difference. We can have a loan agreement if it makes you feel any better.’
‘But it could take ages to pay you back.’
Good, thought Strike, but aloud he said,
‘So? I’ve just told you, I haven’t got any use for the money right now.’
‘It’s really generous of you,’ said Robin, and she thought with some longing of a second-hand Defender 90 she’d spotted online just the previous day. ‘But—’
‘Christ’s sake, I’m not offering you a kidney,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.
They entered the club. The foyer had blood red walls. At the reception, they gave Decima’s name and were led upstairs, past the entrance to a large restaurant with white walls and leather seats around tables, then into a small private room called the Library, which had dark blue walls, book shelves and orb-shaped lamps.
Decima was already sitting at the round table, wearing a loose black dress. She’d lost a lot of weight since she and Strike had last met; her large brown eyes were shadowed, but she’d brushed her hair and dyed its grey roots. Her air was of a creature who’d been forcibly flushed out of their burrow into the daylight. Strike, who’d been dreading having to watch Decima breastfeed, registered that there was no baby present.
‘You haven’t brought—?’
‘Lion? No, I’ve got a local girl babysitting,’ said Decima, and she glanced down at the phone lying face up beside her. ‘He’ll be OK, I expressed plenty of milk for him.’