‘I did what I had to do to get information out of him,’ she said coldly, and left the room again, ostensibly to stir the gravy, but in fact to give herself time to stop blushing.
Regretting his attempt at archness, which in truth had been a clumsy attempt to find out how much Robin had enjoyed those parts of the interview that had involved kissing and, perhaps, being groped by Pez Pierce, Strike considered calling an apology after her. Before he could do so, however, his mobile rang. It was Madeline.
Strike hesitated, staring at the screen. Madeline had wanted him to call her back, which of course he hadn’t done. He was supposed to be sitting alone in some anonymous Travelodge and suspected that if he ignored Madeline’s call she’d ring back every ten minutes until he answered.
‘Hi,’ he said, taking the call.
‘How are you? Did you get a hotel room?’
‘Yeah, just checked in,’ said Strike, keeping his voice low. ‘Can’t talk for long, I’m expecting an update from a subcontractor.’
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Madeline. ‘Bloody hell, Corm. A bomb. It’s terrifying.’
Robin re-entered the room, her colour still high. Failing to notice that Strike was on the phone, she said,
‘Look, I don’t much appreciate—’
She broke off, seeing the mobile held to his ear.
‘Who was that?’ asked Madeline.
‘Room service,’ said Strike.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Madeline, while Robin stared down at him with accusatory eyes. He had a strong feeling both women knew exactly what was going on: yielding ill-advisedly to the impulse of the cornered male, he attempted to brazen it out.
‘It was.’
‘Corm,’ said Madeline, ‘I’m not stupid.’
Robin left the room again.
‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ said Strike, now closing his eyes, as if he were a child on an out-of-control bike, careering towards a wall.
‘So who was that woman, and what doesn’t she appreciate?’
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He ought to have left the flat before taking the call, but he was so tired, and his leg so sore, he hadn’t wanted to get up. He opened his eyes again and fixed them on the Raoul Dufy print on the wall. What wouldn’t he give to be sitting alone by a window overlooking the Mediterranean right now?
‘I’m having a quick drink with Robin,’ he said. ‘To talk over agency stuff. How we’re going to carry on without access to the office.’
There was a long silence, then Madeline said,
‘You’re staying with her.’
‘No I’m not,’ said Strike.
‘But it’s OK to meet Robin this evening and risk terrorists finding her—’
‘They’re already onto her,’ said Strike. ‘The bomb was addressed to both of us.’
‘Sweet,’ said Madeline coldly. ‘It’s like you’re married, isn’t it? Well, I’ll let you get on with your drink.’
The line went dead.
A swarm of angry, anxious thoughts buzzed rapidly through Strike’s brain: It’s got to end. You fuckwit. I don’t need this tonight. It was never going to work. No point calling back. Got to end it. Apologise.
Strike pushed himself off the sofa and limped to the kitchen where Robin stood with his back to her, stirring gravy.
‘Sorry,’ said Strike. ‘I was being a dick.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin coldly. ‘You were. You wouldn’t take that tone with Barclay, if he had to chat up some woman to get information.’
‘I’d say far worse than that if Barclay had had to snog some woman to get stuff out of her, believe me,’ said Strike, and when Robin turned to look at him, half annoyed, half grudgingly amused, he shrugged and said, ‘Banter, innit? It’s what we do.’
‘Hmm,’ said Robin, turning away to give the gravy another stir. ‘Well, I’d have thought you’d be pleased I got so much out of Pierce.’
‘I was pleased,’ said Strike. ‘You did bloody well. That chicken smells great.’
‘It’ll need another half an hour,’ said Robin. She hesitated, then said, ‘Who were you claiming I was room service to?’
‘Madeline,’ said Strike. He had no energy left for lying. ‘She wanted me to stay with her. I said I was going to a hotel. Just easier.’
Robin, who was very interested in this information, kept stirring the gravy, hoping to hear more but not wanting to ask for it. However, as Strike didn’t enlarge on the subject, Robin turned down the heat under the saucepan and both returned to the sitting room.
While Robin checked the game and greeted various players to make sure Buffypaws wasn’t completely inactive, Strike took out his notebook and turned to the pages in which he’d written observations on Robin’s interview with Pez.
‘You really did do great with Pierce,’ he said.
‘All right,’ said Robin with a slight eye-roll as she refilled both their glasses, ‘there’s no need to overdo it.’
‘I imagine you’ve noticed how many boxes on our Anomie profile he ticks? Knows a lot about the Beatles, doesn’t like cats—’
‘That was only ever a guess—’
‘—part-time carer for his father – he also knows a way into that cemetery without getting caught—’
‘I know that, but—’
‘—and by the sounds of it, he and Edie were working on something together and she left him in the lurch, going off with Josh and writing a smash hit with him. That’s grounds for serious resentment.’
‘She didn’t necessarily leave him in the lurch,’ said Robin. ‘She might not have thought whatever she and Pez were doing was any good. Changed her mind. They’d argued about Tim as well. Maybe it wasn’t fun working with him after that.’
‘Might not be how Pierce sees it. You don’t think he’s Anomie, do you?’ said Strike, watching for her reaction.
‘Well…’ Robin hesitated, ‘he’s got the ability to create the game, but we knew that all along. I don’t know… When I was with him, I just didn’t feel it.’
By exercising heroic self-restraint, Strike refrained from making the most obvious of the ribald comments that occurred to him.
‘I mean,’ said Robin, who thankfully hadn’t noticed any sense of strain in Strike’s expression, ‘Anomie’s vicious – sadistic. I just didn’t get that from Pez. He can definitely be crass – I told you about that thing he painted on Josh and Edie’s wall – and he was quite aggressive to the Ink Black Heart fan who turned up at our first drawing class and said she was there to “soak up the magic” or something. She was a bit annoying,’ Robin added, taking a sip of wine, ‘but there was no call for him to be that cruel. Yasmin Weatherhead seemed scared of him. I could imagine him making fat jokes. He’s that type.
‘But barring his dad being ill, which must be a big strain, he’s not doing badly in life, as far as I can see. He’s popular with women. He’s found a place to live that suits him. And he’s getting work, even if it’s not as steady as he’d like. I s’pose it’s the same objection I had to Gus Upcott. To be as good as they are in their respective fields would take hours and hours out of every day, and if there’s one thing we know for sure about Anomie, it’s that they’ve a lot of time on their hands.’
‘True,’ said Strike. ‘Well, speaking of people with a lot of time on their hands, I turned up something new myself this morning. Didn’t have time to print it out before the bomb went off, but the bottom line is: Kea Niven made some very threatening comments on Twitter on the night before the attacks, which she deleted, but which have since turned up on Reddit. She was talking about stabbing people through the heart.’