Little though he wanted to speak to her, he had to get Madeline out of the way, as he put it to himself, because he had quite enough on his plate without being harassed by an angry girlfriend. Well aware he’d behaved in a less than exemplary fashion, he was prepared to issue an apology, but then what? Lying back on the pillows, he seemed to see only an ever more constricting tunnel of mutually increasing resentment if he continued the relationship. While his stump jumped around as though electric pulses were running through it, he thought he should have seen from the first that his and Madeline’s lives were fundamentally incompatible. She needed a man happy to stand beside her and beam while the camera flashes exploded; she deserved someone who cared about her enough to look past a scene born of stress and too much alcohol, and he qualified on neither count. He took a deep breath, picked up his mobile and pressed her number.
Madeline answered after a few rings, her voice as cold as it had been in her voicemail message.
‘Hi.’
When it became clear that she was waiting for him to say something, he asked,
‘How are you?’
‘Fairly shit. How’re you?’
‘Been better. Listen, I want to apologise for last night. I shouldn’t have lied, it was shitty behaviour. I thought there’d be a row, so—’
‘—you made sure there’d be one.’
‘Not intentionally,’ said Strike, wishing his leg would stop its uncontrollable jerking.
‘Did you stay at Robin’s last night, Corm? Tell me the truth.’
He turned his head to look out at the horizon, where the azure of the sky met the teal of the sea.
‘I did, yeah.’
There was a lengthy silence. Strike said nothing, hoping that Madeline would end things now, without any further effort on his part. However, the next sound he heard was quiet but unmistakeable sobs.
‘Look,’ he began, with no real idea what he was going to tell her to look at, but Madeline said,
‘How could I have been so stupid as to fall for you? People told me, they warned me—’
He wasn’t going to fall into the trap of asking who these people were, because he was certain there was only one: she whose disintegrating marriage was currently threatening his livelihood.
‘—but you didn’t seem like that at all—’
‘If you mean by “that”, that I’m sleeping with Robin, I’m not,’ he said, reaching for his e-cigarette only to discover that the damn thing was out of charge. ‘You’ve been the only person I’ve slept with all the time we’ve been together.’
‘Past tense,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve been the only person.’
‘We’re talking about the past, aren’t we?’
‘Do you want this, Corm?’ she demanded, her voice higher than usual, choking back tears. ‘Do you actually want to be with me?’
‘You’re great,’ he said, inwardly cringing at the necessity for these empty, formulaic words, which spared nobody any hurt but offered the speaker a comforting conviction of their own kindness, ‘and it’s been great, but I think we want different things.’
He expected her to argue, perhaps to shout at him, because the scene at her launch had revealed a perfect willingness to wound when hurt. Instead, after a couple more sobs, she hung up.
80
I know not what can ease my pains,
Nor what it is I wish;
The passion at my heart-strings strains
Like a tiger in a leash.
Pulled abruptly out of a deep sleep by a couple of knocks on the bedroom door, Strike blinked dazedly at the sloping timber ceiling for a couple of seconds, wondering where he was, and upon remembering that this was a hotel in Whitstable, he glanced at the sky out of the window and guessed that it was early evening.
‘Strike?’ said Robin’s voice from outside the door. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah,’ he called back in a hoarse voice. ‘Give me a minute.’
The spasms in his leg had subsided. He hopped to the door, which wasn’t quite as difficult as it might have been, because there was a handily placed chest of drawers and a brass end to the bedstead.
‘Sorry,’ was his first word upon opening the door. ‘Fell asleep. Come in.’
Robin knew he wouldn’t have taken off his prosthesis if he hadn’t been in a lot of pain, because he always hated the comment and enquiry it engendered. He hopped awkwardly back to the bed and dropped back down onto it.
‘What’s going on with your leg?’
‘Keeps moving of its own bloody accord.’
‘What?’ said Robin, glancing at the prosthesis propped against the wall, which made Strike give a grunt of laughter.
‘Not that. My stump. Spasms. I had them after they first amputated it and they came back a couple of days ago.’
‘Shit,’ said Robin. ‘D’you want to see a doctor?’
‘No point,’ said Strike. ‘Sit down,’ he added, gesturing to a wicker chair. ‘You look like you’ve got news.’
‘I have,’ said Robin, taking the seat. ‘Ormond’s arrest was just on TV. Apparently the police have applied to hold him for another twenty-four hours.’
‘So he hasn’t coughed to murder yet.’
‘Can’t have done. But there’s something else—’
‘D’you mind,’ said the still sleep-befuddled Strike, ‘if I have a smoke before we get into the rest?’ He ran a hand through his dense, curly hair, leaving it looking unchanged. ‘I’ll have to put my leg back on. And I’m bloody starving… there wasn’t much to those sandwiches at lunch, was there?’
‘D’you want help getting downst—?’
‘No, no,’ said Strike, waving her away. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Shall I go and get us a table in the dining room, then?’
‘Yeah, that’d be great. Meet you downstairs.’
Robin headed for the ground floor, concerned about Strike but also full of barely suppressed excitement. She’d been so consumed by the line of investigation that had suddenly opened before her after her chat with Fiendy1 that she’d hardly noticed the afternoon slipping by, and only at ten past six had it occurred to her Strike hadn’t returned.
A helpful young female member of staff pointed Robin into a dining room, which had walls painted the colour of slate, with bow windows facing the sea and pieces of corrugated white coral displayed on the mantelpieces. A waiter showed her to a table for two and Robin, having ordered herself a glass of Rioja, chose the seat facing the sea, which she thought only fair, given that she’d given Strike the sea-view room. She then propped up her iPad on the table, on which the game was still playing.
Anomie was still absent, which was starting to intrigue Robin. Unless she’d missed an appearance during their journey into Whitstable, this was the longest they’d failed to appear in the game since she’d joined it, and she couldn’t help reflecting that Phillip Ormond was currently in custody and undoubtedly unable to use any electronic device.
Meanwhile, Pez Pierce had texted Jessica Robins several more times since Robin had responded to his drawing. Robin had invented an evening with her parents to quell Pez’s expectation of regular texts, but that hadn’t stopped him sending messages, the latest of which was, So when am I gonna see u again? – to which Jessica had coyly replied, I’ll check my availability. Gtg, my dad’s complaining I’m on my phone too much.