Strike’s memory of the aftermath of attempting to punch a suspect in the Stafford Hotel was hazy, not because he’d been drunk, but because he’d been lost to everything but his own rage.
‘They might not have barred us explicitly, but try going back in there and see what kind of a welcome you get,’ said Robin, fishing one of the last olives out of the dishes that had arrived with their first drink. Strike had already single-handedly finished the crisps.
‘Charlotte’s father kept sheep,’ Strike said, and Robin felt that small frisson of interest she always experienced when he mentioned his former fiancée, which was almost never.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, on Arran,’ said Strike. ‘He had a massive house there with his third wife. Hobby farming, you know. Probably a tax write-off. They were evil-looking bastards – the sheep, that is – can’t remember the name of the breed. Black and white. Huge horns and yellow eyes.’
‘They sound like Jacobs,’ said Robin, and responding to Strike’s grin, she said, ‘I grew up with massive piles of Sheep Management next to the loo – obviously I know sheep breeds… What’s Arran like?’
She really meant, ‘What was Charlotte’s family like?’
‘Pretty, from what I can remember, but I was only at the house once. Never got a return invitation. Charlotte’s father hated the sight of me.’
‘Why?’
Strike downed the last of his cocktail before answering.
‘Well, there were a few reasons, but I think top of the list was that his wife tried to seduce me.’
Robin’s gasp was far louder than she’d intended.
‘Yeah. I must’ve been about twenty-two, twenty-three. She was at least forty. Very good-looking, if you like them coke-thin.’
‘How – what…?’
‘We’d gone to Arran for the weekend. Scheherazade – that was the stepmother – and Charlotte’s father were very big drinkers. Half the family had drug problems as well, all the stepsisters and half-brothers.
‘The four of us sat up boozing after dinner. Her father wasn’t over-keen on me in the first place – hoping for something a lot more blue-blooded. They’d put Charlotte and me in separate bedrooms on different floors.
‘I went up to my attic room about two in the morning, stripped off, fell into bed very pissed, turned out the light and a couple of minutes later the door opened. I thought it was Charlotte, obviously. The room was pitch black. I moved over, she slid in beside me –’
Robin realised her mouth was agape and closed it.
‘– stark naked. Still didn’t twig – I had most of a bottle of whisky inside me. She – ah – reached for me – if you know what I’m saying –’
Robin clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘– and we kissed and it was only when she whispered in my ear that she’d noticed me looking at her tits when she’d bent over the fire that I realised I was in bed with my hostess. Not that it matters, but I hadn’t been looking at her tits. I’d been getting ready to catch her. She was so pissed, I thought she was going to topple into the fire when she threw a log on it.’
‘What did you do?’ Robin asked through her fingers.
‘Shot out of bed like I had a firework up my arse,’ said Strike, as Robin began to laugh again, ‘hit the washstand, knocked it over and smashed some giant Victorian jug. She just sniggered. I had the impression she thought I’d be straight back in bed with her once the shock wore off. I was trying to find my boxers in the dark when Charlotte opened the door for real.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah, she didn’t take too kindly to finding me and her stepmother naked in the same bedroom,’ said Strike. ‘It was a toss-up which of us she wanted to kill most. The screaming woke Sir Anthony. He came charging upstairs in his brocade dressing gown, but he was so pissed he hadn’t tied it properly. He turned the lights on and stood there holding a shooting stick, oblivious to the fact that his cock was hanging out until his wife pointed it out.
‘“Anthony, we can see Johnny Winkle.”’
Robin now laughed so hard that Strike had to wait for her to compose herself before continuing the story. At the bar a short distance from their table, a silver-haired man was watching Robin with a slight smirk on his face.
‘What then?’ Robin asked breathlessly, mopping her eyes with the miniature napkin that had come with her drink.
‘Well, as far as I can remember, Scheherazade didn’t bother to justify herself. If anything, she seemed to think it was all a bit of a laugh. Charlotte lunged at her and I held Charlotte back, and Sir Anthony basically seemed to take the view that it was all my fault for not locking my bedroom door. Charlotte was a bit inclined that way too. But life in squats with my mother hadn’t really prepared me for what to expect from the aristocracy. On balance, I’d have to say people were a lot better behaved in the squats.’
He raised his hand to indicate to the smiling waitress that they were ready for more drinks, and Robin, whose ribs were sore from laughing, got to her feet.
‘Need the loo,’ she said breathlessly, and the eyes of the silver-haired man on the bar stool followed her as she walked away.
The cocktails had been small but very strong, and Robin, who spent so much of her life running surveillance in trainers, was out of the habit of wearing heels. She had to grasp the handrail firmly while navigating the red-carpeted stairs down to the Ladies’ Room, which was more palatial than any Robin had visited before. The soft pink of a strawberry macaron, it featured circular marble sinks, a velvet sofa and walls covered in murals of nymphs standing in water lily-strewn lakes.
Having peed, Robin straightened her dress and checked her mascara in the mirror, expecting it to have run with all the laughing. Washing her hands, she thought back over the story Strike had just told her. However funny she’d found it, it was also slightly intimidating. In spite of the vast array of human vagaries, many of them sexual, that Robin had encountered in her detective career, she sometimes felt herself to be inexperienced and unworldly compared to other women her age. Robin’s personal experience of the wilder shores of sexual adventurousness was non-existent. She’d only ever had one sexual partner and had reasons beyond the usual for wishing to trust the person with whom she went to bed. A middle-aged man with a patch of vitiligo under his left ear had once stood in the dock and claimed that nineteen-year-old Robin had invited him into a dark stairwell for sex, and that he’d choked her into unconsciousness because she’d told him she ‘liked it rough’.
‘I think my next drink had better be water,’ Robin said five minutes later, as she dropped back into her seat opposite Strike again. ‘Those are seriously strong cocktails.’
‘Too late,’ said Strike, as the waitress set fresh glasses in front of them. ‘Fancy a sandwich, mop up some of the alcohol?’
He passed her the menu. The prices were exorbitant.
‘No, listen—’
‘I wouldn’t have invited you to the Ritz if I wasn’t prepared to cough up,’ said Strike with an expansive gesture. ‘I’d have ordered a cake, but—’
‘Ilsa’s already done it, for tomorrow night?’ Robin guessed.
The following evening a group of friends, Strike included, would be giving Robin a birthday dinner, organised by their mutual friend.
‘Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, so act surprised. Who’s coming to this dinner, anyway?’ Strike asked. He had a slight curiosity about whether there were any people he didn’t know about: specifically, men.
Robin listed the names of the couples.
‘… and you and me,’ she finished.