‘Yes, next week should be fine, but – I expect Allan told you I work from home,’ said Katya. ‘Would it be convenient for you if we met in a café, rather than at my house? Because my husband’s ill, you see, and I’d rather not disturb him.’
‘No problem at all,’ said Strike. ‘Whereabouts is good for you?’
‘Well, we’re in Hampstead – would that be too far?’
‘Not at all,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll be in your area on Thursday, to speak to Phillip Ormond. You know—?’
‘Yes, I know who Phillip is.’
‘I’m meeting him at six o’clock, in a pub near the school where he teaches. Perhaps I could talk to you that afternoon, before I see Phillip?’
‘Thursday, Thursday,’ she said, and he heard the turning of pages and assumed Katya was that increasingly rare beast, a person who kept a physical diary. ‘Yes, Thursday should be fine. I usually visit Josh in the afternoons, but I know he’d rather I prioritised talking to you.’
They agreed on a time and a café in Hampstead, then Katya thanked him again for taking the case in a now slightly husky voice and rang off.
The girl ahead of Strike was still walking and trying to call somebody on her phone. Strike brought up Anomie’s Twitter feed again. There were no fresh tweets.
The end of his amputated leg was starting to chafe, in spite of the gel pad between stump and prosthesis. There’d been a lot of unexpected walking this afternoon. Strike kept his eyes focused on the girl’s left arm and those intricate tattoos. They must have cost a decent amount, he thought, but if she had hundreds of pounds to spend on tattoos, why were her clothes so worn and cheap?
Quite suddenly, the girl stopped walking. She was talking into the phone at last, her manner extremely agitated as she moved out of the middle of the path and dropped down onto an empty bench, her head bowed, one hand shielding her eyes. Strike moved onto the grass, always a difficult surface to navigate with his prosthesis, and feigned absorption in his own phone. Apparently aimlessly, he approached the place where she was sitting until he was able to hear what she was saying.
‘… but why couldn’t you ’ave told me, just told me?’ she was saying, in a thick Yorkshire accent, which came as a surprise. ‘’Ow d’you think I felt when she said you was meetin’ Nils?’
A long silence ensued, during which the person on the other end of the phone was clearly talking.
‘But why, though?’ said the girl from Yorkshire. Her voice broke, but unlike Katya, she made no attempt to hide from the person on the end of the phone that she was crying. ‘Why?’
There was another long silence, while the girl’s thin shoulders shook and she made gurgling, gasping noises. A young man with the hood raised on his zip-up top passed, his eyes sliding over the sobbing girl without compassion.
‘Yeah, but why couldn’t I be there too, then?… But they didn’t ’ave to know… Why did they?’
Another pause, and then she burst out:
‘But you want me to say you was with me when it suits you, don’t you?’
Jumping up from the bench, she started walking again, faster than before. Strike followed, losing ground because he had to move off the grass and back onto the paved path. She was talking vociferously now, gesticulating with her tattooed left arm, and he knew she must be still crying because of the curious stares she was attracting from those walking the other way.
She was now approaching the exit of the park and Strike realised for the first time how close they were to Highgate Cemetery. The park abutted it and he could see glimpses of graves through the trees to his left. His target moved out of the park and turned left into the lane beyond, and as he gained on her, he could hear fragments of what she was saying, so distressed she appeared not to care who heard her.
‘I didn’t mean… I never threatened… why, though?… just excuses… working tonight… No, why, though?’
The person with whom she was talking had evidently hung up. She came to a halt, level with the imposing neo-gothic gatehouse that formed the entrance to the cemetery, and Strike slowed down too, once again pretending interest in his phone. Wiping her eyes childishly on her right forearm, the girl stood irresolute, looking towards the right-hand entrance to the cemetery, and he saw her again in profile and thought her white, sunken face with its too-prominent teeth and black eyes looked like a death’s head. The long dyed hair, the tattooed arm and the cheap black clothing all lent her a curious sense of fitness with the scene: she was modern, but she was gothic-Victorian, too, a child mourner in her long black skirt, staring towards the graves. Pretending to be texting, Strike snatched several photographs of her standing still, contemplating the graveyard, before she set off again.
He followed her for another twenty-five minutes, until she reached Junction Road, a long, busy street full of traffic. On she walked, past shops and offices, until at last she turned into Brookside Lane and disappeared through a side door that Strike could tell would lead to the upper rooms of an irregularly shaped corner shop. The windows looked dirty. A sign for a letting agent stood out between two of them.
Strike took pictures of the place on his phone, then turned away to look for a taxi. The end of his stump was now extremely sore and he thought he might prioritise getting a burger over going home to shower and change, in the only-too-likely event of Madeline’s chosen bar not offering much beyond spiced nuts.
It was ten minutes before he found a fast food restaurant. Sitting down with a grunt of relief at getting the weight off his prosthesis, he took a large bite of cheeseburger then tried for the umpteenth time to sign up for Drek’s Game. Just as had happened on every previous occasion, the little black animated heart appeared, smiling and shrugging, and told him to try again.
Strike took a second mouthful of cheeseburger, then switched to Twitter to see whether Anomie had had anything more to say.
The tweet appeared while Strike was eating his chips.
Anomie @AnomieGamemaster
If god meant us to feel sympathetic, why’d he make crying people look so fkn ugly.
5.14 pm 9 April 2015
23
And there is neither false nor true;
But in a hideous masquerade
All things dance on…
<Moderator Channel>
<9 April 2015 19.32>
<Present: Hartella, Fiendy1, Worm28>
Hartella: Has LordDrek been in?
Fiendy1: haven’t seen him, why?
Hartella: just wondered
Fiendy1: Anomie still not letting anyone new in?
Hartella: No
<Morehouse has joined the channel>
Morehouse: No Anomie?
Hartella: He was here half an hour ago then he disappeared
Morehouse: yeah. He was taking a phone call from me.
Fiendy1: wow, must be like having God’s phone number
Worm28: lol
Morehouse: LordDrek and Vilepechora been in?
Hartella: I haven’t seen either of them today. Why?