‘Ah,’ said Ryan Murphy, who sounded nearly as uncomfortable as Robin felt. ‘Well – no worries. Er – enjoy your – yeah, happy hunting. Bye.’
‘Bye,’ said Robin, her voice higher than usual, and she turned off the call.
She could feel her face burning. Onwards she walked, a little faster now, her only objectives to put more distance between herself and Cormoran Strike, and then to find a dark corner in which she could savour to the full her realisation that she was the most romantically inept woman in London.
27
He looks for war, his heart is ready,
His thoughts are bitter, he will not bow.
A mere half an hour after they’d last spoken, Shah called Strike to say that Montgomery and his friends were in Opium, a dim sum parlour in Chinatown and a short walk from the office. Strike’s gastric symptoms had been eased by a visit to the bathroom but his stump was still complaining about carrying his weight. Ignoring the pain, he pulled his coat back on, locked up the office and set out to join Shah, once again navigating his way across the channels still dug in the roads.
Montgomery’s party was on the third floor (because of course they bloody are, thought Strike, his hamstring screaming in protest all the way upstairs), sitting on steel-legged stools around a wooden table where a bartender was mixing cocktails in front of them. All the meticulously groomed young men in the group looked to Strike like versions of Montgomery, their beards neatly trimmed, their T-shirts tight, while the young women were all very heavily made-up, their hair dyed colours not found in nature: purple-grey, vermillion, bluebell. Everyone in the group had their phones out, taking pictures of the cocktails, the shelves of bottles behind the bartender and the picture of Chairman Mao painted on a cabinet. The exposed brick and bare floorboards reminded Strike of the bars he went to with Madeline, all of which were starting to become a blur.
Shah was sitting a short distance away from the group in a side room, Montgomery in his eyeline.
‘Anomie just tweeted,’ he informed Strike as the latter sat down opposite him. ‘And Montgomery was typing on his phone at the time.’
‘OK, keep an eye on him while I’m talking,’ said Strike. ‘I need another job done.’
While he outlined the problem of Jago Ross, Shah stared, apparently absent-mindedly, at the noisy group at the bartender’s table. When Strike had finished talking, Shah looked directly at him for the first time.
‘So… you want me to get something on your ex’s husband.’
Shah had an odd look on his face that Strike had never seen there before: blank, shut down.
‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll be completely fucked if he names me in the divorce. I need bargaining power.’
Shah glanced back at Montgomery’s table, then said,
‘Why’m I getting this job?’
‘Well, I can’t bloody do it, can I? He knows me. He’s a prick but he’s not an idiot. I don’t want to risk him recognising Robin either. She was in the paper last year and so was Barclay. I want clean, new faces on the job, people he can’t associate with me. It’ll have to be you and Midge.’
Shah sipped his drink, glanced towards Montgomery again, but said nothing.
‘Is there a problem?’ Strike asked, annoyed.
‘This is a job on the books, is it?’ Shah asked. ‘Or are we talking cash in hand and nothing on the record?’
‘Why d’you ask?’
‘I’m asking,’ said Shah, watching the group rather than looking at Strike, ‘because Patterson had a sideline in using his agency to fuck over people he had personal grudges against. All done cash in hand, off the record, but sometimes he “forgot” to pay. I was usually picked to do that kind of stuff.’
‘This isn’t a personal grudge,’ said Strike. ‘I’m well rid of his wife. He’s doing this to try and fuck up my business. If he wasn’t trying to make me part of their mess, I wouldn’t give a shit. I’ll put it through the books and I’ll pay like any other client.’
Strike hadn’t thought as far as how he would tell Robin what he was up to, but now, he supposed, he had little choice.
‘I’m well aware we haven’t really got capacity for another case right now,’ Strike added. ‘I wouldn’t be doing this if I had a choice.’
‘OK, sorry. I just wanted to be clear about what’s going on,’ said Shah. ‘You got the guy’s details?’
‘I’ll email you everything when I get back to the office. He’s on his second marriage. I’ll try and get details of his first wife as well, and I’ll copy Midge in.’
‘Right you are,’ said Shah. ‘I’ll get started as soon as you’ve sent it.’
Strike thanked his subcontractor and left the bar, his limp more pronounced with every step.
28
Away, away with loving then,
With hoping and believing;
For what should follow,
But grieving, grieving?
It was almost seven o’clock, so Robin, who’d been sitting in a corner of a Soho café, alternating between feelings of humiliation and wretchedness, set out at last for Bob Bob Ricard, nearing the entrance just as fair-haired, bespectacled Ilsa got out of a cab in front of her.
They hugged. Ilsa looked tired but pleased to see Robin, who craved both a drink and the opportunity to unburden herself. The question was how much she wanted to share with Ilsa, whose attempts at matchmaking between Robin and Strike had previously caused Robin some embarrassment.
They were shown downstairs into a basement room that combined high Victorian opulence with the atmosphere of a nightclub: dramatically lit, with red and gold decor, a floor decorated like a backgammon board, leather banquettes and – she saw it as soon as they slid into their booth – a ‘Push for Champagne’ button on the wall beside them.
‘You all right?’ said Ilsa, looking concerned.
‘Think I might need a drink before I tell you,’ said Robin.
‘Well, then, press the button – that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’
‘Tell me about your case,’ said Robin.
‘I can’t believe we got her off,’ said Ilsa, and for the short time it took for a pink-waistcoated waiter to bring them champagne, she told Robin about the teenage girl who’d stood trial for helping plan a terrorist attack.
‘… so the other four were all found guilty,’ Ilsa finished, just as the waiter set two glasses of champagne down in front of them, ‘and so they bloody well should have been, but I thought, she’s finished. I could hear her mother sobbing behind us. But thank Christ the judge believed the psychologist. Fifteen, profoundly autistic and convinced she’d found real friends online… of course she fell for it. And she was the one they were going to strap the bloody explosives to. Bastards. Right, tell me what’s up with you.’
‘First things first: congratulations on winning,’ said Robin, clinking her glass against Ilsa’s, then drinking some champagne. ‘So, I just got asked out by a guy from CID, and I asked if I could bring Strike along on the date.’
‘You what?’
By the end of Robin’s explanation, Ilsa was laughing so much people were turning to look at her.