The bottom picture on the left-hand side of the board was a drawing: Torment Town’s strange depiction of a fair-haired woman in glasses floating in a dark pool. Strike was still trying to find the true identity of Torment Town, who’d finally responded to his online message.
To Strike’s comment, Amazing pictures. Do you draw from imagination? the anonymous artist had written:
Thanks. Kind of.
Strike had replied:
You’re really talented. You should do a comic book. Horror.
To which Torment Town had responded,
Nobody would want to read that lol
Strike had then said,
You really don’t like the UHC, do you?
But to this, Torment Town had made no reply. Strike was afraid he’d come to the point too quickly and regretted, not for the first time, that he couldn’t set Robin to work on extracting confidences out of whoever had drawn these pictures. Robin was good at building trust online, as she’d proven when she’d persuaded a teenager to give her vital information in one of their previous cases.
Strike closed Pinterest and opened Facebook instead. Carrie Curtis Woods still hadn’t accepted his follower request.
With a sigh, he pushed himself reluctantly up from his chair, and carried his mug of tea and vape pen into the outer office, where Pat sat typing, e-cigarette clamped between her teeth as usual.
‘All right,’ Strike said, sitting down on the red sofa opposite Pat’s desk, ‘let’s hear these threats.’
Pat pressed a button on her desk phone, and Charlotte’s voice, slurred with drink as Strike had expected, filled the room.
‘’S me, pick up, you fucking coward. Pick up…’
A few moments’ silence, then Charlotte’s voice came almost in a shout.
‘OK, then, I’ll leave a fucking message for your precious fucking Robin to hear when she picks up your messages, before giving you your morning blow job. I was there when your leg got blown off, even though we were split up, I stayed with you an’ I visit’d you ev’ry single day, an’ I gave you a place to stay when your whole shitty family gave up on you, and ev’ryone around me saying, “You know he’s on the make” an’ “What’re you doing, he’s an abusive shit?” an’ I wouldn’t listen, even after ev’rything you’d done to me, I was there for you, an’ now when I need a friend you can’t even fucking meet me fr’a coffee when I’ve got fucking cancer, you fucking leech, you user, an’ I’m still protecting you to the fucking press even though I could tell them things that’d fucking finish you, I could finish you if I told them, and why should I be fucking loyal wh—’
A loud beep cut the message off. Pat’s expression was impassive. There was a click, then a second message began.
‘Pick up. Fucking pick up, you cowardly bastard… after everything you did to me, you expect me to defend you to the press. You walked out after I miscarried, you fucking threw me across that fucking boat, you fucked every girl that moved when we were together, does precious Robin know what she’s letting hersel—’
This time there was no beep: Pat had slammed her hand onto a button on the phone, silencing voicemail. Littlejohn’s silhouette had appeared outside the frosted glass in the door onto the stairwell. The door opened.
‘Morning,’ said Strike.
‘Morning,’ said Littlejohn, looking down at Strike through his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Need to file my report on Toy Boy.’
Strike watched in silence as Littlejohn retrieved the file from the drawer and added a couple of sheets of notes. Pat had begun typing again, e-cigarette waggling between her teeth, ignoring both men. When Littlejohn had replaced the file in the drawer, he turned to Strike and for the first time in their acquaintance, initiated conversation.
‘Think you should know, I might be being followed.’
‘Followed?’ repeated Strike, eyebrows raised.
‘Yeah. Pretty sure I’ve seen the same guy watching me, three days apart.’
‘Any reason someone would be watching you?’
‘No,’ said Littlejohn, with a trace of defiance.
‘Nothing you’re not telling me?’
‘Like what?’ said Littlejohn.
‘Wife not planning a divorce? Creditors trying to track you down?’
‘’Course not,’ said Littlejohn. ‘I thought it might be something to do with this place.’
‘What, the agency?’ said Strike.
‘Yeah… made a few enemies along the way, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, after a sip of tea, ‘but they’re nearly all in jail.’
‘You tangled with terrorists last year,’ said Littlejohn.
‘What did the person watching you look like?’ asked Strike.
‘Skinny black guy.’
‘Probably not a neo-Nazi, then,’ said Strike, making a mental note to tell Shanker the skinny black guy would need replacing.
‘Could be press,’ said Littlejohn. ‘That Private Eye story about you.’
‘Think they’ve mistaken you for me, do you?’
‘No,’ said Littlejohn.
‘Well, if you want to hand in your notice because you’re scared of—’
‘I’m not scared,’ said Littlejohn curtly. ‘Just thought you ought to know.’
When Strike didn’t respond, Littlejohn said,
‘Maybe I made a mistake.’
‘No, it’s good you’re keeping your eyes open,’ said Strike insincerely. ‘Let me know if you see the guy again.’
‘Will do.’
Littlejohn left the office without another word, casting a sideways look at Pat as he passed her. The office manager continued to stare determinedly at her monitor. Once Littlejohn’s footsteps had died away, Strike pointed at the phone.
‘Is there much more of that?’
‘She called again,’ said Pat, ‘but it’s more of the same. Threatening to go to the press with all her made-up nonsense.’
‘How d’you know it’s made-up nonsense?’ said Strike perversely.
‘You never assaulted her, I know that.’
‘You don’t know anything of the bloody sort,’ said Strike irritably, getting up from the sofa to fetch a banana from the kitchen area, instead of the chocolate biscuit he really fancied.
‘You might be a grumpy sod,’ said Pat, scowling, ‘but I can’t see you knocking a woman around.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Strike. ‘Be sure and tell the Mail that when they come calling – and delete those messages.’
Well aware that he was venting his anger on the office manager, he forced himself to say,
‘You’re right: I never threw her across a boat and I never did any of the other stuff she’s shouting about, either.’
‘She doesn’t like Robin,’ said Pat, looking up at him, her dark eyes shrewd behind the lenses of her reading glasses. ‘Jealous.’
‘There’s nothing—’
‘I know that,’ said Pat. ‘She’s with Ryan, isn’t she?’
Strike took a moody bite of banana.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Pat.
‘Nothing,’ said Strike, his mouth full. ‘I don’t negotiate with terrorists.’
‘Hm,’ said Pat. She took a deep drag on her e-cigarette then spoke through a cloud of vapour. ‘You can’t trust a drinker. Never know what they might do when the brakes are off.’
‘I’m not going to be held over a barrel for the rest of my life,’ said Strike. ‘She had sixteen fucking years from me. That’s enough.’