He spent most of Monday on surveillance of Toy Boy, handing over to Barclay in the late afternoon, then heading back to the office at four o’clock. Robin had been there all day, trying to sublimate in work the anxiety she felt about moving Will out of the safe haven of Pat’s house to visit Prudence that evening.
‘I still think Will and Flora could have FaceTimed,’ Robin said to Strike, when he joined her at the partners’ desk, coffee in hand.
‘Yeah, well, Prudence is a therapist, isn’t she? Wants the in-person touch.’
He glanced at Robin, who looked both tired and tense. Assuming this was due to her continuing fear of the church, he said,
‘They’d be stupider than I think they are to try and tail us after what I said to Wace on Friday, but if we spot anyone, we’ll pull over and confront them.’
Strike chose not to mention that if, as he half-suspected, Wace was playing mind games rather than genuinely attempting covert surveillance, the church leader might equally decide to ramp up harassment in retribution for their face-to-face chat at Olympia.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ Robin said. ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent certain, but I think Isaac Mills might be dead. Look: I found it an hour ago.’
She passed the printout of a small news item in the Telegraph dated January 2011 across the desk. It described an incident in which Isaac Mills, 38, had died in a head-on collision with a van which, unlike Mills, had been driving on the correct side of the road.
‘Right age,’ said Robin, ‘and wrong side of the road sounds like he was drunk or stoned.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike.
‘I’ll keep looking,’ said Robin, taking back the clipping, ‘because there are other Isaac Millses out there, but I’ve got a horrible feeling that was our man. Did you talk to Dev about taking Rosie Fernsby out for dinner, by the way?’
‘Did, yeah, he’s going to make a profile on Mingle Guru tonight. I had another thought about Rosie, actually. If that profile is hers, and she really has been travelling around India for the last few years, it makes sense that she hasn’t got a permanent base here. I wondered whether she might be housesitting while her mother’s in Canada.’
‘Nobody’s answered the landline in all the time I’ve tried. It just goes straight to voicemail.’
‘Even so, it wouldn’t be far out of our way, going through Richmond on the way back from Strawberry Hill. We could just knock on the door in Cedar Terrace and see what happens.’
Strike’s mobile rang. Expecting Lucy, he instead saw Midge’s number.
‘Everything all right?’
‘No,’ said Midge.
With a sense of foreboding, Strike switched the mobile to speakerphone and laid it down on the desk between him and Robin.
‘It’s not Tash’s fault,’ said Midge defensively, ‘OK? She hasn’t been able to get back to the annexe for the last couple of nights, so she seized a chance when she was coming back from a massage an hour ago.’
‘She was spotted?’ said Strike sharply.
‘Yeah,’ said Midge. ‘Some bloke who works there saw her tapping on the window.’
Strike’s and Robin’s eyes met. The latter, who feared Strike was about to explode, made a grimace intended to prevent any unhelpful outburst.
‘Obviously, Tash walked straight off,’ said Midge, ‘but the bad thing is—’
‘That’s not the bad thing?’ said Strike ominously.
‘Look, she’s done us a favour, Strike, and at least she’s found out Lin’s there!’
‘Midge, what else happened?’ said Robin, before Strike could retort.
‘Well, she had the note in the pocket of her robe, the one to show Lin, saying Will and Qing are out, and… and now she can’t find it. She thinks she might’ve taken the wrong robe when she left the massage room. Or, maybe, she’s dropped it.’
‘OK,’ said Robin, gesturing to Strike to withhold the stream of recriminations she knew he was bursting to deliver, ‘Midge, if she can pretend she’s lost a ring or something—’
‘She’s already gone back to the massage room to look, but she called me first because, obviously—’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Obviously.’
‘Let us know what happens,’ said Robin. ‘Call us.’
‘Will do,’ said Midge. She rang off.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ said Strike, seething. ‘What did I tell Tasha? Take no risks, be ultra-cautious, then she goes to that fucking window by daylight—’
‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘I know.’
‘We should never have put an amateur in there!’
‘It was the only way,’ said Robin. ‘We had to use someone they’d never realise had a connection to us. Now we’ve just got to hope she gets that note back.’
Strike got to his feet and began to pace.
‘If they’ve found that note, Zhou’s probably scrambling to pull another Jacob – hide Lin and come up with an alternative blonde, fast. Fuck – this isn’t good… I’m going to call Wardle.’
Strike did so. Robin listened as her partner laid out the problem to his best police contact. As she could have predicted, Wardle needed quite a lot of explanation and repetition before he fully grasped what Strike was telling him.
‘If Wardle finds it hard to believe, I can just imagine how regular officers are going to react,’ said Strike bitterly, having hung up. ‘I don’t think they’ll see it as a top priority, rescuing a girl who’s living at a luxury spa. What’s the time?’
‘Time to go,’ said Robin, shutting down her computer.
‘Are we giving Pat a lift home?’
‘No, she’s meeting her granddaughter. Dennis is going to look after Qing while Will’s with us.’
So Strike and Robin walked together towards the garage where Strike kept his BMW. It was a warm evening; a pleasant change from the intermittent drizzle of the last few days. They’d just reached the garage when Strike’s mobile rang again: Lucy.
‘Hi, what did the GP say?’ he asked.
‘He thinks Ted’s had a mini-stroke.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Strike, unlocking the car with his free hand.
‘They want to scan him. The earliest they can do is Friday.’
‘Right,’ said Strike, getting into the passenger’s seat while Robin took the wheel. ‘Well, if you like, I’ll go with him. You’re picking up all the slack here.’
‘Thanks, Stick,’ said Lucy. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘Thank Christ he was with you when it happened. Imagine if he’d been alone in St Mawes.’
‘I know,’ said Lucy.
‘I’ll take him for the scan, and afterwards we’ll talk plans, OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Lucy, sounding defeated. ‘OK. How are things with you?’
‘Busy,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll call you later.’
‘Everything all right?’ asked Robin, waiting until Strike had hung up until turning on the ignition.
‘No,’ said Strike, and as they set off up the road, he explained about Ted’s stroke, and his Alzheimer’s, and the burden Lucy was currently bearing, and the guilt he felt about not pulling his weight. In consequence, neither Strike nor Robin noticed the blue Ford Focus that pulled away from the kerb a hundred yards beyond the garage, as Robin accelerated.
The Ford’s speed was often adjusted, which varied the distance between it and the BMW, so that it was sometimes one, and sometimes as many as three cars behind them. Both detectives’ minds were so preoccupied with their separate, joint, general and specific anxieties that both failed to notice they were, again, being followed.