Strike, who very much wanted to hear Robin’s new information, gathered from her silence that she considered it inadvisable to dredge up everything that had happened in the consulting room with Will present. The latter looked exhausted and troubled.
‘Have you heard from Midge?’ Robin asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘nothing new.’
Robin’s heart sank. She could tell from Strike’s tone that ‘nothing new’ meant ‘nothing good’, but in deference to Will’s feelings, she forwent further questions.
They crossed Twickenham Bridge with its bronze lamps and balustrades, the Thames glinting, gunmetal grey, below, and Strike wound down the window to vape. As he did so, he glanced in the wing mirror. A blue Ford Focus was following them. He watched it for a few seconds, then said,
‘There’s—’
‘A car following us, with dodgy number plates,’ said Robin. ‘I know.’
She’d just spotted it. The plates were fake and illegal, the kind that could be ordered easily online. The car had been moving steadily closer since they’d moved into Richmond.
‘Shit,’ said Robin, ‘I think I saw it on the way to Prudence’s, but it was hanging back. Shit,’ she added, looking into the rear-view mirror, ‘is the driver—?’
‘Wearing a balaclava, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘But I don’t think it’s the Franks.’
Both remembered Strike’s bullish assertion earlier that they’d stop and confront anyone who seemed to be tailing them. Each, watching the car, knew this would be exceptionally unwise.
‘Will,’ said Robin, ‘duck down, please, right down. And hold on – you too,’ she told Strike.
Without indicating, Robin accelerated and took a hard right. The Ford’s driver was caught off guard; they swerved into the middle of the road, almost colliding with oncoming traffic as Robin sped off, first through a car park, then down a narrow residential road.
‘The fuck did you know you’d be able to get out the other side of the car park?’ said Strike, who was holding on as best he could. Robin was twenty miles over the speed limit.
‘Been here before,’ said Robin, who, again failing to indicate, now turned left onto a wider road. ‘I was following that cheating accountant. Where are they?’
‘Catching up,’ said Strike, turning to look. ‘Just hit two parked cars.’
Robin slammed her foot on the accelerator. Two pedestrians crossing the road had to sprint to get out of her way.
‘Shit,’ she shouted again, as it became clear that they were about to rejoin the A316, going back the way they’d come.
‘Doesn’t matter, just go—’
Robin took the corner at such speed she narrowly missed the central barrier.
‘Will,’ she said, ‘keep down, for God’s sake, I—’
The rear window and windscreen shattered. The bullet had passed so close to Strike’s head he’d felt its heat: with blank whiteness where there’d been glass, Robin was driving blind.
‘Punch it out!’ she shouted at Strike, who took off his seat belt to oblige. A second loud bang: they heard the bullet hit the boot. Strike was thumping broken glass out of the windscreen to give Robin visibility; fragments showered down upon both of them.
A third shot: this time wide.
‘Hold on!’ Robin said again, and she skidded around the turn into the other lane, making it by inches, causing Strike to smash his face into the intact side window.
‘Sorry, sorry—’
‘Fuck that, GO!’
The passing bullet had flooded Strike’s brain with white-hot panic; he had the irrational conviction that the car was about to explode. Craning around in his seat, he saw the Ford hit the barrier at speed.
‘That’s fucked them – no – shit—’
The crash hadn’t been disabling. The Ford was reversing, trying to make the turn.
‘Go, GO!’
As Robin slammed her foot to the floor, she saw a flashing blue light on the other side of the road.
‘Where’s the Ford? Where’s the Ford?’
‘Can’t see—’
‘What are you going that way for?’ Robin yelled at the passing police car, which was going in the opposite direction. ‘Hold on—’
She steered a hard left at speed into another narrow street.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Strike, whose face had hit what remained of the windscreen, and who couldn’t believe she’d made the turn.
‘And again!’ said Robin, the BMW tipping slightly as she took a right.
‘They’ve gone,’ said Strike, looking at the wing mirror and as he wiped away the blood trickling down his face. ‘Slow down – you’ve lost them… fuck.’
Robin decelerated. She turned another corner, then steered into a parking space and braked, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly she had to make a conscious effort to let go. They could hear sirens in the distance.
‘You all right, Will?’ asked Strike, looking back at the young man now lying in the dark footwell, covered in glass.
‘Yeah,’ said Will faintly.
A group of young men were walking up the dark street towards them.
‘You’ve got a crack in your windscreen, love,’ said one of them, to hearty guffaws from his mates.
‘You all right?’ Strike asked Robin.
‘Better than you,’ she answered, looking at the cut on his face.
‘Windscreen, not bullet,’ said Strike, drawing out his mobile and keying in 999.
‘D’you think they got him?’ Robin asked, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the sirens.
‘We’ll find out soon enough. Police,’ he told the operator.
119
Nine in the fifth place means:
Resolute conduct.
Perseverance with awareness of danger.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
‘This is the fifth time we’ve spoken to the police about the UHC and suspicious activity around our office,’ said Strike. ‘I appreciate that you don’t have all that information immediately to hand, I know I’m giving you a lot of back story you might think is irrelevant, but I’m not going to lie: I’d appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot.’
It was two o’clock in the morning. It had taken an hour for Strike’s heart rate to slow to an appropriate rate for a stationary forty-one-year-old male. He was still sitting in the small police interview room he’d been taken to upon arrival at the local station. Having been asked whether he knew why someone might want to shoot him, Strike had given a full account of the agency’s current investigation into the UHC, advised his interrogator to look up Kevin Pirbright’s murder, explained that a gun-toting intruder had tried to break into their office a week previously and informed the officer this was the second time he and Robin had been tailed in a car in the last couple of weeks.
The sheer scale of Strike’s story seemed to aggravate PC Bowers, a long-necked man with an adenoidal voice. As Bowers became more openly sceptical and incredulous (‘A church has got it in for you?’) Strike had been provoked into open irritability. Aside from everything else, he was now exceptionally hungry. A request for food had led to the production of three plain biscuits and a cup of milky tea, and given that he was the victim of the shooting rather than a suspect, Strike felt he was owed a little more consideration.
Robin, meanwhile, was dealing with a different kind of problem. She’d finished giving her statement to a perfectly friendly and competent female officer, but had declined a lift home, instead insisting that Will be driven back to Pat’s. Having seen Will into the police car, Robin returned to the waiting room and, with a sense of dread but knowing she had no choice, called Murphy to tell him what had happened.