‘Fine,’ said Strike, while Robin lowered her voice in the inner office, and his feeling of irritation increased. ‘What’s up?’
‘Look, I hope you don’t think I’m interfering.’
‘Tell me what you’ve got to say, then I’ll tell you if you’re interfering,’ said Strike, without bothering to sound too friendly.
‘Well, you’re about to get a call from Bijou.’
‘Which you know, because—?’
‘Because she just told me. Actually, she told me, and three other people I was having a conversation with.’
‘And?’
‘She says you haven’t answered her texts, so—’
‘You’ve called to tell me off for not answering texts?’
‘God, no, the reverse!’
In the inner office, Robin was laughing at something else Ryan had said. The man simply couldn’t be that fucking funny.
‘Go on,’ Strike said to Ilsa, striding towards the inner door and closing it rather more firmly than was necessary. ‘Say your piece.’
‘Corm,’ said Ilsa quietly, and he could tell she was trying not to be overheard by colleagues, ‘she’s crazy. She’s already told—’
‘You’ve called to give me unsolicited advice on my love life, is that right?’
Robin, who’d just finished her call with Ryan, got to her feet and opened the door in time to hear Strike say,
‘—no, I don’t. So, yeah, don’t interfere.’
He hung up.
‘Who was that?’ said Robin, surprised.
‘Ilsa,’ said Strike curtly, walking back past her and sitting back down at the partners’ desk.
Robin, who suspected she knew what Ilsa had just called about, settled back into her chair without saying anything. Noticing this unusual lack of curiosity, Strike made the correct deduction that Ilsa and Robin had already discussed his night with Bijou.
‘Did you know Ilsa was planning to tell me how to conduct my private life?’
‘What?’ said Robin, startled by both question and tone. ‘No!’
‘Really?’ said Strike.
‘Yes, really!’ said Robin, which was true: she might have told Ilsa to talk to Strike, but she hadn’t known she was going to do it.
Strike’s mobile now rang for a second time. He hadn’t bothered to save Bijou’s number to his contacts, but, certain who he was about to hear, he answered.
‘Hi, stranger,’ said her unmistakeably loud, husky voice.
‘Hi,’ said Strike. ‘How’re you?’
Robin got up and walked into the next room, on the pretext of fetching more coffee. Behind her, she heard Strike say,
‘Yeah, sorry about that, been busy.’
As it was Robin’s determined habit these days not to think about her partner in any terms other than those of friendship and work, she chose to believe the mingled feelings of annoyance and hurt now possessing her were caused by Strike’s irritability and the near slamming of the office door, while she’d been talking to Ryan. It was entirely his business if he wanted to sleep with that vile woman again, and more fool him if he didn’t realise she was after him for the fortune he didn’t possess, or the baby he didn’t want.
‘Yeah, OK,’ she heard Strike say. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Making a determined effort to look neutral, Robin returned to the partners’ desk with fresh coffee, ignoring her partner’s air of truculent defiance.
16
The line at the beginning has good fortune, the second is favourable; this is due to the time.
The third line bears an augury of misfortune, the fifth of illness…
The I Ching or Book of Changes
For the next couple of days, Strike and Robin communicated only by matter-of-fact texts, with neither jokes nor extraneous chat. Robin was more annoyed with herself for dwelling on the door slamming and the accusation that she’d been gossiping with Ilsa behind her partner’s back than she was at Strike for doing either of these two things.
Strike, who knew he’d behaved unreasonably, made no apology. However, a nagging sense of self-recrimination was added to his irritation at Ilsa, and both were intensified by his second date with Bijou.
He’d known he was making a mistake within five minutes of meeting her again. While she’d roared with laughter at her own anecdotes and talked loudly about top QCs who fancied her, he’d sat in near silence, asking himself what the hell he was playing at. Determined at least to get what he’d come for, he left her flat a few hours later with a faint feeling of self-disgust and a strong desire never to set eyes on her again. The only small consolation was that his hamstring hadn’t suffered this time, because he’d indicated a preference for being horizontal while having sex.
While it was hardly the first time Strike had slept with a woman he wasn’t in love with, never before had he screwed someone he actively disliked. The whole episode, which he now considered firmly closed, had intensified rather than alleviated his low mood, forcing him back up against his feelings for Robin.
Little did Strike know that Robin and Murphy’s relationship had suffered its first serious blow, a fact that Robin had no intention whatsoever of sharing with her business partner.
The row happened on Wednesday evening in a bar near Piccadilly Circus. Robin, who was due to leave for Coventry at five o’clock the following morning, hadn’t really fancied a mid-week trip to the cinema in the first place. However, as Murphy had already bought the tickets, she felt she couldn’t object. He seemed determined not to slide into a pattern whereby they merely met at each other’s flats for food and sex. Robin guessed this was due to a fear of taking her for granted or getting into a rut, which she’d deduced, from oblique comments, had been a complaint of his ex-wife’s.
The trigger for their argument was a casual remark of Robin’s about her planned stay at Chapman Farm. It then became clear that Murphy was labouring under a misapprehension. He’d thought she’d only be gone for seven days if she managed to be recruited, and was shocked to discover that, in reality, she’d committed to an open-ended undercover job that might last several weeks. Murphy was nettled that Robin hadn’t explained the situation fully, while Robin was irate at the fact he hadn’t listened properly. It might not be Murphy’s fault that he was bringing back unpleasant memories of her ex-husband’s assumed right to dictate the limits of her professional commitment, but the comparison was unavoidable, given that Murphy seemed to think Strike had pressured Robin into doing this onerous job, and she hadn’t been assertive enough to refuse.
‘I happen to want to do it,’ Robin told Murphy, speaking in an angry whisper, because the bar was crowded. The moment they should have left for the cinema had slid past twenty minutes previously, unnoticed. ‘I volunteered because I know I’m the best person for the job – and for your information, Strike’s been actively trying to persuade me out of it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it might take so long,’ said Robin, lying by omission.
‘And he’s going to miss you, is that what you’re saying?’
‘You know what, Ryan? Sod off.’
Indifferent to the curious looks of a group of girls standing nearby, who’d been casting the handsome Murphy sidelong glances, Robin dragged her coat back on.
‘I’m going home. I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to drive to Coventry, anyway.’
‘Robin—’
But she was already striding towards the door.
Murphy caught up with her a hundred yards down the road. His apology, which was fulsome, was made within sight of the cupid-topped Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain where her ex-husband had proposed, which did nothing to dispel Robin’s sense of déjà vu. However, as Murphy gallantly took all the blame on himself, Robin felt she had no choice but to relent. Given that Hail, Caesar! was already half over, they went instead for a cheap Italian meal and parted, at least superficially, on good terms.
Nevertheless, Robin’s mood remained low as she set off north in her old Land Rover the following morning. Yet again, she’d been forced to face the difficulty of reconciling any kind of normal personal life with her chosen line of work. She’d thought it might be easier with Ryan, given his profession, but here she was again, justifying commitments she knew he wouldn’t have given a second thought to, had he been the one making them.
Her journey up the M1 was uneventful and therefore offered few distractions from her unsatisfactory musings. However, as she approached Newport Pagnell service station, where she’d been planning to stop for a coffee, Ilsa called. The Land Rover didn’t have Bluetooth, so Robin waited until she was in Starbucks before ringing Ilsa back.
‘Hi,’ she said, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt, ‘what’s up?’
‘Nothing, really,’ said Ilsa. ‘Just wondered whether Corm’s said anything to you.’
‘About Bijou?’ said Robin, who couldn’t be bothered to pretend she didn’t know what Ilsa was talking about. ‘Other than accusing me of talking to you behind his back, no.’
‘Oh God,’ groaned Ilsa. ‘I’m sorry. I was only trying to warn him—’
‘I know,’ sighed Robin, ‘but you know what he’s like.’
‘Nick says I should apologise, which is nice bloody solidarity from my husband, I must say. I’d like to see Nick’s face if Bijou gets herself knocked up on purpose. I don’t s’pose you know—?’
‘Ilsa,’ said Robin, cutting across her friend, ‘if you’re about to ask me whether I quiz Strike on his contraceptive habits—’
‘You realise she told me – with five other people within earshot, incidentally – that she took a used condom out of the bin, while she was having an affair with that married QC, and inserted it inside herself?’
‘Jesus,’ said Robin, startled, and very much wishing she hadn’t been given this information, ‘well, I – I suppose that’s Strike’s lookout, isn’t it?’
‘I was trying to be a good friend,’ said Ilsa, sounding frustrated. ‘However much of a dickhead he is, I don’t want him paying child support to bloody Bijou Watkins for the next eighteen years. She’d make a nightmarish mother, nearly as bad as Charlotte Campbell.’