3
To be circumspect and not to forget one’s armour is the right way to security.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike arrived back in his attic flat in Denmark Street at eight that evening, with the gassy sensation champagne always gave him, feeling vaguely depressed. Usually he’d have grabbed a takeaway on the way home, but on leaving hospital after a three-week stay the previous year he’d been given strict instructions about weight loss, physiotherapy and giving up smoking. For the first time since his leg had been blown off in Afghanistan, he’d done as the doctors ordered.
Now, without much enthusiasm, he put vegetables in a newly purchased steamer, took a salmon fillet out of the fridge and measured out some wholegrain rice, all the time trying not to think about Robin Ellacott, and succeeding only in so far as he remained aware of how difficult it was not to think about her. He might have left hospital with many good resolutions, but he’d also been burdened with an intractable problem that couldn’t be solved by lifestyle changes: a problem that, in truth, he’d had far longer than he cared to admit, but which he’d finally faced only when lying in his hospital bed, watching Robin leave for her first date with Murphy.
For several years now, he’d told himself that an affair with his detective partner wasn’t worth risking his most important friendship for, or jeopardising the business they’d built together. If there were hardships and privations attached to a life lived resolutely alone in a small attic flat above his office, Strike had considered them a price well worth paying for independence and peace after the endless storms and heartache of his long, on-off relationship with Charlotte. Yet the shock of hearing that Robin was heading off for a date with Ryan Murphy had forced Strike to admit that the attraction he’d felt towards Robin from the moment she’d first taken off her coat in his office had slowly mutated against his will into something else, something he’d finally been forced to name. Love had arrived in a form he didn’t recognise, which was doubtless why he’d become aware of the danger too late to head it off.
For the first time since he’d met Robin, Strike had no interest in pursuing a separate sexual relationship as a distraction from and a sublimation of any inconvenient feelings he might have for his partner. The last time he’d sought solace with another woman, beautiful as she’d been, he’d ended up with a stiletto heel puncture on his leg and a sense of grim futility. He still didn’t know whether, in the event of Robin’s relationship with Murphy ending, as he devoutly hoped it would, he’d force a conversation he’d once have resisted to the utmost, with a view to ascertaining Robin’s own true feelings. The objections to an affair with her remained. On the other hand (‘It suits you!’ that prick Murphy had said, seeing Robin with a baby in her arms), he feared the business partnership might break up in any case, because Robin would decide marriage and children appealed more than a detective career. So here stood Cormoran Strike, slimmer, fitter, clearer of lung, alone in his attic, poking broccoli angrily with a wooden spoon, thinking about not thinking about Robin Ellacott.
The ringing of his mobile came as a welcome distraction. Taking salmon, rice and vegetables off the heat, he answered.
‘Awright, Bunsen?’ said a familiar voice.
‘Shanker,’ said Strike. ‘What’s up?’
The man on the phone was an old friend, though Strike would have been hard pressed to remember his real name. Strike’s mother, Leda, had scraped the motherless and incurably criminal sixteen-year-old Shanker off the street after he’d been stabbed and brought him home to their squat. Shanker had subsequently become a kind of stepbrother to Strike, and was probably the only human being who’d never seen any flaws in the incurably flighty, novelty-chasing Leda.
‘Need some ’elp,’ said Shanker.
‘Go on,’ said Strike.
‘Need to find a geezer.’
‘What for?’ said Strike.
‘Nah, it ain’t what you fink,’ said Shanker. ‘I ain’ gonna mess wiv ’im.’
‘Good,’ said Strike, taking a drag on the vape pen that continued to supply him with nicotine. ‘Who is he?’
‘Angel’s farver.’
‘Whose father?’
‘Angel,’ said Shanker, ‘me stepdaughter.’
‘Oh,’ said Strike, surprised. ‘You got married?’
‘No,’ said Shanker impatiently, ‘but I’m living wiv ’er mum, in’ I?’
‘What is it, child support?’
‘Nah,’ said Shanker. ‘We’ve just found out Angel’s got leukaemia.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike, startled. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘An’ she wants to see ’er real dad an’ we ain’ got no idea where ’e is. ’E’s a cunt,’ said Shanker, ‘just not my kind o’ cunt.’
Strike understood this, because Shanker’s contacts throughout the criminal world of London were extensive, and could have found a professional con with ease.
‘All right, give me a name and date of birth,’ said Strike, reaching for a pen and notebook. Shanker did so, then asked,
‘’Ow much?’
‘You can owe me one,’ said Strike.
‘Serious?’ said Shanker, sounding surprised. ‘Awright, then. Cheers, Bunsen.’
Always impatient of unnecessary phone talk, Shanker then hung up and Strike returned to his broccoli and salmon, sorry to hear about the ill child who wanted to see her father, but nevertheless reflecting that it would be useful to have a favour in hand with Shanker. The small tip-offs and bits of information Strike got from his old friend, which were sometimes useful when Strike needed bait for police contacts, had escalated sharply in price as Strike’s agency had become more successful.
Meal made, Strike carried his plate to the small kitchen table, but before he could sit down his mobile rang for a second time. The call had been forwarded from the office landline. He hesitated before picking it up, because he had a feeling he knew who he was about to hear.
‘Strike.’
‘Hey, Bluey,’ said a slightly slurred voice. There was a lot of background noise, including voices and music.
It was the second time Charlotte had phoned him in a week. As she no longer had his mobile number, the office line was the only way of contacting him.
‘I’m busy, Charlotte,’ he said, his voice cold.
‘I knew you’d say that… ’m’in a horrible club. You’d hate it…’
‘I’m busy,’ he repeated, and hung up. He expected her to call again, and she did. He let the call go to voicemail as he shrugged off his suit jacket. As he did so, he heard a rustle in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that shouldn’t have been there. Unfolding it, he saw a mobile number and the name ‘Bijou Watkins’. She must be pretty deft, he thought, to have slipped that into his pocket without him feeling it. He tore the piece of paper in half, binned it, and sat down to eat his meal.
4
Nine in the third place means:
When tempers flare up in the family,
Too great severity brings remorse.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
At eleven o’clock on the last Tuesday in February, Strike and Robin travelled together by taxi from their office to the Reform Club, a large, grey nineteenth-century building that stood on Pall Mall.
‘Sir Colin’s in the coffee room,’ said the tailcoated attendant who took their names at the door, and led them across the vast atrium. Robin, who’d thought she looked reasonably smart in black trousers and a sweater, which would also work for her surveillance job later, now felt slightly underdressed. White marble busts stood sentinel on square plinths and large oil paintings of eminent Whigs looked benignly down from gold frames, while columns of fluted stone rose from the tiled floor to the first-floor balcony, then up to a vaulted glass ceiling.
The coffee room, which had implied a small and cosy space, proved to be an equally grand dining room, with green, red and gold walls, long windows and gilt chandeliers with frosted glass globes. Only one table was occupied, and Robin recognised their potential client at once, because she’d looked him up the previous evening.
Sir Colin Edensor, who’d been born into a working-class family in Manchester, had enjoyed a distinguished career in the civil service, which had culminated in a knighthood. Now patron of several charities concerned with education and child welfare, he had a quiet reputation for intelligence and integrity. Over the past twelve months his name, which had hitherto appeared only in broadsheets, had found its way into the tabloids, because Edensor’s scathing remarks about the Universal Humanitarian Church had drawn fire from a wide range of people, including a famous actress, a respected author and sundry pop culture journalists, all of whom depicted Edensor as a rich man furious that his son was squandering his trust fund to help the poor.
Sir Colin’s wealth had come to him through his marriage to the daughter of a man who’d made many millions from a chain of clothing stores. The couple appeared to have been happy together given that the marriage had lasted forty years. Sally had died barely two months previously, leaving behind three sons, of whom William was the youngest by ten years. Robin assumed the two men sitting with Sir Colin were his elder sons.
‘Your guests, Sir Colin,’ said the attendant, without actually bowing, though his tone was hushed and deferential.
‘Good morning,’ said Sir Colin, smiling as he got to his feet and shook hands with the detectives in turn.
Their prospective client had a thick head of grey hair and the sort of face that engenders liking and trust. There were laughter lines on his face, his mouth was naturally upturned at the corners and the brown eyes behind his gold-rimmed bifocals were warm. His accent was still perceptibly Mancunian.