The Running Grave (Cormoran Strike, #7)

by Robert Galbraith

His one unfailing refuge and distraction in times of trouble, ever since he could remember, had been to detangle and unravel, to try and impose order on the chaotic world, to resolve mysteries, to scratch his persistent itch for truth.

He opened his damp eyes again to stare at the cross on the altar. He might not believe, but the cross meant something to him, nonetheless. It stood for Ted and Joan, for order and stability, but also for the unknowable and unresolvable, for the human craving for meaning in chaos, and for the hope of something beyond the world of pain and endless striving. Some mysteries were eternal and unresolvable by man, and there was relief in accepting that, in admitting it. Death, love, the endless complexity of human beings: only a fool would claim to fully understand any of them. And as he sat in this humble old church, with the round tower that lost its sinister aspect when seen up close, he looked back on the teenager who’d left Leda and her dangerous naivety only to fall for Charlotte, and her equally dangerous sophistication, and knew definitively, for the first time, that he was no longer the person who’d craved either of them. He forgave the teenager who’d pursued a destructive force because he thought he could tame it, and thereby right the universe, and make all comprehensible and safe. He wasn’t so different from Lucy, after all. They’d both set out to refashion their worlds, they’d just done it in very different ways. If he was lucky, he had half his life to live again, and it was time to give up things far more harmful than smoking and chips, time to admit to himself he should seek something new, as opposed to what was damaging but familiar. The kindly sheep-faced man ha...

Robin stood up and had taken a couple of steps towards the door when something strange happened. She suddenly knew – didn’t guess, or hope, but knew – that Strike had just arrived beside the blind spot at the perimeter fence. The conviction was so strong that it stopped her in her tracks. Then she turned slowly to face Emily again.

Nine in the fourth place means: Then the companion comes, And him you can trust. The I Ching or Book of Changes

She crashed her way into the wood, following the familiar path, leaping over nettles and roots, passing familiar trees – And in the BMW, Strike saw her coming. Throwing aside the night vision goggles and picking up the foot-long wire cutters, he left the car at a run. He’d got through three strands of barbed wire when Robin screamed, ‘They’re coming, they’re coming, help me—’ He reached over the wall and dragged her with him; her tracksuit bottoms tore on the remaining wire, but she was out onto the road.

As Strike turned off the engine, Robin undid her seat belt, half rose from her seat, threw her arms around him, buried her face in his shoulder and burst into tears. ‘Thank you.’ ‘’S all right,’ said Strike, putting his arms around her and speaking into her hair. ‘My job, innit… you’re out,’ he added quietly, ‘you’re OK now…’ ‘I know,’ sobbed Robin. ‘Sorry… sorry…’ Both were in very inconvenient positions in which to hug, especially as Strike still had his seat belt on, but neither let go for several long minutes. Strike gently rubbed Robin’s back, and she held him in a tight grip, occasionally apologising while his shirt collar grew wet. Instead of recoiling when he pressed his lips to the top of her head, she tightened her hold on him. ‘It’s all right,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s OK.’ ‘You don’t know,’ sobbed Robin, ‘you don’t know…’ ‘You can tell me later,’ said Strike. ‘There’s plenty of time.’ He didn’t want to let her go, but he’d dealt with enough traumatised people in the army – had indeed been one of those people himself, after the car in which he’d been travelling had been blown up, taking half his leg with it – to know that being asked to re-live calamity in its immediate aftermath, when what was really needed was physical comfort and kindness, meant a debrief ought to wait.

‘Strike,’ she said, with a shaky laugh, ‘you’re so thin.’ ‘I’m fucking thin?’

‘That’s Barclay,’ he said, reading the text. ‘He says “thank fuck.”’

‘That’s Midge,’ he said, and he read the text aloud. ‘“Thank fuck for that.”’ The phone buzzed a third time. ‘Shah. “Thank fuck.” What d’you say we get them all thesauruses for Christmas?’

‘Hang on,’ said Strike, as his phone buzzed yet again. ‘We’ve got an outlier. Pat says, “Is she really OK?”’

‘And Midge has been fucked off at me because I thought she and Tasha Mayo might be getting overfamiliar.’ ‘Strike!’ ‘Don’t bother, Pat’s already told me off. She knew another lesbian once, so it’s very much her area of expertise.’

Strike turned off all the lights and eased himself into bed, trying not to wake her, but when he’d finally settled his full weight onto the mattress, Robin stirred, and groped in the darkness for his hand. Finding it, she squeezed. ‘I knew you were there,’ she murmured drowsily, half-asleep. ‘I knew you were there.’ Strike said nothing, but continued to hold her hand until, five minutes later, she gave a long sigh, released him, and rolled over onto her side.

His mobile rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, saw Robin’s number and answered. ‘Can you talk?’ she said. ‘Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years.’

‘To tell you the truth, I’m not as humble as you are, Jonathan,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I don’t need to ask myself whether I’m up to the job, because I know I’m fucking great at it, so be warned: if you do anything to hurt either my partner or Rosie Fernsby, I will burn your church to the fucking ground.’

‘She was always so… unhappy.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I know.’ ‘But she wouldn’t ever… there was a – a darkness in her.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and she was in love with it. It’s dangerous to make a cult of your own unhappiness. Hard to get out, once you’ve been in there too long. You forget how.’ He drank some more of his rapidly diminishing pint before saying, ‘I once quoted Aeschylus at her. “Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” Didn’t go down well.’

‘Cormoran, I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Feel sorry for Amelia and her kids, not me,’ he said. ‘I was done. There’s nothing deader than dead love.’

‘Always a bit of delusion in love, isn’t there?’ said Strike, watching the vapour rise to the ceiling. ‘You fill in the blanks with your own imagination. Paint them exactly the way you want them to be. But I’m a detective… some fucking detective. If I’d stuck to hard facts – if I’d done that, even in the first twenty-four hours I knew her – I’d have walked and never looked back.’ ‘You were nineteen,’ said Robin. ‘Exactly the same age Will was, when he heard Jonathan Wace speak for the first time.’ ‘Ha! You think I was in a cult, do you?’ ‘No, but I’m saying… we’ve got to forgive who we were, when we didn’t know any better.

—she knew I was in love with you.’

Happiness is a choice that requires an effort at times, and it was well past time for him to make the effort.