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“You didn’t have to be so dramatic,” Robin said, smiling up into his swollen face when at last he was standing in front of her. He grinned back, painful though it was: the two-hundred-mile journey he had undertaken so recklessly had been worth it, after all, to see her smile at him like that. “Bursting into church. You could have just called.”
“Hi, I’m Jenny, Stephen’s wife,” said the broad-shouldered brunette on Stephen’s other side. “You look as though you could use this.” She passed an untouched pint across Stephen’s plate. Strike was so grateful he could have kissed her.
again, Robin’s eyes returned to Strike’s back. He was scoffing petits fours and talking to Stephen. She was glad she had put him beside Stephen. She had always thought they would get on.
Her therapist had been unhappy that she was terminating treatment. “We recommend a full course,” she had said. “I know,” Robin replied, “but, well, I’m sorry, I think this has done me as much good as it’s going to.” The therapist’s smile had been chilly.
She felt justified in not hurrying home to do more unpacking, but to buy herself a Cornetto and enjoy it as she wandered through the sun-drenched streets of her new area. Chasing her own cheerfulness like a butterfly, because she was afraid it might escape, she turned up a quieter street, forcing herself to concentrate, to take in the unfamiliar scene.
“Who are you representing?” Strike had already taken a swift inventory of the capitalized words visible on the leaflets clutched against the other man’s chest: DISSENT—DISOBEDIENCE—DISRUPTION and, rather incongruously, ALLOTMENTS. There was also a crude cartoon of five obese businessmen blowing cigar smoke to form the Olympic rings.
Come worship our glorious medalists—a shiny gold for everyone who passes over a big enough bribe with a pot of someone else’s piss!
“We’re supposed to get excited about the public schoolboys and girls who got to practice sports while the rest of us were having our playing fields sold off for cash! Sycophancy should be our national Olympic sport! We deify people who’ve had millions invested in them because they can ride a bike, when they’ve sold themselves as fig leaves for all the planet-raping, tax-dodging bastards who are queuing up to get their names on the barriers—barriers shutting working people off their own land!”
He caught sight of her, holding the green dress against herself. “I thought you were wearing the gray one?” Their eyes met in the mirror. Bare-chested, tanned and handsome, Matthew’s features were so symmetrical that his reflection was almost identical to his real appearance. “I think it makes me look pale,” said Robin. “I prefer the gray one,” he said. “I like you pale.” She forced a smile. “All right,” she said. “I’ll wear the gray.”
“Have you seen our betting book?” Strike turned the pages of the heavy, leather-bound tome, where long ago wagers had been recorded. In a gigantic scrawl dating back to the seventies, he read: “Mrs. Thatcher to form the next government. Bet: one lobster dinner, the lobster to be larger than a man’s erect cock.” He was grinning over this when a bell rang overhead.
The allegiance he had given the army, he had transferred to a future with Charlotte. “Good move,” his old friend Dave Polworth had said without missing a beat, when Strike told him of the engagement. “Shame to waste all that combat training. Slightly increased risk of getting killed, though, mate.”
Here he found another lengthy article by Jimmy, arguing for the dissolution of the “apartheid state” of Israel and the defeat of the “Zionist lobby” which had a stranglehold on the Western capitalist establishment. Strike noted that Jasper Chiswell was among the “Western Political Elite” listed at the bottom of this article as a “publicly declared Zionist.”
Then a man’s growl, almost theatrically menacing, filled the quiet office: “They say they piss themselves as they die, Chiswell, is that true? Forty grand, or I’ll find out how much the papers will pay.”
Not a fan of Plato, Mr. Mallik? Catullus more up your street, I expect. He produced some fine poetry about men of your habits. Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, eh? Poem 16, look it up, you’ll enjoy it.
I will bite you and crush you, Aurelius, the pathetic and the scoundrel of Fury.
“It was a gift,” he was saying distinctly into the receiver, “from my eldest son. Twenty-four-karat gold, inscribed Nec Aspera Terrent. Bloody hell’s bells!” he roared suddenly, and Robin saw the heads of the bright young people just outside the office turning towards Chiswell.
Nor Do Harsh Things Frighten You
Strike saw for the first time the boy’s resemblance to his grandmother, Strike’s own mother, Leda. He had the same very dark hair, pale skin and finely drawn mouth. He would, in fact, have made a beautiful girl, but Leda’s son knew what puberty was about to do to the boy’s jaw and neck… if he lived. Course he’s going to bloody live. The nurse said— He’s in intensive fucking care. They don’t put you in here for hiccups.
With an almighty effort he controlled himself and cleared his throat. “… sorry, Jack, your mum wouldn’t like me swearing in your ear… it’s Uncle Cormoran here, by the way, if you didn’t… anyway, Mum and Dad are on their way back, OK? And I’ll be with you until they—” He stopped mid-sentence. Robin was framed in the distant doorway of the ward.
It was a glorious thing, to be given hope, when all had seemed lost.
“Unlikely as it might seem, Kinvara genuinely fell for Dad, I could tell. She could have done a damn sight better if it was money she was after. He’s skint.”
“Cormoran?” Robin called through the door. “Everything OK?” “No, it’s fucking not!” He opened the office door. In one part of his brain, he registered that Robin was wearing the green dress he had bought her two years ago, as a thank you for helping him catch their first killer. She looked stunning.
“What’s all this about?” Kinvara said, who had marched around the rear of the Mercedes to address Strike. “What’s going on? What does my husband need a private detective for?” “Will you be quiet, you stupid, stupid bitch?”
“We’re about to get sacked, aren’t we?” whispered Robin. “I’d say it’s odds on,” said Strike, who, now that he was on his feet, was in considerable pain.
as she moved away from him, towards the grand staircase, he called after her: “Nice dress, by the way.”
Before he could move away from her vicinity, she turned around and looked straight into his eyes. Color flooded her face, which as he knew was normally cameo pale. She was heavily pregnant. Her condition had not touched her anywhere but the swollen belly. She was as fine-boned as ever in face and limbs. Less adorned than any other woman in the room, she was easily the most beautiful. For a few seconds they contemplated each other, then she took a few tentative steps forwards, the color ebbing from her cheeks as fast as it had come. “Corm?” “Hello, Charlotte.”
As he said it, he caught a flash of green over Charlotte’s shoulder. Robin, who was now talking brightly to the mousy woman in purple brocade who had finally escaped Geraint. “Pretty,” said Charlotte, who had looked to see what had caught his attention. She had always had a preternatural ability to detect the slightest flicker of interest towards other women.
“Did you watch the opening ceremony?” she asked politely, busy with teapot and strainer. “I did, yeah,” said Strike. “Great, wasn’t it?” “Well, I liked the first part,” said Izzy, “all the industrial revolution bit, but I thought it went, well, a bit PC after that. I’m not sure foreigners will really get why we were talking about the National Health Service, and I must say, I could have done without all the rap music.
Strike, who had dealt with several military suicides, knew that survivors were nearly always left with a particularly noxious form of grief, a poisoned wound that festered even beyond that of those whose relatives had been dispatched by enemy bullets.
Strike reflected, not for the first time, that Robin was the only woman he had ever met who had shown no interest in improving him.
I don’t see any of my family, actually. They don’t like my partner. Or my politics.” She smoothed out the Hezbollah T-shirt and showed Robin. “What, are they Tories?” asked Robin. “Might as well be,” said Flick. “They loved bloody Blair.”
he wondered whether Robin’s husband, who had previously deleted her call history without her knowledge, knew her current passcode. These small matters of trust were often powerful indicators of the strength of a relationship.
Jasper always said, ‘Tory faithful likes bastards or buffoons,’ and that he was neither one nor the other.
“You didn’t love me enough—” “Don’t you dare fucking blame me,” he said, in spite of himself. Nobody else did this to him: nobody even came close. “The end—that was all you.” “You wouldn’t compromise—” “Oh, I compromised. I came to live with you, like you wanted—”
“You wanted to stop me wanting anything that wasn’t you. That’d be the proof I loved you, if I gave up the army, the agency, Dave Polworth, every-bloody-thing that made me who I am.”
I gave you the best I had to give, and it was never enough,” he said. “There comes a point where you stop trying to save the person who’s determined to drag you down with them.”
“You’re so naive!” he told her now. “Voting’s part of the great democratic con! Pointless ritual designed to make the masses think they’ve got a say and influence! It’s a power-sharing deal between the Red and Blue Tories!” “What’s th’answer, then, if it’s not voting?” asked Robin, cradling her barely touched half of lager. “Community organization, resistance and mass protest,”
“It’s not like I wanna be married or anything—” she laughed at the very idea, “—he can sleep with who he likes and so can I. That’s the deal and I’m fine with it.” She had already explained to Robin at the shop that she identified as both genderqueer and pansexual, while monogamy, properly looked at, was a tool of patriarchal oppression, a line that Robin suspected had been originally Jimmy’s.
“Where are you Marxists when we’re challenging the ideal of the heteronormative family?” she demanded of Digby.
Perhaps her bare foot had missed it, or, more probably, the earring had been in the bed and displaced only when Robin pulled off the undersheet. Of course, there were many diamond stud earrings in the world. The fact remained that the pair to which Robin’s attention had most recently been drawn had been Sarah Shadlock’s.
Della’s opaque lenses contributed to a feeling of inscrutable menace and Strike, though wholly unintimidated, was put in mind of the blind oracles and seers that peopled ancient myths, and the particular supernatural aura attributed by the able-bodied to this one particular disability.
Eating his meatless dinner unenthusiastically in front of the television, supposedly watching highlights of the Olympics closing ceremony, his attention was barely held by the sight of the Spice Girls zooming around on top of London cabs. I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it, Della Winn had said.
In Strike’s opinion it looked like the bastard offspring of a gingerbread palace and a gothic prison. A Victorian stonemason had carved the word “Sanatorium” into the dirty redbrick arch over the double doorway.
I think it’s about time somebody pissed on Freddie’s eternal flame. If he hadn’t been born a Chiswell, the bastard would’ve been in borstal.
a type of reform school or detention center for young offenders
“After I got blown up, I couldn’t get in a car without doing what you’ve just done, panicking and breaking out in a cold sweat and half suffocating. For a while I’d do anything to avoid being driven by someone else. I’ve still got problems with it, to tell the truth.” “I didn’t realize,” said Robin. “You don’t show it.” “Yeah, well, you’re the best driver I know. You should see me with my bloody sister.
that’s where we celebrated our paper anniversary. Paper,” she repeated, with a sigh, “and some people make it to platinum.”
2nd Anniversary - cotton
You pick up a lot of tips in jail. Fake IDs, vacant buildings, empty addresses, you can do a hell of a lot with them.
