She had meant that she was going nowhere just now, not that she would stay for ever, but Matthew had begun to cry.
‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to walk . . . I love you, Rob. I know I fucked up, but I love you . . . ’
The doctor gave Matthew oral antibiotics and went to make telephone calls. Delirious, Matthew clung to his wife, thanking her. Sometimes he drifted into a state where, again, he thought he saw shadows moving in the empty corners of the room, and twice more he muttered about his dead mother. Alone in the velvety blackness of the tropical night, Robin listened to winged insects colliding with the screens at the windows, alternately comforting and watching over the man she had loved since she was seventeen.
It hadn’t been cellulitis. The infection had responded, over the next twenty-four hours, to antibiotics. As he recovered from the sudden, violent illness, Matthew watched her constantly, weak and vulnerable as she had never seen him, afraid, she knew, that her promise to stay had been temporary.
‘We can’t throw it all away, can we?’ he had asked her hoarsely from the bed where the doctor had insisted he stay. ‘All these years?’
She had let him talk about the good times, the shared times, and she had reminded herself about the giggling girl who had called Strike ‘Cormy’. She envisioned going home and asking for an annulment, because the marriage had still not been consummated. She remembered the money her parents had spent on the wedding day she had hated.
Bees buzzed in the churchyard roses around her as Robin wondered, for the thousandth time, where she would be right now if Matthew hadn’t scratched himself on coral. Most of her now-terminated therapy sessions had been full of her need to talk about the doubts that had plagued her ever since she had agreed to remain married.
In the months that had followed, and especially when she and Matthew were getting on reasonably well, it seemed to her that it had been right to give the marriage a fair trial, but she never forgot to think of it in terms of a trial, and this in itself sometimes led her, sleepless at night, to castigate herself for the pusillanimous failure to pull herself free once Matthew had recovered.
She had never explained to Strike what had happened, why she had agreed to try and keep the marriage afloat. Perhaps that was why their friendship had grown so cold and distant. When she had returned from her honeymoon, it was to find Strike changed towards her – and perhaps, she acknowledged, she had changed towards him, too, because of what she had heard on the line when she had called, in desperation, from the Maldives bar.
‘Sticking with it, then, are you?’ he had said roughly, after a glance at her ring finger.
His tone had nettled her, as had the fact that he had never asked why she was trying, never asked about her home life from that point onwards, never so much as hinted that he remembered the hug on the stairs.
Whether because Strike had arranged matters that way or not, they had not worked a case together since that of the Shacklewell Ripper. Imitating her senior partner, Robin had retreated into a cool professionalism.
But sometimes she was afraid that he no longer valued her as he once had, now that she had proven herself so conventional and cowardly. There had been an awkward conversation a few months ago in which he had suggested that she take time off, asked whether she felt she was fully recovered after the knife attack. Taking this as a slight upon her bravery, afraid that she would again find herself sidelined, losing the only part of her life that she currently found fulfilling, she had insisted that she was perfectly well and redoubled her professional efforts.
The muted mobile in her bag vibrated. Robin slipped her hand inside and looked to see who was calling. Strike. She also noticed that he had called earlier, while she was saying a joyful goodbye to the Villiers Trust Clinic.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I missed you earlier, sorry.’
‘Not a problem. Move gone all right?’
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Just wanted to let you know, I’ve hired us a new subcontractor. Name of Sam Barclay.’
‘Great,’ said Robin, watching a fly shimmering on a fat, blush-pink rose. ‘What’s his background?’
‘Army,’ said Strike.
‘Military police?’
‘Er – not exactly.’
As he told her the story of Sam Barclay, Robin found herself grinning.
‘So you’ve hired a dope-smoking painter and decorator?’
‘Vaping, dope vaping,’ Strike corrected her, and Robin could tell that he was grinning, too. ‘He’s on a health kick. New baby.’
‘Well, he sounds . . . interesting.’
She waited, but Strike did not speak.
‘I’ll see you Saturday night, then,’ she said.
Robin had felt obliged to invite Strike to her and Matthew’s house-warming party, because she had given their most regular and reliable subcontractor, Andy Hutchins, an invitation, and felt it would be odd to leave out Strike. She had been surprised when he had accepted.
‘Yeah, see you then.’
‘Is Lorelei coming?’ Robin asked, striving for casualness, but not sure she had succeeded.
Back in central London, Strike thought he detected a sardonic note in the question, as though challenging him to admit that his girlfriend had a ludicrous moniker. He would once have pulled her up on it, asked what her problem was with the name ‘Lorelei’, enjoyed sparring with her, but this was dangerous territory.
‘Yeah, she’s coming. The invitation was to both—’
‘Yes, of course it was,’ said Robin hastily. ‘All right, I’ll see you—’
‘Hang on,’ said Strike.
He was alone in the office, because he had sent Denise home early. The temp had not wanted to leave: she was paid by the hour, after all, and only after Strike had assured her that he would pay for a full day had she gathered up all her possessions, talking nonstop all the while.
‘Funny thing happened this afternoon,’ said Strike.
Robin listened intently, without interrupting, to Strike’s vivid account of the brief visit of Billy. By the end of it, she had forgotten to worry about Strike’s coolness. Indeed, he now sounded like the Strike of a year ago.
‘He was definitely mentally ill,’ said Strike, his eyes on the clear sky beyond the window. ‘Possibly psychotic.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘I know,’ said Strike. He picked up the pad from which Billy had ripped his half-written address and turned it absently in his free hand. ‘Is he mentally ill, so he thinks he saw a kid strangled? Or is he mentally ill and he saw a kid strangled?’
Neither spoke for a while, during which time both turned over Billy’s story in their minds, knowing that the other was doing the same. This brief, companionable spell of reflection ended abruptly when a cocker spaniel, which Robin had not noticed as it came snuffling through the roses, laid its cold nose without warning on her bare knee and she shrieked.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Nothing – a dog—’
‘Where are you?’
‘In a graveyard.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Just exploring the area. I’d better go,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘There’s another flat-pack waiting for me at home.’
‘Right you are,’ said Strike, with a return to his usual briskness. ‘See you Saturday.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the cocker spaniel’s elderly owner, as Robin slid her mobile back into her bag. ‘Are you frightened of dogs?’
‘Not at all,’ said Robin, smiling and patting the dog’s soft golden head. ‘He surprised me, that’s all.’
As she headed back past the giant skulls towards her new home, Robin thought about Billy, whom Strike had described with such vividness that Robin felt as though she had met him, too.
So deeply absorbed in her thoughts was she, that for the first time all week, Robin forgot to glance up at the White Swan pub as she passed it. High above the street, on the corner of the building, was a single carved
swan, which reminded Robin, every time she passed it, of her calamitous wedding day.
4
But what do you propose to do in the town, then?
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Six and a half miles away, Strike set his mobile down on his desk and lit a cigarette. Robin’s interest in his story had been soothing after the interview he had endured half an hour after Billy had fled. The two policemen who had answered Denise’s call had seemed to relish their opportunity to make the famous Cormoran Strike admit his fallibility, taking their time as they ascertained that he had succeeded in finding out neither full name nor address of the probably psychotic Billy.
The late afternoon sun hit the notebook on his desk at an angle, revealing faint indentations. Strike dropped his cigarette into an ashtray he had stolen long ago from a German bar, picked up the notepad and tilted it this way and that, trying to make out the letters formed by the impressions, then reached for a pencil and lightly shaded over them. Untidy capital letters were soon revealed, clearly spelling the words ‘Charlemont Road’. Billy had pressed less hard on the house or flat number than the street name. One of the faint indents looked like either a 5 or an incomplete 8, but the spacing suggested more than one figure, or possibly a letter.
Strike’s incurable predilection for getting to the root of puzzling incidents tended to inconvenience him quite as much as other people. Hungry and tired though he was, and despite the fact that he had sent his temp away so he could shut up the office, he tore the paper carrying the revealed street name off the pad and headed into the outer room, where he switched the computer back on.
There were several Charlemont Roads in the UK, but on the assumption that Billy was unlikely to have the means to travel very far, he suspected that the one in East Ham had to be the right one. Online records showed two Williams living there, but both were over sixty. Remembering that Billy had been scared that Strike might turn up at ‘Jimmy’s place’, he had searched for Jimmy and then James, which turned up the details of James Farraday, 49.
Strike made a note of Farraday’s address beneath Billy’s indented scribbles, though not at all confident that Farraday was the man he sought. For one thing, his house number contained no fives or eights and, for another, Billy’s extreme unkemptness suggested that whomever he lived with must take a fairly relaxed attitude to his personal hygiene. Farraday lived with a wife and what appeared to be two daughters.
Strike turned off the computer, but continued to stare abstractedly at the dark screen, thinking about Billy’s story. It was the detail of the pink blanket that kept nagging at him. It seemed such a specific, unglamorous detail for a psychotic delusion.
Remembering that he needed to be up early in the morning for a paying job, he pulled himself to his feet. Before leaving the office, he inserted the piece of paper bearing both the impressions of Billy’s handwriting and Farraday’s address into his wallet.
London, which had recently been at the epicentre of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, was preparing to host the Olympics. Union Jacks and the London 2012 logo were everywhere – on signs, banners, bunting, keyrings, mugs and umbrellas – while jumbles of Olympic merchandise cluttered virtually every shop window. In Strike’s opinion, the logo resembled shards of fluorescent glass randomly thrown together and he was equally unenamoured of the official mascots, which looked to him like a pair of cycloptic molars.
There was a tinge of excitement and nervousness about the capital, born, no doubt, of the perennially British dread that the nation might make a fool of itself. Complaints about non-availability of Olympics tickets were a dominant theme in conversation, unsuccessful applicants decrying the lottery that was supposed to have given everybody a fair and equal chance of watching events live. Strike, who had hoped to see some boxing, had not managed to get tickets, but laughed out loud at his old school friend Nick’s offer to take his place at the dressage, which Nick’s wife Ilsa was overjoyed to have bagged.
Harley Street, where Strike was due to spend Friday running surveillance on a cosmetic surgeon, remained untouched by Olympic fever. The grand Victorian façades presented their usual implacable faces to the world, unsullied by garish logos or flags.
Strike, who was wearing his best Italian suit for the job, took up a position near the doorway of a building opposite and pretended to be talking on his mobile, actually keeping watch over the entrance of the expensive consulting rooms of two partners, one of whom was Strike’s client.
‘Dodgy Doc’, as Strike had nicknamed his quarry, was taking his time living up to his name. Possibly he had been scared out of his unethical behaviour by his partner, who had confronted him after realising that Dodgy had recently performed two breast augmentations that had not been run through the business’s books. Suspecting the worst, the senior partner had come to Strike for help.
‘His justification was feeble, full of holes. He is,’ said the white-haired surgeon, stiff-lipped but full of foreboding, ‘and always has been a . . . ah . . . womaniser. I checked his internet history before confronting him and found a website where young women solicit cash contributions for their cosmetic enhancements, in return for explicit pictures. I fear . . . I hardly know what . . . but it might be that he has made an arrangement with these women that is not . . . monetary. Two of the younger women had been asked to call a number I did not recognise, but which suggested surgery might be arranged free in return for an “exclusive arrangement”.’
Strike had not so far witnessed Dodgy meeting any women outside his regular hours. He spent Mondays and Fridays in his Harley Street consulting rooms and the mid-week at the private hospital where he operated. Whenever Strike had tailed him outside his places of work, he had merely taken short walks to purchase chocolate, to which he seemed addicted. Every night, he drove his Bentley home to his wife and children in Gerrards Cross, tailed by Strike in his old blue BMW.
Tonight, both surgeons would be attending a Royal College of Surgeons dinner with their wives, so Strike had left his BMW in its expensive garage. The hours rolled by in tedium, Strike mostly concerned with shifting the weight off his prosthesis at regular intervals as he leaned up against railings, parking meters and doorways. A steady trickle of clients pressed the bell at Dodgy’s door and were admitted, one by one. All were female and most were sleek and well-groomed. At five o’clock, Strike’s mobile vibrated in his breast pocket and he saw a text from his client.
Safe to clock off, about to leave with him for the Dorchester.
Perversely, Strike hung around, watching as the partners left the building some fifteen minutes later. His client was tall and white-haired; Dodgy, a sleek, dapper olive-skinned man with shiny black hair, who wore three-piece suits. Strike watched them get into a taxi and leave, then yawned, stretched and contemplated heading home, possibly with a takeaway.
Almost against his will, he pulled out his wallet and extracted the piece of crumpled paper on which he had managed to reveal Billy’s street name.
All day, at the back of his mind, he had thought he might go and seek out Billy in Charlemont Road if Dodgy Doc left work early, but he was tired and his leg sore. If Lorelei knew that he had the evening off, she would expect Strike to call. On the other hand, they were going to Robin’s house-warming together tomorrow night and if he spent tonight at Lorelei’s, it would be hard to extricate himself tomorrow, after the party. He never spent two nights in a row at Lorelei’s flat, even when the opportunity had occurred. He liked to set limits on her rights to his time.
As though hoping to be dissuaded by the weather, he glanced up at the clear June sky and sighed. The evening was clear and perfect, the agency so busy that he did not know when he would next have a few hours to spare. If he wanted to visit Charlemont Road, it would have to be tonight.
5
I can quite understand your having a horror of public meetings and . . . of the rabble that frequents them.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
&n
bsp; His journey coinciding with rush hour, it took Strike over an hour to travel from Harley Street to East Ham. By the time he had located Charlemont Road his stump was aching and the sight of the long residential street made him regret that he was not the kind of man who could simply write off Billy as a mental case.
The terraced houses had a motley appearance: some were bare brick, others painted or pebble-dashed. Union Jacks hung at windows: further evidence of Olympic fever or relics of the Royal Jubilee. The small plots in front of the houses had been made into pocket gardens or dumps for debris, according to preference. Halfway along the road lay a dirty old mattress, abandoned to whoever wanted to deal with it.
His first glimpse of James Farraday’s residence did not encourage Strike to hope that he had reached journey’s end, because it was one of the best-maintained houses in the street. A tiny porch with coloured glass had been added around the front door, ruched net curtains hung at each window and the brass letterbox gleamed in the sunshine. Strike pressed the plastic doorbell and waited.
Lethal White Page 7
