Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘No,’ said Robin, cutting across him. ‘That’s fine, OK, we’ll take the Land Rover.’

‘Great. How’s Dodgy?’

‘In his consulting rooms. Any news on Aamir?’

‘I’ve got Andy trying to find the sister he’s still on good terms with.’

‘And what are you up to?’

‘I’ve just been reading the Real Socialist Party website.’

‘Why?’

‘Jimmy gives quite a lot away in his blog posts. Places he’s been and things he’s seen. You OK to stay on Dodgy until Friday?’

‘Actually,’ said Robin, ‘I was going to ask whether I could take a couple of days off to deal with some personal business.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike, brought up short.

‘I’ve got a couple of appointments I need – I’d rather not miss,’ said Robin.

It wasn’t convenient to Strike to have to cover Dodgy Doc himself, partly because of the continuing pain in his leg, but mainly because he was eager to continue chasing down confirmation of his theory on the Chiswell case. This was also very short notice to ask for two days’ leave. On the other hand, Robin had just indicated a willingness to sacrifice her weekend to a probable wildgoose chase into the dell.

‘Yeah, OK. Everything all right?’

‘Fine, thanks. I’ll let you know if anything interesting happens with Dodgy. Otherwise, we should probably leave London at elevenish on Saturday.’

‘Barons Court again?’

‘Would it be all right if you meet me at Wembley Stadium station? It would just be easier, because of where I’m going to be on Friday night.’

This, too, was inconvenient: a journey for Strike of twice the length and involving a change of Tube.

‘Yeah, OK,’ he said again.

After Robin had hung up, he remained in her chair for a while, pondering their conversation.

She had been noticeably tight-lipped about the nature of the appointments that were so important that she didn’t want to miss them. He remembered how particularly angry Matthew had sounded in the background of his calls to Robin, to discuss their pressured, unstable and occasionally dangerous job. She had twice sounded distinctly underwhelmed about the prospect of digging in the hard ground at the bottom of the dell, and now asked to drive the BMW rather than the tank-like Land Rover.

He had almost forgotten his suspicion of a couple of months ago, that Robin might be trying to get pregnant. Into his mind swam the vision of Charlotte’s swollen belly at the dinner table. Robin wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be able to walk away from her child as soon as it left the womb. If Robin was pregnant . . .

Logical and methodical as he usually was, and aware in one part of himself that he was theorising on scant data, Strike’s imagination nevertheless showed him Matthew, the father-to-be, listening in on Robin’s tense request for time off for scans and medical checks, gesticulating angrily at her that the time had come to stop, to go easy on herself, to take better care.

Strike turned back to Jimmy Knight’s blog, but it took him a little longer than usual to discipline his troubled mind back into obedience.

61

Oh, you can tell me. You and I are such friends, you know.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Fellow Tube travellers gave Strike a slightly wider berth than was necessary on Saturday morning, even allowing for his kit bag. He generally managed to cut a path easily through crowds, given his bulk and his boxer’s profile, but the way he was muttering and cursing as he struggled up the stairs at Wembley Stadium station – the lifts weren’t working – made passers-by extra careful to neither jostle nor impede him.

The primary reason for Strike’s bad mood was Mitch Patterson, whom he had spotted that morning from the office window, skulking in a doorway, dressed in jeans and a hoodie entirely unsuited to his age and bearing. Puzzled and angered by the private detective’s reappearance, but having no route out of the building except by the front door, Strike had called a cab to wait for him at the end of the street, and left the building only once it was in position. Patterson’s expression when Strike had said ‘Morning, Mitch’ might have amused Strike, if he hadn’t been so insulted that Patterson had thought he could get away with watching the agency in person.

All the way to Warren Street station, where he asked the cab to drop him, Strike had been hyper-alert, worried that Patterson had been there as a distraction or decoy, enabling a second, less obtrusive tail to follow him. Even now, as he clambered, panting, off the top of the stairs at Wembley, he turned to scrutinise the travellers for the one who ducked down, turned back or hastily concealed their face. None of them did so. On balance, Strike concluded that Patterson had been working alone; victim, perhaps, of one of the manpower problems so familiar to Strike. The fact that Patterson had chosen to cover the job rather than forgo it suggested that somebody was paying him well.

Strike hoisted his kit bag more securely onto his shoulder and set off towards the exit.

Having pondered the question during his inconvenient journey to Wembley, Strike could think of three reasons why Patterson had reappeared. The first was that the press had got wind of some interesting new development in the Met investigation into Chiswell’s death, and that this had led a newspaper to rehire Patterson, his remit to find out what Strike was up to and how much he knew.

The second possibility was that someone had paid Patterson to stalk Strike, in the hopes of impeding his movements or hampering his business. That suggested that Patterson’s employer was somebody that Strike was currently investigating, in which case, Patterson doing the job himself made sense: the whole point would be to destabilise Strike by letting him know that he was being watched.

The third possible reason for Patterson’s renewed interest in him was the one that bothered Strike most, because he had a feeling it was most likely to be the true one. He now knew that he had been spotted in Franco’s with Charlotte. His informant was Izzy, whom he had called in the hope of fleshing out details of the theory he hadn’t yet confided to anyone.

‘So, I hear you had dinner with Charlotte!’ she had blurted, before he had managed to pose a question.

‘There was no dinner. I sat with her for twenty minutes because she was feeling ill, then left.’

‘Oh – sorry,’ said Izzy, cowed by his tone. ‘I – I wasn’t prying – Roddy Fforbes was in Franco’s and he spotted the pair of you . . . ’

If Roddy Fforbes, whoever he was, was spreading it around London that Strike was taking his heavily pregnant, married ex-fiancée out for dinner while her husband was in New York, the tabloids would definitely be interested, because wild, beautiful and aristocratic Charlotte was news. Her name had peppered gossip columns since she was sixteen years old, her various tribulations – running away from school, the stints in rehab and in psychiatric clinics – were well documented. It was even possible that Patterson had been hired by Jago Ross, who could certainly afford it. If the side effect of policing his wife’s movements was ruining Strike’s business, Ross would undoubtedly consider that a bonus.

Robin, who was sitting a short distance away from the station in the Land Rover, saw Strike emerge onto the pavement, kit bag over his shoulder and registered that he looked as bad-tempered as she had ever seen him. He lit a cigarette, scanning the street until his eye found the Land Rover at the end of a series of parked vehicles and he began to limp, unsmiling, towards her. Robin, whose own mood was perilously low, could only assume that he was angry at having to make the long trip to Wembley with what appeared to be a heavy bag and a sore leg.