Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

She had been awake since four o’clock that morning, unable to get back to sleep, cramped and unhappy on Vanessa’s hard sofa, thinking about her future, and about the row she had had with her mother by phone. Matthew had called the house in Masham, trying to reach her, and Linda was not only desperately worried, but furious that Robin hadn’t told her what was going on first.

‘Where are you staying? With Strike?’

‘Of course I’m not staying with Strike, why on earth would I be—?’

‘Where, then?’

‘With a different friend.’

‘Who? Why didn’t you tell us? What are you going to do? I want to come down to London to see you!’

‘Please don’t,’ said Robin through gritted teeth.

Her guilt about the expense of the wedding she and Matthew had put her parents to, and about the embarrassment her mother and father were about to endure in explaining to their friends that her marriage was over barely a year after it had begun, weighed heavily on her, but she couldn’t bear the prospect of Linda badgering and cajoling, treating her as though she were fragile and damaged. The last thing she needed right now was her mother suggesting that she go back to Yorkshire, to be cocooned in the bedroom that had witnessed some of the worst times of her life.

After two days viewing a multitude of densely packed houses, Robin had put down a deposit on a box room in a house in Kilburn, where she would have five other housemates, and into which she would be able to move the following week. Every time she thought of the place, her stomach turned over in trepidation and misery. At the age of almost twenty-eight, she would be the oldest housemate.

Trying to propitiate Strike, she got out of the car and offered to help him with the kit bag, but he grunted at her that he could manage. As the canvas hit the metal floor of the Land Rover she heard a loud clattering of heavy metal tools and experienced a nervous spasm in her stomach.

Strike, who had taken fleeting stock of Robin’s appearance, had his worst suspicions strengthened. Pale, with shadows beneath her eyes, she managed to look both puffy and drawn and also seemed to have lost weight in the few days since he’d last seen her. The wife of his old army friend Graham Hardacre had been hospitalised in the early stages of pregnancy because of persistent vomiting. Perhaps one of Robin’s important appointments had been to address that problem.

‘You all right?’ Strike asked Robin roughly, buckling up his seatbelt.

‘Fine,’ she said, for what felt like the umpteenth time, taking his shortness as annoyance at his long Tube journey.

They drove out of London without talking. Finally, when they had reached the M40, Strike said:

‘Patterson’s back. He was watching the office this morning.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Has there been anyone round your place?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Robin, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. Perhaps this was what Matthew had been calling her about, when he had tried to reach her in Masham.

‘You didn’t have any trouble getting away this morning?’

‘No,’ said Robin, honestly enough.

In the days that had elapsed since she’d walked out, she had imagined telling Strike that her marriage was over, but had not yet been able to find a form of words that she knew she would be able to deliver with the requisite calm. This frustrated her: it ought, she told herself, to be easy. He was the friend and colleague who had been there when she’d called off the wedding and who knew about Matthew’s previous infidelity with Sarah. She ought to be able to tell him casually mid-conversation, as she had with Raphael.

The problem was that on the rare occasions when she and Strike had shared revelations about their love lives, it had been when one of them had been drunk. Otherwise, a profound reserve on such matters had always lain between them, in spite of Matthew’s paranoid conviction that they spent most of their working lives in flirtation.

But there was more to it than that. Strike was the man she had hugged on the stairs at her wedding reception, the man with whom she had imagined walking out on her husband before the marriage could be consummated, the man for whom she had spent nights of her honeymoon wearing a groove in the white sand as she paced alone, wondering whether she was in love with him. She was afraid of giving herself away, afraid of betraying what she had thought and felt, because she was sure that if he ever had the merest suspicion of what a disruptive factor he had been, in both the beginning and the end of her marriage, it would surely taint their working relationship, as certainly as it would surely prejudice her job if he ever knew about the panic attacks.

No, she must appear to be what he was – self-contained and stoic, able to absorb trauma and limp on, ready to face whatever life flung at her, even what lay at the bottom of the dell, without flinching or turning away.

‘So what d’you think Patterson’s up to?’ she asked.

‘Time will tell. Did your appointments go all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, and to distract herself from the thought of her tiny new rented room, and the student couple who had shown her around, casting sideways glances at the strangely grown-up woman who was coming to live with them, she said, ‘There are biscuits in the bag back there. No tea, sorry, but we can stop if you like.’

The thermos was back in Albury Street, one of the things she had forgotten to sneak out of the house when she had returned while Matthew was at work.

‘Thanks,’ said Strike, though without much enthusiasm. He was wondering whether the reappearance of snacks, given his self-proclaimed diet, might not be further proof of his partner’s pregnancy.

Robin’s phone rang in her pocket. She ignored it. Twice that morning, she had received calls from the same unknown number and she was afraid that it might be Matthew who, finding himself blocked, had borrowed another phone.

‘D’you want to get that?’ asked Strike, watching her pale, set profile.

‘Er – not while I’m driving.’

‘I can answer it, if you want.’

‘No,’ she said, a little too quickly.

The mobile stopped ringing but, almost at once, began again. More than ever convinced that it was Matthew, Robin took the phone out of her jacket, saying:

‘I think I know who it is, and I don’t want to talk to them just now. Once they hang up, could you mute it?’

Strike took the mobile.

‘It’s been put through from the office number. I’ll turn it to speakerphone,’ said Strike helpfully, given that the ancient Land Rover didn’t have a functioning heater, let alone Bluetooth, and he did so, holding the mobile close to her mouth, so that she could make herself heard over the rattle and growl of the draughty vehicle.

‘Hello, Robin here. Who’s this?’

‘Robin? Don’t you mean Venetia ?’ said a Welsh voice.

‘Is that Mr Winn?’ said Robin, eyes on the road, while Strike held the mobile steady for her.

‘Yes, you nasty little bitch, it is.’

Robin and Strike glanced at each other, startled. Gone was the unctuous, lascivious Winn, keen to charm and impress.

‘Got what you were after, haven’t you, eh? Wriggling up and down that corridor, sticking your tits in where they weren’t wanted, “oh, Mr Winn—”’ he imitated her the same way Matthew did, high-pitched and imbecilic, ‘“—oh, help me, Mr Winn, should I do charity or should I do politics, let me bend a bit lower over the desk, Mr Winn”. How many men have you trapped that way, how far do you go—?’

‘Have you got something to tell me, Mr Winn?’ asked Robin loudly, talking over him. ‘Because if you’ve just called to insult me—’