Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

Ten minutes later, her mobile rang again.

‘That was quick.’

‘Yeah, we’re in luck. Shanker’s having a rest day. Our interests happen to coincide. There’s somebody he wouldn’t mind the police picking off. Tell Vanessa we’re offering information on Ian Nash.’

‘Ian Nash?’ repeated Robin, sitting up to grab pen and paper and make a note of the name. ‘Who exactly—?’

‘Gangster. Vanessa will know who he is,’ said Strike.

‘How much did it cost?’ asked Robin. The personal bond between Strike and Shanker, profound in its way, never interfered with Shanker’s rules of business.

‘Half the first week’s fee,’ said Strike, ‘but it’ll be money well spent if Oliver comes across with the goods. How’re you?’

‘What?’ said Robin, disconcerted. ‘I’m fine. Why d’you ask?’

‘Don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you that I’ve got a duty of care, as your employer?’

‘We’re partners.’

‘You’re a salaried partner. You could sue for poor working conditions.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Robin, examining the forearm where the eight-inch purple scar still stood out, livid, against her pale skin, ‘I’d’ve already done that, if I was going to? But if you’re offering to sort out the loo on the landing—’

‘I’m just saying,’ persisted Strike, ‘it’d be natural if you’d had a bit of reaction. Finding a body isn’t many people’s idea of fun.’

‘I’m absolutely fine,’ lied Robin.

I have to be fine , she thought, after they had bidden each other goodbye. I’m not losing everything, all o ver again.

40

Your starting - point is so very widely removed from his, you see.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

At six o’clock on Wednesday morning, Robin, who had again slept in the spare room, got up and dressed herself in jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt and trainers. Her backpack contained a dark wig that she had bought online and which had been delivered the previous morning, under the very nose of the skulking journalist. She crept quietly downstairs, so as not to wake Matthew, with whom she had not discussed her plan. She knew perfectly well that he would disapprove.

There was a precarious peace between them, even though dinner on Saturday night with Tom and Sarah had been an awful affair: in fact, precisely because dinner had been so dreadful. It had started inauspiciously because the journalist had indeed followed them up the street. They had succeeded in shaking him off, largely due to Robin’s counter-surveillance training, which had led them to dodge unseen out of a crowded Tube compartment just before the doors closed, leaving Matthew aggravated by what he considered undignified, childish tricks. But even Matthew could not lay the blame for the rest of the evening at Robin’s door.

What had begun as light-hearted analysis over dinner of their failure to win the charity cricket match had turned suddenly nasty and aggressive. Tom had suddenly lashed out drunkenly at Matthew, telling him he was not half as good as he thought he was, that his arrogance had grated on the rest of the team, that, indeed, he was not popular in the office, that he put people’s backs up, rubbed them the wrong way. Rocked by the sudden attack, Matthew had tried to ask what he had done wrong at work, but Tom, so drunk that Robin thought he must have started on the wine long before their arrival, had taken Matthew’s hurt incredulity as provocation.

‘Don’t play the fucking innocent with me!’ he had shouted. ‘I’m not going to stand for it any more! Belittling me and fucking needling me—’

‘Was I?’ Matthew asked Robin, shaken, as they walked back towards the Tube in the darkness.

‘No,’ said Robin, honestly. ‘You didn’t say anything nasty to him at all.’

She added ‘tonight’ only in her head. It was a relief to be taking a hurt and bewildered Matthew home, rather than the man she usually lived with, and her sympathy and support had won her a couple of days’ ceasefire at home. Robin was not about to jeopardise their truce by telling Matthew what she was planning this morning to throw the still-lurking journalist off her trail. She couldn’t afford to be followed to a meeting with a forensic pathologist, especially as Oliver, according to Vanessa, had needed a great deal of persuasion to meet Strike and Robin in the first place.

Letting herself quietly out of the French windows into the courtyard behind the house, Robin used one of the garden chairs to clamber onto the top of the wall that divided their garden from that of the house directly behind them, of which the curtains were, mercifully, closed. With a muffled, earthy thud, she slid off the wall onto the neighbours’ lawn.

The next part of her escape was a little trickier. She had first to drag a heavy ornamental bench in their neighbour’s garden several feet, until it stood plumb with the fence, then, balancing on the back of it, she climbed over the top of the creosoted panel, which swayed precariously as she dropped down into a flowerbed on the other side, where she staggered and fell. Scrambling up again, she hurried across the new lawn to the opposite fence, in which there was a door to the car park on the other side.

To Robin’s relief, the bolt opened easily. As she pulled the garden gate closed behind her, she thought ruefully of the footprints she had just left across the dewy lawns. If the neighbours woke early, it would be only too easy to discover whence had come the intruder who had invaded their gardens, shifted their garden furniture and squashed their begonias. Chiswell’s killer, if killer there was, had been far more adept at covering their tracks.

Crouching down behind a parked Skoda in the deserted car park that served the garage-less street, Robin used the wing mirror to adjust the dark wig she had taken out of her backpack, then walked off briskly along the street that ran parallel with Albury Street, until she turned right into Deptford High Street.

Other than a couple of vans making early morning deliveries and the proprietor of a newsagent raising the metal security roller door from his shop front, there was hardly anybody around. Glancing over her shoulder, Robin felt a sudden rush, not of panic, but of elation: nobody was following her. Even so, she didn’t remove her wig until she was safely on the Tube, giving the young man who had been eyeing her covertly over his Kindle something of a surprise.

Strike had chosen the Corner Café on Lambeth Road for its proximity to the forensics laboratory where Oliver Bargate worked. When Robin arrived, she found Strike standing outside, smoking. His gaze fell to the muddy knees of her jeans.

‘Rough landing in a flowerbed,’ she explained, as she came within earshot. ‘That journalist is still hanging around.’

‘Matthew give you a leg up?’

‘No, I used garden furniture.’

Strike ground out his cigarette on the wall beside him and followed her into the café, which smelled pleasantly of frying food. In Strike’s opinion, Robin looked paler and thinner than usual, but her manner was cheerful as she ordered coffee and two bacon rolls.

‘One,’ Strike corrected her. ‘One,’ he repeated regretfully to the man behind the counter. ‘Trying to lose weight,’ he told Robin, as they took a recently vacated table. ‘Better for my leg.’

‘Ah,’ said Robin. ‘Right.’

As he swept the crumbs from the table with his sleeve, 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. He knew that he could have changed his mind now and ordered five bacon rolls, and she would simply have grinned and handed them over. This thought made him feel particularly affectionate towards her as she joined him at the table in her muddy jeans.