Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil

“... thought we were done,” said Matthew’s exasperated voice behind the door. Strike doubted that he knew that he could be heard, because when he opened it Robin’s fiancé was wearing an ingratiating smile that vanished the moment he realized who it was.

“What d’you want?”

“I need to talk to Robin,” said Strike.

As Matthew hesitated, with every appearance of wishing to block Strike’s entrance, Linda came out into the hall behind him.

“Oh,” she said at the sight of Strike.

He thought she looked both thinner and older than the previous time he had met her, no doubt because her daughter had nearly got herself killed, then turned up voluntarily at a violent sexual predator’s house and got attacked all over again. Strike could feel the fury building beneath his diaphragm. If necessary, he would shout for Robin to come and meet him on the doorstep, but he had no sooner formed this resolution than she appeared behind Matthew. She too looked paler and thinner than usual. As always, he found her better-looking in the flesh than in the memory he had of her when not present. This did not make him feel any more kindly towards her.

“Oh,” she said in exactly the same colorless tone as her mother.

“I’d like a word,” said Strike.

“All right,” said Robin with a slightly defiant upwards jerk of her head that made her red-gold hair dance around her shoulders. She glanced at her mother and Matthew, then back at Strike. “D’you want to come into the kitchen, then?”

He followed her down the hall into the small kitchen where a table for two stood crammed into the corner. Robin closed the door carefully behind them. Neither sat down. Dirty dishes were piled by the sink; they had apparently been eating pasta before the police arrived to interrogate Robin. For some reason, this evidence that Robin had been behaving so prosaically in the wake of the chaos she had unleashed increased the rage now battling with Strike’s desire not to lose control.

“I told you,” he said, “not to go anywhere near Brockbank.”

“Yes,” said Robin in a flat voice that aggravated him still further. “I remember.”

Strike wondered whether Linda and Matthew were listening at the door. The small kitchen smelled strongly of garlic and tomatoes. An England Rugby calendar hung on the wall behind Robin. The thirtieth of June was circled thickly, the words HOME FOR WEDDING written beneath the date.

“But you decided to go anyway,” said Strike.

Visions of violent, cathartic action — picking up the pedal bin and throwing it through the steamy window, for instance — were rising chaotically in his mind’s eye. He stood quite still, large feet planted on the scuffed lino, staring at her white and stubborn face.

“I don’t regret it,” she said. “He was raping—”

“Carver’s convinced I sent you. Brockbank’s vanished. You’ve driven him underground. How’re you going to feel if he decides he’d better cut the next one into pieces before she can blab?”

“Don’t you dare put that on me!” said Robin, her voice rising. “Don’t you dare! You’re the one who punched him when you went to arrest him! If you hadn’t hit him he might’ve gone down for Brittany!”

“That makes what you did right, does it?”

He refrained from shouting only because he could hear Matthew lurking in the hall, however quiet the accountant thought he was being.

“I’ve stopped Angel being abused and if that’s a bad thing to do—”

“You’ve driven my business off the edge of a fucking cliff,” said Strike in a quiet voice that stopped her in her tracks. “We were warned away from those suspects, from the whole investigation, but you went storming in and now Brockbank’s gone to ground. The press’ll be all over me for this. Carver’ll tell them I’ve fucked it all up. They’ll bury me. And even if you don’t give a shit about any of that,” said Strike, his face rigid with fury, “how about the fact the police have just found a connection between Kelsey’s church and the one in Brixton where Brockbank was attending?”

She looked stricken.

“I–I didn’t know—”

“Why wait for the facts?” asked Strike, his eyes dark shadows in the harsh overhead lighting. “Why not just blunder in and tip him off before the police can take him in?”

Appalled, Robin said nothing. Strike was looking at her now as though he never liked her, as though they had never shared any of the experiences that, to her, had constituted a bond like no other. She had been prepared for him to punch walls and cupboards again, even, in the heat of his anger, to—

“We’re finished,” said Strike.

He took some satisfaction from the shrinking movement she could not hide, from the sudden blanching of her face.

“You don’t—”

“I don’t mean it? You think I need a partner who won’t take instruction, who does what I’ve explicitly told her not to do, who makes me look like a trouble-making egotistical prick in front of the police and causes a murder suspect to disappear under the force’s nose?”

He said it in a single breath and Robin, who had taken a step backwards, knocked the England Ruby calendar off the wall with a rustle and thud she failed to hear, so loudly was the blood pounding in her ears. She thought she might faint. She had imagined him shouting “I ought to fire you!” but not once had she considered that he might actually do it, that everything she had done for him — the risks, the injuries, the insights and the inspirations, the long hours of discomfort and inconvenience — would be washed away, rendered negligible by this one act of well-intentioned disobedience. She could not even get enough breath into her lungs to argue, because his expression was such that she knew all she could expect was further icy condemnation of her actions and an exposition of how badly she had screwed up. The memory of Angel and Alyssa holding each other on the sofa, the reflection that Angel’s suffering was finished and that her mother believed and supported her, had comforted Robin through the hours of suspense during which she waited for this blow to fall. She had not dared tell Strike what she had done. Now she thought it might have been better if she had.

“What?” she said stupidly, because he had asked her something. The noises had been meaningless.

“ Who was the man you took with you? ”

“That’s none of your business,” she whispered after a short hesitation.

“They said he threatened Brockbank with a kni — Shanker!” said Strike, light dawning only now, and in that instant she saw a trace of the Strike she knew in the reanimated, infuriated face. “ How the fuck did you get Shanker’s number? ”

But she could not speak. Nothing mattered beside the fact that she was fired. She knew that Strike did not relent when he decided that a relationship had run its course. His girlfriend of sixteen years had never heard from him again after he had ended it, although Charlotte had tried to initiate contact since.

He was already leaving. She followed him into the hall on numb legs, feeling herself to be acting like a beaten dog who still slinks after the punisher, hoping desperately for forgiveness.

“Goodnight,” Strike called to Linda and Matthew, who had retreated into the sitting room.

“Cormoran,” Robin whispered.

“I’ll send your last month’s salary on,” he said without looking at her. “Quick and clean. Gross misconduct.”

The door closed behind him. She could hear his size fourteens moving away up the path. With a gasp, she began to cry. Linda and Matthew both came hurrying into the hall, but too late: Robin had fled to the bedroom, unable to face their relief and delight that, at last, she would have to give up her dream of being a detective.