“I’m so sorry,” she said, getting to her feet, sweating profusely. Panic lapped at the edges of her thought, but then an idea bobbed up like a life raft. “I really am. I was going to leave a note. I was only going to borrow it.”

As the two men frowned at her, she gestured to the unplugged fan.

“Ours is broken. Our room’s like an oven. I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said, appealing to Geraint. “I was just going to borrow it for thirty minutes.” She smiled piteously. “Honestly, I felt faint earlier.”

She plucked the front of her shirt away from her skin, which was indeed clammy. His gaze fell to her chest and the usual lecherous grin resurfaced.

“Though I shouldn’t say so, overheating rather suits you,” said Winn, with the ghost of a smirk, and Robin forced a giggle.

“Well, well, we can spare it for thirty minutes, can’t we?” he said, turning to Aamir. The latter said nothing, but stood ramrod straight, staring at Robin with undisguised suspicion. Geraint lifted the fan carefully off the desk and passed it to Robin. As she turned to go, he patted her lightly on the lower back.

“Enjoy.”

“Oh, I will,” she said, her flesh crawling. “Thank you so much, Mr. Winn.”

28

Do I take it to heart, to find myself so hampered and thwarted in my life’s work?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The long hike to and around Chelsea Physic Garden the previous day had not benefited Strike’s hamstring injury. As his stomach was playing up from a constant diet of Ibuprofen, he had eschewed painkillers for the past twenty-four hours, with the result that he was in what his doctors liked to describe as “some discomfort” as he sat with his one and a half legs up on the office sofa on Thursday afternoon, his prosthesis leaning against the wall nearby while he reviewed the Chiswell file.

Silhouetted like a headless watchman against the window of his inner office was Strike’s best suit, plus a shirt and tie, which hung from the curtain rail, shoes and clean socks sitting below the limp trouser legs. He was going out to dinner with Lorelei tonight and had organized himself so that he need not climb the stairs to his attic flat again before bed.

Lorelei had been typically understanding about his lack of communication during Jack’s hospitalization, saying with only the slightest edge to her voice that it must have been a horrible thing to go through on his own. Strike had too much sense to tell her that Robin had been there, too. Lorelei had then requested, sweetly and without rancor, dinner, “to talk a few things through.”

They had been dating for just over ten months and she had just nursed him through five days of incapacity. Strike felt that it was neither fair, nor decent, to ask her to say what she had to say over the phone. Like the hanging suit, the prospect of having to find an answer to the inevitable question “where do you see this relationship going?” loomed ominously on the periphery of Strike’s consciousness.

Dominating his thoughts, however, was what he saw as the perilous state of the Chiswell case, for which he had so far seen not a penny in payment, but which was costing him a significant outlay in salaries and expenses. Robin might have succeeded in neutralizing the immediate threat of Geraint Winn, but after a promising start Barclay had nothing whatsoever to use against Chiswell’s first blackmailer, and Strike foresaw disastrous consequences should the Sun newspaper find its way to Jimmy Knight. Balked of the mysterious photographs at the Foreign Office that Winn had promised him, and notwithstanding Chiswell’s assertion that Jimmy would not want the story in the press, Strike thought an angry and frustrated Jimmy was overwhelmingly likely to try and profit from a chance that seemed to be slipping through his fingers. His history of litigation told its own story: Jimmy was a man prone to cutting off his own nose to spite his face.

To compound Strike’s bad mood, after several straight days and nights hanging out with Jimmy and his mates, Barclay had told Strike that unless he went home soon, his wife would be initiating divorce proceedings. Strike, who owed Barclay expenses, had told him to come into the office for a check, after which he could take a couple of days off. To his extreme annoyance, the normally reliable Hutchins had then caviled at having to take over the tailing of Jimmy Knight at short notice, rather than hanging around Harley Street, where Dodgy Doc was once again consulting patients.

“What’s the problem?” Strike had asked roughly, his stump throbbing. Much as he liked Hutchins, he had not forgotten that the ex-policeman had recently taken time off for a family holiday and to drive his wife to hospital when she broke her wrist. “I’m asking you to switch targets, that’s all. I can’t follow Knight, he knows me.”

“Yeah, all right, I’ll do it.”

“Decent of you,” Strike had said, angrily. “Thanks.”

The sound of Robin and Barclay climbing the metal stairs to the office at half past five made a welcome distraction from Strike’s increasingly dark mood.

“Hi,” said Robin, walking into the office with a holdall over her shoulder. Answering Strike’s questioning look, she explained, “Outfit for the Paralympic reception. I’ll change in the loo, I won’t have time to go home.”

Barclay followed Robin into the room and closed the door.

“We met downstairs,” he told Strike cheerfully. “Firs’ time.”

“Sam was just telling me how much dope he’s had to smoke to keep in with Jimmy,” said Robin, laughing.

“I’ve no been inhalin’,” said Barclay, deadpan. “That’d be remiss, on a job.”

The fact that the pair of them seemed to have hit it off was perversely annoying to Strike, who was now making heavy weather of hoisting himself off the fake leather cushions, which made their usual farting noises.

“It’s the sofa,” he snapped at Barclay, who had looked around, grinning. “I’ll get your money.”

“Stay there, I’ll do it,” Robin said, setting down her holdall and reaching for the checkbook in the lower drawer of the desk, which she handed to Strike, with a pen. “Want some tea, Cormoran? Sam?”

“Aye, go on, then,” said Barclay.

“You’re both bloody cheerful,” said Strike sourly, writing Barclay his check, “considering we’re about to lose the job that’s keeping us all in employment. Unless either of you have got information I don’t know about, of course.”

“Only excitin’ thing tae happen in Knightville this week was Flick havin’ a big bust up wi’ one o’ her flatmates,” said Barclay. “Lassie called Laura. She reckoned Jimmy had stolen a credit card out o’ her handbag.”

“Had he?” asked Strike sharply.

“I’d say it was more likely to be Flick herself. Told ye she was boastin’ about helpin’ herself to cash from her work, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“It all kicked off in the pub. The girl, Laura, was scunnered. She and Flick got intae a row about who was more middle class.”

In spite of the pain he was in, and his grumpy mood, Strike grinned.

“Aye, it got nasty. Ponies and foreign holidays dragged in. Then this Laura said she reckoned Jimmy nicked her new credit card off her, months back. Jimmy got aggressive, said that was slander—”