“Need to get going, sorry. ’Scuse me, Izzy.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Izzy said, pouting. “I wanted to ask you all about the Shacklewell Ripper!”

Strike saw Geraint’s eyes widen. Inwardly cursing her, he said, “Night. Bye,” he added to Charlotte.

Limping away as fast as he could manage, he accepted the call, but by the time he had raised it to his ear, the caller had gone.

“Corm.”

Somebody lightly touched his arm. He turned. Charlotte had followed him.

“I’m leaving, too.”

“What about your niece?”

“She’s met Harry, she’ll be thrilled. She doesn’t actually like me that much. None of them do. What happened to your mobile?”

“I fell on it.”

He walked on, but, long-legged as she was, she caught up with him.

“I don’t think I’m going your way, Charlotte.”

“Well, unless you’re tunneling out, we have to walk two hundred yards together.”

He limped on without answering. To his left, he caught another flash of green. As they reached the grand staircase in the hall, Charlotte reached out and lightly grasped his arm, wobbly in the heels that were so unsuitable for a pregnant woman. He resisted the urge to shake her loose.

His mobile rang again. The same unknown number had appeared on the screen. Charlotte drew up beside him, watching his face as he answered it.

The moment the mobile touched his ear he heard a desperate, haunting scream.

“They’re going to kill me, Mr. Strike, help me, help me, please help me… ”

34

But who could really foresee what was coming? I am sure I could not.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The hazy, clear-skied promise of another summer’s day hadn’t yet translated itself into actual warmth when Robin arrived next morning at the café closest to Chiswell’s house. She could have chosen one of the circular tables outside on the pavement, but instead she huddled down in a corner of the café where she was to meet Strike, hands clasped around her latte for comfort, her reflection in the espresso machine pale and heavy-eyed.

Somehow, she had known that Strike would not be here when she arrived. Her mood was simultaneously depressed and nervy. She would rather not have been alone with her thoughts, but here she was, with only the hiss of the coffeemaker for company, chilly in spite of the jacket she had grabbed on the way out of the house and full of anxiety about the imminent confrontation with Chiswell, who might quibble his bill, after the catastrophe of Strike’s fight with Jimmy Knight.

But that wasn’t all that was worrying Robin. She had woken that morning from a confused dream in which the dark, spike-booted figure of Charlotte Ross figured. Robin had recognized Charlotte immediately when she spotted her at the reception. She had tried not to watch the once-engaged couple as they’d talked, angry with herself for being so sharply interested in what was passing between them, yet, even as she had moved from group to group, shamelessly insinuating herself into conversations in the hope of finding the elusive Elspeth Curtis-Lacey, her eyes had sought out Strike and Charlotte, and when they left the reception together she had experienced a nasty sensation in her stomach, akin to the drop of an elevator.

She had arrived home unable to think of anything else, which had made her feel guilty when Matthew emerged from the kitchen, eating a sandwich. She had the impression that he had not been home long. He subjected the green dress to an up-and-down look very like the one Kinvara had given her. She made to walk past him upstairs, but he had moved to block her.

“Robin, come on. Please. Let’s talk.”

So they had gone into the sitting room and talked. Tired of conflict, she had apologized for hurting Matthew’s feelings by missing the cricket match, and for forgetting her wedding ring on their anniversary weekend. Matthew in turn had expressed regret for the things he had said during Sunday’s row, and especially for the remark about her lack of achievements.

Robin felt as though they were moving chess pieces on a board that was vibrating in the preliminary tremors of an earthquake. It’s too late. You know, surely, that none of this matters anymore?

But when the talk was finished, Matthew said, “So we’re OK?”

“Yes,” she replied. “We’re fine.”

He had stood up, held out a hand and helped her up from her chair. She had forced a smile and then he had kissed her, hard, on the mouth, and begun to tug at the green dress. She heard the fabric around the zip tear and when she began to protest, he clamped his mouth on hers again.

She knew that she could stop him, she knew that he was waiting for her to stop him, that she was being tested in an ugly, underhand way, that he would deny what he was really doing, that he would claim to be the victim. She hated him for doing it this way, and part of her wanted to be the kind of woman who could have disengaged from her own revulsion and from her own reluctant flesh, but she had fought too long and too hard to regain possession of her own body to barter it in this way.

“No,” she said, pushing him away. “I don’t want to.”

He released her at once, as she had known he would, with an expression compounded of anger and triumph. Suddenly, she knew that she had not fooled him when they had had sex on their anniversary weekend, and paradoxically that made her feel tender towards him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m tired.”

“Yeah,” said Matthew. “So am I.”

And he had walked out of the room, leaving Robin with a chill down her back where the green dress had torn.

Where the hell was Strike? It was five past nine and she wanted company. She also wanted to know what had happened after he left the reception with Charlotte. Anything would be preferable to sitting here, thinking about Matthew.

As though the thought had summoned him, her phone rang.

“Sorry,” he said, before she could speak. “Suspicious package at bloody Green Park. I’ve been stuck on the Tube for twenty minutes and I’ve only just got reception. I’ll be there as quick as I can, but you might have to start without me.”

“Oh, God,” said Robin, closing her tired eyes.

“Sorry,” Strike repeated, “I’m on my way. Got something to tell you, actually. Funny thing happened last night—oh, hang on, we’re moving. See you shortly.”

He hung up, leaving Robin with the prospect of having to deal alone with the first effusions of Jasper Chiswell’s anger, and still grappling formless feelings of dread and misery that swirled around a dark, graceful woman who was sixteen years’ worth of knowledge and memories ahead of her when it came to Cormoran Strike, which, Robin told herself, shouldn’t matter, for God’s sake, haven’t you got enough problems without worrying about Strike’s love life, it’s nothing whatsoever to do with you…

She felt a sudden guilty prickle around her lips, where Strike’s missed kiss had landed outside the hospital. As though she could wash it away, she downed the dregs of her coffee, got up and left the café for the broad, straight street, which comprised two symmetrical lines of identical nineteenth-century houses.

She walked briskly, not because she was in any hurry to bear the brunt of Chiswell’s anger and disappointment, but because activity helped dispel her uncomfortable thoughts.