The finicky waiter seemed determined to prolong Strike’s discomfort. He had no choice but to stand in full view of every table while he waited for his extra place to be laid. Linda, who was almost a foot shorter than the detective, remained at Strike’s elbow while the youth made imperceptible adjustments to the dessert fork and turned the plate so that the design aligned with its neighbors’. The little Strike could see of Linda’s face below the silvery hat looked angry.
“Thanks very much,” he said at long last, as the waiter stepped out of the way, but as he took hold of the back of his chair, Linda laid a light hand on his sleeve. Her gentle touch might as well have been a shackle, accompanied as it was by an aura of outraged motherhood and offended hospitality. She greatly resembled her daughter. Linda’s fading hair was red-gold, too, the clear gray-blue of her eyes enhanced by her silvery hat.
“Why are you here?” she asked through clenched teeth, while waiters bustled around them, delivering starters. At least the arrival of food had distracted the other guests. Conversation broke out as people’s attention turned to their long-awaited meal.
“To ask Robin to come back to work with me.”
“You sacked her. It broke her heart.”
There was much he could have said to that, but he chose not to say it out of respect for what Linda must have suffered when she had seen that eight-inch knife wound.
“Three times she’s been attacked, working for you,” said Linda, her color rising. “Three times.”
Strike could, with truth, have told Linda that he accepted liability only for the first of those attacks. The second had happened after Robin disregarded his explicit instructions and the third as a consequence of her not only disobeying him, but endangering a murder investigation and his entire business.
“She hasn’t been sleeping. I’ve heard her at night…”
Linda’s eyes were over-bright. She let go of him, but whispered, “You haven’t got a daughter. You can’t understand what we’ve been through.”
Before Strike could muster his exhausted faculties, she had marched away to the top table. He caught Robin’s eye over her untouched starter. She pulled an anguished expression, as though afraid that he might walk out. He raised his eyebrows slightly and dropped, at last, into his seat.
A large shape to his left shifted ominously. Strike turned to see more eyes like Robin’s, set over a pugnacious jaw and surmounted by bristling brows.
“You must be Stephen,” said Strike.
Robin’s elder brother grunted, still glaring. They were both large men; packed together, Stephen’s elbow grazed Strike’s as he reached for his pint. The rest of the table was staring at Strike. He raised his right hand in a kind of halfhearted salute, remembered that it was bandaged only when he saw it, and felt that he was drawing even more attention to himself.
“Hi, I’m Jenny, Stephen’s wife,” said the broad-shouldered brunette on Stephen’s other side. “You look as though you could use this.”
She passed an untouched pint across Stephen’s plate. Strike was so grateful he could have kissed her. In deference to Stephen’s scowl, he confined himself to a heartfelt “thanks” and downed half of it in one go. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jenny mutter something in Stephen’s ear. The latter watched Strike set the pint glass down again, cleared his throat and said gruffly:
“Congratulations in order, I s’pose.”
“Why?” said Strike blankly.
Stephen’s expression became a degree less fierce.
“You caught that killer.”
“Oh yeah,” said Strike, picking up his fork in his left hand and stabbing the salmon starter. Only after he had swallowed it in its entirety and noticed Jenny laughing did he realize he ought to have treated it with more respect. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Very hungry.”
Stephen was now contemplating him with a glimmer of approval.
“No point in it, is there?” he said, looking down at his own mousse. “Mostly air.”
“Cormoran,” said Jenny, “would you mind just waving at Jonathan? Robin’s other brother—over there.”
Strike looked in the direction indicated. A slender youth with the same coloring as Robin waved enthusiastically from the next table. Strike gave a brief, sheepish salute.
“Want her back, then, do you?” Stephen fired at him.
“Yeah,” said Strike. “I do.”
He half-expected an angry response, but instead Stephen heaved a long sigh.
“S’pose I’ve got to be glad. Never seen her happier than when she was working for you. I took the piss out of her when we were kids for saying she wanted to be a policewoman,” he added. “Wish I hadn’t,” he said, accepting a fresh pint from the waiter and managing to down an impressive amount before continuing. “We were dicks to her, looking back, and then she… well, she stands up for herself a bit better these days.”
Stephen’s gaze wandered to the top table and Strike, who had his back to it, felt justified in stealing a look at Robin, too. She was silent, neither eating nor looking at Matthew.
“Not now, mate,” he heard Stephen say and turned to see his neighbor holding out a long thick arm to form a barrier between Strike and one of Martin’s friends, who was on his feet and already bending low to ask Strike a question. The friend retreated, abashed.
“Cheers,” said Strike, finishing Jenny’s pint.
“Get used to it,” said Stephen, demolishing his own mousse in a mouthful. “You caught the Shacklewell Ripper. You’re going to be famous, mate.”
People talked of things passing in a blur after a shock, but it was not like that for Robin. The room around her remained only too visible, every detail distinct: the brilliant squares of light that fell through the curtained windows, the enamel brightness of the azure sky beyond the glass, the damask tablecloths obscured by elbows and disarranged glasses, the gradually flushing cheeks of the scoffing and quaffing guests, Aunt Sue’s patrician profile unsoftened by her neighbors’ chat, Jenny’s silly yellow hat quivering as she joked with Strike. She saw Strike. Her eyes returned so often to his back that she could have sketched with perfect accuracy the creases in his suit jacket, the dense dark curls of the back of his head, the difference in the thickness of his ears due to the knife injury to the left.
No, the shock of what she had discovered in the receiving line had not rendered her surroundings blurred. It had instead affected her perception of both sound and time. At one point, she knew that Matthew had urged her to eat, but it did not register with her until after her full plate had been removed by a solicitous waiter, because everything said to her had to permeate the thick walls that had closed in on her in the aftermath of Matthew’s admission of perfidy. Within the invisible cell that separated her entirely from everyone else in the room, adrenaline thundered through her, urging her again and again to stand up and walk out.