Strike had just entered the kitchen, freshly washed and dressed, after their usual Sunday night rendezvous. The spotless cream and white space was full of stainless steel surfaces and subdued lighting, like a space age operating theater. A plasma TV hung on the wall behind the table. President Obama was on screen, standing at a podium, talking.
“They’ve killed Osama bin Laden!” said Elin.
“Bloody hell,” said Strike, stopping dead to read the tickertape running across the bottom of the screen.
Clean clothes and a shave had made little difference to his hangdog look of exhaustion. The hours he was putting in trying to catch a glimpse of Laing or Whittaker were beginning to take their painful toll: his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was tinged with gray.
He crossed to the coffee maker, poured himself a mugful and gulped it down. He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week’s few small achievements that he had finished that job, at least. Now he leaned against the steel-topped island, watching the immaculate President and envying him from his soul. He, at least, had got his man.
The known details of bin Laden’s death gave Elin and Strike something to talk about while she was dropping him off at the Tube.
“I wonder how sure they were it was him,” she said, pulling up outside the station, “before they went in.”
Strike had been wondering that, too. Bin Laden had been physically distinctive, of course: well over six feet tall… and Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker, until Elin recalled them.
“I’ve got work drinks on Wednesday, if you fancy it.” She sounded slightly self-conscious. “Duncan and I have nearly agreed everything. I’m sick of sneaking around.”
“Sorry, no can do,” he said. “Not with all these surveillance jobs on, I told you.”
He had to pretend to her that the pursuit of Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker were paid jobs, because she would never have understood his so far fruitless persistence otherwise.
“OK, well, I’ll wait for you to ring me, then,” she said, and he caught, but chose to ignore, a cool undertone in her voice.
Is it worth it? he asked himself as he descended into the Underground, backpack over his shoulder, with reference not to the men he was pursuing but to Elin. What had begun as an agreeable diversion was starting to assume the status of onerous obligation. The predictability of their rendezvous—same restaurants, same nights—had started to pall, yet now that she offered to break the pattern he found himself unenthusiastic. He could think offhand of a dozen things he would rather do with a night off than have drinks with a bunch of Radio Three presenters. Sleep headed the list.
Soon—he could feel it coming—she would want to introduce him to her daughter. In thirty-seven years, Strike had successfully avoided the status of “Mummy’s boyfriend.” His memories of the men who had passed through Leda’s life, some of them decent, most of them not—the latter trend reaching its apotheosis in Whittaker—had left him with a distaste that was almost revulsion. He had no desire to see in another child’s eyes the fear and mistrust that he had read in his sister Lucy’s every time the door opened onto yet another male stranger. What his own expression had been, he had no idea. For as long as he had been able to manage it, he had closed his mind willfully to that part of Leda’s life, focusing on her hugs and her laughter, her maternal delight in his achievements.
As he climbed out of the Tube at Notting Hill Gate on his way to the school, his mobile buzzed: Mad Dad’s estranged wife had texted.
Just checking you know boys not at school today because of bank holiday. They’re with grandparents. He won’t follow them there.
Strike swore under his breath. He had indeed forgotten about the bank holiday. On the plus side, he was now free to return to the office, catch up with some paperwork, then head out to Catford Broadway by daylight for a change. He only wished that the text could have arrived before he made the detour to Notting Hill.
Forty-five minutes later, Strike was tramping up the metal staircase towards his office and asking himself for the umpteenth time why he had never contacted the landlord about getting the birdcage lift fixed. When he reached the glass door of his office, however, a far more pressing question presented itself: why were the lights on?
Strike pushed open the door so forcefully that Robin, who had heard his laborious approach, nevertheless jumped in her chair. They stared at each other, she defiant, he accusing.
“What are you doing here?”
“Working,” said Robin.
“I told you to work from home.”
“I’ve finished,” she said, tapping a sheaf of papers that lay on the desk beside her, covered with handwritten notes and telephone numbers. “Those are all the numbers I could find in Shoreditch.”
Strike’s eyes followed her hand, but what caught his attention was not the small stack of neatly written papers she was showing him, but the sapphire engagement ring.