She was standing in the dressmaker’s box-like changing room, with its gilt-framed mirror and its new-carpet smell, when Strike called next day. Robin knew that it was Strike because of the unique ringtone that she had attached to his calls. She lunged for her handbag, causing the dressmaker to emit a little cry of annoyance and surprise as the folds of chiffon that she was dexterously repinning were torn from her hands.
“Hello?” said Robin.
“Hi,” said Strike.
The single syllable told her that something bad had happened.
“Oh God, has someone else been killed?” Robin blurted out, forgetting the dressmaker crouching at the hem of her wedding dress. The woman stared at her in the mirror, her mouth full of pins.
“Sorry, could you give me a moment? Not you!” she added to Strike, in case he hung up.
“Sorry,” she repeated as the curtain closed behind the dressmaker and she sank down onto the stool in the corner in her wedding dress, “I was with someone. Has someone else died?”
“Yes,” said Strike, “but it’s not what you think. It’s Wardle’s brother.”
Robin’s tired and overwrought brain tried to join dots that refused to connect.
“It’s nothing to do with the case,” said Strike. “He was knocked down on a zebra crossing by a speeding van.”
“God,” said Robin, utterly fazed. She had temporarily forgotten that death came in any manner other than at the hands of a maniac with knives.
“It’s a fucker, all right. He had three kids, and a fourth on the way. I’ve just spoken to Wardle. Bloody terrible thing to happen.”
Robin’s brain seemed to grind back into gear again.
“So is Wardle—?”
“Compassionate leave,” said Strike. “Guess who’s taken over from him?”
“Not Anstis?” Robin asked, suddenly worried.
“Worse than that,” said Strike.
“Not—not Carver?” said Robin, with a sudden presentiment of doom.
Of the policemen whom Strike had managed to offend and upstage during his two most famous detective triumphs, Detective Inspector Roy Carver had been the most comprehensively outclassed and was consequently the most deeply embittered. His failings during the investigation into a famous model’s fall from her penthouse flat had been extensively documented and, indeed, exaggerated in the press. A sweaty man with dandruff and a mottled, purple face like corned beef, he had had an antipathy towards Strike even before the detective had publicly proven that the policeman had failed to spot murder.
“Right in one,” said Strike. “I’ve just had him here for three hours.”
“Oh, God—why?”
“Come off it,” said Strike, “you know why. This is a wet dream for Carver, having an excuse to interrogate me about a series of murders. He stopped just short of asking me for alibis, and he spent a hell of a lot of time on those fake letters to Kelsey.”
Robin groaned.
“Why on earth would they let Carver—? I mean, with his record—”
“Hard though it might be for us to believe, he hasn’t been a dickhead his entire career. His bosses must think he was unlucky with Landry. It’s supposed to be only temporary, while Wardle’s off, but he’s already warned me to stay well away from the investigation. When I asked how inquiries into Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker were going, he as good as told me to fuck off with my ego and my hunches. We’ll be getting no more inside information on the progress of the case, I can promise you that.”
“He’ll have to follow up Wardle’s lines of investigation, though,” said Robin, “won’t he?”
“Given that he’d clearly rather chop off his own knob than let me solve another of his cases, you’d think he’d be careful to follow up all my leads. Trouble is, I can tell he’s rationalized the Landry case as me getting lucky, and I reckon he thinks me coming up with three suspects in this case is pure showboating. I wish to hell,” said Strike, “we’d got an address for Brockbank before Wardle had to leave.”
As Robin had been silent for a whole minute while she listened to Strike, the dressmaker clearly thought it reasonable to check whether she was ready to resume the fitting, and poked her head in through the curtain. Robin, whose expression was suddenly beatific, waved her away impatiently.
“We have got an address for Brockbank,” Robin told Strike in a triumphant voice as the curtains swung closed again.
“What?”
“I didn’t tell you, because I thought Wardle would already have got it, but I thought, just in case—I’ve been ringing round the local nurseries, pretending I was Alyssa, Zahara’s mum. I said I wanted to check they had our new address right. One of them read it out to me off the parent contact sheet. They’re living on Blondin Street in Bow.”