“This makes a nice change,” she said, smiling, as she sank down onto the curved, upholstered bench at their round table.
They ordered. Strike, who craved a pint of Doom Bar, drank burgundy of Elin’s choosing and wished, despite having smoked more than a pack that day, that he could have a cigarette. Meanwhile, his dinner companion launched into a barrage of property talk: she had decided against the Strata penthouse and had now looked at a property in Camberwell, which seemed promising. She showed him a picture on her phone: another columned and porticoed vision of Georgian whiteness met his tired eyes.
As Elin discussed the various pros and cons of a move to Camberwell, Strike drank in silence. He even begrudged the wine’s deliciousness, throwing it back like the cheapest plonk, trying to blunt the edges of his resentment with alcohol. It did not work: far from dissolving, his sense of alienation deepened. The comfortable Mayfair restaurant with its low lighting and its deep carpet felt like a stage set: illusory, ephemeral. What was he doing here, with this gorgeous but dull woman? Why was he pretending to be interested in her expensive lifestyle, when his business was in its death throes and he alone in London knew the identity of the Shacklewell Ripper?
Their food arrived and the deliciousness of his fillet of beef did something to assuage his resentment.
“So what have you been up to?” asked Elin, punctiliously polite as usual.
Strike now found himself presented with a stark choice. Telling her the truth about what he had been up to would necessitate an admission that he had not kept her abreast of any of the recent events that would have been deemed enough news for a decade in most people’s lives. He would be forced to reveal that the girl in the newspapers who had survived the Ripper’s latest attack was his own business partner. He would have to tell her that he had been warned off the case by a man whom he had previously humiliated over another high-profile murder. If he were making a clean breast of all that he had been up to, he ought also to add that he now knew exactly who the killer was. The prospect of relating all this bored and oppressed him. He had not once thought to call her while any of these events had unfolded, which was revealing enough in itself.
Playing for time while he took another sip of wine, Strike came to the decision that the affair had to end. He would make an excuse not to go back to Clarence Terrace with her tonight, which ought to give her early warning of his intentions; the sex had been the best part of the relationship all along. Then, next time they met, he’d tell her it was over. Not only did he feel it would be churlish to end things over a meal for which she was paying, there was a remote chance that she would walk out, leaving him with a bill that his credit card company would undoubtedly refuse to process.
“I haven’t been up to much, to be honest,” he lied.
“What about the Shackle—”
Strike’s mobile rang. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and saw that the number had been withheld. Some sixth sense told him to answer it.
“Sorry,” he said to Elin, “I think I need to—”
“Strike,” said Carver’s unmistakable South London voice. “Did you send her to do it?”
“What?” said Strike.
“Your fucking partner. Did you send her to Brockbank?”
Strike stood up so suddenly that he hit the edge of the table. A spray of bloodied brown liquid spattered across the heavy white tablecloth, his fillet of beef slid over the edge of the plate and his wineglass toppled, splashing Elin’s pale blue dress. The waiter gaped, as did the refined couple at the next table.
“Where is she? What’s happened?” asked Strike loudly, oblivious to everything except the voice on the end of the line.
“I warned you, Strike,” said Carver, his voice crackling with rage. “I fucking warned you to stay away. You have fucked up royally this time—”
Strike lowered the mobile. A disembodied Carver bellowed into the restaurant, the “cunts” and “fucks” clearly audible to anybody standing nearby. He turned to Elin in her purple-stained dress, with her beautiful face screwed up in mingled perplexity and anger.
“I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. I’ll call you later.”
He did not stay to see how she took it; he did not care.
Limping slightly, because he had twisted his knee in his haste to get up, Strike hurried out of the restaurant, phone to his ear again. Carver was now virtually incoherent, shouting Strike down whenever he attempted to speak.
“Carver, listen,” Strike shouted as he regained Upper Brook Street, “there’s something I want to—fucking listen, will you!”
But the policeman’s obscenity-strewn soliloquy merely became louder and filthier.