“Have you been looking?”
“Of course not!” she said, and he smiled at how indignant she sounded at the suggestion she might have been through his cupboards. “You’re just—you’re not the sort of person who’d have medicinal brandy.”
“Want a beer?”
She shook her head, unable to smile.
Once the tea had been made, Strike sat down opposite her with his own mug. He looked exactly what he was: a large ex-boxer who smoked too much and ate too much fast food. He had heavy eyebrows, a flattened and asymmetrical nose and, when not smiling, a permanent expression of sullen crossness. His dense, dark curly hair, still damp from the shower, reminded her of Jacques Burger and Sarah Shadlock. The row seemed a lifetime ago. She had only briefly thought of Matthew since coming upstairs. She dreaded telling him what had happened. He would be angry. He did not like her working for Strike.
“Have you looked at—at it?” she muttered, after picking up and setting down the boiling tea without drinking it.
“Yeah,” said Strike.
She did not know what else to ask. It was a severed leg. The situation was so horrible, so grotesque, that every question that occurred to her sounded ridiculous, crass. Do you recognize it? Why do you think they sent it? And, most pressing of all, why to me?
“The police’ll want to hear about the courier,” he said.
“I know,” said Robin. “I’ve been trying to remember everything about him.”
The downstairs door buzzer sounded.
“That’ll be Wardle.”
“Wardle?” she repeated, startled.
“He’s the friendliest copper we know,” Strike reminded her. “Stay put, I’ll bring him to you here.”
Strike had managed to make himself unpopular among the Metropolitan Police over the previous year, which was not entirely his fault. The fulsome press coverage of his two most notable detective triumphs had understandably galled those officers whose efforts he had trumped. However, Wardle, who had helped him out on the first of those cases, had shared in some of the subsequent glory and relations between them remained reasonably amicable. Robin had only ever seen Wardle in the newspaper reports of the case. Their paths had not crossed in court.
He turned out to be a handsome man with a thick head of chestnut hair and chocolate-brown eyes, who was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Strike did not know whether he was more amused or irritated by the reflexive look Wardle gave Robin on entering the room—a swift zigzag sweep of her hair, her figure and her left hand, where his eyes lingered for a second on the sapphire and diamond engagement ring.
“Eric Wardle,” he said in a low voice, with what Strike felt was an unnecessarily charming smile. “And this is Detective Sergeant Ekwensi.”
A thin black female officer whose hair was smoothed back in a bun had arrived with him. She gave Robin a brief smile and Robin found herself taking disproportionate comfort from the presence of another woman. Detective Sergeant Ekwensi then let her eyes stray around Strike’s glorified bedsit.
“Where’s this package?” she asked.
“Downstairs,” said Strike, drawing the keys to the office out of his pocket. “I’ll show you. Wife OK, Wardle?” he added as he prepared to leave the room with Detective Sergeant Ekwensi.
“What do you care?” retorted the officer, but to Robin’s relief he dropped what she thought of as his counselor’s manner as he took the seat opposite her at the table and flipped open his notebook.
“He was standing outside the door when I came up the street,” Robin explained, when Wardle asked how the leg had arrived. “I thought he was a courier. He was dressed in black leather—all black except for blue stripes on the shoulders of his jacket. His helmet was plain black and the visor was down and mirrored. He must have been at least six feet tall. Four or five inches taller than me, even allowing for the helmet.”
“Build?” asked Wardle, who was scribbling in his notebook.
“Pretty big, I’d say, but he was probably padded out a bit by the jacket.”
Robin’s eyes wandered inadvertently to Strike as he reentered the room. “I mean, not—”
“Not a fat bastard like the boss?” Strike, who had overheard, suggested and Wardle, never slow to make or enjoy a dig at Strike, laughed under his breath.
“And he wore gloves,” said Robin, who had not smiled. “Black leather motorcycle gloves.”
“Of course he’d wear gloves,” said Wardle, adding a note. “I don’t suppose you noticed anything about the motorbike?”
“It was a Honda, red and black,” said Robin. “I noticed the logo, that winged symbol. I’d say 750cc. It was big.”
Wardle looked both startled and impressed.