25 Roupell Street, SE1
Strike knew why she had written the date out so clearly: she was determined that this time – was it the third or fourth time they’d tried? – he and her fiancé would finally meet.
Little though the unknown accountant might believe it, Strike was grateful for Matthew’s mere existence, and for the sapphire and diamond ring that shone from Robin’s third finger. Matthew sounded like a dickhead (Robin little imagined how accurately Strike remembered each of her casual asides about her fiancé), but he imposed a useful barrier between Strike and a girl who might otherwise disturb his equilibrium.
Strike had not been able to guard against warm feelings for Robin, who had stuck by him when he was at his lowest ebb and helped him turn his fortunes around; nor, having normal eyesight, could he escape the fact that she was a very good-looking woman. He viewed her engagement as the means by which a thin, persistent draught is blocked up, something that might, if allowed to flow untrammelled, start to seriously disturb his comfort. Strike considered himself to be in recovery after a long, turbulent relationship that had ended, as indeed it had begun, in lies. He had no wish to alter his single status, which he found comfortable and convenient, and had successfully avoided any further emotional entanglements for months, in spite of his sister Lucy’s attempts to fix him up with women who sounded like the desperate dregs of some dating site.
Of course, it was possible that once Matthew and Robin were actually married, Matthew might use his improved status to persuade his new wife to leave the job that he clearly disliked her doing (Strike had correctly interpreted Robin’s hesitations and evasions on that score). However, Strike was sure that Robin would have told him, had the wedding date been fixed, so he considered that danger, at present, remote.
With yet another huge yawn, he folded the newspaper and threw it onto the chair, turning his attention to the television news. His one personal extravagance since moving into the tiny attic flat had been satellite TV. His small portable set now sat on top of a Sky box and the picture, no longer reliant on a feeble indoor aerial, was sharp instead of grainy. Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, was announcing plans to slash £350 million from the legal aid budget. Strike watched through his haze of tiredness as the florid, paunchy man told Parliament that he wished to ‘discourage people from resorting to lawyers whenever they face a problem, and instead encourage them to consider more suitable methods of dispute resolution’.
He meant, of course, that poor people ought to relinquish the services of the law. The likes of Strike’s average client would still avail themselves of expensive barristers. Most of his work these days was undertaken on behalf of the mistrustful, endlessly betrayed rich. His was the information that fed their sleek lawyers, that enabled them to win better settlements in their vitriolic divorces and their acrimonious business disputes. A steady stream of well-heeled clients was passing his name on to similar men and women, with tediously similar difficulties; this was the reward for distinction in his particular line of work, and if it was often repetitive, it was also lucrative.
When the news ended he clambered laboriously off the bed, removed the remnants of his meal from the chair beside him and walked stiffly into his small kitchen area to wash everything up. He never neglected such things: habits of self-respect learned in the army had not left him in the depths of his poverty, nor were they entirely due to military training. He had been a tidy boy, imitating his Uncle Ted, whose liking for order everywhere from his toolbox to his boathouse had contrasted so starkly with the chaos that had surrounded Strike’s mother Leda.
Within ten minutes, after a last pee in the toilet that was always sodden because of its proximity to the shower, and cleaning his teeth at the kitchen sink where there was more room, Strike was back on his bed, removing his prosthesis.
The weather forecast for the next day was rounding off the news: sub-zero temperatures and fog. Strike rubbed powder into the end of his amputated leg; it was less sore tonight than it had been a few months ago. Today’s full English breakfast and takeaway curry notwithstanding, he had lost a bit of weight since he had been able to cook for himself again, and this had eased the pressure on his leg.
He pointed the remote control at the TV screen; a laughing blonde and her washing powder vanished into blankness. Strike manoeuvred himself clumsily beneath the covers.
Of course, if Owen Quine was hiding at his writer’s retreat it would be easy enough to winkle him out. Egotistical bastard, he sounded, flouncing off into the darkness with his precious book…
The hazy mental image of a furious man storming away with a holdall over his shoulder dissolved almost as quickly as it had formed. Strike was sliding into a welcome, deep and dreamless sleep. The faint pulse of a bass guitar far below in the subterranean bar was swiftly drowned by his own rasping snores.