40
Be glad thou art unnam’d; ’tis not worth the owning.
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The False One
Sleet, rain and snow pelted the office windows in turn the following day. Miss Brocklehurst’s boss turned up at the office around midday to view confirmation of her infidelity. Shortly after Strike had bidden him farewell, Caroline Ingles arrived. She was harried, on her way to pick up her children from school, but determined to give Strike the card for the newly opened Golden Lace Gentleman’s Club and Bar that she had found in her husband’s wallet. Mr Ingles’s promise to stay well away from lap-dancers, call girls and strippers had been a requirement of their reconciliation. Strike agreed to stake out Golden Lace to see whether Mr Ingles had again succumbed to temptation. By the time Caroline Ingles had left, Strike was very ready for the pack of sandwiches waiting for him on Robin’s desk, but he had taken barely a mouthful when his phone rang.
Aware that their professional relationship was coming to a close, his brunette client was throwing caution to the winds and inviting Strike out to dinner. Strike thought he could see Robin smiling as she ate her sandwich, determinedly facing her monitor. He tried to decline with politeness, at first pleading his heavy workload and finally telling her that he was in a relationship.
‘You never told me that,’ she said, suddenly cold.
‘I like to keep my private and professional lives separate,’ he said.
She hung up halfway through his polite farewell.
‘Maybe you should have gone out with her,’ said Robin innocently. ‘Just to make sure she’ll pay her bill.’
‘She’ll bloody pay,’ growled Strike, making up for lost time by cramming half a sandwich into his mouth. The phone buzzed. He groaned and looked down to see who had texted him.
His stomach contracted.
‘Leonora?’ asked Robin, who had seen his face fall.
Strike shook his head, his mouth full of sandwich.
The message comprised three words:
It was yours.
He had not changed his number since he had split up with Charlotte. Too much hassle, when a hundred professional contacts had it. This was the first time she had used it in eight months.
Strike remembered Dave Polworth’s warning:
You be on the watch, Diddy, for signs of her galloping back over the horizon. Wouldn’t be surprised if she bolts.
Today was the third, he reminded himself. She was supposed to be getting married tomorrow.
For the first time since he had owned a mobile phone, Strike wished it had the facility to reveal a caller’s location. Had she sent this from the Castle of Fucking Croy, in an interlude between checking the canapés and the flowers in the chapel? Or was she standing on the corner of Denmark Street, watching his office like Pippa Midgley? Running away from a grand, well-publicised wedding like this would be Charlotte’s crowning achievement, the very apex of her career of mayhem and disruption.
Strike put the mobile back into his pocket and started on his second sandwich. Deducing that she was not about to discover what had made Strike’s expression turn stony, Robin screwed up her empty crisp packet, dropped it in the bin and said:
‘You’re meeting your brother tonight, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Aren’t you meeting your brother—?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah.’
‘At the River Café?’
‘Yeah.’
It was yours.
‘Why?’ asked Robin.
Mine. The hell it was. If it even existed.
‘What?’ said Strike, vaguely aware that Robin had asked him something.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘What did you ask me?’
‘Why are you going to the River Café?’
‘Oh. Well,’ said Strike, reaching for his own packet of crisps, ‘it’s a long shot, but I want to speak to anyone who witnessed Quine and Tassel’s row. I’m trying to get a handle on whether he staged it, whether he was planning his disappearance all along.’
‘You’re hoping to find a member of staff who was there that night?’ said Robin, clearly dubious.