Robin, who was struggling to keep up with Strike’s thought processes and sceptical of those parts she could understand, followed him down the metal staircase and out into the cold.
‘This murder,’ said Strike, lighting a cigarette as they walked down Denmark Street together, ‘was months if not years in the planning. Work of genius, when you think about it, but it’s over-elaborate and that’s going to be its downfall. You can’t plot murder like a novel. There are always loose ends in real life.’
Strike could tell that he was not convincing Robin, but he was not worried. He had worked with disbelieving subordinates before. Together they descended into the Tube and onto a Central line train.
‘What did you get for your nephews?’ Robin asked after a long silence.
‘Camouflage gear and fake guns,’ said Strike, whose choice had been entirely motivated by the desire to aggravate his brother-in-law, ‘and I got Timothy Anstis a bloody big drum. They’ll enjoy that at five o’clock on Christmas morning.’
In spite of her preoccupation, Robin snorted with laughter.
The quiet row of houses from which Owen Quine had fled a month previously was, like the rest of London, covered in snow, pristine and pale on the roofs and grubby grey underfoot. The happy Inuit smiled down from his pub sign like the presiding deity of the wintry street as they passed beneath him.
A different policeman stood outside the Quine residence now and a white van was parked at the kerb with its doors open.
‘Digging for guts in the garden,’ Strike muttered to Robin as they drew nearer and spotted spades lying on the van floor. ‘They didn’t have any luck at Mucking Marshes and they’re not going to have any luck in Leonora’s flower beds either.’
‘So you say,’ replied Robin sotto voce, a little intimidated by the staring policeman, who was quite handsome.
‘So you’re going to help me prove this afternoon,’ replied Strike under his breath. ‘Morning,’ he called to the watchful constable, who did not respond.
Strike seemed energised by his crazy theory, but if by any remote chance he was right, Robin thought, the killing had grotesque features even beyond that carved-out corpse…
They headed up the front path of the house beside the Quines’, bringing them within feet of the watchful PC. Strike rang the bell, and after a short wait the door opened revealing a short, anxious-looking woman in her early sixties who was wearing a housecoat and wool-trimmed slippers.
‘Are you Edna?’ Strike asked.
‘Yes,’ she said timidly, looking up at him.
When Strike introduced himself and Robin Edna’s furrowed brow relaxed, to be replaced by a look of pathetic relief.
‘Oh, it’s you, I’ve heard all about you. You’re helping Leonora, you’re going to get her out, aren’t you?’
Robin felt horribly aware of the handsome PC, listening to all of it, feet away.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Edna, backing out of their way and beckoning them enthusiastically inside.
‘Mrs – I’m sorry, I don’t know your surname,’ began Strike, wiping his feet on the doormat (her house was warm, clean and much cosier than the Quines’, though identical in layout).
‘Call me Edna,’ she said, beaming at him.
‘Edna, thank you – you know, you ought to ask to see ID before you let anyone into your house.’
‘Oh, but,’ said Edna, flustered, ‘Leonora told me all about you…’
Strike insisted, nevertheless, on showing her his driving licence before following her down the hall into a blue-and-white kitchen much brighter than Leonora’s.
‘She’s upstairs,’ said Edna when Strike explained that they had come to see Orlando. ‘She’s not having a good day. Do you want coffee?’
As she flitted around fetching cups she talked non-stop in the pent-up fashion of the stressed and lonely.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having her, poor lamb, but…’ She looked hopelessly between Strike and Robin then blurted out, ‘But how long for? They’ve no family, you see. There was a social worker round yesterday, checking on her; she said if I couldn’t keep her she’d have to go in a home or something; I said, you can’t do that to Orlando, they’ve never been apart, her and her mum, no, she can stay with me, but…’
Edna glanced at the ceiling.
‘She’s very unsettled just now, very upset. Just wants her mum to come home and what can I say to her? I can’t tell her the truth, can I? And there they are next door, digging up the whole garden, they’ve gone and dug up Mr Poop…’
‘Dead cat,’ Strike muttered under his breath to Robin as tears bubbled behind Edna’s spectacles and bounced down her round cheeks.
‘Poor lamb,’ she said again.
When she had given Strike and Robin their coffees Edna went upstairs to fetch Orlando. It took ten minutes for her to persuade the girl to come downstairs, but Strike was glad to see Cheeky Monkey clutched in her arms when she appeared, today dressed in a grubby tracksuit and wearing a sullen expression.
‘He’s called like a giant,’ she announced to the kitchen at large when she saw Strike.
‘I am,’ said Strike, nodding. ‘Well remembered.’
Orlando slid into the chair that Edna pulled out for her, holding her orang-utan tightly in her arms.
‘I’m Robin,’ said Robin, smiling at her.
‘Like a bird,’ said Orlando at once. ‘Dodo’s a bird.’
‘It’s what her mum and dad called her,’ explained Edna.
‘We’re both birds,’ said Robin.
Orlando gazed at her, then got up and walked out of the kitchen without speaking.
Edna sighed deeply.
‘She takes upset over anything. You never know what she’s—’
But Orlando had returned with crayons and a spiral-bound drawing pad that Strike was sure had been bought by Edna to try to keep her happy. Orlando sat down at the kitchen table and smiled at Robin, a sweet, open smile that made Robin feel unaccountably sad.
‘I’m going to draw you a robin,’ she announced.
‘I’d love that,’ said Robin.
Orlando set to work with her tongue between her teeth. Robin said nothing, but watched the picture develop. Feeling that Robin had already forged a better rapport with Orlando than he had managed, Strike ate a chocolate biscuit offered by Edna and made small talk about the snow.
Eventually Orlando finished her picture, tore it out of the pad and pushed it across to Robin.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Robin, beaming at her. ‘I wish I could draw a dodo, but I can’t draw at all.’ This, Strike knew, was a lie. Robin drew very well; he had seen her doodles. ‘I’ve got to give you something, though.’