When Strike emerged fifteen minutes later, he seemed calmer.
‘All right,’ he said, seizing his tea and taking a gulp. ‘I’ve got a plan and I’m going to need you. Are you up for it?’
‘Of course!’ said Robin.
He gave her a concise outline of what he wanted to do. It was ambitious and would require a healthy dose of luck.
‘Well?’ Strike asked her finally.
‘No problem,’ said Robin.
‘We might not need you.’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘On the other hand, you could be key.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘Sure that’s all right?’ Strike asked, watching her closely.
‘No problem at all,’ said Robin. ‘I want to do it, I really do – it’s just,’ she hesitated, ‘I think he—’
‘What?’ said Strike sharply.
‘I think I’d better have a practice,’ said Robin.
‘Oh,’ said Strike, eyeing her. ‘Yeah, fair enough. Got until Thursday, I think. I’ll check the date now…’
He disappeared for the third time into his inner office. Robin returned to her computer chair.
She desperately wanted to play her part in the capture of Owen Quine’s killer, but what she had been about to say, before Strike’s sharp response panicked her out of it, was: ‘I think he might have seen me.’
47
Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm.
John Webster, The White Devil
By the light of the old-fashioned street lamp the cartoonish murals covering the front of the Chelsea Arts Club were strangely eerie. Circus freaks had been painted on the rainbow-stippled walls of a long low line of ordinarily white houses knocked into one: a four-legged blonde girl, an elephant eating its keeper, an etiolated contortionist in prison stripes whose head appeared to be disappearing up his own anus. The club stood in a leafy, sleepy and genteel street, quiet with the snow that had returned with a vengeance, falling fast and mounting over roofs and pavements as though the brief respite in the arctic winter had never been. All through Thursday the blizzard had grown thicker and now, viewed through a rippling lamp-lit curtain of icy flakes, the old club in its fresh pastel colours appeared strangely insubstantial, pasteboard scenery, a trompe l’œil marquee.
Strike was standing in a shadowy alley off Old Church Street, watching as one by one they arrived for their small party. He saw the aged Pinkelman helped from his taxi by a stone-faced Jerry Waldegrave, while Daniel Chard stood in a fur hat on his crutches, nodding and smiling an awkward welcome. Elizabeth Tassel drew up alone in a cab, fumbling for her fare and shivering in the cold. Lastly, in a car with a driver, came Michael Fancourt. He took his time getting out of the car, straightening his coat before proceeding up the steps to the front door.
The detective, on whose dense curly hair the snow was falling thickly, pulled out his mobile and rang his half-brother.
‘Hey,’ said Al, who sounded excited. ‘They’re all in the dining room.’
‘How many?’
‘’Bout a dozen of them.’
‘Coming in now.’
Strike limped across the street with the aid of his stick. They let him in at once when he gave his name and explained that he was here as Duncan Gilfedder’s guest.
Al and Gilfedder, a celebrity photographer whom Strike was meeting for the first time, stood a short way inside the entrance. Gilfedder seemed confused as to who Strike was, or why he, a member of this eccentric and charming club, had been asked by his acquaintance Al to invite a guest whom he did not know.
‘My brother,’ said Al, introducing them. He sounded proud.
‘Oh,’ said Gilfedder blankly. He wore the same type of glasses as Christian Fisher and his lank hair was cut in a straggly shoulder-length bob. ‘I thought your brother was younger.’
‘That’s Eddie,’ said Al. ‘This is Cormoran. Ex-army. He’s a detective now.’
‘Oh,’ said Gilfedder, looking even more bemused.
‘Thanks for this,’ Strike said, addressing both men equally. ‘Get you another drink?’
The club was so noisy and packed it was hard to see much of it except glimpses of squashy sofas and a crackling log fire. The walls of the low-ceilinged bar were liberally covered in prints, paintings and photographs; it had the feeling of a country house, cosy and a little scruffy. As the tallest man in the room, Strike could see over the crowd’s heads towards the windows at the rear of the club. Beyond lay a large garden lit by exterior lights so that it was illuminated in patches. A thick, pristine layer of snow, pure and smooth as royal icing, lay over verdant shrubbery and the stone sculptures lurking in the undergrowth.
Strike reached the bar and ordered wine for his companions, glancing as he did so into the dining room.
Those eating filled several long wooden tables. There was the Roper Chard party, with a pair of French windows beside them, the garden icy white and ghostly behind the glass. A dozen people, some of whom Strike did not recognise, had gathered to honour the ninety-year-old Pinkelman, who was sitting at the head of the table. Whoever had been in charge of the placement, Strike saw, had sat Elizabeth Tassel and Michael Fancourt well apart. Fancourt was talking loudly into Pinkelman’s ear, Chard opposite him. Elizabeth Tassel was sitting next to Jerry Waldegrave. Neither was speaking to the other.
Strike passed glasses of wine to Al and Gilfedder, then returned to the bar to fetch a whisky for himself, deliberately maintaining a clear view of the Roper Chard party.
‘Why,’ said a voice, clear as a bell but somewhere below him, ‘are you here?’
Nina Lascelles was standing at his elbow in the same strappy black dress she had worn to his birthday dinner. No trace of her former giggly flirtatiousness remained. She looked accusatory.
‘Hi,’ said Strike, surprised. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘Nor I you,’ she said.
He had not returned any of her calls for over a week, not since the night he had slept with her to rid himself of thoughts of Charlotte on her wedding day.
‘So you know Pinkelman,’ said Strike, trying for small talk in the face of what he could tell was animosity.
‘I’m taking over some of Jerry’s authors now he’s leaving. Pinks is one of them.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Strike. Still, she did not smile. ‘Waldegrave still came to the party, though?’
‘Pinks is fond of Jerry. Why,’ she repeated, ‘are you here?’
‘Doing what I was hired to do,’ said Strike. ‘Trying to find out who killed Owen Quine.’
She rolled her eyes, clearly feeling that he was pushing his persistence past a joke.
‘How did you get in here? It’s members only.’