‘Welsh rugby union player? Twenty-three caps?’ said Matthew.
‘Right,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah, Dad made Squadron Leader. Left in eighty-six and he’s run his own property management business since. Done all right for himself. Nothing like your old man,’ said Matthew, a little defensively, ‘but all right.’
Tit, thought Strike.
‘What are you talking about?’ Robin said anxiously, sitting back down.
‘Just Dad,’ said Matthew.
‘Poor thing,’ said Robin.
‘Why poor thing?’ snapped Matthew.
‘Well – he’s worried about your mum, isn’t he? The mini-stroke?’
‘Oh,’ said Matthew, ‘that.’
Strike had met men like Matthew in the army: always officer class, but with that little pocket of insecurity just beneath the smooth surface that made them overcompensate, and sometimes overreach.
‘So how are things at Lowther-French?’ Robin asked Matthew, willing him to show Strike what a nice man he was, to show the real Matthew, whom she loved. ‘Matthew’s auditing this really odd little publishing company. They’re quite funny, aren’t they?’ she said to her fiancé.
‘I wouldn’t call it “funny”, the shambles they’re in,’ said Matthew, and he talked until their food arrived, littering his chat with references to ‘ninety k’ and ‘a quarter of a mill’, and every sentence was angled, like a mirror, to show him in the best possible light: his cleverness, his quick thinking, his besting of slower, stupider yet more senior colleagues, his patronage of the dullards working for the firm he was auditing.
‘… trying to justify a Christmas party, when they’ve barely broken even in two years; it’ll be more like a wake.’
Matthew’s confident strictures on the small firm were followed by the arrival of their food and silence. Robin, who had been hoping that Matthew would reproduce for Strike some of the kinder, more affectionate things he had found to tell her about the eccentrics at the small press, could think of nothing to say. However, Matthew’s mention of a publishing party had just given Strike an idea. The detective’s jaws worked more slowly. It had occurred to him that there might be an excellent opportunity to seek information on Owen Quine’s whereabouts, and his capacious memory volunteered a small piece of information he had forgotten he knew.
‘Got a girlfriend, Cormoran?’ Matthew asked Strike directly; it was something he was keen to establish. Robin had been vague on the point.
‘No,’ said Strike absently. ‘’Scuse me – won’t be long, got to make a phone call.’
‘Yeah, no problem,’ said Matthew irritably, but only once Strike was once again out of earshot. ‘You’re forty minutes late and then you piss off during dinner. We’ll just sit here waiting till you deign to come back.’
‘Matt!’
Reaching the dark pavement, Strike pulled out cigarettes and his mobile phone. Lighting up, he walked away from his fellow smokers to the quiet end of the side street to stand in darkness beneath the brick arches that bore the railway line.
Culpepper answered on the third ring.
‘Strike,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good. Calling to ask a favour.’
‘Go on,’ said Culpepper non-committally.
‘You’ve got a cousin called Nina who works for Roper Chard—’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘You told me,’ said Strike patiently.
‘When?’
‘Few months ago when I was investigating that dodgy dentist for you.’
‘Your fucking memory,’ said Culpepper, sounding less impressed than unnerved. ‘It’s not normal. What about her?’
‘Couldn’t put me in touch with her, could you?’ asked Strike. ‘Roper Chard have got an anniversary party tomorrow night and I’d like to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got a case,’ said Strike evasively. He never shared with Culpepper details of the high-society divorces and business ruptures he was investigating, in spite of Culpepper’s frequent requests to do so. ‘And I just gave you the scoop of your bloody career.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ said the journalist grudgingly, after a short hesitation. ‘I suppose I could do that for you.’
‘Is she single?’ Strike asked.
‘What, you after a shag, too?’ said Culpepper, and Strike noted that he seemed amused instead of peeved at the thought of Strike trying it on with his cousin.
‘No, I want to know whether it’ll look suspicious if she takes me to the party.’
‘Oh, right. I think she’s just split up with someone. I dunno. I’ll text you the number. Wait till Sunday,’ Culpepper added with barely suppressed glee. ‘A tsunami of shit’s about to hit Lord Porker.’
‘Call Nina for me first, will you?’ Strike asked him. ‘And tell her who I am, so she understands the gig?’
Culpepper agreed to it and rang off. In no particular hurry to return to Matthew, Strike smoked his cigarette down to the butt before moving back inside.
The packed room, he thought, as he made his way across it, bowing his head to avoid hanging pots and street signs, was like Matthew: it tried too hard. The decor included an old-fashioned stove and an ancient till, multiple shopping baskets, old prints and plates: a contrived panoply of junk-shop finds.
Matthew had hoped to have finished his noodles before Strike returned, to underline the length of his absence, but had not quite managed it. Robin was looking miserable and Strike, wondering what had passed between them while he had been gone, felt sorry for her.
‘Robin says you’re a rugby player,’ he told Matthew, determined to make an effort. ‘Could’ve played county, is that right?’
They made laborious conversation for another hour: the wheels turned most easily while Matthew was able to talk about himself. Strike noticed Robin’s habit of feeding Matthew lines and cues, each designed to open up an area of conversation in which he could shine.
‘How long have you two been together?’ he asked.
‘Nine years,’ said Matthew, with a slight return of his former combative air.
‘That long?’ said Strike, surprised. ‘What, were you at university together?’
‘School,’ said Robin, smiling. ‘Sixth form.’
‘Wasn’t a big school,’ said Matthew. ‘She was the only girl with any brains who was fanciable. No choice.’
Tosser, thought Strike.
Their way home lay together as far as Waterloo station; they walked through the darkness, continuing to make small talk, then parted at the entrance to the Tube.
‘There,’ said Robin hopelessly, as she and Matthew walked away towards the escalator. ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘Punctuality’s shit,’ said Matthew, who could find no other charge to lay against Strike that did not sound insane. ‘He’ll probably arrive forty minutes bloody late and ruin the service.’
But it was tacit consent to Strike’s attendance and, in the absence of genuine enthusiasm, Robin supposed it could have been worse.
Matthew, meanwhile, was brooding in silence on things he would have confessed to nobody. Robin had accurately described her boss’s looks – the pube-like hair, the boxer’s profile – but Matthew had not expected Strike to be so big. He had a couple of inches on Matthew, who enjoyed being the tallest man in his office. What was more, while he would have found it distasteful showboating if Strike had held forth about his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, or told them how his leg had been blown off, or how he had earned the medal that Robin seemed to find so impressive, his silence on these subjects had been almost more irritating. Strike’s heroism, his action-packed life, his experiences of travel and danger had somehow hovered, spectrally, over the conversation.
Beside him on the train, Robin too sat in silence. She had not enjoyed the evening one bit. Never before had she known Matthew quite like that; or at least, never before had she seen him like that. It was Strike, she thought, puzzling over the matter as the train jolted them. Strike had somehow made her see Matthew through his eyes. She did not know quite how he had done it – all that questioning Matthew about rugby – some people might have thought it was polite, but Robin knew better… or was she just annoyed that he had been late, and blaming him for things that he had not intended?
And so the engaged couple sped home, united in unexpressed irritation with the man now snoring loudly as he rattled away from them on the Northern line.