Her imagination showed her Matthew’s face if she had to telephone him and say that she was not coming, that she had missed the sleeper. His mother’s funeral… who misses a funeral? She should have been there already, at Matt’s father’s house, helping with arrangements, taking some of the strain. Her weekend bag ought already to have been sitting in her old bedroom at home, her funeral clothes pressed and hanging in her old wardrobe, everything ready for the short walk to the church the following morning. They were burying Mrs Cunliffe, her future mother-in-law, but she had chosen to drive off into the snow with Strike, and now they were gridlocked, two hundred miles from the church where Matthew’s mother would be laid to rest.
He’ll never forgive me. He’ll never forgive me if I miss the funeral because I did this…
Why did she have to have been presented with such a choice, today of all days? Why did the weather have to be so bad? Robin’s stomach churned with anxiety and the traffic did not move.
Strike said nothing, but turned on the radio. The sound of Take That filled the car, singing about there being progress now, where once there was none. The music grated on Robin’s nerves, but she said nothing.
The line of traffic moved forward a few feet.
Oh, please God, let me get to King’s Cross on time, prayed Robin inside her head.
For three quarters of an hour they crawled through the snow, the afternoon light fading fast around them. What had seemed a vast ocean of time until the departure of the night train was starting to feel to Robin like a rapidly draining pool in which she might shortly be sitting alone, marooned.
Now they could see the crash ahead of them; the police, the lights, a mangled Polo.
‘You’ll make it,’ said Strike, speaking for the first time since he had turned on the radio as they waited their turn to be waved forwards by the traffic cop. ‘It’ll be tight, but you’ll make it.’
Robin did not answer. She knew it was all her fault, not his: he had offered her the day off. It was she who had been insistent on coming with him to Devon, she who had lied to Matthew about the availability of train seats today. She ought to have stood all the way from London to Harrogate rather than miss Mrs Cunliffe’s funeral. Strike had been with Charlotte sixteen years, on and off, and the job had broken them. She did not want to lose Matthew. Why had she done this; why had she offered to drive Strike?
The traffic was dense and slow. By five o’clock they were travelling in thick rush-hour traffic outside Reading and crawled to a halt again. Strike turned up the news when it came on the radio. Robin tried to care what they would say about Quine’s murder, but her heart was in Yorkshire now, as though it had leapfrogged the traffic and all the implacable, snowy miles between her and home.
‘Police have confirmed today that murdered author Owen Quine, whose body was discovered six days ago in a house in Barons Court, London, was murdered in the same way as the hero of his last, unpublished book. No arrest has yet been made in the case.
‘Detective Inspector Richard Anstis, who is in charge of the investigation, spoke to reporters earlier this afternoon.’
Anstis, Strike noted, sounded stilted and tense. This was not the way he would have chosen to release the information.
‘We’re interested in hearing from everyone who had access to the manuscript of Mr Quine’s last novel—’
‘Can you tell us exactly how Mr Quine was killed, Detective Inspector?’ asked an eager male voice.
‘We’re waiting for a full forensic report,’ said Anstis, and he was cut across by a female reporter.
‘Can you confirm that parts of Mr Quine’s body were removed by the killer?’
‘Part of Mr Quine’s intestines were taken away from the scene,’ said Anstis. ‘We’re pursuing several leads, but we would appeal to the public for any information. This was an appalling crime and we believe the perpetrator to be extremely dangerous.’
‘Not again,’ said Robin desperately and Strike looked up to see a wall of red lights ahead. ‘Not another accident…’
Strike slapped off the radio, unwound his window and stuck his head out into the whirling snow.
‘No,’ he shouted to her. ‘Someone stuck at the side of the road… in a drift… we’ll be moving again in a minute,’ he reassured her.
But it took another forty minutes for them to clear the obstruction. All three lanes were packed and they resumed their journey at little more than a crawl.
‘I’m not going to make it,’ said Robin, her mouth dry, as they finally reached the edge of London. It was twenty past ten.
‘You are,’ said Strike. ‘Turn that bloody thing off,’ he said, thumping the sat nav into silence, ‘and don’t take that exit—’
‘But I’ve got to drop you—’
‘Forget me, you don’t need to drop me – next left—’
‘I can’t go down there, it’s one way!’
‘Left!’ he bellowed, tugging the wheel.
‘Don’t do that, it’s danger—’
‘D’you want to miss this bloody funeral? Put your foot down! First right—’
‘Where are we?’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ said Strike, squinting through the snow. ‘Straight on… my mate Nick’s dad’s a cabbie, he taught me some stuff – right again – ignore the bloody No Entry sign, who’s coming out of there on a night like this? Straight on and left at the lights!’
‘I can’t just leave you at King’s Cross!’ she said, obeying his instructions blindly. ‘You can’t drive it, what are you going to do with it?’
‘Sod the car, I’ll think of something – up here, take the second right—’
At five to eleven the towers of St Pancras appeared to Robin like a vision of heaven through the snow.
‘Pull over, get out and run,’ said Strike. ‘Call me if you make it. I’ll be here if you don’t.’
‘Thank you.’
And she had gone, sprinting over the snow with her weekend bag dangling from her hand. Strike watched her vanish into the darkness, imagined her skidding a little on the slippery floor of the station, not falling, looking wildly around for the platform… She had left the car, on his instructions, at the kerb on a double line. If she made the train he was stranded in a hire car he couldn’t drive and which would certainly be towed.
The golden hands on the St Pancras clock moved inexorably towards eleven o’clock. Strike saw the train doors slamming shut in his mind’s eye, Robin sprinting up the platform, red-gold hair flying…
One minute past. He fixed his eyes on the station entrance and waited.
She did not reappear. Still he waited. Five minutes past. Six minutes past.
His mobile rang.
‘Did you make it?’
‘By the skin of my teeth… it was just about to leave… Cormoran, thank you, thank you so much…’
‘No problem,’ he said, looking around at the dark icy ground, the deepening snow. ‘Have a good journey. I’d better sort myself out. Good luck for tomorrow.’
‘Thank you!’ she called as he hung up.
He had owed her, Strike thought, reaching for his crutches, but that did not make the prospect of a journey across snowy London on one leg, or a hefty fine for abandoning a hire car in the middle of town, much more appealing.