‘Seen this?’ said Robin’s youngest brother, Jonathan, fresh back from the corner shop with the extra milk requested by his mother. ‘It’s on the front page, Rob. That writer with his guts ripped out—’
‘Jon!’ said Mrs Ellacott sharply.
Robin knew that her mother was not reprimanding her son out of any suspicion that Matthew would not appreciate mention of her job, but because of a more general aversion to discussing sudden death in the aftermath of the burial.
‘What?’ said Jonathan, oblivious to the proprieties, shoving the Daily Express under Robin’s nose.
Quine had made the front page now that the press knew what had been done to him.
HORROR AUTHOR WROTE OWN MURDER.
Horror author, Robin thought, he was hardly that… but it makes a good headline.
‘Is your boss gonna solve it, d’you reckon?’ Jonathan asked her, thumbing through the paper. ‘Show up the Met again?’
She began to read the account over Jonathan’s shoulder, but caught Matthew’s eye and moved away.
A buzzing issued from Robin’s handbag, discarded in a sagging chair in the corner of the flagged kitchen, as they ate their meal of stew and baked potatoes. She ignored it. Only when they had finished eating and Matthew was dutifully helping her mother clear the table did Robin wander to her bag to check her messages. To her great surprise she saw a missed call from Strike. With a surreptitious glance at Matthew, who was busily stacking plates in the dishwasher, she called voicemail while the others chatted.
You have one new message. Received today at seven twenty p.m.
The crackle of an open line, but no speech.
Then a thud. A yell in the distance from Strike:
‘No you don’t, you fucking—’
A bellow of pain.
Silence. The crackle of the open line. Indeterminate crunching, dragging sounds. Loud panting, a scraping noise, the line dead.
Robin stood aghast, the phone pressed against her ear.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked her father, glasses halfway down his nose as he paused on the way to the dresser, knives and forks in his hand.
‘I think – I think my boss has – has had an accident—’
She pressed Strike’s number with shaking fingers. The call went straight to voicemail. Matthew was standing in the middle of the kitchen watching her, his displeasure undisguised.
33
Hard fate when women are compell’d to woo!
Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton,
The Honest Whore
Strike did not hear Robin calling because, unbeknownst to him, his mobile had been knocked onto silent when it had hit the ground fifteen minutes previously. Nor was he aware that his thumb had hit Robin’s number as the phone slipped through his fingers.
He had only just left his building when it happened. The door onto the street had swung shut behind him and he had had two seconds, with his mobile in his hand (waiting for a ring-back from the cab he had reluctantly ordered) when the tall figure in the black coat had come running at him through the darkness. A blur of pale skin beneath a hood and a scarf, her arm outstretched, inexpert but determined, with the knife pointing directly at him in a wavering clutch.
Bracing himself to meet her he had almost slipped again but, slamming his hand to the door, he steadied himself and the mobile fell. Shocked and furious with her, whoever she was, for the damage her pursuit had already done to his knee he bellowed – she checked for a split-second, then came at him once more.
As he swung his stick at the hand in which he had already seen the Stanley knife his knee twisted again. He let out a roar of pain and she leapt back, as though she had stabbed him without knowing it, and then, for the second time, she had panicked and taken flight, sprinting away through the snow leaving a furious and frustrated Strike unable to give chase, and with no choice but to scrabble around in the snow for his phone.
Fuck this leg!
When Robin called him he was sitting in a crawling taxi, sweating with pain. It was small consolation that the tiny triangular blade he had seen glinting in his pursuer’s hand had not pierced him. His knee, to which he had felt obliged to fit the prosthesis before setting out for Nina’s, was excruciating once more and he was burning with rage at his inability to give chase to his mad stalker. He had never hit a woman, never knowingly hurt one, but the sight of the knife coming at him through the dark had rendered such scruples void. To the consternation of the taxi driver, who was watching his large, furious-looking passenger in the rear-view mirror, Strike kept twisting in his seat in case he saw her walking along the busy Saturday-night pavements, round-shouldered in her black coat, her knife concealed in her pocket.
The cab was gliding beneath the Christmas lights of Oxford Street, large, fragile parcels of silver wrapped with golden bows, and Strike fought his ruffled temper as they travelled, feeling no pleasure at the thought of his imminent dinner date. Again and again Robin called him, but he could not feel the mobile vibrating because it was deep in his coat pocket, which lay beside him on the seat.
‘Hi,’ said Nina with a forced smile when she opened the door to her flat half an hour after the agreed time.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Strike, limping over the threshold. ‘I had an accident leaving the house. My leg.’
He had not brought her anything, he realised, standing there in his overcoat. He should have brought wine or chocolates and he felt her notice it as her big eyes roved over him; she had good manners herself and he felt, suddenly, a little shabby.
‘And I’ve forgotten the wine I bought you,’ he lied. ‘This is crap. Chuck me out.’
As she laughed, though unwillingly, Strike felt the phone vibrate in his pocket and automatically pulled it out.
Robin. He could not think why she wanted him on a Saturday.
‘Sorry,’ he told Nina, ‘gotta take this – urgent, it’s my assistant—’
Her smile slipped. She turned and walked out of the hall, leaving him there in his coat.
‘Robin?’
‘Are you all right? What happened?’
‘How did you—?’
‘I’ve got a voicemail that sounds like a recording of you being attacked!’
‘Christ, did I call you? Must’ve been when I dropped the phone. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was—’
Five minutes later, having told Robin what had happened, he hung up his coat and followed his nose to the sitting room, where Nina had laid a table for two. The room was lamp-lit; she had tidied, put fresh flowers around the place. A strong smell of burnt garlic hung in the air.
‘Sorry,’ he repeated as she returned carrying a dish. ‘Wish I had a nine-to-five job sometimes.’