‘Don’t play fucking games with me!’ Strike shouted, bending towards her with two large fists clenched. He could feel his damaged knee only too acutely now. It was her fault he had taken the fall that had damaged the ligaments all over again.
‘Cormoran,’ said Robin firmly, sliding between them and forcing him to take a pace backwards. ‘Listen,’ she told the girl. ‘Listen to me. Tell him why you’re doing this and maybe he won’t call—’
‘You’ve gotta be fucking joking,’ said Strike. ‘Twice she’s tried to stab—’
‘—maybe he won’t call the police,’ said Robin loudly, undeterred.
The woman jumped up and tried to make a break for it towards the door.
‘No you don’t,’ said Strike, hobbling fast around Robin, catching his assailant round the waist and throwing her none too gently back onto the sofa. ‘Who are you?’
‘You’ve hurt me now!’ she shouted. ‘You’ve really hurt me – my ribs – I’ll get you for assault, you bastard—’
‘I’ll call you Pippa, then, shall I?’ said Strike.
A shuddering gasp and a malevolent stare.
‘You – you – fuck—’
‘Yeah, yeah, fuck me,’ said Strike irritably. ‘Your name.’
Her chest was heaving under the heavy overcoat.
‘How will you know if I’m telling the truth, even if I tell you?’ she panted, with a further show of defiance.
‘I’ll keep you here till I’ve checked,’ said Strike.
‘Kidnap!’ she shouted, her voice as rough and loud as a docker’s.
‘Citizen’s arrest,’ said Strike. ‘You tried to fucking knife me. Now, for the last bloody time—’
‘Pippa Midgley,’ she spat.
‘Finally. Have you got ID?’
With another mutinous obscenity she slid a hand into her pocket and drew out a bus pass, which she threw to him.
‘This says Phillip Midgley.’
‘No shit.’
Watching the implication hit Strike, Robin felt a sudden urge, in spite of the tension in the room, to laugh.
‘Epicoene,’ said Pippa Midgley furiously. ‘Didn’t you get it? Too subtle for you, dickhead?’
Strike looked up at her. The Adam’s apple on her scratched, marked throat was still prominent. She had buried her hands in her pockets again.
‘I’ll be Pippa on all my documents next year,’ she said.
‘Pippa,’ Strike repeated. ‘You’re the author of “I’ll turn the handle on the fucking rack for you”, are you?’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, on a long drawn-out sigh of comprehension.
‘Oooooh, you’re so clever, Mr Butch,’ said Pippa in spiteful imitation.
‘D’you know Kathryn Kent personally, or are you just cyber-friends?’
‘Why? Is knowing Kath Kent a crime now?’
‘How did you know Owen Quine?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that bastard,’ she said, her chest heaving. ‘What he’s done to me… what he’s done… pretending… he lied… lying fucking bastard…’
Fresh tears splattered down her cheeks and she dissolved into hysterics. Her scarlet-tipped hands clawed at her hair, her feet drummed on the floor, she rocked backwards and forwards, wailing. Strike watched her with distaste and after thirty seconds said:
‘Will you shut the fuck—’
But Robin quelled him with a glance, tore a handful of tissues out of the box on her desk and pushed them into Pippa’s hand.
‘T-t-ta—’
‘Would you like a tea or coffee, Pippa?’ asked Robin kindly.
‘Co… fee… pl…’
‘She’s just tried to bloody knife me, Robin!’
‘Well, she didn’t manage it, did she?’ commented Robin, busy with the kettle.
‘Ineptitude,’ said Strike incredulously, ‘is no fucking defence under the law!’
He rounded on Pippa again, who had followed this exchange with her mouth agape.
‘Why have you been following me? What are you trying to stop me doing? And I’m warning you – just because Robin here’s buying the sob stuff—’
‘You’re working for her!’ yelled Pippa. ‘That twisted bitch, his widow! She’s got his money now, hasn’t she – we know what you’ve been hired to do, we’re not fucking stupid!’
‘Who’s “we”?’ demanded Strike, but Pippa’s dark eyes slid again towards the door. ‘I swear to God,’ said Strike, whose much-tried knee was now throbbing in a way that made him want to grind his teeth, ‘if you go for that door one more fucking time I’m calling the police and I’ll testify and be glad to watch you go down for attempted murder. And it won’t be fun for you inside, Pippa,’ he added. ‘Not pre-op.’
‘Cormoran!’ said Robin sharply.
‘Stating facts,’ said Strike.
Pippa had shrunk back onto the sofa and was staring at Strike in unfeigned terror.
‘Coffee,’ said Robin firmly, emerging from behind the desk and pressing the mug into one of the long-taloned hands. ‘Just tell him what all this is about, for God’s sake, Pippa. Tell him.’
Unstable and aggressive though Pippa seemed, Robin could not help pitying the girl, who appeared to have given almost no thought to the possible consequences of lunging at a private detective with a blade. Robin could only assume that she possessed in extreme form the trait that afflicted her own younger brother Martin, who was notorious in their family for the lack of foresight and love of danger that had resulted in more trips to casualty than the rest of his siblings combined.
‘We know she hired you to frame us,’ croaked Pippa.
‘Who,’ growled Strike, ‘is “she” and who is “us”?’
‘Leonora Quine!’ said Pippa. ‘We know what she’s like and we know what she’s capable of! She hates us, me and Kath, she’d do anything to get us. She murdered Owen and she’s trying to pin it on us! You can look like that all you want!’ she shouted at Strike, whose heavy eyebrows had risen halfway to his thick hairline. ‘She’s a crazy bitch, she’s jealous as hell – she couldn’t stand him seeing us and now she’s got you poking around trying to get stuff to use against us!’
‘I don’t know whether you believe this paranoid bollocks—’
‘We know what’s going on!’ shouted Pippa.
‘Shut up. Nobody except the killer knew Quine was dead when you started stalking me. You followed me the day I found the body and I know you were following Leonora for a week before that. Why?’ And when she did not answer, he repeated: ‘Last chance: why did you follow me from Leonora’s?’
‘I thought you might lead me to where he was,’ said Pippa.
‘Why did you want to know where he was?’
‘So I could fucking kill him!’ yelled Pippa, and Robin was confirmed in her impression that Pippa shared Martin’s almost total lack of self-preservation.
‘And why did you want to kill him?’ asked Strike, as though she had said nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Because of what he did to us in that horrible fucking book! You know – you’ve read it – Epicoene – that bastard, that bastard—’