Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(105)

Nine years of shared life, of growing up together, of arguing and reconciling, of loving. Nine years, holding fast to each other through trauma that ought to have broken them apart.

She remembered the day after the proposal, the day she had been sent by the temping agency to Strike. It seemed much, much longer ago than it was. She felt like a different person… at least, she had felt like a different person, until Strike told her to stay at home and copy down phone numbers, evading the question of when she would return to work as his partner.

“They split up.”

“What?” said Robin.

“They did,” said Matthew, and his voice broke. He nodded at the screen. Prince William had just turned to look at his bride. “They broke up for a bit.”

“I know they did,” said Robin.

She tried to speak coldly, but Matthew’s expression was bereft.

Maybe on some level I think you deserve better than me.

“Is it—are we really over?” he asked.

Kate Middleton had drawn level with Prince William at the altar. They looked delighted to be reunited.

Staring at the screen, Robin knew that today her answer to Matthew’s question would be taken as definitive. Her engagement ring was still lying where she had left it, on top of old accountancy textbooks on the bookcase. Neither of them had touched it since she had taken it off.

“Dearly beloved…” began the Dean of Westminster on screen.

She thought of the day that Matthew had asked her out for the very first time and remembered walking home from school, her insides on fire with excitement and pride. She remembered Sarah Shadlock giggling, leaning against him in a pub in Bath, and Matthew frowning slightly and pulling away. She thought of Strike and Elin… what have they got to do with anything?

She remembered Matthew, white-faced and shaking, in the hospital where they had kept her for twenty-four hours after the rape. He had missed an exam to be with her, simply taken off without leaving word. His mother had been annoyed about that. He had had to resit in the summer.

I was twenty-one and I didn’t know then what I know now: that there’s nobody like you and that I could never love anyone else as much as I love you…

Sarah Shadlock, arms around him when he was drunk, no doubt, while he poured out his confused feelings about Robin, agoraphobic, unable to be touched…

The mobile beeped. Automatically, Robin picked it up and looked at it.


All right, I believe it’s you.



Robin could not take in what she was reading and set the mobile down on the sofa without responding. Men looked so tragic when they cried. Matthew’s eyes were scarlet. His shoulders heaved.

“Matt,” she said in a low voice over his silent sobs. “Matt…”

She held out her hand.





38


Dance on Stilts


The sky was marbled pink, but the streets were still heaving with people. A million Londoners and out-of-towners swarmed the pavements: red, white and blue hats, Union Jacks and plastic crowns, beer-swilling buffoons clutching the hands of children with painted faces, all of them bobbing and eddying on a tide of mawkish sentiment. They filled the Tube, they packed the streets, and as he forced his way through them, looking for what he needed, he heard more than once the refrain of the national anthem, sung tunelessly by the tipsy, and once with virtuosity by a gaggle of rollicking Welsh women who blocked his way out of the station.

He had left It sobbing. The wedding had lifted It temporarily out of It’s misery, led to cloying affection and self-pitying tears, to plaintive hints about commitment and companionship. He had kept his temper only because his every nerve, every atom of his being focused on what he was going to do tonight. Focused on the release that was coming, he had been patient and loving, but his reward had been It taking the biggest liberty yet and trying to prevent him leaving.

He had already put on the jacket that accommodated his knives, and he had cracked. Although he had not laid a finger on It, he knew how to terrify and intimidate with words alone, with body language, with a sudden revelation of the beast inside. He had slammed his way out of the house, leaving It cowed and appalled behind him.

He would have to work hard to make up for that, he reflected as he pushed his way through a crowd of drinkers on a pavement. A bunch of poxy flowers, some fake regret, some bullshit about being stressed… the thought turned his expression mean. Nobody dared challenge him, not with his size and demeanor, though he knocked into several of them plowing his way through them. They were like skittles, fleshy ninepins, and they had about as much life and meaning to him. People had significance in his life only in what they could do for him. That was how The Secretary had come to assume such importance. He had never tracked a woman for so long.

Yes, the last one had taken a while too, but that had been different: that dumb little bitch had toppled so gleefully into his clutches you’d have thought getting hacked to pieces was her life’s ambition. Which, of course, it had been…

The thought of it made him smile. The peach towels and the stink of her blood… He was starting to get the feeling again, that feeling of omnipotence. He was going to get one tonight, he could feel it…

Headin’ for a meeting, shining up my greeting…

He was on the lookout for a girl who had become separated from the massing throngs, addled with drink and sentimentality, but they moved in herds through the streets, so he was starting to think he’d be better with a whore after all.