Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(50)

He had once before put his arm around Robin’s shoulders but that had been quite different: he had been using her as a walking stick. This time it was she who could barely move in a straight line. He found her waist and held her steady as they left the pub.

“Matthew,” she said, as they moved off, “would not like this.”

Strike said nothing. In spite of everything he had heard, he was not as sure as Robin was that the relationship was over. They had been together nine years and there was a wedding dress ready and waiting in Masham. He had been careful to offer no criticism of Matthew that might be repeated to her ex-fiancé in the renewal of hostilities that was surely coming, because the accumulated ties of nine years could not be severed in a single night. His reticence was for Robin’s sake rather than his own. He had no fear of Matthew.

“Who was that man?” asked Robin sleepily, after they had walked a hundred yards in silence.

“Which man?”

“That man this morning… I thought he might be the leg man… he scared the hell out of me.”

“Ah… that’s Shanker. He’s an old friend.”

“He’s terrifying.”

“Shanker wouldn’t hurt you,” Strike assured her. Then, as an afterthought: “But don’t ever leave him alone in the office.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll nick anything that’s not nailed down. He does nothing for nothing.”

“Where did you meet him?”

The story of Shanker and Leda took them all the way to Frith Street, where quiet town houses looked down upon them, exuding dignity and order.

“Here?” said Robin, gazing open-mouthed up at Hazlitt’s Hotel. “I can’t stay here—this’ll be expensive!”

“I’m paying,” said Strike. “Think of it as this year’s bonus. No arguments,” he added, as the door opened and a smiling young man stood back to let them in. “It’s my fault you need somewhere safe.”

The wood-paneled hall was cozy, with the feeling of a private house. There was only one way in and nobody could open the front door from outside.

When he had given the young man his credit card Strike saw the unsteady Robin to the foot of the stairs.

“You can take tomorrow morning off if you—”

“I’ll be there at nine,” she said. “Cormoran, thanks for—for—”

“Not a problem. Sleep well.”

Frith Street was quiet as he closed the Hazlitt’s door behind him. Strike set off, his hands deep in his pockets, lost in thought.

She had been raped and left for dead. Holy shit.

Eight days previously some bastard had handed her a woman’s severed leg and she had not breathed a word of her past, not asked for special dispensation to take time off, nor deviated in any respect from the total professionalism she brought to work every morning. It was he, without even knowing her history, who had insisted on the best rape alarm, on nothing after dark, on checking in with her regularly through the working day…

At the precise moment Strike became aware that he was walking away from Denmark Street rather than towards it, he spotted a man in a beanie hat twenty yards away, skulking on the corner of Soho Square. The amber tip of the cigarette swiftly vanished as the man turned and began to walk hurriedly away.

“’Scuse me, mate!”

Strike’s voice echoed through the quiet square as he sped up. The man in the hat did not look back, but broke into a run.

“Oi! Mate!”

Strike, too, began to run, his knee protesting with every jolting step. His quarry looked back once then took a sharp left, Strike moving as fast as he could in pursuit. Entering Carlisle Street, Strike squinted ahead at the crowd clustered around the entrance of the Toucan, wondering whether his man had joined it. Panting, he ran on past the pub drinkers, drawing up at the junction with Dean Street and revolving on the spot, looking for his quarry. He had a choice of taking a left, a right or continuing along Carlisle Street, and each offered a multitude of doorways and basement spaces in which the man in the beanie hat could have hidden, assuming he had not hailed a passing cab.

“Bollocks,” Strike muttered. His stump was sore against the end of his prosthesis. All he had was an impression of ample height and breadth, a dark coat and hat and the suspicious fact that he had run when called, run before Strike could ask him for the time, or a light, or directions.

He took a guess and headed right, up Dean Street. The traffic swooshed past him in either direction. For nearly an hour Strike continued to prowl the area, probing into dark doorways and basement cavities. He knew this was almost certainly a fool’s errand, but if—if—they had been followed by the man who had sent the leg, he was clearly a reckless bastard who might not have been scared away from Robin’s vicinity by Strike’s ungainly pursuit.

Men in sleeping bags glared at him as he moved far closer than members of the public usually dared; twice he startled cats out from behind dustbins, but the man in the beanie hat was nowhere to be seen.





21



… the damn call came,

And I knew what I knew and didn’t want to know.

Blue ?yster Cult, “Live for Me”



Robin woke next day to a sore head and a weight in the pit of her stomach. In the time it took to roll over on unfamiliar, crisp white pillows, the events of the previous evening seemed to come crashing down on her. Shaking her hair out of her face she sat up and looked around. Between the carved posts of her wooden four-poster she made out the dim outlines of a room barely illuminated by the line of brilliant light between brocade curtains. As her eyes became accustomed to the gilded gloom she made out the portrait of a fat gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers, framed in gilt. This was the kind of hotel in which you took an expensive city break, not where you slept off a hangover with a few hastily snatched clothes in a holdall.