Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(74)

“Shall we go?” Robin asked quietly and Strike nodded, dropping the burning stub of his cigarette into his last inch of McEwan’s, where it emitted a small, satisfying hiss.





27



A dreadful knowledge comes…

Blue ?yster Cult, “In the Presence of Another World”



They were given rooms five doors apart in the Travelodge. Robin had dreaded the man behind the desk offering a double room, but Strike had headed that off with a peremptory “two singles” before he had time to open his mouth.

Ridiculous, really, to feel suddenly self-conscious, because they had been physically closer all day in the Land Rover than they were in the lift. It felt odd saying goodnight to Strike when she reached the door of her room; not that he lingered. He merely said “’night” and walked on to his own room, but he waited outside his door until she managed to work the key card and let herself inside with a flustered wave.

Why had she had waved? Ridiculous.

She dropped her holdall on the bed and moved to the window, which offered only a bleak view of the same industrial warehouses they had passed on their way into town a few hours earlier. It felt as though they had been away from London for much longer than they had.

The heating was turned up too high. Robin forced open a stiff window, and the cool night air surged inside, eager to invade the stuffy square box of a room. After putting her phone on to charge, she undressed, pulled on a nightshirt, brushed her teeth and slid down between the cool sheets.

She still felt strangely unsettled, knowing that she was sleeping five rooms away from Strike. That was Matthew’s fault, of course. If you sleep with him, we’re over for good.

Her unruly imagination suddenly presented her with the sound of a knock on the door, Strike inviting himself in on some slim pretext…

Don’t be ridiculous.

She rolled over, pressing her flushed face into the pillow. What was she thinking? Damn Matthew, putting things in her head, judging her by himself…

Strike, meanwhile, had not yet made it into bed. He was stiff all over from the long hours of immobility in the car. It felt good to get the prosthesis off. Even though the shower was not particularly handy for a man with one leg, he used it, carefully holding on to the bar inside the door, trying to relax his sore knee with hot water. Towel-dried, he navigated his way carefully back to the bed, put his mobile on to charge and climbed, naked, beneath the covers.

Lying with his hands behind his head he stared up at the dark ceiling and thought about Robin, lying five rooms away. He wondered whether Matthew had texted again, whether they were on the phone together, whether she was capitalizing on her privacy to cry for the first time all day.

The sounds of what was probably a stag party reached him through the floor: loud male laughter, shouting, whoops, slamming doors. Somebody put on music and the bass pounded through his room. It reminded him of the nights he had slept in his office, when the music playing in the 12 Bar Café below had vibrated through the metal legs of his camp bed. He hoped the noise was not as loud in Robin’s room. She needed her rest—she had to drive another two hundred and fifty miles tomorrow. Yawning, Strike rolled over and, in spite of the thudding music and yells, fell almost immediately asleep.


They met by agreement in the dining room next morning, where Strike blocked Robin from view as she surreptitiously refilled their flask from the urn at the buffet and both loaded their plates with toast. Strike resisted the full English and rewarded himself for his restraint by sliding several Danish pastries into his backpack. At eight o’clock they were back in the Land Rover, driving through the glorious Cumbrian countryside, a rolling panorama of heather moors and peat lands under a hazy blue sky, and joining the M6 South.

“Sorry I can’t share the driving,” said Strike, who was sipping coffee. “That clutch would kill me. It’d kill both of us.”

“I don’t care,” said Robin. “I love driving, you know that.”

They sped on in companionable silence. Robin was the only person whom Strike could stand to be driven by, notwithstanding the fact that he had an ingrained prejudice against women drivers. This was something that he generally kept quiet, but which had its roots in many a negative passenger experience, from his Cornish aunt’s nervous ineptitude, to his sister Lucy’s distractibility, to Charlotte’s reckless courting of danger. An ex-girlfriend from the SIB, Tracey, had been competent behind the wheel and yet had become so paralyzed with fear on a high, narrow alpine road that she had stopped, on the verge of hyperventilating, refusing to cede the wheel to him but unable to drive further.

“Matthew like the Land Rover?” Strike asked as they trundled over a flyover.

“No,” said Robin. “He wants an A3 Cabriolet.”

“Course he does,” said Strike under his breath, inaudible in the rattling car. “Wanker.”

It took them four hours to reach Market Harborough, a town which, as they established en route, neither Strike nor Robin had ever visited. The approach wound through a number of pretty little villages with thatched roofs, seventeenth-century churches, topiary gardens and residential streets with names like Honeypot Lane. Strike remembered the stark, blank wall, barbed wire and looming submarine factory that had formed the view from Noel Brockbank’s childhood home. What could have brought Brockbank here, to bucolic prettiness and charm? What kind of business owned the telephone number that Holly had given Robin, and which was now residing in Strike’s wallet?