The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(26)

It took forty minutes to reach his destination, partly because the row of nineteenth-century workers’ cottages where the pub stood was blocked to traffic. Strike chose to get out and end the curmudgeonly taxi driver’s attempt to make sense of the street numbering, which appeared not to follow a logical sequence, and proceeded on foot, wondering whether the difficulty of finding the place had influenced Matthew’s choice.

The King’s Arms turned out to be a picturesque Victorian corner pub the entrances of which were surrounded by a mixture of professional young men in suits and what looked like students, all smoking and drinking. The small crowd parted easily as he approached, giving him a wider berth than was strictly necessary even for a man of his height and breadth. As he crossed the threshold into the small bar Strike wondered, not without a faint hope that it might happen, whether he might be asked to leave on account of his filthy clothes.

Meanwhile, in the noisy back room, which was a glass-ceilinged courtyard self-consciously crammed with bric-a-brac, Matthew was looking at his watch.

‘It’s nearly a quarter past,’ he told Robin.

Clean cut in his suit and tie, he was – as usual – the handsomest man in the room. Robin was used to seeing women’s eyes swivel as he walked past them; she had never quite managed to make up her mind how aware Matthew was of their swift, burning glances. Sitting at the long wooden bench that they had been forced to share with a party of cackling students, six foot one, with a firm cleft chin and bright blue eyes, he looked like a thoroughbred kept in a paddock of Highland ponies.

‘That’s him,’ said Robin, with a surge of relief and apprehension.

Strike seemed to have become larger and rougher-looking since he had left the office. He moved easily towards them through the packed room, his eyes on Robin’s bright gold head, one large hand grasping a pint of Hophead. Matthew stood up. It looked as though he braced himself.

‘Cormoran – hi – you found it.’

‘You’re Matthew,’ said Strike, holding out a hand. ‘Sorry I’m so late, I tried to get away earlier but I was with the sort of bloke you wouldn’t want to turn your back on without permission.’

Matthew returned an empty smile. He had expected Strike to be full of those kinds of comments: self-dramatising, trying to make a mystery of what he did. By the look of him, he’d been changing a tyre.

‘Sit down,’ Robin told Strike nervously, moving along the bench so far that she was almost falling off the end. ‘Are you hungry? We were just talking about ordering something.’

‘They do reasonably decent food,’ said Matthew. ‘Thai. It’s not the Mango Tree, but it’s all right.’

Strike smiled without warmth. He had expected Matthew to be like this: name-dropping restaurants in Belgravia to prove, after a single year in London, that he was a seasoned metropolitan.

‘How did it go this afternoon?’ Robin asked Strike. She thought that if Matthew only heard about the sort of things that Strike did, he would become as fascinated as she was by the process of detection and his every prejudice would fall away.

But Strike’s brief description of his afternoon, omitting all identifying details of those involved, met barely concealed indifference on the part of Matthew. Strike then offered them both a drink, as they were holding empty glasses.

‘You could show a bit of interest,’ Robin hissed at Matthew once Strike was out of earshot at the bar.

‘Robin, he met a man in a shop,’ said Matthew. ‘I doubt they’ll be optioning the film rights any time soon.’

Pleased with his own wit, he turned his attention to the blackboard menu on the opposite wall.

When Strike had returned with drinks, Robin insisted on battling her way up to the bar with their food order. She dreaded leaving the two men alone together, but felt that they might, somehow, find their own level without her.

Matthew’s brief increase in self-satisfaction ebbed away in Robin’s absence.

‘You’re ex-army,’ he found himself telling Strike, even though he had been determined not to permit Strike’s life experience to dominate the conversation.

‘That’s right,’ said Strike. ‘SIB.’

Matthew was not sure what that was.

‘My father’s ex-RAF,’ he said. ‘Yeah, he was in same time as Jeff Young.’

‘Who?’

‘Welsh rugby union player? Twenty-three caps?’ said Matthew.

‘Right,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah, Dad made Squadron Leader. Left in eighty-six and he’s run his own property management business since. Done all right for himself. Nothing like your old man,’ said Matthew, a little defensively, ‘but all right.’

Tit, thought Strike.

‘What are you talking about?’ Robin said anxiously, sitting back down.

‘Just Dad,’ said Matthew.

‘Poor thing,’ said Robin.

‘Why poor thing?’ snapped Matthew.

‘Well – he’s worried about your mum, isn’t he? The mini-stroke?’

‘Oh,’ said Matthew, ‘that.’

Strike had met men like Matthew in the army: always officer class, but with that little pocket of insecurity just beneath the smooth surface that made them overcompensate, and sometimes overreach.

‘So how are things at Lowther-French?’ Robin asked Matthew, willing him to show Strike what a nice man he was, to show the real Matthew, whom she loved. ‘Matthew’s auditing this really odd little publishing company. They’re quite funny, aren’t they?’ she said to her fiancé.