The Cuckoo's Calling(155)
“He won’t get off, will he?” asked Agyeman suddenly, as they were about to part.
“No, of course not,” said Strike. “The papers haven’t got it yet, but the police found Rochelle’s mobile phone in his mother’s safe. He didn’t dare get rid of it. He’d reset the code of the safe so that no one could get in but him: 030483. Easter Sunday, nineteen eighty-three: the day he killed my mate Charlie.”
It was Robin’s last day. Strike had invited her to come with him to meet Jonah Agyeman, whom she had done so much to find, but she had refused. Strike had the feeling that she was deliberately withdrawing from the case, from the work, from him. He had an appointment at the Amputee Center at Queen Mary’s Hospital that afternoon; she would be gone by the time he returned from Roehampton. Matthew was taking her to Yorkshire for the weekend.
As Strike limped back to the office through the continuing chaos of the building work, he wondered whether he would ever see his temporary secretary again after today, and doubted it. Not so very long ago, the impermanence of their arrangement had been the only thing that reconciled him to her presence, but now he knew that he would miss her. She had come with him in the taxi to the hospital, and wrapped her trench coat around his bleeding arm.
The explosion of publicity around Bristow’s arrest had done Strike’s business no harm at all. He might even genuinely need a secretary before long; and indeed, as he made his way painfully up the stairs to his office, he heard Robin’s voice on the telephone.
“…an appointment for Tuesday, I’m afraid, because Mr. Strike’s busy all day Monday…Yes…absolutely…I’ll put you down for eleven o’clock, then. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.”
She swung around on her swivel chair as Strike entered.
“What was Jonah like?” she demanded.
“Nice guy,” said Strike, lowering himself into the collapsed sofa. “Situation’s doing his head in. But the alternative was Bristow winding up with ten mill, so he’ll have to cope.”
“Three prospective clients phoned while you were out,” she said, “but I’m a bit worried about that last one. He could be another journalist. He was much more interested in discussing you than his own problem.”
There had been quite a few such calls. The press had seized with glee upon a story that had angles aplenty, and everything they loved best. Strike himself had featured heavily in the coverage. The photograph they had used most, and he was glad of it, was ten years old and had been taken while he was still a Red Cap; but they had also dug out the picture of the rock star, his wife and the supergroupie.
There had been plenty written about police incompetence; Carver had been snapped hurrying down the street, his jacket flying, the sweat patches just visible on his shirt; but Wardle, handsome Wardle, who had helped Strike bring Bristow in, had so far been treated with indulgence, especially by female journalists. Mostly, however, the news media had feasted all over again on the corpse of Lula Landry; every version of the story sparkling with pictures of the dead model’s flawless face, and her lithe and sculpted body.
Robin was talking; Strike had not been listening, his attention diverted by the throbbing in his arm and leg.
“…a note of all the files and your diary. Because you’ll need someone, now, you know; you’re not going to be able to take care of all this on your own.”
“No,” he agreed, struggling to his feet; he had intended to do this later, at the moment of her departure, but now was as good a moment as any, and it made an excuse to leave the sofa, which was extremely uncomfortable. “Listen, Robin, I haven’t ever said a proper thank-you…”
“Yes you have,” she said hurriedly. “In the cab on the way to the hospital—and anyway, there’s no need. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve loved it, actually.”
He was hobbling away into the inner office, and did not hear the catch in her voice. The present was hidden at the bottom of his kitbag. It was very badly wrapped.
“Here,” he said. “This is for you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Oh,” said Robin, on a strangled note, and Strike was both touched and faintly alarmed to see tears spill down her cheeks. “You didn’t have to…”
“Open it at home,” he said, but too late; the package was literally coming apart in her hands. Something slithered, poison-green, out of the split in the paper, on to the desk in front of her. She gasped.
“You…oh my God, Cormoran…”
She held up the dress she had tried on, and loved, in Vashti, and stared at him over the top of it, pink-faced, her eyes sparkling.
“You can’t afford this!”
“Yeah, I can,” he said, leaning back against the partition wall, because it was marginally more comfortable than sitting on the sofa. “Work’s rolling in now. You’ve been incredible. Your new place is lucky to get you.”
She was frantically mopping her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. A sob and some incomprehensible words escaped her. She reached blindly for the tissues that she had bought from petty cash, in anticipation of more clients like Mrs. Hook, blew her nose, wiped her eyes and said, with the green dress lying limp and forgotten across her lap:
“I don’t want to go!”
“I can’t afford you, Robin,” he said flatly.