The Cuckoo's Calling(82)
“Oh Stick…come and stay with us!”
He had a fleeting vision of the all-blue spare room, and Greg’s forced smile.
“Luce, I’m happy where I am. I just want to get on with work and be on my own for a bit.”
It took him another half-hour to shift her out of his office. She felt guilty that she had lost her temper; apologized, then attempted to justify herself, which triggered another diatribe about Charlotte. When she finally decided to leave, he helped her downstairs with her bags, successfully distracting her from the boxes full of his possessions that still stood on the landing, and finally depositing her into a black cab at the end of Denmark Street.
Her round, mascara-streaked face looked back at him out of the rear window. He forced a grin and a wave before lighting another cigarette, and reflecting that Lucy’s idea of sympathy compared unfavorably with some of the interrogation techniques they had used at Guantanamo.
10
ROBIN HAD FALLEN INTO THE habit of buying Strike a pack of sandwiches with her own, if he happened to be in the office over lunchtime, and reimbursing herself from petty cash.
Today, however, she did not hurry back. She had noticed, though Lucy had seemed oblivious, how unhappy Strike had been to find them in conversation. His expression, when he had entered the office, had been every bit as grim as the first time they had met.
Robin hoped that she had not said anything to Lucy that Strike would not like. Lucy had not exactly pried, but she had asked questions to which it was difficult to know the answer.
“Have you met Charlotte yet?”
Robin guessed that this was the stunning ex-wife or girlfriend whose exit she had witnessed on her first morning. Near-collision hardly constituted a meeting, however, so she answered:
“No, I haven’t.”
“Funny.” Lucy had given a disingenuous little smile. “I’d have thought she’d have wanted to meet you.”
For some reason, Robin had felt prompted to reply:
“I’m only temporary.”
“Still,” said Lucy, who seemed to understand the answer better than Robin did herself.
It was only now, wandering up and down the aisle of crisps without really concentrating on them, that the implications of what Lucy had said slid into place. Robin supposed that Lucy might have meant to flatter her, except that the mere possibility of Strike making any kind of pass was extremely distasteful to her.
(“Matt, honestly, if you saw him…he’s enormous and he’s got a face like some beaten-up boxer. He is not remotely attractive, I’m sure he’s over forty, and…” she had cast around for more aspersions to cast upon Strike’s appearance, “he’s got that sort of pubey hair.”
Matthew had only really become reconciled to her continuing employment with Strike now that Robin had accepted the media consultancy job.)
Robin selected two bags of salt and vinegar crisps at random, and headed towards the cash desk. She had not yet told Strike that she would be leaving in two and a half weeks’ time.
Lucy had moved from the subject of Charlotte only to interrogate Robin on the amount of business coming through the shabby little office. Robin had been as vague as she dared, intuiting that if Lucy did not know how bad Strike’s finances were, it was because he did not want her to know. Hoping that he would be pleased for his sister to think that business was good, she mentioned that his latest client was wealthy.
“Divorce case, is it?” asked Lucy.
“No,” said Robin, “it’s a…well, I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement…he’s been asked to reinvestigate a suicide.”
“Oh God, that won’t be fun for Cormoran,” said Lucy, with a strange note in her voice.
Robin looked confused.
“Hasn’t he told you? Mind you, people usually know without telling. Our mother was a famous—groupie, they call it, don’t they?” Lucy’s smile was suddenly forced, and her tone, though she was striving for detachment and unconcern, had become brittle. “It’s all on the internet. Everything is these days, isn’t it? She died of an overdose and they said it was suicide, but Stick always thought her ex-husband did it. Nothing was ever proven. Stick was furious. It was all very sordid and horrible, anyway. Perhaps that’s why the client chose Stick—I take it the suicide was an overdose?”
Robin did not reply, but it did not matter; Lucy went on without pausing for an answer:
“That’s when Stick dropped out of university and joined the military police. The family was very disappointed. He’s really bright, you know; nobody in our family had ever been to Oxford; but he just packed up and left and joined the army. And it seemed to suit him; he did really well there. I think it’s a shame he left, to be honest. He could have stayed, even with, you know, his leg…”
Robin did not betray, by so much as a flicker of her eyelid, that she did not know.
Lucy sipped her tea.
“So whereabouts in Yorkshire are you from?”
The conversation had flowed pleasantly after that, right up until the moment that Strike had walked in on them laughing at Robin’s description of Matthew’s last excursion into DIY.
But Robin, heading back to the office with sandwiches and crisps, felt even sorrier for Strike than she had done before. His marriage—or, if they had not been married, his live-in relationship—had failed; he was sleeping in his office; he had been injured in the war, and now she discovered that his mother had died in dubious and squalid circumstances.