“Really?” said Robin, startled. She’d met Al a couple of years previously, but knew that he and Strike weren’t close. “No, I don’t know where he is, Pat. Have you left a message? He’s probably somewhere he can’t pick up.”
“Yeah, I’ve left a voicemail,” said Pat. “All right, I’ll keep trying him. Bye.”
Robin walked on, her desire for a coffee forgotten in her curiosity about Al turning up at the office. She’d quite liked Al when she’d met him; he seemed in slight awe of his older half-brother, which Robin had found endearing. Al didn’t look much like Strike, being shorter, with straight hair, a narrow jaw and the slight divergent squint he’d inherited from their famous father.
Thinking about Strike’s family, she turned the corner and saw, with a thrill of dread that brought her to a halt, Matthew climbing out of a taxi, wearing an unfamiliar dark overcoat over his suit. His head turned, and for a moment they were looking at each other, fifty yards apart like gunslingers ready to fire. Then Robin’s mobile rang; she reached for it automatically, and when she’d put it to her ear and looked up, Matthew had disappeared into the building.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” said Strike, “just got the email from Oakden. ‘Out of the country,’ my arse.”
Robin glanced at her watch. She still had five minutes, and her lawyer, Judith, was nowhere in sight. She drew back against the cold stone wall and said,
“Yeah, I thought that, too. Have you rung Pat back?”
“No, why?”
“Al’s at the office.”
“Al who?”
“Your brother, Al,” said Robin.
There was a brief pause.
“Fuck’s sake,” said Strike under his breath.
“Where are you?” asked Robin.
“At a B&Q in Chingford. Our blonde friend in Stoke Newington’s shopping.”
“What for?”
“Rubber foam and MDF, for starters,” said Strike. “That bloke from Shifty’s gym’s helping her. Where are you?”
“Waiting outside Matthew’s lawyers. It’s mediation morning,” said Robin.
“Shit,” said Strike, “I forgot. Best of luck. Listen—take the rest of the day off, if you’d—”
“I don’t want time off,” said Robin. She’d just spotted Judith in the distance, walking briskly toward her in a red coat. “I’m planning to go and see Betty Fuller afterward. I’d better go, Cormoran. Speak later.”
She hung up and walked forwards to meet Judith, who smiled broadly.
“All right?” she asked, patting Robin on the arm with the hand not holding her briefcase. “Should be fine. You let me do the talking.”
“Right,” said Robin, smiling back with as much warmth as she could muster.
They walked up the steps together into a small lobby area, where a stocky, suited man with a haircut like Caesar’s came forward with a perfunctory smile, his hand outstretched to Judith.
“Ms. Cobbs? Andrew Shenstone. Ms. Ellacott? How d’you do?”
His handshake left Robin’s hand throbbing. He and Judith walked ahead of Robin through double doors, chatting about London traffic, and Robin followed, dry-mouthed and feeling like a child trailing its parents. After a short walk up a dark corridor, they turned left into a small meeting room with an oval table and a shabby blue carpet. Matthew was sitting there alone, still wearing his overcoat. He readjusted himself in his chair when they entered. Robin looked directly into his face as she sat down, diagonally opposite him. To her surprise, Matthew looked instantly away. She’d imagined him glaring across the table, with that strange muzzle-like whitening around his mouth he’d worn during arguments toward the end of their marriage.
“Right then,” said Andrew Shenstone, with another smile, as Judith Cobbs opened the file she’d brought with her. He had a leather document holder sitting, closed, in front of him. “Your client’s position remains as stated in your letter of the fourteenth, Judith, is that correct?”
“That’s right,” said Judith, her thick black glasses perched on the end of her nose as she scanned a copy of said letter. “Ms. Ellacott’s perfectly happy to forgo any claim on your client, except in respect of the proceeds from the sale of the flat in—um—”
Hastings Road, thought Robin. She remembered moving into the cramped conversion with Matthew, excitedly carrying boxes of pot plants and books up the short path, Matthew plugging in the coffee machine that had been one of their first joint purchases, the fluffy elephant he’d given her so long ago, sitting on the bed.
“—Hastings Road, yes,” said Judith, scanning her letter, “from which she’d like the ten thousand pounds her parents contributed to the deposit, upon purchase.”
“Ten thousand,” repeated Andrew Shenstone. He and Matthew looked at each other. “In that case, we’re agreeable.”
“You’re… agreeable?” said Judith Cobbs, as surprised as Robin herself.
“My client’s circumstances have changed,” said Shenstone. “His priority now is securing the divorce as speedily as possible, which I think your client has indicated is also preferable to her, excepting the ten thousand pounds? Of course,” added Shenstone, “we’re almost at the requisite two years, so…”
Judith looked at Robin, who nodded, her mouth still dry.
“Then I think we can conclude things today. Very good indeed,” said Andrew Shenstone complacently, and it was impossible to escape the suspicion that he was addressing himself. “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up…”
He opened his document holder, spun it around on the polished table top and pushed it toward Judith, who read the document inside carefully.
“Yes,” she said finally, sliding the document sideways to Robin, who learned that Matthew was promising to transfer the money to Robin’s account within seven days of signature. “Happy?” Judith added in an undertone to Robin.
“Yes,” said Robin, slightly dazed.
What, she wondered, had been the point of dragging her here? Had it been one last demonstration of power, or had Matthew only decided that morning to give in? She reached into her handbag, but Judith was already holding out her own fountain pen, so Robin took it and signed. Judith passed the document back to Andrew Shenstone, who slid it over to Matthew, who scrawled a hasty signature. He glanced up at Robin when he’d done so, then looked quickly away again, and in that moment, Robin knew what had happened, and why he’d given her what she wanted.
“Very good,” said Andrew Shenstone again, and he slapped the table with his thick hand and laughed. “Well, short and sweet, eh? I think we’re…?”
“Yes,” said Judith, with a little laugh, “I think we are!”
Matthew and Robin rose and watched their lawyers gathering up their things and, in Judith’s case, pulling her coat back on. Disorientated by what had just happened, Robin again had the sensation of being a child with its parents, unsure how to quit the situation, waiting for the lawyers to release her.
Andrew Shenstone held the door open for Robin and she passed back into the corridor, heading toward the lobby. Behind her, the lawyers were talking about traffic again. When they paused in the lobby to take leave of each other, Matthew, after a brief word of thanks to Shenstone, walked straight out past Robin, into the street.
Robin waited for Andrew Shenstone to disappear inside the building again before addressing Judith.
“Thanks so much,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t really do much, did I?” said Judith, laughing. “But mediation often brings people to their senses, I’ve seen it happen before. Much harder to justify yourself in a room with objective observers.”
They shook hands, and Robin headed out into a spring breeze that blew her hair into her mouth. She felt slightly unsettled. Ten thousand pounds. She’d offered to give it back to her parents, knowing that they’d struggled to match Matthew’s parents’ contribution, but they’d told her to keep it. She’d have to settle her bill with Judith, of course, but the remainder would
give her a buffer, maybe even help her back toward her own place.
She turned a corner and there, right in front of her, standing at the curb, his arm raised in his attempt to hail a taxi, was Matthew.
Catching sight of her, he stood frozen for a moment, his hand still raised, and the taxi he’d been trying to hail slowed ten yards away, and picked up a couple instead.
“Sarah’s pregnant, isn’t she?” said Robin.
He looked down at her, not quite as tall as Strike, but as good-looking as he’d been at seventeen, on the day he’d asked her out.
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “It was an accident.”
Was it hell, thought Robin. Sarah had always known how to get what she wanted. Robin realized at last how long a game Sarah had played: always present, giggling, flirting, prepared to settle for Matthew’s best friend to keep him close. Then, as her clutch tightened, but Matthew threatened to slip through it, there’d been the diamond earring she’d left in Robin’s bed and now, still more valuable, a pregnancy to make sure of him, before he could enter a dangerous state of singledom. Robin had a strong suspicion that this was what had lain behind the two postponements of mediation. Had a newly hormonal and insecure Sarah made scenes, frightened of Matthew coming face to face with Robin while he hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted either the baby or its mother?
“And she wants to be married before she has it?”
“Yeah,” said Matthew. “Well, so do I.”
Did the image of their own wedding flash across his mind, as it flashed across Robin’s? The church in Masham that both of them had attended since primary school, the reception in that beautiful hotel, with the swans in the lake that refused to swim together, and the disastrous reception, during which Robin had known, for a few terrifying seconds, that if Strike had asked her to leave with him, she’d have gone.
“How’re things with you?”
“Great,” said Robin.
She put up a good front. What you do, when you meet the ex, isn’t it? Pretend you think you did the right thing. No regrets.
“Well,” he said, as the traffic rolled past, “I need to…”
He began to walk away.
“Matt.”
He turned back.
“What?”
“I’ll never forget… how you were, when I really needed you. Whatever else… I’ll never forget that part.”
For a fraction of a second, his face worked slightly, like a small boy’s. Then he walked back to her, bent down, and before she knew what was happening, he’d hugged her quickly, then let go as though she was red hot.
“G’luck, Robs,” he said thickly, and walked away for good.
56
Whereas this Lady, like a sheepe astray,
Now drowned in the depth of sleepe all fearlesse lay.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
At the precise moment Matthew turned to walk away from Robin in Holborn, Strike, who was sitting in his parked car three miles away, outside the familiar terraced house in Stoke Newington, decided to call his brother, lest Al sit in wait for him at the office all day. The detective’s anger was shot through with other, less easily identifiable feelings, of which the least painful to acknowledge was grudging admiration for Al’s persistence. Strike didn’t doubt that Al had come to the office for a last-ditch attempt to persuade Strike into some form of reconciliation with his father, preferably before or during the party to celebrate his father’s new album. Having always considered Al a fairly weak and sybaritic character, Strike had to admit he was showing guts, risking his older brother’s fury.
Strike waited until Elinor Dean had unloaded the foam and the cheap wood from her car and carried it all inside with the aid of her friend from Shifty’s gym, watched the front door close, then called Al’s number.
“Hi,” said Al, picking up after a single ring.
“Why are you in my office?” asked Strike.
“Wanted to see you, bruv. Talk face to face.”
“Well, I won’t be back there today,” lied Strike. “So I suggest you say whatever it is you’ve got to say now.”
“Bruv—”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Er—your secretary—Pat, is it?” Strike heard Al turn away from his mobile to check, and heard Pat’s caw of agreement, “and a bloke called—”
“Barclay,” said the Scot loudly, in the background.
“Right, well, go into my office for some privacy,” said Strike. He listened while Al told Pat what Strike had asked him to do, heard the familiar sound of his own office door closing, then said,
“If this is about what I think it’s about—”
“Cormoran, we didn’t want to tell you this, but Dad’s got cancer.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Strike leaned forwards momentarily and rested his forehead on the steering wheel of his car, before he sat up again.
“Prostate,” Al continued. “They reckon they’ve caught it early. But we thought you should know, because this party isn’t just about celebrating the band’s anniversary, and the new album. It’s about giving him something to look forward to.”
There was a silence.
“We thought you should know,” Al repeated.
Why should I fucking know? thought Strike, eyes on the closed door of Elinor Dean’s house. He had no relationship with Rokeby. Did Al expect him to weep, to rush to Rokeby’s side, to express compassion or pity? Rokeby was a multimillionaire. Doubtless he’d enjoy the very best treatment. The memory of Joan’s lily urn bobbing away on the sea recurred as Strike said,
“OK, well, I don’t really know how to respond to that. I’m sure it’s a bugger for everyone who cares about him.”
Another long silence followed.
“We thought this might make a difference,” said Al quietly.
“To what?”
“To your attitude.”
“As long as they’ve caught it early, he’ll be fine,” said Strike bracingly. “Probably live to father another couple of kids he never sees.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Al, really angry now. “You might not give a shit, but he happens to be my dad—”
“I give a shit about people who’ve ever given a shit about me,” said Strike, “and keep your fucking voice down, those are my employees you’re airing my private business in front of.”
“That’s your priority?”
Strike thought of Charlotte who, according to the papers, remained in hospital, and of Lucy, who was agitating to know whether Strike would be able to take the weekend off, to join Ted at her house in Bromley for the weekend. He thought of the clients in the Shifty case, who were hinting they’d terminate payment in a week’s time unless the agency found out what hold Shifty had on his boss. He thought of Margot Bamborough, and the rapidly vanishing year they’d been allotted to find out what had happened to her. Inexplicably, he thought of Robin, and the fact that he’d forgotten that today was her mediation session with Matthew.
“I’ve got a life,” said Strike, keeping a curb on his temper only by exercising maximum self-control, “which is hard and complicated, just like everyone else’s. Rokeby’s got a wife and half a dozen kids and I’m at maximum capacity for people who need me. I’m not coming to his fucking party, I’m not interested in hearing from him, I don’t want a relationship with him. I don’t know how much clearer I can make this, Al, but I’m—”
The line went dead. Without regretting anything he’d said, but nevertheless breathing heavily, Strike threw his mobile onto the passenger seat, lit a cigarette and watched Elinor Dean’s front door for another fifteen minutes until, on a sudden whim, he snatched up the phone from beside him again, and called Barclay.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Filin’ my expenses,” said the Scot laconically. “That casino cost ye a fortune.”
“Is my brother still there?”
“No, he left.”
“Good. I ne
ed you to come and take over in Stoke Newington.”
“I havenae got my car wi’ me.”
“OK, well, fuck it, then,” said Strike angrily.
“I’m sorry, Strike,” said Barclay, “but I’m s’posed tae have this afternoon off—”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Strike, closing his eyes. He had the same sensation of a wire tightening around his forehead that he’d experienced in St. Mawes. “Getting frustrated. Enjoy your afternoon off. Seriously,” he added, in case Barclay thought he was being sarcastic.
Having hung up on Barclay, Strike rang Robin.
“How did mediation go?”
“Fine,” said Robin, though she sounded strangely flat. “We’ve settled.”
“Great!”
“Yeah. It’s a relief.”
“Did you say you’re going to Betty Fuller’s?”
“Yes, I was just about to head into the Tube.”
“Remind me where she lives?”
“Sheltered housing on Sans Walk in Clerkenwell.”
“OK, I’ll meet you there,” said Strike.
“Really? I’m fine to—”
“I know, but I want to be there,” Strike cut across her.
He pulled away from Elinor Dean’s house knowing that he’d just been abrasive toward his two favorite colleagues. If he was going to vent his temper, it could at least have been at Pat and Morris’s expense.
Twenty minutes later, Strike entered Clerkenwell via Percival Street. To his right were the nondescript red-brick flats where Janice Beattie and Steve Douthwaite had once lived, and he wondered yet again what had become of Margot’s one-time patient, whose whereabouts, in spite of his and Robin’s best efforts, remained unknown.
Sans Walk was a narrow pedestrianized one-way street. Strike parked his BMW as close to it as possible. The day was surprisingly warm, in spite of a good amount of cloud. As he approached Sans Walk, he saw Robin waiting for him at the entrance.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s up the other end, that red-brick modern building with the circular tower thing on top.”
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 71