“How far’s that from Woolstone?”

“Twenty miles or so?”

“All right,” said Strike, “how about we take the Land Rover out to Newbury to interview Tegan and then maybe swing by the dell, just for another look?”

“Um… yes, OK,” said Robin, her mind racing over the logistics of having to return to Albury Street for the Land Rover. She had left it behind because parking places required a permit on Vanessa’s street. “When?”

“Whenever Tegan can see us, but ideally this week. Sooner the better.”

“OK,” said Robin, thinking of the tentative plans she had made to view rooms over the next couple of days.

“Everything all right, Robin?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Ring me when you’ve spoken to Raphael then, OK?”

“Will do,” said Robin, glad to end the call. “Speak later.”

58

… I believe two different kinds of will can exist at the same time in one person.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Nam Long Le Shaker had the feeling of a decadent, colonial-era bar. Dimly lit, with leafy plants and assorted paintings and prints of beautiful women, the décor mixed Vietnamese and European styles. When Robin entered the restaurant at five past seven, she found Raphael leaning up against the bar, wearing a dark suit and tieless white shirt, already halfway down a drink and talking to the long-haired beauty who stood in front of a glittering wall of bottles.

“Hi,” said Robin.

“Hello,” he responded with a trace of coolness, and then, “Your eyes are different. Were they that color at Chiswell House?”

“Blue?” asked Robin, shrugging off the coat she had worn because she felt shivery, even though the evening was warm. “Yes.”

“S’pose I didn’t notice because half the bloody lightbulbs are missing. What are you drinking?”

Robin hesitated. She ought not to drink while conducting an interview, but at the same time, she suddenly craved alcohol. Before she could decide, Raphael said with a slight edge in his voice:

“Been undercover again today, have we?”

“Why d’you ask?”

“Your wedding ring’s gone again.”

“Were your eyes this sharp in the office?” asked Robin, and he grinned, reminding her why she had liked him, even against her will.

“I noticed your glasses were fake, remember?” he said. “I thought at the time you were trying to be taken seriously, because you were too pretty for politics. So these,” he indicated his deep brown eyes, “may be sharp, but this,” he tapped his head, “not so much.”

“I’ll have a glass of red,” said Robin, smiling, “and I’ll pay, obviously.”

“If this is all on Mr. Strike, let’s have dinner,” said Raphael at once. “I’m starving and skint.”

“Really?”

After a day of trawling through the available rooms for rent on her agency salary, she was not in the mood to hear the Chiswell definition of poverty again.

“Yeah, really, little though you might believe it,” said Raphael, with a slightly acid smile, and Robin suspected he knew what she had been thinking. “Seriously, are we eating, or what?”

“Fine,” said Robin, who had barely touched food all day, “let’s eat.”

Raphael took his bottle of beer off the bar and led her through to the restaurant where they took a table for two beside the wall. It was so early that they were the only diners.

“My mother used to come here in the eighties,” said Raphael. “It was well known because the owner liked telling the rich and famous to sod off if they weren’t dressed properly to come in, and they all loved it.”

“Really?” said Robin, her thoughts miles away. It had just struck her that she would never again have dinner with Matthew like this, just the two of them. She remembered the very last time, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. What had he been thinking while he ate in silence? Certainly he had been furious at her for continuing to work with Strike, but perhaps he had also been weighing in his mind the competing attractions of Sarah, with her well-paid job at Christie’s, her endless fund of stories about other people’s wealth, and her no doubt self-confident performance in bed, where the diamond earrings her fiancé had bought her snagged on Robin’s pillow.

“Listen, if eating with me’s going to make you look like that, I’m fine with going back to the bar,” said Raphael.

“What?” said Robin, surprised out of her thoughts. “Oh—no, it isn’t you.”

A waiter brought over Robin’s wine. She took a large slug.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about my husband. I left him last night.”

As she watched Raphael freeze in surprise with the bottle at his lips, Robin knew herself to have crossed an invisible boundary. In her whole time at the agency, she had never used truths about her private life to gain another’s confidence, never blended the private and the professional to win another person over. In turning Matthew’s infidelity into a device to manipulate Raphael, she knew that she was doing something that would appall and disgust her husband. Their marriage, he would have thought, ought to be sacrosanct, a world apart from what he saw as her seedy, ramshackle job.

“Seriously?” said Raphael.

“Yes,” said Robin, “but I don’t expect you to believe me, not after all the crap I told you when I was Venetia. Anyway,” she took her notebook out of her handbag, “you said you were OK with me asking some questions?”

“Er—yeah,” he said, apparently unable to decide whether he was more amused or disconcerted. “Is this real? Your marriage broke up last night?”

“Yes,” said Robin. “Why are you looking so shocked?”

“I don’t know,” said Raphael. “You just seem so… Girl Guidey.” His eyes moved over her face. “It’s part of the appeal.”

“Could I just ask my questions?” said Robin, determinedly unfazed.

Raphael drank some beer and said:

“Always busy with the job. Turns a man’s thoughts to what it would take to distract you.”

“Seriously—”

“Fine, fine, questions—but let’s order first. Fancy some dim sum?”

“Whatever’s good,” said Robin, opening her notebook.

Ordering food seemed to cheer Raphael up.

“Drink up,” he said.

“I shouldn’t be drinking at all,” she replied, and indeed, she hadn’t touched the wine since her first gulp. “OK, I wanted to talk about Ebury Street.”

“Go on,” said Raphael.

“You heard what Kinvara said about the keys. I wondered whether—”

“—I ever had one?” asked Raphael with equanimity. “Guess how many times I was ever in that house.”

Robin waited.

“Once,” said Raphael. “Never went there as a kid. When I got out of—you know—Dad, who hadn’t visited me once while I was inside, invited me down to Chiswell House to see him, so I did. Brushed my hair, put on a suit, got all the way down to that hellhole and he didn’t bother turning up. Detained by a late vote at the House or some crap. Picture how happy Kinvara was to have me on her hands for the night, in that bloody depressing house that I’ve had bad dreams about ever since I was a kid. Welcome home, Raff.