“No, it isn’t,” said Robin.
Strike looked sideways at her, grinning, and immediately tripped on a root, remaining upright at some cost to his sore knee.
“Shit… I wondered whether you remembered.”
“‘Christopher didn’t promise anything about the pictures,’” quoted Robin promptly. “He’s a civil servant who mentored Aamir Mallik at the Foreign Office. Fizzy just told me.”
“We’re back to ‘a man of your habits,’ aren’t we?”
Neither spoke for a short spell as they concentrated on a particularly treacherous stretch of path where whip-like branches clung willingly to fabric and skin. Robin’s skin was a pale, dappled green in the sun filtered by the ceiling of leaves above them.
“See any more of Raphael, after I went outside?”
“Er—yes, actually,” said Robin, feeling slightly self-conscious. “He came out of the sitting room as I was coming out of the loo.”
“Didn’t think he’d pass up another chance of talking to you,” said Strike.
“It wasn’t like that,” Robin said untruthfully, remembering the remark about masked orgies. “Izzy whispering anything interesting, back there?” she asked.
Amused by the reciprocal jab, Strike took his eyes off the path, thereby failing to spot a muddy stump. He tripped for a second time, this time saving himself from a painful fall by grabbing a tree covered in a prickly climbing plant.
“Fuck—”
“Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” he said, angry with himself, examining the palm that was now full of thorns and starting to pull them out with his teeth. He heard a loud snap of wood behind him and turned to see Robin holding out a fallen branch, which she had broken to make a rough walking stick.
“Use this.”
“I don’t—” he began, but catching sight of her stern expression, he gave in. “Thanks.”
They set off again, Strike finding the stick more useful than he wanted to admit.
“Izzy was just trying to convince me that Kinvara could have sneaked back to Oxfordshire, after bumping off Chiswell between six and seven in the morning. I don’t know whether she realizes there are multiple witnesses to every stage of Kinvara’s journey from Ebury Street. The police probably haven’t gone into detail with the family yet, but I think, once the penny drops that Kinvara can’t have done it in person, Izzy’ll start suggesting she hired a hitman. What did you make of Raphael’s various outbursts?”
“Well,” said Robin, navigating around a patch of nettles, “I can’t blame him, getting annoyed with Torquil.”
“No,” agreed Strike, “I think old Torks would grate on me, too.”
“Raphael seems really angry with his father, doesn’t he? He didn’t have to tell us about Chiswell putting that mare down. I thought he was almost going out of his way to paint his father as… well…”
“A bit of a shit,” agreed Strike. “He thought Chiswell had stolen those pills of Kinvara’s out of malice, too. That whole episode was bloody strange, actually. What made you so interested in those pills?”
“They seemed so out of place for Chiswell.”
“Well, it was a good call. Nobody else seems to have asked questions about them. So what does the psychologist make of Raphael denigrating his dead father?”
Robin shook her head, smiling, as she usually did when Strike referred to her in this way. She had dropped out of her psychology course at university, as he well knew.
“I’m serious,” said Strike, grimacing as his false foot skidded on fallen leaves and he saved himself, this time with the aid of Robin’s stick. “Bollocks… go on. What d’you make of him putting the boot into Chiswell?”
“Well, I think he’s hurt and furious,” said Robin, weighing her words. “He and his father were getting on better than they ever had, from what he told me when I was at the House of Commons, but now Chiswell’s dead, Raphael’s never going to be able to get properly back on good terms with him, is he? He’s left with the fact he was written out of the will and no idea of how Chiswell really felt about him. Chiswell was quite inconsistent with Raphael. When he was drunk and depressed, he seemed to lean on him, but otherwise he was pretty rude to him. Although I can’t honestly say I saw Chiswell ever being nice to anybody, except maybe—”
She stopped short.
“Go on,” said Strike.
“Well, actually,” said Robin, “I was going to say he was quite nice to me, the day I found out all about the Level Playing Field.”
“This was when he offered you a job?”
“Yes, and he said he might have a bit more work for me, once I’d got rid of Winn and Knight.”
“Did he?” said Strike, curiously. “You never told me that.”
“Didn’t I? No, I don’t suppose I did.”
And like Strike, she remembered the week that he had been laid up at Lorelei’s, followed by the hours at the hospital with Jack.
“I went over to his office, as I told you, and he was on the phone to some hotel about a money clip he’d lost. It was Freddie’s. After Chiswell got off the phone, I told him about the Level Playing Field and he was happier than I ever saw him. ‘One by one, they trip themselves up,’” he said.
“Interesting,” panted Strike, whose leg was now killing him. “So you think Raphael’s smarting about the will, do you?”
Robin, who thought she caught a sardonic note in Strike’s voice, said:
“It isn’t just money—”
“People always say that,” he grunted. “It is the money, and it isn’t. Because what is money? Freedom, security, pleasure, a fresh chance… I think there’s more to be got out of Raphael,” said Strike, “and I think you’re going to have to be the one to do it.”
“What else can he tell us?”
“I’d like a bit more clarity on that phone call Chiswell made to him, right before that bag went over his head,” panted Strike, who was now in considerable pain. “It doesn’t make much sense to me, because even if Chiswell knew he was about to kill himself, there were people far better placed to keep Kinvara company than a stepson she didn’t like who was miles away in London.
“Trouble is, the call makes even less sense if it was murder. There’s something,” said Strike, “we aren’t being t—ah. Thank Christ.”
Steda Cottage had just come into view in a clearing ahead of them. The garden, which was surrounded by a broken-down fence, was now almost as overgrown as its surroundings. The building was squat, made of dark stone and clearly derelict, with a yawning hole in the roof and cracks in most of the windows.
“Sit down,” Robin advised Strike, pointing him towards a large tree stump just outside the cottage fence. In too much pain to argue, he did as she instructed, while Robin picked her way towards the front door and gave it a little push, but found it locked. Wading through knee-length grass, she peered one by one through the grimy windows. The rooms were thick with dust and empty. The only sign of any previous occupant was in the kitchen, where a filthy mug bearing a picture of Johnny Cash sat alone on a stained surface.