“Why?” asked Robin.

“He was an old friend, did Chiswell a favor hiring Raphael. They must’ve been reasonably close. You never know, Chiswell might’ve told him what the blackmail was about. And he tried to reach Chiswell early on the morning Chiswell died. I’d like to know why.

“So, going forwards: you’re going to have a bash at Flick at her jewelry shop, Barclay can stay on Jimmy and Flick, and I’ll tackle Geraint Winn and Aamir Mallik.”

“They’ll never talk to you,” said Robin at once. “Never.”

“Want to bet?”

“Tenner says they won’t.”

“I don’t pay you enough for you to throw tenners around,” said Strike. “You can buy me a pint.”

Strike took care of the bill and they headed back across the road to the car, Robin secretly wishing that there was somewhere else they needed to go, because the prospect of returning to Albury Street was depressing.

“We might be better off going back on the M40,” said Strike, reading a map on his phone. “There’s been an accident on the M4.”

“OK,” said Robin.

This would take them past Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. As she reversed out of the car park, Robin suddenly remembered Matthew’s texts from earlier. He had claimed to have been messaging work, but she couldn’t remember him ever contacting his office at a weekend before. One of his regular complaints about her job was that its hours and responsibilities bled into Saturday and Sunday, unlike his.

“What?” she said, becoming aware that Strike had just spoken to her.

“I said, they’re supposed to be bad luck, aren’t they?” repeated Strike, as they drove away from the pub.

“What are?”

“White horses,” he said. “Isn’t there a play where white horses appear as a death omen?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin, changing gear. “Death rides a white horse in Revelations, though.”

“A pale horse,” Strike corrected her, winding down the window so that he could smoke again.

“Pedant.”

“Says the woman who won’t call a brown horse ‘brown,’” said Strike.

He reached for the grubby wooden cross, which was sliding about on the dashboard. Robin kept her eyes on the road ahead, determinedly focused on anything but the vivid image that had occurred to her when she had first spotted it, almost hidden in the thick, whiskered stems of the nettles: that of a child, rotting in the earth at the bottom of that dark basin in the woods, dead and forgotten by everyone except a man they said was mad.

45

It is a necessity for me to abandon a false and equivocal position.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Strike paid in pain for the walk through the woods at Chiswell House the next morning. So little did he fancy getting up out of bed and heading downstairs to work on a Sunday that he was forced to remind himself that, like the character of Hyman Roth in one of his favorite films, he had chosen this business freely. If, like the Mafia, private detection made demands beyond the ordinary, certain concomitants had to be accepted along with the rewards.

He had had a choice, after all. The army had been keen to keep him, even with half his leg missing. Friends of friends had offered everything from management roles in the close protection industry to business partnerships, but the itch to detect, solve and reimpose order upon the moral universe could not be extinguished in him, and he doubted it ever would be. The paperwork, the frequently obstreperous clients, the hiring and firing of subordinates gave him no intrinsic satisfaction—but the long hours, the physical privations and the occasional risks of his job were accepted stoically and with occasional relish. And so he showered, put on his prosthesis and, yawning, made his painful way downstairs, remembering his brother-in-law’s suggestion that his ultimate goal ought to be sitting in an office while others literally did the legwork.

Strike’s thoughts drifted to Robin as he sat down at her computer. He had never asked her what her ultimate ambition for the agency was, assuming, perhaps arrogantly, that it was the same as his: build up a sufficient bank balance to ensure them both a decent income while they took the work that was most interesting, without fear of losing everything the moment they lost a client. But perhaps Robin was waiting for him to initiate a talk along the lines that Greg had suggested? He tried to imagine her reaction, if he invited her to sit down on the farting sofa while he subjected her to a PowerPoint display setting out long-term objectives and suggestions for branding.

As he set to work, thoughts of Robin metamorphosed into memories of Charlotte. He remembered how it had been on days like this while they had been together, when he had required uninterrupted hours alone at a computer. Sometimes Charlotte had taken herself out, often making an unnecessary mystery about where she was going, or invented reasons to interrupt him, or pick a fight that kept him pinned down while the precious hours trickled away. And he knew that he was reminding himself how difficult and exhausting that behavior had been, because ever since he had seen her at Lancaster House, Charlotte had slid in and out of his disengaged mind like a stray cat.

A little under eight hours, seven cups of tea, three bathroom breaks, four cheese sandwiches, three bags of crisps, an apple and twenty-two cigarettes later, Strike had repaid all his subcontractors’ expenses, ensured that the accountant had the firm’s latest receipts, read Hutchins’ updated report on Dodgy Doc and tracked several Aamir Malliks across cyberspace in search of the one he wanted to interview. By five o’clock he thought he had him, but the photograph was so far from “handsome,” which was how Mallik had been described in the blind item online, that he thought it best to email Robin a copy of the pictures he had found on Google Images, to confirm that this was the Mallik he sought.

Strike stretched, yawning, listening to a drum solo that a prospective purchaser was banging out in a shop below in Denmark Street. Looking forward to getting back upstairs and watching the day’s Olympic highlights, which would include Usain Bolt running the hundred meters, he was on the point of shutting off his computer when a small “ping” alerted him to the arrival of an email from [email protected], the subject line reading simply: “You and me.”

Strike rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, as though the sight of the new email had been some temporary aberration of sight. However, there it sat at the top of his inbox when he raised his head and opened his eyes again.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Deciding that he might as well know the worst, he clicked on it.

The email ran to nearly a thousand words and gave the impression of having been carefully crafted. It was a methodical dissection of Strike’s character, which read like the case notes for a psychiatric case that, while not hopeless, required urgent intervention. By Lorelei’s analysis, Cormoran Strike was a fundamentally damaged and dysfunctional creature standing in the way of his own happiness. He caused pain to others due to the essential dishonesty of his emotional dealings. Never having experienced a healthy relationship, he ran from it when it was given to him. He took those who cared about him for granted and would probably only realize this when he hit rock bottom, alone, unloved and tortured by regrets.