Page 59 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,

Does the selfsame weary thing take place?

The same endeavour to make you believe,

And with much the same effect, no more:

Each method abundantly convincing,

As I say, to those convinced before…

Robert Browning Christmas-Eve

‘… well, if he did, it’s criminal,’ Murphy was saying.

Robin paused on the stairs. She’d slept until half past nine, which she hadn’t done for months, and had woken to find her boyfriend gone from the bed.

Judging by the quietness of the house, Robin guessed that one or both of Annabel’s parents had taken her out for a trip to the shops or the park.

Robin had been halfway downstairs to the kitchen when she’d heard Murphy talking, and something in his tone made her pause between walls on which family photographs were displayed, listening.

‘Has she talked to you about it?’ said Linda.

‘No,’ said Murphy, ‘and I haven’t brought it up. She gets ratty.’

‘I don’t think she can bear to admit he’s not perfect, in case we all tell her she should get a different job, but it’s not as though there aren’t other places she could work. But this is a whole other level, this is really… really grubby. Has he got a girlfriend currently, do you know?’

‘Yeah, some lawyer, apparently,’ said Murphy.

‘I wonder what she said when she saw it.’

‘Christ knows,’ said Murphy. ‘He probably told her it was rubbish. What else could he say?’

‘It said in the Telegraph he was going to sue.’

Robin’s heart was thumping uncomfortably fast, but she told herself to remain calm. It would be playing right into her mother’s hands, and, indeed, Murphy’s, to become overly emotional. She tiptoed down the last few stairs.

‘She hasn’t mentioned court action to me.’

‘Well, if he isn’t suing—’

‘Talking about Strike and Candy?’ said Robin, entering the kitchen, forcing herself to sound brisk rather than incensed.

Murphy looked startled and guilty. Linda had frozen in the act of drying a dinner plate. The puppy, Betty, gambolled towards Robin, barking a welcome. Robin bent automatically to pet her, but she was looking at her boyfriend as she did it.

‘I left you to sleep because I thought you needed it,’ said Murphy, who was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, and holding his water bottle. ‘I was going to go for a run.’

‘Well, don’t let me stop you,’ said Robin, in a tone that said I’ll deal with you later.

Not entirely to her surprise, Murphy headed for the back door, looking sheepish. When it had closed behind him, Robin said to her mother,

‘If you’re interested in Strike, it’s probably best to ask me for details rather than Ryan. I’m the one who works with him.’

The Telegraph was lying on the kitchen table, which exacerbated Robin’s bad temper. Possibly her mother had been skimming it to check whether there were any more unpleasant stories about Strike she could discuss with Murphy, while Robin was out of earshot.

‘I was only—’ began Linda.

‘I know what you were “only”,’ said Robin, heading for the coffee pot with Betty lolloping around her slippered feet. ‘So ask away.’

‘I just saw the story about that – that woman, and – well, people round here know you work with him, so they asked me about it.’

‘OK, well, here’s your chance to get a full bulletin for the neighbours,’ said Robin.

‘Robin, don’t be like—’

‘If you want to talk about me behind my back—’

‘We weren’t talking about you— ’

‘“She gets ratty.” “She can’t bear to think he’s not perfect.”’

‘We were—’

‘Our agency found out the wife of that journalist is having an affair,’ said Robin. ‘That was the journalist’s revenge, claiming we hired a sex worker to entrap a man.’

‘He didn’t say all of you had done it,’ said Linda.

‘None of us did it,’ said Robin forcefully, now turning to glare at her mother. ‘ None of us.’

‘OK, well, if you say it’s not true, it’s not true,’ said Linda. She still had the dinner plate and tea towel in her hands, but was doing nothing with them.

‘And Strike is suing,’ said Robin, out of sheer temper. ‘So be sure and keep an eye out for the retraction, so you can alert the neighbours when it comes in.’

‘Robin—’

‘If you want to bitch about my partner, do it to my face, not my boyfriend’s,’ said Robin, whose temper was increasing rather than diminishing as she vented it; she hadn’t realised how much anger she had stored up (because she was the easy child, the placator, the one primed not to make a fuss, amid three rambunctious brothers).

‘I’m sick and tired of this constant chipping away at Strike, and the agency.

Maybe if this didn’t happen every single bloody time I see you, I’d want to come home more often! ’

She knew how much she’d hurt her mother by Linda’s involuntary gasp , but didn’t care.

Robin was thinking of the aftermath of the operation she’d gone through alone, rather than endure Linda’s insistence that her heavy work schedule had led to the mistake; of the week she’d spent with her parents after her long undercover job, during which Linda had increased rather than soothed her anxiety; of the countless jibes about the dangers she ran, whereas Jenny, the pregnant vet, got off with ‘we were worried’, not with a loud insistence that she should give up the career she loved, and for which she’d worked so hard.

‘Strike doesn’t need to try and intimidate sex workers into screwing him,’ Robin said, on a roll now.

‘Seeing as you’re so interested, you should know he does bloody well for himself with women, he doesn’t need to hire them.

I seem to remember you liking him, and telling me he’s “got something about him”, before you decided he’s the Devil incarnate – and given his background, he doesn’t need Ryan to tell him it’s criminal to try and coerce women into sex by withholding payment. ’

‘Robin—’

‘Just say it to my face! Say you don’t like him, say you’d rather I’d stayed the girl I was after I got raped!’

‘You can’t – how can you say that to me?’ whispered Linda.

‘Easily. I’m where I belong, where I was always meant to be. It just took me longer to get there, because of what happened, but you’d rather I had a kind of half-life, you’d rather—’

‘I wouldn’t rather you were still with Matthew,’ said Linda. ‘We never liked him. I was glad when you called off the wedding, I never wanted to say it, but I was, we always thought he was wrong for you—’

‘Pity you’re not as smart when it comes to what’s right for me,’ said Robin.

‘Robin—’

‘ I’m not still in that bloody stairwell, ’ said Robin, her voice becoming louder, ‘but you make me feel like I never left it, the way you treat me!’

She’d overfilled her mug with black coffee, which had spilled over the sides.

Betty, who hadn’t liked the raised voices, had skittered away and was now worrying a rubber bone in the corner.

Robin knew she’d hurt Linda worse than she’d ever done before, even in her teens, when a certain amount of door slamming and mutual recrimination had of course taken place.

She and her mother had been close, once; but for the last four years, ever since Robin had received the injury that had left an eight-inch scar on her forearm, a gulf had been steadily widening between mother and daughter.

Robin was infuriated and insulted by Linda’s constant, implicit suggestion that her daughter was a malleable fool who did whatever her business partner wanted, without agency, without sense; her mother had no idea how often Strike had urged caution on his best female operative, how little he wanted to see her hurt.

‘You haven’t got children,’ said Linda in a low voice.

‘Thanks for pointing that out,’ said Robin. ‘I was worried I’d left them somewhere.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like, to worry yourself sick about your daughter—’

‘ You don’t know what it’s like to have my worries,’ said Robin, thinking of the icy ultrasound wand on her stomach, and the rubber gorilla hidden in her sock drawer in London, and MI5 being angry at the agency for investigating, and DCI Malcolm Truman and his masonic lodge. ‘So we’re even.’

She’d just tipped some of her brimming cup of coffee into the sink when she heard the front door open and her father, Stephen and Annabel entered the kitchen, all pink-faced, cheerful and talkative.

Linda hastily wiped her eyes on the tea towel as Michael Ellacott set a bulging bag of shopping on the table.

‘Auntie Bobbin,’ said Annabel, trotting over to Robin to show her a stick. ‘I’ve got Stick Man.’

‘We’re in a big Stick Man phase,’ Stephen informed his sister.

‘Lovely,’ Robin said to Annabel, who was big for her age, brunette, like her mother, but with her father’s dimples. ‘You need to look after him.’

‘Or a dog will take him,’ said Annabel, nodding gravely.

‘Jenny still asleep?’ Stephen asked Linda.

‘Yes, and so’s Jonathan,’ said Linda, her voice artificially cheerful as she resumed her drying and putting away of crockery. ‘I don’t know what his excuse is.’

Robin sat down at the kitchen table and pulled the abandoned Telegraph towards her while the others clattered around her, Linda opening and closing cupboards, Michael putting away groceries, Stephen unbuttoning Annabel’s coat and fetching her a drink.

After staring mindlessly at an article on the United Nations Security Council without taking in a word, Robin turned the page.

Lord Oliver Branfoot was pictured, scruffy and bull-like, beaming in black tie beside a very tall man, and a large blonde woman in evening dress. The caption read, ‘Branfoot Trust Recommends Reintroduction of Borstals’.

‘Have you been hearing the Martin saga?’ said a voice near Robin, and she started.

‘What?’

‘Mum been filling you in on Martin?’ asked Stephen.

‘No,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, coffee in one hand, paper in the other. ‘Sorry, it’ll have to wait. I’ve got to call Strike.’