Page 79 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… while acts are from their motives judged,

And to one act many most unlike motives,

This pure, that guilty, may have each impell’d—

Power fails us to try clearly if that cause

Assign’d us by the actor be the true one…

Matthew Arnold Merope: A Tragedy

Robin’s Friday really only ended in the early hours of Saturday morning, when the lights in Plug’s mother’s house in Camberwell went out, and she knew her target, who’d done a lot of shouting that afternoon, had finally gone to bed.

She drove home through the icy night in her hired Mazda, yawning regularly, thinking against her will of a multitude of stressful things, Decima Mullins foremost among them.

Strike might well be correct in saying the fragile woman obsessed with the corpse in the silver shop would only hire somebody else if they refused to investigate for her, but this was the first time Robin had felt grubby just for doing her job, and she didn’t need more things on her conscience.

The imminent trip to Crieff and Ironbridge was already weighing on it, because she’d deliberately obfuscated their precise destinations to Murphy, leaving him with the vague impression that they were looking for Rupert Fleetwood somewhere in Northumbria.

Worst of all were the small ripples of mingled apprehension and excitement she felt when she pictured that Lake District hotel.

To compound Robin’s general and specific stresses, Murphy was now pressuring her to commit to viewing at least one of the houses he kept forwarding her, and a stream of information about her new nephew appeared on her phone every ten minutes, or so it felt, meaning that Robin had to fake the delight and fascination her family seemed to expect of her, and would need to find time in her busy schedule to buy and send a gift.

Babies seemed to be everywhere. Jenny and the miniature sumo called Barnaby; Robin’s cousin Katie, to whose first son she was godmother, had just announced her second pregnancy; the soon-to-be-born child of the warring Martin and Carmen; Robin’s policewoman friend, Vanessa Ekwensi, was due to give birth shortly; and Lion Fleetwood, photographed looking frail and startled on his changing mat.

Don’t think about it. Ever since the shock of the ectopic pregnancy had worn off, Robin had been repressing a treacherous tendency in herself to dwell on the fact that what had split open her fallopian tube had been an actual human being.

Better by far to think of it as something akin to a ruptured appendix, not somebody who might, but for untreated chlamydia, have made his or her appearance next August, irrevocably changing Robin’s life. Don’t think about it, what’s the point?

Robin set off to take over surveillance on Jim Todd at midday.

This was the first time Robin had followed the cleaner, and she’d donned her warmest coat, a useful beanie that concealed her hair, plus a scarf that was not only useful protection against the very cold day but handy should she need to bury her face in it.

Shah had already texted Robin Todd’s current location: a café on Kingsway.

The agency had at last, by dint of watching the cleaner, found out which Lebanese restaurant he lived over, and discovered that he rarely emerged from the building before noon on the days when he wasn’t cleaning.

Robin remained alert for anyone following her, as she had ever since the unknown man had forced the rubber gorilla into her hand in Harrods, but was certain nobody had.

‘Bloody freezing, isn’t it?’ were Shah’s first words when Robin joined him. ‘He’s been in there half an hour. Late breakfast.’

‘OK, thanks,’ said Robin.

She expected Shah to leave immediately, because he had a wife and two small children at home, and probably didn’t want to miss too much of the weekend, but to her surprise he lingered.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here, but I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Go on,’ said Robin, wondering whether she was about to hear another complaint about Kim Cochran.

‘Why’s Bijou Watkins calling Strike?’

‘When did Bijou Watkins call him?’ asked Robin, surprised.

‘Yesterday. I was filing expenses at the office yesterday afternoon and I heard Pat passing on the message.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘Right. I… I don’t know. I mean, they broke up. Are you sure Pat said Bijou—?’

‘It’s not a name that sounds like much else,’ said Shah.

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘That’s true.’

‘We don’t need Strike messing around with Bijou bloody Watkins again,’ said Shah. ‘You missed all that, but for fuck’s sake—’

‘What did I miss?’ said Robin.

‘ Private Eye, rumours he’d helped her bug her married lover’s office.

And she’s pregnant now, it was in the Mail , they did a sympathy profile of his ex-wife – the papers hate Honbold, he’s the chair of that Campaign for Ethical Journalism thing .

We don’t need more publicity about Strike’s sex life, not after that fucking call girl story, and the thing about him shagging women who get evidence for him. ’

The anxious knot in Robin’s belly tightened. Loyalty to Strike was conflicting with the desire to assuage Shah’s worries. They didn’t want to lose Shah: he was too good a detective.

‘Watkins could’ve been calling for some professional help,’ Robin temporised. ‘Not for any personal reason.’

‘Then he’d better have bloody well turned her down. We’ve got enough clients, we don’t need women he’s shagging.’

‘He doesn’t sleep with clients,’ said Robin.

‘He’d better not start,’ said Shah. ‘Sorry,’ he added curtly, ‘I know this isn’t your fault, but my wife believed that call girl story. She keeps asking me why I’m working for such a scumbag.’

‘That story wasn’t true,’ said Robin.

‘That’s what I told my wife,’ said Shah, ‘so it’d be good if Strike could keep his nose clean, going forwa – there’s Todd.’

Robin glanced across the road. The almost spherical cleaner, with his shining white pate and tufts of hair over his ears, had just emerged from Black Sheep Coffee, and was shuffling off down the street.

‘See you later,’ Robin told Shah, and she set off, trailing Todd on the opposite side of the road.

Confused and worried by what she’d just heard, Robin wanted to call Strike immediately and ask what was going on, but Todd was heading towards Holborn Tube, which was only a minute’s walk away, and sure enough, he crossed the four lanes of traffic ahead of her and disappeared into the station.

As she descended the escalator, keeping several people between herself and Todd, Robin mentally reviewed the evidence that Strike and Bijou’s liaison had ended months previously.

He’d told her explicitly that he’d never considered Bijou a girlfriend.

He hadn’t concealed Bijou’s pregnancy from Robin; on the contrary, not long after Robin had come out of Chapman Farm, Strike had told her the child was Honbold’s, with a perfect indifference that supported the impression that he couldn’t care less about mother or baby.

So perhaps Bijou really did want to hire a detective?

… except that that didn’t ring true… Andrew Honbold wouldn’t want her hiring Strike, not after her name and the detective’s had been bracketed together in Private Eye…

no, thought Robin, the unpleasant wriggling sensation in her stomach intensifying, there was something up, something Strike hadn’t told her.

Todd took the first available train east and sat down, short, fat legs splayed, apparently playing a game on his phone, while Robin stood and swayed, holding on to a ceiling hand strap, ready to move when Todd did, her thoughts a long way away from the egg-shaped man whose reflection she was watching in the dark window.