Page 276 of The Hallmarked Man

Strike forced himself back into a standing position.

‘I can carry one of those,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘It’s fine, I can—’

‘Give me one of the fucking bags, I’ve got one hand free and one good leg.’

‘All right, all right,’ said the exasperated Robin. ‘There, happy?’

‘Ecstatic,’ said Strike, and they moved off towards the stairs.

As they walked back along Rue de la Seigneurie, unavoidably slowly, because Strike was now severely impeded by his twisted knee, he said,

‘What would you think of Wardle coming to work for us?’

‘Wardle?’ said Robin, in surprise. ‘Would he be interested?’

‘He would, yeah.’

‘Well, he’d be great,’ said Robin, ‘but can we afford him?’

‘He’s not expecting the salary he’s on in the CID. Cost-benefit; we could take on more work with another subcontractor. I think he’d more than pay for himself.’

‘What’s made him want to leave the police?’

While Strike explained the combination of personal circumstances that had made Wardle keen on a change of career, Robin had time to remember that Murphy didn’t like Eric Wardle. He’d never explained why, but usually had a critical comment to make whenever his name came up. However, it wasn’t up to Murphy who the agency hired, any more than it was up to him which cases they decided to investigate.

The rain had passed off again, but the light was rapidly fading and, their progress being so slow, the sun had set before they reached the lonely lane along which the Old Forge was supposed to lie. Soon they were immersed in velvety darkness.

‘The stars are incredible, aren’t they?’ said Robin, looking upwards. In the absence of street lights, they shone hard and bright against the deep black, every constellation clearly marked.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, who might, under other circumstances, have attempted to wax poetic, but was now in a lot of pain and mainly concentrating on the damp, uneven terrain, which Robin was illuminating with her phone torch. The wind was whispering through the hedgerows; Robin kept glancing back, expecting to see a vehicle behind her, but it was a relief to think that nobody in a gorilla mask was about to appear.

‘I think this is it,’ she said at last, as a building loomed to the right.

Forbearing to say ‘Christ, I hope so,’ Strike followed her carefully up a short gravelled drive, down a few stone steps, and at last, with enormous relief, through the unlocked door of the B&B, where Robin turned on the lights.

They stood in a large hallway, with a wooden walkway overhead connecting two upstairs bedrooms. To the right was a bedroom, to the left, a shower room. Their bags, still with the green tags attached, were sitting in the middle of the wooden floor.

‘D’you want to take the ground-floor bedroom?’ said Robin.

‘Cheers,’ said Strike. ‘All right if I get a shower before we eat?’

‘Of course, I’ll cook,’ said Robin, taking the bag of shopping from him.

Their fingers touched as he handed it over. Robin felt a tiny thrill pass through her, and then a sudden sense of mingled excitement and panic.

87

… we shall be

But closer linked—two creatures whom the earth

Bears singly—with strange feelings, unrevealed

But to each other…

Robert Browning