Page 65 of The Running Grave

More silence: Strike and Robin were looking at each other. At last a single monosyllable issued from the phone.

‘Why?’

‘I’m a private—’

‘I know ’oo you are.’

Unlike her father’s, Abigail’s accent was pure working-class London.

‘Well, I’m trying to investigate some claims made about the church.’

‘’Oose claims?’

‘A man called Kevin Pirbright,’ said Strike, ‘who’s now dead, unfortunately. Did he ever make contact with you? He was writing a book.’

There was another silence, the longest yet.

‘You working for a newspaper?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘No, for a private client. I wondered whether you’d be happy to talk to me. It can be off the record,’ Strike added.

Yet another lengthy silence followed.

‘Hello?’

‘I dunno,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll need to fink about it. I’ll call you back if I… I’ll call you later.’

The line went dead.

Robin, who realised she’d been holding her breath, exhaled.

‘Well… I can’t say I’m surprised. If I were Wace’s daughter, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of it, either.’

‘No,’ agreed Strike, ‘but she’d be very useful, if she was happy to talk… I left a message for Jordan Reaney’s wife yesterday, after you left, by the way. Tracked her down to her place of work. She’s a manicurist at a place called Kuti-cles with a K.’

He checked the time on the dashboard.

‘We should probably go in.’

When Strike pressed the doorbell they heard a dog barking, and when the door opened, a wire-haired fox terrier came flying out of the house so fast he flew right past Strike and Robin, skidded on the paved area in the front of the house, turned, ran back and began jumping up and down on its hind legs, barking hysterically.

‘Calm down, Basil!’ shouted Niamh. Robin was taken aback by her youth: she was in her mid-twenties, and for the second time lately, Robin found herself comparing her own flat to somebody else’s house. Niamh was short and plump, with shoulder-length black hair and very bright blue eyes, and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with a quotation by Charlotte Brontë printed on the front: I would always rather be happy than dignified.

‘Sorry,’ Niamh said to Strike and Robin, before saying, ‘Basil, for God’s sake,’ seizing the dog by its collar and dragging it back inside. ‘Come in. Sorry,’ she repeated over her shoulder, as she dragged the overexcited dog along the wooden floorboards towards a kitchen at the end of the hall, ‘we moved in last Sunday and he’s been hyper ever since… get out,’ she added, forcibly pushing the dog out into the garden through a back door, which she closed firmly on him.

The kitchen was farmhouse style, with a purple Aga and plates displayed on a dresser. A scrubbed wooden table was surrounded by purple-painted chairs, and the fridge door was covered in a child’s paintings, mostly blobs of paint and squiggles, which were held up with magnets. There was also – and this, Robin thought, explained how a twenty-five-year-old came to find herself living in such an expensive house – a picture of Niamh in a bikini, arm in arm with a man in swimming trunks, who looked at least forty. A smell of baking was making Strike salivate.

‘Thanks very much for seeing us, Mrs—’

‘Call me Niamh,’ said their hostess, who, now that she didn’t have a fox terrier to manage, looked nervous. ‘Please, sit down, I’ve just made biscuits.’

‘You’ve just moved in and you’re baking?’ said Robin, smiling.

‘Oh, I love baking, it calms me down,’ said Niamh, turning away to grab oven gloves. ‘Anyway, we’re pretty much straight now. I only took a couple of days off because I had leave owed to me.’

‘What d’you do for a living?’ asked Strike, who’d taken the chair nearest the back door, at which Basil was now whining and scratching, eager to get back in.

‘Accountant,’ said Niamh, now lifting cookies off the baking tray with a spatula. ‘Tea? Coffee?’