Page 174 of Troubled Blood

“What societal benefit would you say that had?” he asked.

There was a short, nasty silence in which the three students stared at the detective.

“Well, obviously,” said Kyle, with a small half-laugh, “that’s—that’s a completely different thing. Nobody’s talking about kids—that’s not—that’s illegal, isn’t it? I’m talking about—”

“Porn industry’s full of trafficking,” said Strike, still watching Kyle through his smoke. “Women and kids from poor countries. One of the little girls in my case was filmed with a plastic bag over her head, while a bloke anally raped her.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Kyle and Courtney throw her darting looks and knew, with an elevator drop in the area of her solar plexus, that her brother must have shared her history with his friends. Max was the only person at the table who seemed entirely relaxed. He was watching Strike with the dispassionate attention of a chemist checking an ongoing experiment.

“The video of that kid was viewed over a hundred thousand times online,” said Strike. Cigarette jammed in his mouth, he now helped himself to a large piece of cheesecake, effectively demolishing it to get a third of it onto his plate. “Plenty of pleasure centers stimulated there, eh?” he went on, looking up at Kyle.

“No, but that’s completely different, though,” said Courtney, rallying to Kyle’s defense. “We were talking about women who—it’s up to women, grown women, to decide what they want to do with their own bod—”

“Did you cook all this?” Strike asked Max through a mouthful of cheesecake. He still had a lit cigarette in his left hand.

“Yes,” said Max.

“Bloody good,” said Strike. He turned back to Kyle. “How many waitresses d’you know who got trafficked into it?”

“Well, obviously none but—I mean, you’re bound to’ve seen that bad stuff, aren’t you, being police—”

“As long as you don’t have to see it, all good, eh?”

“Well, if you feel like that…” said Kyle, red in the face now, “if you’re so against it, you must never’ve—you’ve never used porn, then, you don’t—?”

“If nobody else wants pudding,” said Robin loudly, standing up and pointing toward the sofa area, “shall we have coffee over there?”

Without waiting for an answer, she headed for the kitchen area. Behind her, she heard the scraping of a couple of chairs. After switching on the kettle, she headed downstairs to the bathroom, where, after she’d peed, she sat for five minutes on the toilet with her face in her hands.

Why had Strike turned up drunk? Why did they have to talk about rape and porn? Her attacker had been a voracious consumer of violent pornography, with a particular emphasis on choking, but his internet search history had been deemed inadmissible evidence by the judge. Robin didn’t want to know whether Strike used porn; she didn’t want to think about trafficked children being filmed, just as she didn’t want to remember Morris’s dick pic on her phone, or the snuff movie Bill Talbot had stolen. Tired and low, she asked herself why Strike couldn’t leave the students alone, if not out of consideration for his host, then for her, his partner.

She headed back upstairs. Halfway to the living area she heard Kyle’s heated voice and knew the argument had escalated. Arriving on the top floor, Robin saw the other five sitting around the coffee table, on which stood a cafetière, a bottle and the chocolates Jonathan had brought. Strike and Max were both holding glasses of brandy while Courtney, who was now very obviously drunk, though nowhere near as much as Strike, was nodding along with Kyle’s argument, a cup of coffee balanced precariously in her hands. Robin sat back down at the abandoned dining table, away from the rest of the group, took a piece of beef out of the casserole and fed it to a pathetically grateful Wolfgang.

“The point is to destigmatize and reclaim derogatory language about women,” Kyle was saying to Strike. “That’s the point.”

“And that’ll be ’chieved by a bunch’f nice middle-class girls going f’ra walk in their underwear, will it?” said Strike, his voice thick with alcohol.

“Well, not necessar’ly under—” began Courtney.

“It’s about ending victim-blaming,” said Kyle loudly. “Surely you can—?”

“An’ how’s it end victim-blaming?”

“Well, obv’sly,” said Courtney loudly, “by changing the adertu—the underlying attitudes—”

“You think rapists’ll see you all marching ’long and think ‘better jack in the raping,’ do you?”

Courtney and Kyle both began shouting at Strike. Jonathan glanced anxiously at his sister, who felt another of those sickening drops in her stomach.

“It’s about destigmatizing—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, plen’y of men will enjoy watching you all strut past in your bras,” said Strike, taking a sloppy gulp of brandy, “’n’ I’m sure you’ll look great on Instagram—”

“It’s not about Instagram!” said Courtney, who sounded almost tearful now. “We’re making a serious point about—”

“Men who call women sluts, yeah, you said,” said Strike, talking over her again. “I’m sure they’ll feel properly rebuked, watching you prounce—prance by in your mini-skirt.”

“It’s not about rebuking,” said Kyle, “you’re missing the—”