Page 253 of Troubled Blood

It was Saturday evening, and Robin arrived on the crowded Tube platform to find she’d just missed a train. By the time she exited at Green Park station, she’d lost the chance of arriving at the American Bar early, which she’d hoped to do, so that she and Strike could have a few words together before Oakden arrived. Worse still, when she hurried down St. James’s Street, she saw, with a sense of déjà vu, a large crowd blocking the bottom of the road, being marshaled by police. As Robin slowed down, wondering whether she’d be able to get through the dense mass of people to the Stafford, a couple of sprinting paparazzi overtook her, in pursuit of a series of black Mercedeses. As Robin watched them pressing their lenses against windows, she became aware that the crowd in the distance was chanting “Jonn-ny! Jonn-ny!” Through the windows of one of the cars heading toward the event, Robin glimpsed a woman in a Marie Antoinette wig. Only when she was nearly knocked sideways by a sprinting pair of autograph hunters, both of them holding Deadbeats posters, did Robin realize with a thrill of shock that Strike’s father was the Jonny whose name was being chanted.

“Shit,” she said aloud, wheeling around and hurrying back up the road, pulling out her mobile as she went. She knew there was another entrance to the Stafford via Green Park. Not only was she going to be late, but a horrible suspicion had just hit her. Why had Oakden been so determined to meet on this specific evening? And why had it had to be this bar, so close to what she was afraid was an event involving Strike’s father? Did Strike know, had he realized, what was happening close by?

She called him, but he didn’t pick up. Still walking, she typed out a text:

Cormoran I don’t know whether you know this, but Jonny Rokeby’s having an event around the corner. I think it’s possible Oakden’s trying to set you up.

Breaking into a jog, because she was already five minutes late, she knew she’d just told Strike, for the very first time, that she knew who his father was.

On her arrival in Green Park, she saw from a distance a policeman at the rear entrance, who, with one of the hotel’s bowler-hatted attendants, was politely but firmly turning away two men with long-lensed cameras.

“Not this way, sorry,” said the policeman. “Only for tonight. If it’s the hotel you want, you’ll have to go round the front.”

“What’s going on?” demanded a suited man hand in hand with a beautiful Asian woman in a cheongsam. “We’ve got a dinner booking! Why can’t we go through?”

“Very sorry, sir, but there’s an event on at Spencer House,” explained the doorman, “and police want us to stop people using this as a short cut.”

The two men with cameras swore and turned away, jogging back the way Robin had come. She lowered her head as they passed her, glad that she was still wearing her unneeded glasses, because her picture had appeared in the press during a court case a couple of years back. Maybe she was being paranoid, but Robin was worried the pressmen had been trying to use the Stafford not as a short cut to Rokeby and his guests, but as a means of getting to his estranged son.

Now that the photographers had gone, the bowler-hatted attendant permitted the woman in the cheongsam and her companion to enter, and after giving Robin a shrewd up-and-down glance, evidently decided she wasn’t a photographer and allowed her to proceed through the gate into a courtyard, where well-dressed drinkers were smoking beneath exterior heaters. After checking her mobile and seeing that Strike hadn’t answered her text, she hurried up the steps into the American Bar.

It was a comfortable, elegant space of dark wood and leather, with pennants and baseball caps from many American states and universities hanging from the ceiling. Robin immediately spotted Strike standing in a suit at the bar, his surly expression lit by the rows of illuminated bottles on the wall.

“Cormoran, I just—”

“If you’re about to tell me my father’s just round the corner,” said Strike tersely, “I know. This arsehole doesn’t realize I’m wise to his attempted set-up, yet.”

Robin glanced into the far corner. Carl Oakden was sitting there, legs spread wide, an arm along the back of the leather bench. He was wearing a suit, but no tie, and his attitude was clearly meant to suggest a man at ease in these cosmopolitan surroundings. With his slightly too-close-together eyes and his narrow forehead, he still resembled the boy who’d smashed Roy’s mother’s crystal bowl all those years ago.

“Go and talk to him. He wants some food, I’m getting menus,” muttered Strike. “We’d just got started on Steve Douthwaite. Apparently, Dorothy always thought the bloke was suspicious.”

Heading toward Oakden, Robin prayed that Strike was going to keep his temper. She’d only once seen him lose his cool with a witness, and had no desire to see it happen again.

“Mr. Oakden?” she said, smiling as she reached him and extending her hand. “I’m Robin Ellacott, we’ve emailed—”

“I know,” said Oakden, turning his head slowly to look her up and down with a smirk. He ignored her outstretched hand and Robin could tell he did so deliberately. Refusing to show that she realized that he was trying to be offensive, she shrugged off her raincoat.

“Nice bar,” she said pleasantly, sitting down opposite him. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Normally takes you cheaper places, does he?” asked Oakden.

“Cormoran was just telling me you remember your mother talking about Steve Douth—”

“Love,” said Oakden, legs still wide apart, arm along the back of the leather bench, “I told you all along, I’m not interested in being palmed off with assistants or secretaries. I’ll talk to him, or nobody.”

“I’m actually Cormoran’s—”

“I’ll bet you are,” said Oakden, with a snigger. “Don’t suppose he can get rid of you now, can he?”

“Sorry?”

“Not now you’ve been knifed, trying to do a man’s job,” said Oakden, with a glance toward her forearm as he raised his cocktail to his lips. “You’d probably sue the shit out of him, if he tried.”

Oakden, who’d evidently done his homework on the detectives, was clearly reveling in his rudeness. Robin could only suppose that the con man assumed she was too desperate for his information to take offense at his manner. He seemed determined to derive maximum pleasure from this encounter: to enjoy free alcohol and food, and bait a woman who was unlikely to walk away. Robin wondered which paper or picture agency he’d contacted, to propose luring Strike within a few hundred yards of his father’s party, and how much Oakden stood to gain, if they could get a picture of Strike apparently publicly snubbing his father, or catch the detective on record saying something angry and quotable.

“There you go,” said Strike, throwing a couple of leather-bound menus onto the table and sitting down. He hadn’t thought to bring Robin anything to drink. Oakden picked up a menu and perused it slowly, and he seemed to enjoy keeping them waiting.

“I’ll have the club sandwich,” he said at last, and Strike hailed a waiter. The order given, Strike turned back to Oakden and said,