The Silkworm

“Shockingly little to stab a teenager,” said Robin forcefully and then, catching Strike off guard, “What did you think of Matthew?”

“Nice bloke,” lied Strike automatically.

He refrained from elaboration. She was no fool; he had been impressed before now by her instinct for the lie, the false note. Nevertheless, he could not help hurrying them on to a different subject.

“I’m starting to think, maybe next year, if we’re turning a proper profit and you’ve already had your pay rise, we could justify taking someone else on. I’m working flat out here, I can’t keep going like this forever. How many clients have you turned down lately?”

“A couple,” Robin responded coolly.

Surmising that he had been insufficiently enthusiastic about Matthew but resolute that he would not be any more hypocritical than he had already been, Strike withdrew shortly afterwards into his office and shut the door again.

However, on this occasion, Strike was only half right.

Robin had indeed felt deflated by his response. She knew that if Strike had genuinely liked Matthew he would never have been as definitive as “nice bloke.” He’d have said “Yeah, he’s all right,” or “I s’pose you could do worse.”

What had irritated and even hurt was his suggestion of bringing in another employee. Robin turned back to her computer monitor and started typing fast and furiously, banging the keys harder than usual as she made up this week’s invoice for the divorcing brunet. She had thought—evidently wrongly—that she was here as more than a secretary. She had helped Strike secure the evidence that had convicted Lula Landry’s killer; she had even collected some of it alone, on her own initiative. In the months since, she had several times operated way beyond the duties of a PA, accompanying Strike on surveillance jobs when it would look more natural for him to be in a couple, charming doormen and recalcitrant witnesses who instinctively took offense at Strike’s bulk and surly expression, not to mention pretending to be a variety of women on the telephone that Strike, with his deep bass voice, had no hope of impersonating.

Robin had assumed that Strike was thinking along the same lines that she was: he occasionally said things like “It’s good for your detective training” or “You could use a countersurveillance course.” She had assumed that once the business was on a sounder footing (and she could plausibly claim to have helped make it so) she would be given the training she knew she needed. But now it seemed that these hints had been mere throwaway lines, vague pats on the head for the typist. So what was she doing here? Why had she thrown away something much better? (In her temper, Robin chose to forget how little she had wanted that human resources job, however well paid.)

Perhaps the new employee would be female, able to perform these useful jobs, and she, Robin, would become receptionist and secretary to both of them, and never leave her desk again. It was not for that that she had stayed with Strike, given up a much better salary and created a recurring source of tension in her relationship.

At five o’clock on the dot Robin stopped typing in midsentence, pulled on her trench coat and left, closing the glass door behind her with unnecessary force.

The bang woke Strike up. He had been fast asleep at his desk, his head on his arms. Checking his watch he saw that it was five and wondered who had just come into the office. Only when he opened the dividing door and saw that Robin’s coat and bag were gone and her computer monitor dark did he realize that she had left without saying good-bye.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said impatiently.

She wasn’t usually sulky; it was one of the many things he liked about her. What did it matter if he didn’t like Matthew? He wasn’t the one marrying him. Muttering irritably under his breath, Strike locked up and climbed the stairs to his attic room, intending to eat and change before meeting Nina Lascelles.

12

She is a woman of an excellent assurance, and an

extraordinary happy wit, and tongue.

Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman

Strike proceeded along the dark, cold Strand towards Fleet Street that evening with his hands balled deep in his pockets, walking as briskly as fatigue and an increasingly sore right leg would permit. He regretted leaving the peace and comfort of his glorified bedsit; he was not sure that anything useful would come of this evening’s expedition and yet, almost against his will, he was struck anew in the frosty haze of this winter’s night by the aged beauty of the old city to which he owed a divided childhood allegiance.