Page 115 of The Hallmarked Man
No hero, I confess.
Robert Browning
A Light Woman
Robin had seen the online article about Strike just before boarding the Tube that morning, and consequently spent most of her journey to Denmark Street staring fixedly at the passenger opposite’s feet and thinking about what she’d just read, instead of the discovery she’d made the previous evening and which she’d been looking forward to sharing with Strike.
She told herself the Candy story must be false, but could she be completely sure? Back in 2013 she and Strike had been by no means as close as they were now; there’d been pockets of his life that had remained totally mysterious to her. A voice in her head kept insistingyou know he never did this, but life had taught Robin that men you might trust completely – clean-cut chartered accountants like her own unfaithful ex-husband, for instance, or serial rapists (the man who’d ended her university career, and ruined her fallopian tubes, had been cohabiting with a woman who’d stood by him throughout the trial and given him flimsy fake alibis), or the bigamists and philanderers she’d dealt with at work – were sometimes hiding huge and jagged secrets that tore apart more lives than their own when revealed. Strike’s record on openness and transparency when it came to his sex life was extremely poor. Robin wouldn’t have known about Madeline if Charlotte hadn’t told her, about Bijou if Ilsa hadn’t told her, or about Dominic Culpepper’s cousin if Kim hadn’t mentioned her.
No, Strike wouldn’t be the first man to have done somethingnobody around him believed him capable of, and the pit of Robin’s stomach felt as though it was teeming with wriggling maggots, and she just wanted to get to the office and have the thing out with him, believing (but could she count even on that?) that if she could look him in the eye, she’d know the truth.
Robin had just left Tottenham Court Road when her mobile rang.
‘There are journalists outside the office, he wanted you to know,’ said Pat.
‘How many?’ said Robin.
‘Two.’
‘What’s going on there?’
‘I think he’s going to do something silly,’ said Pat.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He’s trying to get hold of that journalist who wrote the thing.’
‘I’ll be there in five,’ said Robin, speeding up.
As she rounded the corner into Denmark Street she heard a man calling her name. She bowed her head and kept walking; there didn’t seem to be a photographer, thank God—
‘Miss Ellacott? Miss Ellacott? Anything to say about Lord Branfoot’s comments? Anything to say about Candy, Miss Ellacott?’
‘No comment,’ said Robin coldly, refusing to look the young man in the face, but here came an older man, his phone recording in his hand.
‘Did you know about Candy, Miss Ellacott? Did you meet her?’
‘No comment,’ repeated Robin; she was at the door, had opened it, and slammed it in the reporters’ faces.
Up the two flights of metal stairs she ran, her operation site aching, until she reached the glass door. The first thing she saw on entering was Pat’s alarmed face; then she heard her detective partner’s voice as, probably, could the entire street.
‘YEAH, I’LL LEAVE A FUCKING MESSAGE!YOU TELL THAT CUNT I’M COMING FOR HIM, ALL RIGHT?’
‘Oh, for God’s—’
Robin ran through the dividing doorway into the inner office.
‘IF HE THINKS THE ONLY THING I CAN GET ON HIM IS THAT HIS WIFE—’
Strike’s first clue that his partner had arrived was his phone being wrenched out of his hand.
‘The fuck—?’
Robin stabbed at the screen to end the call.
‘You can’t go to war with Culpepper,’ she said fiercely, backing away from Strike while keeping a tight, two-handed grip on his phone. ‘Youcan’t! He’s got a national newspaper on his side!’
Strike looked at her, his expression thunderous.
