Page 303 of The Hallmarked Man
Robin pressed his number.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I thought you’d still be asleep. Where are you?’
‘Charing Cross Road.’
‘The hell are you doing up so early?’ said Strike.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ said Robin.
‘Know the feeling,’ said Strike. He’d taken a taxi back to Harlesden to pick up his car, deposited it in the usual garage, headed back to the office, and then, struck by an idea and feeling far too awake to go to bed, had spent the ensuing hours going back over the silver vault file.
‘Where are you?’ asked Robin, who could hear background chat and clinking.
‘Dunno,’ said Strike. ‘Where am I? Hang on… Little Portland Café on Little Portland Street. I’m having a full English. Didn’t have any dinner.’
‘D’you want some company?’
‘Yeah, if it’s you,’ said Strike and, tired and miserable though Robin was, she felt a flicker of comfort at these words.
‘OK, I’ll see you there.’
Shortly before she arrived at the café, she received another text from her boyfriend.
Please just call me.
Another wave of anger and guilt washed over Robin. She needed to decide what she was going to say before she responded to Murphy. She currently had no idea.
When she entered the café, an old-fashioned greasy spoon, where the air was thick with the smell of bacon fat and frying eggs, she saw Strike at a corner table looking as she felt: exhausted and slightly unkempt.
‘What’s happened?’ Robin asked, dropping into the seat opposite him.
‘You all right?’ Strike asked, because Robin looked very pale and tired.
‘Fine,’ said Robin.
She had no intention of telling Strike about Murphy’s drinking: she felt too much loyalty to her boyfriend for that.
‘Want to eat something while I tell you?’
‘Actually,’ said Robin, who hadn’t had breakfast, ‘yes.’
She ordered tea and a bacon roll, and when the waiter had departed, Strike filled her in on his overnight activities, starting with Barnaby’s, moving through the discovery of two corpses, and concluding with his arrest, interview and release without charge, by which time Robin’s roll and mug of tea had arrived, and her mouth was hanging open.
‘Oh – my –God.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘And there’s more. Iverson asked me whether our client has been pregnant or had a kid recently.’
Robin’s hand flew to her mouth, exactly as Fiona Freeman’s had, when Robin had told her she’d been caught on camera putting the cipher note through the agency’s door.
‘Apparently,’ Strike continued, ‘Wright told one of the upstairs neighbours that his girlfriend was expecting.’
‘Oh no,’ Robin whispered, through her fingers.
‘He could’ve been bullshitting,’ said Strike, who’d expected this reaction.
‘But—’
