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‘No, I told you: he’s an alcoholic. Sober two years.’
‘Ah… well, he seems nice. He wants kids,’ added Ilsa, shooting a glance at her friend. ‘He was telling me so, earlier.’
‘We’re hardly going to start trying for a baby when we’ve known each other barely eight months, Ilsa.’
‘Corm’s never wanted kids.’
Robin ignored this comment. She knew perfectly well that Ilsa and Nick had hoped for several years that she and Strike would become more to each other than detective partners and best friends.
‘Did you see Charlotte in the Mail?’ asked Ilsa, when it became clear Robin wasn’t going to discuss Strike’s paternal urges or lack thereof. ‘With that Thingy Dormer?’
‘Mm,’ said Robin.
‘I’d say “poor bloke”, but he looks tough enough to handle her… mind you, so did Corm, and that didn’t stop her fucking up his life as badly as she could.’
Charlotte Campbell was Strike’s ex-fiancée, with whom he’d been entangled on and off for sixteen years. Recently separated from her husband, Charlotte was now featuring heavily in gossip columns alongside her new boyfriend, Landon Dormer, a thrice-married, lantern-jawed billionaire American hotelier. Robin’s only thought on seeing the most recent paparazzi pictures of the couple was that Charlotte, though as beautiful as ever in her red slip dress, looked strangely blank and glassy-eyed.
There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Ilsa’s husband entered.
‘The consensus,’ Nick told his wife, ‘is that we take pictures before cutting the christening cake.’
‘Well, you’ll have to give me a bit longer,’ said the harried Ilsa, ‘because he’s only had one side.’
‘And in other news, your friend Bijou’s trying to chat up Corm,’ Nick added, grinning.
‘She’s not my bloody friend,’ retorted Ilsa, ‘and you’d better warn him she’s a complete nutcase. Ouch,’ she added crossly, glaring down at her son.
Down in the crowded kitchen, Strike was still standing beside the uncut christening cake, while Bijou Watkins, whose Christian name Strike had asked her to repeat because he hadn’t believed it the first time, was subjecting him to a rapid-fire stream of gossip relating to her job punctuated by cackles of laughter at her own jokes. She spoke very loudly: Strike doubted whether there was anyone in the kitchen who wasn’t able to hear her.
‘… with Harkness – you know George Harkness? The QC?’
‘Yeah,’ lied Strike. Either Bijou imagined that private detectives routinely attended court cases, or she was one of those people who imagine that everyone is as interested in the minutiae and personalities of their profession as they are.
‘… so I was on the Winterson case – Daniel Winterson? Insider trading?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, glancing around the kitchen. Ryan Murphy had disappeared. Strike hoped he’d left.
‘… and we couldn’t afford another mistrial, obviously, so Gerry said to me, “Bijou, I’ll need you in your push-up bra, we’ve got Judge Rawlins…”’
She cackled again as a few male guests looked around at Bijou, some smirking. Strike, who hadn’t expected the turn the conversation had taken, found himself glancing down at her cleavage. She had an undeniably fabulous figure, small-waisted, long-legged and large-breasted.
‘… you know who Judge Rawlins is, right? Piers Rawlins?’
‘Yeah,’ Strike lied again.
‘Right, so, he’s a real one for the ladies, so I’m walking into court like this…’
She pressed her breasts together with her upper arms and emitted a throaty laugh again. Nick, who’d just reappeared in the kitchen, caught Strike’s eye and grinned.
‘… and so, yeah, we were pulling out all the stops, and when the verdict came in, Gerry said to me, OK, next time it’ll have to be no knickers and you just keep bending over to pick up your pen.’
She burst out laughing for the third time. Strike, who could just imagine how his two female co-workers, Robin and ex-policewoman Midge Greenstreet, would react if he started suggesting these strategies for getting information out of witnesses or suspects, settled for a perfunctory smile.
At this moment, Robin reappeared in the kitchen, alone. Strike’s eyes followed her as she slid through the crowd to Nick to tell him something. He’d rarely seen Robin wear her strawberry blonde hair up, and it suited her. Her light blue dress was far more demure than Bijou’s and looked new: bought in tribute to Master Benjamin Herbert, Strike wondered, or for the benefit of Ryan Murphy? As he watched, Robin turned, saw him, and smiled over the sea of heads.
‘’Scuse me,’ he said, cutting off Bijou mid-anecdote, ‘need to talk to someone.’
He picked up two of the pre-poured glasses of champagne standing beside the christening cake and cleaved his way through the jumble of laughing, drinking friends and relatives to where Robin was standing.
