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‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you’re not the first man who thinks I can’t be in partnership with Strike without screwing him. If you don’t trust me—’
‘It’s not a question of trust.’
‘How can it not be a question of trust? You’ve just been trying to catch me out in a lie!’
‘You might’ve wanted to spare my feelings. Slept upstairs, and maybe nothing happened, but you didn’t want to admit you’d been there.’
‘That isn’t – what – happened. Strike and I are friends – and he happens to be dating a lawyer.’
The lie fell easily and instinctively out of Robin’s mouth, and when she saw Murphy’s expression clear, she knew it had served its purpose.
‘You never told me that.’
‘I had no idea you were so interested in Strike’s love life. I’ll keep you briefed in future.’
Murphy laughed.
‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ he said, reaching for her hand. ‘I am, seriously. Shit… I didn’t mean to… Lizzie went off with a supposed “friend”, in the end.’
‘I know that, but what you’re failing to factor in here is, I’m not Lizzie.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, seriously. How long’s Strike been with this lawyer?’
‘I don’t know – months. I don’t keep notes,’ said Robin.
The rest of the evening passed amicably enough. Tired, still annoyed but wanting to keep the peace, Robin told herself she’d worry later about what might happen if Nick, Ilsa, or Strike himself revealed that his affair with Bijou was over.
116
Nine at the beginning means:
Hidden dragon.
Do not act.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin spent a good deal of the next three days asking herself unanswerable questions about the state of her own feelings, and in speculation about the likely future trajectory of Murphy’s newly revealed jealousy. Would this relationship go the same way as her marriage, through increasing levels of suspicion to a destructive explosion, or was she projecting old resentments onto Murphy, much as he’d done to her?
Though she’d accepted the truce, and did her best to act as though all was forgiven and forgotten, Robin remained annoyed that, yet again, she’d been forced to justify and dissemble on matters relating to Cormoran Strike. Those fatal four words, ‘I love you, too’, had brought about a shift in Murphy. It would be going too far to call his new attitude possessiveness, but there was a certain assurance that had been lacking before.
In her more honest moments, Robin asked herself why she hadn’t called him when worried a gunman might be lurking out of sight round the corner. The only answers she could come up with were confused, and some opened doors onto further questions she didn’t want to answer. At the admissible end of the scale was her fear that Murphy would have overreacted. She hadn’t wanted to hand her boyfriend a justification for dictating what risks she took, because she’d had quite enough of that already, from her mother. Yet, whispered her conscience, she’d let Strike tell her to be more careful, hadn’t she? She’d also done as he’d suggested, with regard to taxis and taking on no jobs on her own. What was the difference?
The answer (so Robin told herself) was that she and Strike were in business together, which gave him certain rights – but here, her self-analysis stopped, because it might be argued that Murphy, too, had rights; it was simply that she found them less admissible. Such musings came dangerously close to forcing her to confront something she was determinedly avoiding. Ruminations on Strike’s true feelings, as she knew from past experience, led only to confusion and pain.
Strike, meanwhile, had personal worries of his own. On Saturday afternoon, Lucy called him with the news that Ted, who was still staying at her house, had had a ‘funny turn’. Guilt-stricken that he hadn’t so much as visited Ted in the last couple of weeks, Strike abandoned surveillance of the husband they’d nicknamed Hampstead to drive straight to Lucy’s house in Bromley, where he’d found Ted even more disorientated than usual. Lucy had already made a doctor’s appointment for their uncle, and had promised to get back to Strike with news as soon as she had it.
He spent most of Monday on surveillance of Toy Boy, handing over to Barclay in the late afternoon, then heading back to the office at four o’clock. Robin had been there all day, trying to sublimate in work the anxiety she felt about moving Will out of the safe haven of Pat’s house to visit Prudence that evening.
‘I still think Will and Flora could have FaceTimed,’ Robin said to Strike, when he joined her at the partners’ desk, coffee in hand.
‘Yeah, well, Prudence is a therapist, isn’t she? Wants the in-person touch.’
He glanced at Robin, who looked both tired and tense. Assuming this was due to her continuing fear of the church, he said,
‘They’d be stupider than I think they are to try and tail us after what I said to Wace on Friday, but if we spot anyone, we’ll pull over and confront them.’
