“Oh good,” said Robin.
To Robin’s left, Max began asking Strike’s opinion on various aspects of his character’s personality and past. Courtney returned to the table and began to wolf down her pasta, drinking and topping up her wine regularly as she went while telling Jonathan and Kyle her plans about a protest march at university. Robin joined in neither conversation, but ate and drank in silence, one eye on the mobile beside her plate in case Ilsa texted or rang back.
“… couldn’t happen,” Strike was saying. “He wouldn’t’ve been allowed to join up in the first place, conviction for possession with intent to supply. Total bollocks.”
“Really? The writers did quite a lot of research—”
“Should’ve known that, then.”
“… so yeah, basically, you dress up in your underwear and short skirts and stuff,” Courtney was saying, and when Kyle and Jon laughed she said, “Don’t, it’s serious—”
“… no, this is useful,” said Max, scribbling in a notebook. “So if he’d been in jail before the army—”
“If he’d done more than thirty months, the army wouldn’t’ve taken him…”
“I’m not wearing suspenders, Kyle—anyway, Miranda doesn’t want—”
“I don’t know how long he’s supposed to have done,” said Max. “I’ll check. Tell me about drugs in the army, how common—?”
“—so she says, ‘D’you not understand how problematic the word ‘slut’ is, Courtney?’ And I’m like, ‘Er, what d’you think—’”
“‘What d’you think a fucking SlutWalk’s for?’” said Kyle, talking over Courtney. He had a deep voice and the air of a young man who was used to being listened to.
The screen of Robin’s mobile lit up. Ilsa had texted back.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, though nobody was paying her any attention, and she headed into the kitchen area to read what Ilsa had said.
Didn’t mean to worry you. Nick home, shitfaced. He’s been in the pub with Corm. We’re talking. He says he didn’t mean it the way I took it. What other way was there? X
Robin, who felt entirely on Ilsa’s side, nevertheless texted back:
He’s a dickhead but I know he really loves you. Xxx
As she poured herself another double gin and tonic, Max called to her, asking her to bring Strike another beer from the fridge. When Robin set the open bottle down in front of Strike he didn’t thank her, but merely took a long pull on it and raised his voice, because he was having difficulty trying to make himself heard over Kyle and Courtney, whose conversation had now migrated to the unknown Miranda’s views on pornography.
“… so I’m, like, you do understand that women can actually choose what to do with their own bodies, Miran—Oh shit, sorry—”
Courtney’s expansive gesture had knocked over her wine glass. Robin jumped up to get the kitchen roll. By the time she got back, Courtney’s glass had been refilled by Kyle. Robin mopped up the wine while the two separate conversations grew steadily louder on either side of her, binned the sodden kitchen roll, then sat back down, wishing she could just go to bed.
“… troubled background, that’s fucking original, guess what, plenty of people join the army because they want to serve, not to escape…”
“Pure whorephobia,” boomed Kyle. “I s’pose she thinks waitresses love every fucking minute of their jobs, does she?”
“… and he can’t have been in 1 Rifles if he’s your age. The bat-talion was only formed…”
“… labor for hire, where’s the fucking difference?”
“… think it was end 2007…”
“… and some women enjoy watching porn, too!”
Courtney’s words fell loudly into a temporary lull. Everyone looked round at Courtney, who’d blushed and was giggling with her hand over her mouth.
“It’s all right, we’re talking feminism,” said Kyle, with a smirk. “Courtney isn’t suggesting, y’know—after-dinner entertainment.”
“Kyle!” gasped Courtney, slapping his upper arm and dissolving into further giggles.
“Who wants pudding?” Robin asked, standing up to collect the empty plates. Max, too, got to his feet.
“I’m sorry Strike’s so pissed,” Robin murmured to Max, as she tipped a few uneaten pieces of ravioli into the bin.
“Are you kidding?” said Max, with a slight smile. “This is pure gold. My character’s an alcoholic.”
He’d gone, bearing a homemade cheesecake to the table, before Robin could tell him that Strike didn’t usually drink this much; indeed, this was only the second time she’d ever known him drunk. The first time he’d been sad and quite endearing, but tonight there was a definite undercurrent of aggression. She remembered the shouted “Go fuck yourself” she’d heard through the office door that afternoon and again wondered to whom Strike had been talking.
Robin followed Max back to the table, carrying a lemon tart and a third large gin and tonic. Kyle was now treating the entire table to his views on pornography. Robin didn’t much like the expression on Strike’s face. He’d often displayed an instinctive antipathy toward the kind of young man you could least imagine in the army; she trusted he was going to keep his feelings to himself tonight.
“… form of entertainment, just like any other,” Kyle was saying, with an expansive gesture. Fearful of more accidents, Robin discreetly moved the almost empty wine bottle out of hitting range. “When you look at it objectively, strip it from all the puritanical bullshit—”
“Yeah, exactly,” said Courtney, “women have got agency over their own—”
“—movies, gaming, it all stimulates the pleasure centers in your brain,” said Kyle, now pointing at his own immaculately groomed head. “You could make an argument that movies are emotional pornography. All this moralistic, manufactured outrage about porn—”
“I can’t eat either of those if they’ve got dairy in them,” Courtney whispered to Robin, who pretended she hadn’t heard.
“—women want to make a living out of their own bodies, that’s the literal definition of female empowerment and you could argue it has more societal benefit than—”
“When I was in Kosovo,” said Strike unexpectedly and all three students turned to look at him, with startled expressions. Strike paused, fumbling to get his cigarettes out of his pocket.
“Cormoran,” said Robin, “you can’t smo—”
“No problem,” said Max, getting up, “I’ll bring an ashtray.”
It took Strike three attempts to make his lighter work and in the meantime everybody watched him in silence. Without raising his voice, he’d dominated the room.
“Who’d like cheesecake?” Robin said into the silence, her voice artificially cheery.
“I can’t,” said Courtney, with a slight pout. “But I might be able to have the lemon tart, if it’s—?”
“When I was in Kosovo,” Strike repeated, exhaling as Max returned, placed an ashtray in front of him and sat back down again, “—cheers—I investigated a porn case—well, human trafficking. Coupla soldiers had paid for sex with underage girls. They were filmed without their knowledge an’ the videos ended up on PornHub. Case ended up part of an international civilian investigation. Whole load of pre-pubescent boys and girls had been trafficked into porn. The youngest was seven.”
Strike took a large drag of his cigarette, squinting through the smoke at Kyle.
“What societal benefit would you say that had?” he asked.
There was a short, nasty silence in which the three students stared at the detective.
“Well, obviously,” said Kyle, with a small half-laugh, “that’s—that’s a completely different thing. Nobody’s talking about kids—that’s not—that’s illegal, isn’t it? I’m talking about—”
“Porn industry’s full of trafficking,” said Strike, still watching Kyle through his smoke. “Women and kids from poor countries. One of the little girls in my case was filmed with a plastic bag over her head, while a bloke anally raped her.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Kyle and Courtney throw her darting looks and knew, with an elevator drop in the area of her solar plexus, that her brother must have shared her history with his friends. Max was the only person at the table who seemed entirely relaxed. He was watching Strike with the dispassionate attention of a chemist checking an ongoing experiment.
“The video of that kid was viewed over a hundred thousand times online,” said Strike. Cigarette jammed in his mouth, he now helped himself to a large piece of cheesecake, effectively demolishing it to get a third of it onto his plate. “Plenty of pleasure centers stimulated there, eh?” he went on, looking up at Kyle.
“No, but that’s completely different, though,” said Courtney, rallying to Kyle’s defense. “We were talking about women who—it’s up to women, grown women, to decide what they want to do with their own bod—”
“Did you cook all this?” Strike asked Max through a mouthful of cheesecake. He still had a lit cigarette in his left hand.
“Yes,” said Max.