“That,” said Robin quietly, “sounds like hell.”
“Yeah, it was… I really need to stop looking at their bloody Instagram accounts.” Max heaved a deep sigh and absentmindedly rubbed the shirt over the scars on his chest. “Obviously I thought of just selling up, but we barely lived here together, so it’s not as though it’s got a ton of memories. I didn’t have the energy to go through more house-hunting and moving, so here I’ve stayed, struggling to make the mortgage every month.”
Robin thought she knew why Max was telling her all this, and her hunch was confirmed when he looked directly at her and said, “Anyway, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about what happened to you. I had no idea. Ilsa only told me you were held at gunpoint—”
“Oh, I didn’t get raped then,” said Robin, and to Max’s evident surprise, she started to laugh. Doubtless it was her tiredness, but it was a relief to find dark comedy in this litany of terrible things humans did to each other, though none of it was really funny at all: his mutilated heart, the gorilla mask in her nightmares. “No, the rape happened ten years ago. That’s why I dropped out of university.”
“Shit,” said Max.
“Yeah,” said Robin, and echoing Max, she said, “it wasn’t good.”
“So when did the knife thing happen?” asked Max, eyes on Robin’s forearm, and she laughed again. Really, what else was there to do?
“That was a couple of years ago.”
“Working for Strike?”
“Yes,” said Robin, and she stopped laughing now. “Listen, about last night—”
“I enjoyed last night,” said Max.
“You can’t be serious,” said Robin.
“I’m completely serious. It was really useful for building my character. He’s got some proper big man, take-no-bullshit energy about him, hasn’t he?”
“You mean he acts like a dick?”
Max laughed and shrugged.
“Is he very different sober?”
“Yes,” said Robin, “well—I don’t know. Less of a dick.” And before Max could ask anything else about her partner, she said quickly, “He’s right about your cooking, anyway. That was fantastic. Thanks so much, I really needed that.”
Having cleared up, Robin returned downstairs, where she showered before changing for the night’s surveillance. With an hour to go before she needed to take over from Hutchins, she sat back down on her bed and idly typed variations on the name Paul Satchwell into Google. Paul L Satchwell. LP Satchwell. Paul Leonard Satchwell. Leo Paul Satchwell.
Her mobile rang. She glanced down. It was Strike. After a moment or two, she picked it up, but said nothing.
“Robin?”
“Yes.”
“Are you OK to talk?”
“Yes,” she said again, her heart beating faster than usual as she frowned up at the ceiling.
“Calling to apologize.”
Robin was so astonished, she said nothing for several seconds. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Can you even remember what you’re apologizing for?”
“Er… yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “I… didn’t mean that to get dragged up. Should’ve realized it wasn’t a subject you’d want discussed over dinner. Didn’t think.”
Tears started in Robin’s eyes at last.
“OK,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“And I’m sorry for being rude to your brother and his friends.”
“Thank you,” said Robin.
There was a silence. The rain still fell outside. Then Strike said, “Have you heard from Ilsa?”
“No,” said Robin. “Have you heard from Nick?”
“No,” said Strike.
There was another silence.
“So, we’re OK, yeah?” said Strike.
“Yes,” said Robin, wondering whether it was true.
“If I’ve taken you for granted,” said Strike, “I’m sorry. You’re the best I’ve got.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Strike,” said Robin, abandoning the pretense that she wasn’t crying as she snorted back tears.
“What?”
“You just… you’re bloody infuriating.”
“Why?”
“Saying that. Now.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve said it.”
“It is, actually.”
“I’ve told other people.”
“Yeah, well,” said Robin, now laughing and crying simultaneously as she reached for tissues, “you see how that isn’t the same thing as telling me?”
“Yeah, I s’pose,” said Strike. “Now you mention it.”
He was smoking at his small Formica kitchen table while the eternal rain fell outside his attic window. Somehow, the texts from Charlotte had made him realize he had to call Robin, had to make things right with her before he set off for Cornwall and Joan. Now the sound of her voice, and her laughter, acted on him as it usually did, by making everything seem fractionally less awful.
“When are you leaving?” Robin asked, drying her eyes.
“Tomorrow at eight. Lucy’s meeting me at the car hire. We’ve got a jeep.”
“Well, be careful,” said Robin. She’d heard on the news that day about the three people who’d died, trying to travel through the wind and the floods.
“Yeah. Can’t pretend I don’t wish you were driving. Lucy’s bloody terrible behind the wheel.”
“You can stop flattering me now. I’ve forgiven you.”
“I’m serious,” said Strike, his eyes on the relentless rain. “You and your advanced driving course. You’re the only person who doesn’t scare the shit out of me behind the wheel.”
“D’you think you’ll make it?”
“Possibly not all the way in the jeep. But Polworth’s standing by to rescue us. He’s got access to dinghies. We’ve got to do it. Joan might only have days.”
“Well, I’ll be thinking about you,” said Robin. “Keeping everything crossed.”
“Cheers, Robin. Keep in touch.”
After Strike had hung up, Robin sat for a while, savoring the sudden feeling of lightness that had filled her. Then she pulled her laptop toward her, ready to shut it down before she left for her night’s surveillance in the Land Rover. Casually, as she might have thrown the dice one last time before turning away from the craps table, she typed “Paul Satchwell artist” into Google.
… artist Paul Satchwell has spent most of his career on the Greek island of…
“What?” said Robin aloud, as though the laptop had spoken to her. She clicked on the result, and the website of the Leamington Spa Museum and Art Gallery filled the screen. She hadn’t once seen it, in all her hours of searching for Satchwell. This page had either just been created or amended.
Temporary Exhibition March 3rd—7th 2014
Local Artists
The Leamington Spa Museum and Art Gallery will be hosting a temporary exhibition of artists from the Warwickshire area. Entrance free.
Robin scrolled down the page past sundry artists’ photos until she saw him.
It was, without a doubt, the same man. His face might be leathery and cracked, his teeth might have yellowed, his thick, curly hair turned whiter and thinner, but it still hung to his shoulders, while his open shirt showed thick white chest hair.
Born in Leamington Spa and raised in Warwick, artist Paul Satchwell has spent most of his career on the Greek island of Kos. Working mainly in oils, Paul’s Hellenic-influenced exploration of myths challenge the viewer to face primal fears and examine preconceptions through sensual use of line and color…
44
Huge sea of sorrow, and tempestuous griefe,
Wherein my feeble barke is tossed long,
Far from the hoped hauen of reliefe,
Why doe thy cruel billowes beat so strong,
And thy moyst mountaines each on others throng,
Threatning to swallow vp my fearefull lyfe?
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
The storm water, rain and gales they faced were real enough, yet Strike and Lucy’s battle to reach St. Mawes had a strange, dreamlike quality. Both knew death lay at the end; both were resolved that if they managed to reach Joan alive, they would stay with her until she died.
Trees swayed and creaked as they sped along the motorway. They had to divert around great wide lakes where lately there had been fields, forcing them miles out of their way. Twice they were halted at roadblocks and told, by irate police, to turn back. They pressed on, at one point driving fifty miles to progress fifteen, listening to every weather update on the radio and becoming progressively more certain that there would come a point where they had to abandon the jeep. Rain lashed the car, high winds lifted the windscreen wipers from the glass, and brother and sister took it in turns to drive, bound by a single objective, and temporarily freed from all other concerns.