The Faerie Queene

As they headed out of Falmouth, Strike’s mood turned to cheerfulness, which Robin attributed mainly to the interest of a possible new case. She’d never yet known an intriguing problem to fail to engage his attention, no matter what might be happening in his private life.

She was partially right: Strike’s interest had certainly been piqued by Anna’s story, but he was mainly cheered by the prospect of keeping weight off his prosthesis for a few hours, and by the knowledge that every passing minute put further distance between himself and his sister. Opening the car window, allowing the familiar sea air to rush bracingly inside the old car, he lit a cigarette and, blowing smoke away from Robin, asked,

“Seen much of Morris while I’ve been away?”

“Saw him yesterday,” said Robin. “Paid him for his month’s expenses.”

“Ah, great, cheers,” said Strike, “I meant to remind you that needed doing. What d’you think of him? Barclay says he’s good at the job, except he talks too much in the car.”

“Yeah,” said Robin noncommittally, “he does like to talk.”

“Hutchins thinks he’s a bit smarmy,” said Strike, subtly probing.

He’d noticed the special tone Morris reserved for Robin. Hutchins had also reported that Morris had asked him what Robin’s relationship status was.

“Mm,” said Robin, “well, I haven’t really had enough contact with him to form an opinion.”

Given Strike’s current stress levels and the amount of work the agency was struggling to cover, she’d decided not to criticize his most recent hire. They needed an extra man. At least Morris was good at the job.

“Pat likes him,” she added, partly out of mischief, and was amused to see, out of the corner of her eye, Strike turn to look at her, scowling.

“That’s no bloody recommendation.”

“Unkind,” said Robin.

“You realize in a week’s time it’s going to be harder to sack her? Her probation period’s nearly up.”

“I don’t want to sack her,” said Robin. “I think she’s great.”

“Well, then, on your head be it if she causes trouble down the line.”

“It won’t be on my head,” said Robin. “You’re not pinning Pat on me. Hiring her was a joint decision. You were the one who was sick of temps—”

“And you were the one who said ‘it might not be a bad idea to get a more traditional manager in’ and ‘we shouldn’t discount her because of her age’—”

“—I know what I said, and I stand by the age thing. We do need someone who understands a spreadsheet, who’s organized, but you were the one who—”

“—I didn’t want you accusing me of ageism.”

“—you were the one who offered her the job,” Robin finished firmly.

“Dunno what I was bloody thinking,” muttered Strike, flicking ash out of the window.

Patricia Chauncey was fifty-six and looked sixty-five. A thin woman with a deeply lined, monkeyish face and implausibly jet-black hair, she vaped continually in the office, but was to be seen drawing deeply on a Superking the moment her feet touched the pavement at the end of the day’s work. Pat’s voice was so deep and rasping that she was often mistaken for Strike on the phone. She sat at what once had been Robin’s desk in the outer office and had taken over the bulk of the agency’s phone-answering and administrative duties now that Robin had moved to full-time detection.

Strike and Pat’s relationship had been combative from the start, which puzzled Robin, who liked them both. Robin was used to Strike’s intermittent bouts of moodiness, and prone to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially when she suspected he was in pain, but Pat had no compunction about snapping “Would a ‘thanks’ kill you?” if Strike showed insufficient gratitude when she passed him his phone messages. She evidently felt none of the reverence some of their temps had displayed toward the now famous detective, one of whom had been sacked on the spot when Strike realized she was surreptitiously filming him on her mobile from the outer office. Indeed, the office manager’s demeanor suggested that she lived in daily expectation of finding out things to Strike’s discredit, and she’d displayed a certain satisfaction on hearing that the dent in one of the filing cabinets was due to the fact that he’d once punched it.

On the other hand, the filing was up to date, the accounts were in order, all receipts were neatly docketed, the phone was answered promptly, messages were passed on accurately, they never ran out of teabags or milk, and Pat had never once arrived late, no matter the weather and irrespective of Tube delays.

It was true, too, that Pat liked Morris, who was the recipient of most of her rare smiles. Morris was always careful to pay Pat his full tribute of blue-eyed charm before turning his attention to Robin. Pat was already alert to the possibility of romance between her younger colleagues.

“He’s lovely-looking,” she’d told Robin just the previous week, after Morris had phoned in his location so that the temporarily unreachable Barclay could be told where to take over surveillance on their biggest case. “You’ve got to give him that.”

“I haven’t got to give him anything,” Robin had said, a little crossly.

It was bad enough having Ilsa badger her about Strike in her leisure time without Pat starting on Morris during her working hours.

“Quite right,” Pat had responded, unfazed. “Make him earn it.”

“Anyway,” said Strike, finishing his cigarette and crushing the stub out in the tin Robin kept for that purpose in the glove compartment, “you’ve wrapped up Tufty. Bloody good going.”

“Thanks,” Robin said. “But there’s going to be press. Bigamy’s always news.”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it’s going to be worse for him than us, but it’s worth trying to keep our name out of it if we can. I’ll have a word with Mrs.-Campion-in-Windsor. So that leaves us,” he counted the names on his thick fingers, “with Two-Times, Twinkletoes, Postcard and Shifty.”

It had become the agency’s habit to assign nicknames to their targets and clients, mainly to avoid letting real names slip in public or in emails. Two-Times was a previous client of the agency, who’d recently resurfaced after trying other private detectives and finding them unsatisfactory. Strike and Robin had previously investigated two of his girlfriends. At a superficial glance, he seemed most unlucky in love, a man whose partners, initially attracted by his fat bank balance, seemed incapable of fidelity. Over time, Strike and Robin had come to believe that he derived obscure emotional or sexual satisfaction from being cheated on, and that they were being paid to provide evidence that, far from upsetting him, gave him pleasure. Once confronted with photographic evidence of her perfidy, the girlfriend of the moment would be confronted, dismissed and another found, and the whole pattern repeated. This time round, he was dating a glamour model who thus far, to Two-Times’ poorly concealed disappointment, seemed to be faithful.

Twinkletoes, whose unimaginative nickname had been chosen by Morris, was a twenty-four-year-old dancer who was currently having an affair with a thirty-nine-year-old double-divorcée, notable mainly for her history of drug abuse and her enormous trust fund. The socialite’s father was employing the agency to discover anything they could about Twinkletoes’ background or behavior, which could be used to prize his daughter away from him.