Troubled Blood

“Yeah, well,” said Strike, with a shrug. “Trying to be friendly.”

As Robin was putting on her coat in the outer office, Pat said,

“That’s a very good color on you.”

“Thanks. It’s quite old. Miracle it still fits, all the chocolate I’ve been eating lately.”

“Would he like a cuppa, d’you think?”

“I’m sure he would,” said Robin, surprised. Apparently Strike wasn’t the only one who was trying to be friendly.

“Oooh, I used to love this,” said Pat, as the opening bars of “Play That Funky Music” filled the office, and as Robin walked down the stairs, she heard Pat singing along, in her raspy baritone:



Once I was a funky singer,

Playin’ in a rock and roll band…

The Vintry, which Robin reached twenty minutes later, lay near Cannon Street Tube station in the heart of the financial district, and was precisely the kind of place her ex-husband had most enjoyed. Undemandingly modern in a conventional, high-spec manner, with its sleek mixture of steel beams, large windows and wooden floors, it had a hint of open-plan office about it, in spite of the long bar with padded stools. There was the odd quirky touch, such as the two stuffed rabbits on a windowsill, which carried model guns and wore shooting caps, but in the main the clientele, which consisted overwhelmingly of men in suits, were cocooned in an atmosphere of tasteful beige blandness. They stood in cliques, fresh from the day’s work, drinking, laughing together, reading newspapers or their phones, or eyeing up the few female customers—to Robin they seemed to exude not just confidence, but self-satisfaction. She received a number of appreciative looks as she sidled between stockbrokers, bankers and traders on her way to the bar.

Looking carefully around the large open-plan area, Robin gathered that Gemma hadn’t yet arrived, so she took a free bar stool, ordered a tonic water and pretended to be reading the day’s news off her phone, purely to avoid the open staring of the two young men to her right, one of whom seemed determined to make Robin look up, if only to ascertain where the annoying, braying laugh was coming from. To her left, a pair of older men were discussing the imminent Scottish independence referendum.

“Polls are looking shaky,” said the first man. “Hope Cameron knows what he’s doing.”

“They’d be bloody mad to do it. Mad.”

“There’s opportunity in madness—for a few, anyway,” said the first man. “I remember, when I was in Hong Kong—oh, I think that’s our table free…”

The two speakers departed for their dinner. Robin glanced around again, carefully avoiding meeting the eyes of the young man with the braying laugh, and a patch of scarlet at the far end of the bar caught her eye. Gemma had arrived, and was standing alone, trying to catch the barman’s eye. Robin slid off her bar stool, and carried her drink over to Gemma, whose long dark hair fell in gypsyish curls to the middle of her back.

“Hi—Linda?”

“What?” said Gemma, startled. “No, sorry.”

“Oh,” said Robin, looking crestfallen. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong bar. Has this place got other branches?”

“I’ve no idea, sorry,” said Gemma, still with her hand raised, trying to attract the barman’s attention.

“She said she’d be wearing red,” said Robin, looking around at the sea of suits.

Gemma glanced at Robin, mildly interested.

“Blind date?”

“I wish,” said Robin, rolling her eyes. “No, it’s a friend of a friend who thinks there might be an opening at Winfrey and Hughes. The woman said she’d meet me for a quick drink.”

“Winfrey and Hughes? That’s where I work.”

“You’re kidding!” said Robin, with a laugh. “Hey—you’re not really Linda, are you? And pretending to be someone different, because you don’t like the look of me or something?”

“No,” said the other woman, smiling. “I’m Gemma.”

“Oh. Are you meeting someone, or—?”

“S’posed to be,” said Gemma, “yeah.”

“D’you mind me sitting here with you? Just till they arrive? I was getting some properly lechy looks over there.”

“Tell me about it,” said Gemma, as Robin climbed up onto the barstool beside her. The barman now approached a pinstriped, gray-haired man who’d just arrived.

“Oi,” Robin called, and half a dozen businessmen’s heads turned, as well as the barman’s. “She was here first,” said Robin, pointing sideways at Gemma, who laughed again.

“Wow. You don’t mess around, do you?”

“No point, is there?” said Robin, taking a sip of her water. She’d subtly broadened her Yorkshire accent, as she often did when pretending to be a bolder, brasher character than she really felt herself to be. “Gotta take charge, or they’ll walk all bloody over you.”

“You’re not wrong there,” sighed Gemma.

“Winfrey and Hughes isn’t like that, is it?” said Robin. “Full of tossers?”

“Well…”

The barman arrived at that moment to take Gemma’s order. Once the PA had her large glass of red wine, she took a swig and said,

“It’s OK, actually. Depends which bit you’re working in. I’m PA to one of the high-ups. The work’s interesting.”

“Nice guy?” asked Robin casually.

Gemma drank several mouthfuls of wine before saying,

“He’s… all right. Devil you know, isn’t it? I like the job and the company. I’ve got a great salary and a ton of friends there… oh damn—”

Her handbag had slipped off the barstool. As Gemma bent to retrieve it, Robin, whose eyes had roamed across the vista of cream, gray and beige in front of her, suddenly spotted Saul Morris.

He’d just walked into the bar, wearing a suit, an open-necked shirt and a remarkably smug smile. He glanced around, picked out Gemma and Robin by the bright colors of their dresses, and froze. For a second or two, he and Robin simply stared at each other; then Morris turned abruptly and hurried back out of the bar.

Gemma settled herself back onto her barstool, bag safely on her lap. The mobile phone she’d left lying on the counter now lit up.

“Andy?” said Gemma, answering quickly. “Yeah… no, I’m here already…”

There was a long silence. Robin could hear Morris’s voice. He was using the same wheedling tone in which he’d tried to talk her into bed, with all those puerile jokes and have-I-upset-yous.

“Fine,” said Gemma, her expression hardening. “Fine. I just… I’m going to take your number off my phone now and I’d like you… no, actually, I… oh just fuck off!”

She hung up, flushed, her lips trembling.

“Why,” she said, “do they always want to be told they’re still nice guys, after they’ve been total shits?”

“Often wondered that meself,” said Yorkshire Robin. “Boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” said the shaken Gemma. “For six months. Then he just stands me up one night, with no explanation. Then he comes back a couple of times—booty calls, basically,” she said, taking another big swig of wine. “And finally he just ghosts me. I texted him yesterday, I said, look, I just wanna meet, just want an explanation—”

“Sounds like a right twat,” said Robin, whose heart was racing with excitement at this perfect opportunity to have a heart-to-heart. “Hey,” she called to the barman, “can we have a couple more wines and a menu, please?”

And after that, Robin found getting confidences out of Gemma as easy as shelling peas. With three large glasses of wine inside her, and her new friend from Yorkshire being so funny, supportive and understanding, a plate of chicken and polenta to eat, and a bottle of wine (“Yeah, why the hell not?”), she moved seamlessly from the misdemeanors of “Andy” to the inappropriate and unsolicited groping by her boss that had escalated until she was on the verge of quitting.

“Can’t you go to HR?” asked Robin.

“He says nobody’ll believe me because of what happened when we were on a course last year… although… To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what happened,” said Gemma, and looking away from Robin she mumbled, “I mean… we had sex… but I was so out of it… so drunk… I mean, it wasn’t, you know… it wasn’t rape… I’m not saying that…”

“Were you in a fit state to give consent?” said Robin, no longer laughing. She’d only drunk half a glass of wine.

“Well, not… but… no, I’m not putting myself through that,” said Gemma, flushed and tearful. “Not the police and everything, God no… he’s a big shot, he could afford great lawyers… an’ if I didn’t win, how’m I gonna get another job in the City?… Court, and the papers… anyway, it’s too late now… people saw me… coming out of his room. I pretended it was all OK. I had to, I was so embarrassed… rumor mill’s been in overdrive since. We both denied anything happened, so how would it look if I…

“Andy told me I shouldn’t report it,” said Gemma, pouring the last of the bottle into her glass.

“Did he?”

“Yeah… I told him about it, firs’ time we had sex… see, it was the firs’ time I’d slept with anyone since… and he said, “Yeah, you’ll want to keep that quiet… be loads of grief for you, an’ he’ll probably get off’… He was ex-police, Andy, he knew all about that kind of thing.”