On Tuesday morning, Strike sat down to eat breakfast beside an attic window fogged with condensation, and saw that Robin had emailed him overnight. Ever since she’d told him she wasn’t coming to Scotland with him to interview Jade Semple she’d chosen to email when, normally, she’d have phoned.
In addition to still giving Strike the cold shoulder, Robin is only now getting around to emailing the Fiola Fay audio, which seems atypical. She has also discovered that porn producer Craig Wheaton was once a resident of one of Branfoot's homes for boys, though we are not told how she learned this reasonably sensitive bit of information. Strike calls her, but unfortunately, his praise for finding the "link" between Branfoot and de Lion reminds her of his "weak link" line, and she's not ready to forgive that. Strike is trying to pretend things are back to normal but it's not working.
Wardle calls to cancel dinner that night, because he unexpectedly needs to take care of his son. Strike offers to deliver the curry to his house. When he says he's never visited Wardle at home, I assume he meant Wardle's bachelor pad. In LW, he attended Wardle's birthday party; that's where he met Lorelei and where Coco threw a glass of wine over them when they were sitting on the couch. Strike's concern for Wardle here is, again, touching; it's a shame Robin isn't seeing this side of him.
On the way to his policeman friend's, he gets another hysterical call from Bijou, telling him Honbold is threatening to give the full story to "Colin Pepper" if she takes him to court, and begging him again to take a DNA test. Strike has a moment that really puts this book into the nigredo realm for me, despite all the albedo names.
Strike... watched an oncoming double decker speeding towards him and, for a fraction of a second, imagined stepping out in front of it, and erasing himself and every problem along with him, of being lost in black nothingness, in a state of blissful non-being, but the bus passed, and Strike limped on, and he couldn’t even muster anger...
This seems comparable to Harry Potter's moment in the Godric Hollow graveyard, when he wished he was sleeping under the snow with his parents. Strike agrees, but needs a time to formulate a plan so they won't be caught by whoever is tailing Bijou. He misses the obvious answer, which is to give his sample to Ilsa and let Ilsa pass it onto Bijou in the privacy of the law office.
“Yeah," said Wardle. "They had a good grope in the pub a while back."
"How long ago was this?" asked Strike, trying to sound casual.
"Back when he was splitting up with his wife,"said Wardle, and the tiny shoot of – not exactly hope, but something resembling it – withered and died inside Strike. "I told you before, he was a proper arsehole when he was drinking, nothing in a skirt was safe. He’s been in a bloody bad mood lately, apparently. Iverson says, if she didn’t know better, she’d think he was drinking again.”
He also learns about RFM arresting the wrong suspect in the gang shooting, While Wardle is reviewing the rest of his information, most of which Strike seems to know already, Robin calls with the news that Plug Jr.'s been taken to the ER with dog bites and her conclusion that Plug is part of a dog-fighting ring,
Wardle tells Strike of his mother's recent death and his thoughts about leaving the Met, which, given his inheritance, might let him forego his pension and work for a smaller salary. When little Liam calls out for "Daddy," Strike imagines Bijou's child doing the same to him. While Wardle is tending to his son, Strike notices Oliver Branfoot on TV.
“It’s a great act," said Strike, staring stonily at the screen. "That fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Chapter 71 returns to Robin.
Notwithstanding Robin’s offer to forfeit her own free time so that they didn’t have to sacrifice their own, adding Albie Simpson-White to the roster of people who needed following by the agency caused a degree of exasperation among the subcontractors.
The Kimphomaniac, in particular, takes the opportunity to take potshots at Robin again. It is satisfying to see Robin making some plans to put Kim "in her place" rather than let this subcontractor continue to undermine her. We also jump ahead in time to Sunday, Jan 29th. Robin's plans are to tail Albie, hand the job over to KFC, then go see the Land Rover
 |
| "A curved, bright yellow frontage" |
Strike calls immediately after, to invite her to go with Graham Hardacre to tour Temple 17 in the masonic hall. Robin declines, ostensibly because of the heavy workload but mainly because she is still angry with Strike.
KFC shows up, as nice as ever and ready to show that when she isn't shagging police officers for information, she's actually not that great a detective.
“We’re very interested in a girl called Tish Benton," said Robin quietly to Kim, as the newcomer bought herself a drink at the far end of the bar. "That could be her. If you can get near enough to hear her name, that’d be great."
"Yes, I think that’ll be within my capabilities," said Kim.
"Glad to hear it,’ said Robin tartly, and she left."
As we will find out later, she will completely botch this job, leaving Tish Benton as the one (I think, can anyone think of others?) witness in the series that our agency wants to interview, but doesn't manage it.
It is in Chapter 72 when the calendar starts to get a bit wonky. On January 29th, Strike says that Hardy will "be in town for a family wedding next week." It is not clear whether this means the workweek coming up (Jan. 30-Feb 3) or the following week (Feb 5th- 11th), and both present problems. Strike gets the DNA results on Valentine's Day, February 14th. He had called Bijou the day before, on the "4th afternoon without news, which puts the DNA test meeting at the Savoy on Thursday February 9th and Strike's call to Bijou about the plan and his meet-up with Hardy on Tuesday, February 7th. But this is two full weeks after he agreed to take the test, back in Chapter 70, on January 24th. This Savoy plan isn't that complicated; did it really take Strike two weeks to devise it, when both he and Bijou were so anxious about the results and had the threat of the super-injunction being broken any day looming over them?
On the other hand, if we assume "next week" means the earlier period, giving Strike a more reasonable planning time, the backtracking from Valentine's Day doesn't work, so there's an incongruity either way.
Unbeknownst to Robin, Strike was currently preoccupied with an investigative problem he considered even more pressing than the identity of the body in the silver vault.
I'm not sure "unbeknownst to Robin" is appropriate here; she clearly does know a DNA test is in the works. I guess it's the fact that Bijou is being tailed and they are having to hide from Honbold's detective that is the "investigative problem."
“If that woman does call back," he told Pat on his way back to the glass door, "ask if she’s blonde and has got anything tattooed on her face."
"On her face?" said Pat.
"Yeah, you know, the thing on the front of your head," said Strike, and left.
It's great to see Graham Hardacre again (and a nice throwback to Career of Evil) but, given that all of Freemason's Hall (and Temple 17 and its swan) turned out to be red herrings, the most valuable information comes from their pub meeting beforehand.
“Yeah, go on," said Strike. "But they take all money and metal off you first, don’t they?"
"Been reading up?" said Hardacre, with a grin.
"Just wondering whether alcohol’s a good idea when I’m about to be hopping around in the dark," said Strike.
"Think they’d make an exception for your leg, unless you habitually use it as a weapon."
"Not often,’ said Strike, "but it’s been known.”
One of my goals on this read-through is to look for connections between THM and Cuckoo's Calling, which is one of the distinguishing features of my Three Ring Circus structural model compared to Double Wedding Band. While I haven't seen a lot, the one time that Strike's leg was, in fact, used as a weapon was at the end of CC, when he bashes John Bristow with it.
As they emerged from the hall into the sunlight, the conversation shifted easily to mutual military friends, and Strike mentally filed away GAOTU, the chained swan and the symbolic significance of bridges to be pondered later, when he had the time.
Next time: Strike and Robin dine out, and the DNA test is run.
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