The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(62)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“How’re things?” asked Strike, noting Robin’s clench-jawed profile, her cold demeanor.

“Fine,” said Robin.

She now intended to lay her perfectly typed report in front of him, and then, with icy calm, discuss the arrangements for her departure. She might suggest that he hire another temp this week, so that she could instruct her replacement in the day-to-day management of the office before she left.

Strike, whose run of appalling luck had been broken in fabulous style just a few hours previously, and who was feeling as close to buoyant as he had been for many months, had been looking forward to seeing his secretary. He had no intention of regaling her with an account of his night’s activities (or at least, not those that had done so much to restore his battered ego), for he was instinctively close-lipped about such matters, and he was hoping to shore up as much as remained of the boundaries that had been splintered by his copious consumption of Doom Bar. He had, however, been planning an eloquent speech of apology for his excesses of two nights before, an avowal of gratitude, and an exposition of all the interesting conclusions he had drawn from yesterday’s interviews.

“Fancy a cup of tea?”

“No thanks.”

He looked at his watch.

“I’m only eleven minutes late.”

“It’s up to you when you arrive. I mean,” she attempted to backtrack, for her tone had been too obviously hostile, “it’s none of my business what you—when you get here.”

From having mentally rehearsed a number of soothing and magnanimous responses to Strike’s imagined apologies for his drunken behavior of forty-eight hours previously, she now felt that his attitude was distastefully free of shame or remorse.

Strike busied himself with kettle and cups, and a few minutes later set down a mug of steaming tea beside her.

“I said I didn’t—”

“Could you leave that important document for a minute while I say something to you?”

She saved the report with several thumps of the keys and turned to face him, her arms folded across her chest. Strike sat down on the old sofa.

“I wanted to say sorry about the night before last.”

“There’s no need,” she said, in a small, tight voice.

“Yeah, there is. I can’t remember much of what I did. I hope I wasn’t obnoxious.”

“You weren’t.”

“You probably got the gist. My ex-fiancée’s just got engaged to an old boyfriend. It took her three weeks after we split to get another ring on her finger. That’s just a figure of speech; I never actually bought her a ring; I never had the money.”

Robin gathered, from his tone, that there had been no reconciliation; but in that case, where had he spent the night? She unfolded her arms and unthinkingly picked up her tea.

“It wasn’t your responsibility to come and find me like that, but you probably stopped me collapsing in a gutter or punching someone, so thanks very much.”

“No problem,” said Robin.

“And thanks for the Alka-Seltzer,” said Strike.

“Did it help?” asked Robin, stiffly.

“I nearly puked all over this,” said Strike, dealing the sagging sofa a gentle punch with his fist, “but once it kicked in, it helped a lot.”

Robin laughed, and Strike remembered, for the first time, the note she had pushed under the door while he slept, and the excuse she had given for her tactful absence.

“Right, well, I’ve been looking forward to hearing how you got on yesterday,” he lied. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

Robin expanded like a water blossom.

“I was just typing it up…”

“Let’s have it verbally, and you can put it into the file later,” said Strike, with the mental reservation that it would be easy to remove if useless.

“OK,” said Robin, both excited and nervous. “Well, like I said in my note, I saw that you wanted to look into Professor Agyeman, and the Malmaison Hotel in Oxford.”

Strike nodded, grateful for the reminder, because he had not been able to remember the details of the note, read once in the depths of his blinding hangover.

“So,” said Robin, a little breathlessly, “first of all I went along to Russell Square, to SOAS; the School of Oriental and African Studies. That’s what your notes meant, isn’t it?” she added. “I checked a map: it’s walking distance from the British Museum. Isn’t that what all those scribbles meant?”

Strike nodded again.

“Well, I went in there and pretended I was writing a dissertation on African politics, and I wanted some information on Professor Agyeman. I ended up speaking to this really helpful secretary in the politics department, who’d actually worked for him, and she gave me loads of information on him, including a bibliography and a brief biography. He studied at SOAS as an undergraduate.”

“He did?”

“Yes,” said Robin. “And I got a picture.”

From inside the notebook she pulled out a photocopy, and passed it across to Strike.

He saw a black man with a long, high-cheekboned face; close-cropped graying hair and beard and gold-rimmed glasses supported by overlarge ears. He stared at it for several long moments, and when at last he spoke, he said:

“Christ.”

Robin waited, elated.

“Christ,” said Strike again. “When did he die?”

“Five years ago. The secretary got upset talking about it. She said he was so clever, and the nicest, kindest man. A committed Christian.”

“Any family?”

“Yes. He left a widow and a son.”

“A son,” repeated Strike.

“Yes,” said Robin. “He’s in the army.”

“In the army,” said Strike, her deep and doleful echo. “Don’t tell me.”

“He’s in Afghanistan.”

Strike got up and started pacing up and down, the picture of Professor Josiah Agyeman in his hand.

“Didn’t get a regiment, did you? Not that it matters. I can find out,” he said.

“I did ask,” said Robin, consulting her notes, “but I don’t really understand—is there a regiment called the Sappers or some—”

“Royal Engineers,” said Strike. “I can check up on all that.”

He stopped beside Robin’s desk, and stared again at the face of Professor Josiah Agyeman.

“He was from Ghana originally,” she said. “But the family lived in Clerkenwell until he died.”

Strike handed her back the picture.

“Don’t lose that. You’ve done bloody well, Robin.”

“That’s not all,” she said, flushed, excited and trying to keep from smiling. “I took the train out to Oxford in the afternoon, to the Malmaison. Do you know, they’ve made a hotel out of an old prison?”

“Really?” said Strike, sinking back on to the sofa.

“Yes. It’s quite nice, actually. Well, anyway, I thought I’d pretend to be Alison and check whether Tony Landry had left something there or something…”

Strike sipped his tea, thinking that it was highly implausible that a secretary would be dispatched in person for such an inquiry three months after the event.

“Anyway, that was a mistake.”

“Really?” he said, his tone carefully neutral.

“Yes, because Alison actually did go to the Malmaison on the seventh, to try and find Tony Landry. It was incredibly embarrassing, because one of the girls on reception had been there that day, and she remembered her.”

Strike lowered his mug.

“Now that,” he said, “is very interesting indeed.”

“I know,” said Robin excitedly. “So then I had to think really fast.”

“Did you tell them your name was Annabel?”

“No,” she said, on a half-laugh. “I said, well, OK then, I’ll tell the truth, I’m his girlfriend. And I cried a bit.”

“You cried?”

“It wasn’t actually that hard,” said Robin, with an air of surprise. “I got right into character. I said I thought he was having an affair.”

“Not with Alison? If they’ve seen her, they wouldn’t believe that…”

“No, but I said I didn’t think he’d really been at the hotel at all…Anyway, I made a bit of a scene and the girl who’d spoken to Alison took me aside and tried to calm me down; she said they couldn’t give out information about people without a good reason, they had a policy, blah blah…you know. But just to stop me crying, in the end she told me that he had checked in on the evening of the sixth, and checked out on the morning of the eighth. He made a fuss about being given the wrong newspaper while he was checking out, that’s why she remembered. So he was definitely there. I even asked her a bit, you know, hysterically, how she knew it was him, and she described him to a T. I know what he looks like,” she added, before Strike could ask. “I checked before I left; his picture’s on the Landry, May, Patterson website.”

“You’re brilliant,” said Strike, “and this is all bloody fishy. What did she tell you about Alison?”

“That she arrived and asked to see him, but he wasn’t there. They confirmed that he was staying with them, though. And then she left.”

“Very odd. She should have known he was at the conference; why didn’t she go there first?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did this helpful hotel employee say she’d seen him at any times other than check-in and check-out?”

“No,” said Robin. “But we know he went to the conference, don’t we? I checked that, remember?”

“We know he signed in, and probably picked up a name tag. And then he drove back to Chelsea to see his sister, Lady Bristow. Why?”

“Well…she was ill.”

“Was she? She’d just had an operation that was supposed to cure her.”

“A hysterectomy,” said Robin. “I don’t imagine you’d feel wonderful after that.”

“So we’ve got a man who doesn’t like his sister very much—I’ve had that from his own lips—who believes she’s just had a life-saving operation and knows she’s got two of her children in attendance. Why the urgency to see her?”

“Well,” said Robin, with less certainty, “I suppose…she’d just got out of hospital…”

“Which he presumably knew was going to happen before he drove off to Oxford. So why not stay in town, visit her if he felt that strongly about it, and then head out to the afternoon session of the conference? Why drive fifty-odd miles, stay overnight in this plush prison, go to the conference, sign in and then double back to town?”