“Max, that’s fantastic!” said Robin, thrilled for him.
“Yeah,” he said, beaming. “Listen. D’you think your Strike would come over for dinner? I’m playing a veteran. It’d be good to speak to someone who’s actually ex-army.”
“I’m sure he would,” said Robin, hoping she was right. Strike and Max had never met. She accepted a glass of champagne, sat down and held up her glass in a toast. “Congratulations!”
“Thanks,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. “I’ll cook, if Strike comes over. It’ll be good, actually. I need to meet more people. I’m turning into one of those ‘he always kept himself to himself’ blokes you see on the news.”
“And I’ll be the dumb flatmate,” said Robin, her thoughts still with Vi Cooper, “who thought you were lovely and never questioned why I kept coming across you hammering the floorboards back down.”
Max laughed.
“And they’ll blame you more than me,” said Max, “because they always do. The women who didn’t realize… mind you, some of them… who was that guy in America who made his wife call him on an intercom before he’d let her into the garage?”
“Jerry Brudos,” said Robin. Brudos had been mentioned in The Demon of Paradise Park. Like Creed, Brudos had been wearing women’s clothing when he abducted one of his victims.
“I need to get a bloody social life going again,” said Max, more expansive than Robin had ever known him under the influence of alcohol and good news. “I’ve been feeling like hell ever since Matthew left. Kept wondering whether I shouldn’t just sell this place and move on.”
Robin thought her slight feeling of panic might have shown in her face, because Max said,
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to. But it’s half-killed me, keeping it going. I really only bought the place because of him. ‘Put it all into property, you can’t lose with property,’ he said.”
He looked as though he was going to say something else, but if so, decided against it.
“Max, I wanted to ask you something,” said Robin, “but it’s totally fine if the answer’s no. My younger brother and a girlfriend are looking for a place to stay in London for the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth of February. But if you don’t—”
“Don’t be silly,” said Max. “They can sleep on this,” he said, patting the sofa. “It folds out.”
“Oh,” said Robin, who hadn’t known this. “Well, great. Thanks, Max.”
The champagne and the hot bath had made Robin feel incredibly sleepy, but they talked on for a while about Max’s new drama, until at last Robin apologized and said she really did need to go to bed.
As she pulled the duvet over herself, Robin decided against starting a new chapter on Creed. It was best not to have certain things in your head if you wanted to get to sleep. However, once she’d turned out her bedside lamp she found her mind refusing to shut down, so she reached for her iPod.
She never listened to music on headphones unless she knew Max was in the flat. Some life experiences made a person forever conscious of their ability to react, to have advance warning. Now, though, with the front door safely double-locked (Robin had checked, as she always did), and with her flatmate and a dog mere seconds away, she inserted her earbuds and pressed shuffle on the four albums of Joni Mitchell’s she’d now bought, choosing music over another bottle of perfume she didn’t like.
Sometimes, when listening to Mitchell, which Robin was doing frequently these days, she could imagine Margot Bamborough smiling at her through the music. Margot was forever frozen at twenty-nine, fighting not to be defeated by a life more complicated than she had ever imagined it would be, when she conceived the ambition of raising herself out of poverty by brains and hard work.
An unfamiliar song began to play. The words told the story of the end of a love affair. It was a simpler, more direct lyric than many of Mitchell’s, with little metaphor or poetry about it. Last chance lost/The hero cannot make the change/Last chance lost/The shrew will not be tamed.
Robin thought of Matthew, unable to adapt himself to a wife who wanted more from life than a steady progression up the property ladder, unable to give up the mistress who had always, in truth, been better suited to his ideals and ambitions than Robin. So did that make Robin the shrew, fighting for a career that everyone but she thought was a mistake?
Lying in the dark, listening to Mitchell’s voice, which was deeper and huskier on her later albums, an idea that had been hovering on the periphery of Robin’s thoughts for a couple of weeks forced its way into the forefront of her mind. It had been lurking ever since she’d read the letter from the Ministry of Justice, refusing Strike permission to see the serial killer.
Strike had accepted the Ministry of Justice’s decision, and indeed, so had Robin, who had no desire to increase the suffering of the victims’ families. And yet the man who might save Anna from a lifetime of continued pain and uncertainty was still alive. If Irene Hickson had been bursting to talk to Strike, how much more willing might Creed be, after decades of silence?
Last chance lost/the hero cannot make the change.
Robin sat up abruptly, pulled out her earphones, turned the lamp back on, sat up and reached for the notebook and pen she always kept beside her bed these days.
There was no need to tell Strike what she was up to. The possibility that her actions might backfire on the agency must be taken. If she didn’t try, she’d forever wonder whether there hadn’t been a chance of reaching Creed, after all.
34
… no Art, nor any Leach’s Might…
Can remedy such hurts; such hurts are hellish Pain.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
The train service between Cornwall and London resumed at last. Strike packed his bags, but promised his aunt and uncle he’d be back soon. Joan clung
