“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.”
You total shit, Morris.
“No, if I was going to tell about anything,” said Gemma, hazily, “it’d be the insider bloody trading… Oh yeah… nobody knows ’cept me…”
One hour later, Robin and Gemma emerged into the darkening street, Robin almost holding Gemma up, because she showed a tendency to sag if unsupported. After a ten-minute wait, she succeeded in flagging down a taxi, and loaded the very drunk Gemma into it.
“Le’s go out Saturday!” Gemma called to Robin, trying to stop her closing the door.
“Fantastic!” said Robin, who’d given the PA a fake number. “Ring me!”
“Yeah, I will… thanks so much for dinner!”
“No problem!” said Robin, and she succeeded at last in slamming the door on Gemma, who waved at her until the cab turned the corner.
Robin turned away and walked quickly back past the Vintry. A young man in a suit wolf-whistled as she passed.
“Oh bugger off,” muttered Robin, pulling out her phone to call Strike.
To her surprise, she saw she’d missed seven calls from him. She’d also received an email whose subject line read: Creed.
“Oh my God,” said Robin out loud.
She sped up, wanting to get away from the hordes of suited men still walking the streets, to be alone and able to concentrate. Retreating at last into the dark doorway of a gray stone office block, she opened the email. After reading it through three times, to make absolutely sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her, she called Strike back.
“There you are!” he said, answering on the first ring. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I’ve found Douthwaite!”
“You’ve what?” gasped Robin, attracting the startled attention of a sober-looking City gent shuffling past in the dark, holding a tightly furled umbrella. “How?”
“Names,” said Strike, who sound elated. “And Pat listening to hits of the seventies.”
“I don’t—”
“He called himself Jacks first time, right? Well, Terry Jacks had a massive hit with a song called ‘Seasons in the Sun’ in ’74. They played it this afternoon. We know Douthwaite fancied himself a singer, so I thought, bet that’s where he got the idea for ‘Jacks’…”
Robin could hear Strike pacing. He was evidently as excited as she felt.
“So then I went back to Oakden’s book. He said Douthwaite’s ‘Longfellow Serenade’ was a particular hit with the ladies. I looked it up. That was one of Neil Diamond’s. So then,” said Strike, “I start Googling Steve Diamond…
“I’m about to text you a picture,” said Strike. “Stand by.”
Robin took the phone away from her ear and waited. Within a few seconds, the text arrived, and she opened the accompanying picture.
A sweaty, red-faced, balding man in his sixties was singing into a microphone. He wore a turquoise T-shirt stretched over a sizable belly. A chain still hung around his neck, but the only other resemblance to the picture of the spiky-haired, cheeky chap in his kipper tie were the eyes, which were as dark and bright as ever.
“It’s him,” Robin said.
“That picture came off the website of a pub in Skegness,” said Strike. “He’s still a karaoke king and he co-owns and runs a bed and breakfast up there, with his wife Donna. I wonder,” said Strike, “whether she realizes his name hasn’t always been Diamond?”
“This is amazing!” said Robin, so jubilant that she began to walk down the street again, purely to use the energy now surging through her. “You’re brilliant!”
“I know,” said Strike, with a trace of smugness. “So, we’re going to Skegness. Tomorrow.”
“I’m supposed to be—”
“I’ve changed the rota,” said Strike. “Can you pick me up early? Say, eight o’clock? I’ll come out to Earl’s Court.”
“Definitely,” said Robin.
“Then I’ll see you—”
“Wait,” said Robin.
“Oh, shit, yeah,” said Strike politely. “Should’ve asked. How’d it go with Gemma?”
“Great,” said Robin. “Shifty’s insider trading, but never mind that now.”
“He’s—?”
“Strike, I don’t want to upstage you or anything,” she said, failing
