“No regrets, then?” Strike asked.
“Fuck, no,” said Polworth fervently. “Needed to get my hands dirty again. Need to get back outside. Forty next year. Now or never.”
Polworth had applied for the new job without telling his wife what he was doing. Having been offered the position, he’d quit his job and gone home to announce the fait accompli to his family.
“Penny come round, has she?” Strike asked.
“Still tells me once a week she wants a divorce,” Polworth answered indifferently. “But it was better to present her with the fact, than argue the toss for five years. It’s all worked out great. Kids love the new school, Penny’s company let her transfer to the office in the Big City,” by which Polworth meant Truro, not London. “She’s happy. Just doesn’t want to admit it.”
Strike privately doubted the truth of this statement. A disregard for inconvenient facts tended to march hand in hand with Polworth’s love of risk and romantic causes. However, Strike had problems enough of his own without worrying about Polworth’s, so he raised his fresh pint and said, hoping to keep Polworth’s mind off politics:
“Well, many happy returns, mate.”
“Cheers,” said Polworth, toasting him back. “What d’you reckon to Arsenal’s chances, then? Gonna qualify?”
Strike shrugged, because he feared that discussing the likelihood of his London football club securing a place in the Champions League would lead back to a lack of Cornish loyalties.
“How’s your love life?” Polworth asked, trying a different tack.
“Non-existent,” said Strike.
Polworth grinned.
“Joanie reckons you’re gonna end up with your business partner. That Robin girl.”
“Is that right?” said Strike.
“Told me all about it when I was round there, weekend before last. While I was fixing their Sky Box.”
“They didn’t tell me you’d done that,” said Strike, again tipping his pint toward Polworth. “That was good of you, mate, cheers.”
If he’d hoped to deflect his friend, he was unsuccessful.
“Both of ’em. Her and Ted,” said Polworth, “both of ’em reckon it’s Robin.”
And when Strike said nothing, Polworth pressed him, “Nothing going on, then?”
“No,” said Strike.
“How come?” asked Polworth, frowning again. As with Cornish independence, Strike was refusing to embrace an obvious and desirable objective. “She’s a looker. Seen her in the paper. Maybe not on a par with Milady Berserko,” Polworth acknowledged. It was the nickname he had long ago bestowed on Strike’s ex-fiancée. “But on the other hand, she’s not a fucking nutcase, is she, Diddy?”
Strike laughed.
“Lucy likes her,” said Polworth. “Says you’d be perfect together.”
“When were you talking to Lucy about my love life?” asked Strike, with a touch less complaisance.
“Month or so ago,” said Polworth. “She brought her boys down for the weekend and we had them all over for a barbecue.”
Strike drank and said nothing.
“You get on great, she says,” said Polworth, watching him.
“Yeah, we do,” said Strike.
Polworth waited, eyebrows raised and looking expectant.
“It’d fuck everything up,” said Strike. “I’m not risking the agency.”
“Right,” said Polworth. “Tempted, though?”
There was a short pause. Strike carefully kept his gaze averted from the dark woman and her companion, who he was sure were discussing him.
“There might’ve been moments,” he admitted, “when it crossed my mind. But she’s going through a nasty divorce, we spend half our lives together as it is and I like having her as a business partner.”
Given their longstanding friendship, the fact that they’d already clashed over politics and that it was Polworth’s birthday, he was trying not to let any hint of resentment at this line of questioning show. Every married person he knew seemed desperate to chivvy others into matrimony, no matter how poor an advertisement they themselves were for the institution. The Polworths, for instance, seemed to exist in a permanent state of mutual animosity. Strike had more often heard Penny refer to her husband as “that twat” than by his name, and many was the night when Polworth had regaled his friends in happy detail of the ways in which he’d managed to pursue his own ambitions and interests at the expense of, or over the protests of, his wife. Both seemed happiest and most relaxed in the company of their own sex, and on those rare occasions when Strike had enjoyed hospitality at their home, the gatherings always seemed to follow a pattern of natural segregation, the women congregating in one area of the home, the men in another.
“And what happens when Robin wants kids?” asked Polworth.
“Don’t think she’s does,” said Strike. “She likes the job.”
“They all say that,” said Polworth dismissively. “What age is she now?”
“Ten years younger than us.”
“She’ll want kids,” said Polworth confidently. “They all do. And it happens quicker for women. They’re up against the clock.”
“Well, she won’t be getting kids with me. I don’t want them. Anyway, the older I get, the less I think I’m the marrying kind.”
“Thought that myself, mate,” said Polworth. “But then I realized I’d got it all wrong. Told you how it happened, didn’t I? How I ended up proposing to Penny?”
“Don’t think so,” said Strike.
“I never told you about the whole Tolstoy thing?” asked Polworth, surprised at this omission.
Strike, who’d been about to drink, lowered his glass in amazement. Since primary school, Polworth, who had a razor-sharp intelligence but despised any form of learning he couldn’t put to immediate, practical use, had shunned all printed material except technical manuals. Misinterpreting Strike’s expression, Polworth said,
“Tolstoy. He’s a writer.”
“Yeah,” said Strike. “Thanks. How does Tolstoy—?”
“Telling you, aren’t I? I’d split up with Penny the second time. She’d been banging on about getting engaged, and I wasn’t feeling it. So I’m in this bar, telling my mate Chris about how I’m sick of her telling me she wants a ring—you remember Chris? Big guy with a
