But this wasn’t all Robin knew, because after leaving her husband, Robin had spent five weeks living in the spare room of Nick and Ilsa Herbert, who were two of Strike’s best friends. Robin and Ilsa had struck up their own friendship during that time, and still met regularly for drinks and coffees. Ilsa made very little secret of the fact that she hoped and believed that Strike and Robin would one day, and preferably soon, realize that they were “made for each other.” Although Robin regularly asked Ilsa to desist from her broad hints, asserting that she and Strike were perfectly happy with a friendship and working relationship, Ilsa remained cheerfully unconvinced.
Robin was very fond of Ilsa, but her pleas for her new friend to forget any idea of matchmaking between herself and Strike were genuine. She was mortified by the thought that Strike might think she herself was complicit in Ilsa’s regular attempts to engineer foursomes that increasingly had the appearance of double dates. Strike had declined the last two proposed outings of this type and, while the agency’s current workload certainly made any kind of social life difficult, Robin had the uncomfortable feeling that he was well aware of Ilsa’s ulterior motive. Looking back on her own brief married life, Robin was sure she’d never been guilty of treating single people as she now found herself treated by Ilsa: with a cheerful lack of concern for their sensibilities, and sometimes ham-fisted attempts to manage their love lives.
One of the ways in which Ilsa attempted to draw Robin out on the subject of Strike was to tell her all about Charlotte, and here, Robin felt guilty, because she rarely shut the Charlotte conversations down, even though she never left one of them without feeling as though she had just gorged on junk food: uncomfortable, and wishing she could resist the craving for more.
She knew, for instance, about the many me-or-the-army ultimatums, two of the suicide attempts (“The one on Arran wasn’t a proper one,” said Ilsa scathingly. “Pure manipulation”) and about the ten days’ enforced stay in the psychiatric clinic. She’d heard stories that Ilsa gave titles like cheap thrillers: the Night of the Bread Knife, the Incident of the Black Lace Dress and the Blood-Stained Note. She knew that in Ilsa’s opinion, Charlotte was bad, not mad, and that the worst rows Ilsa and her husband Nick had ever had were on the subject of Charlotte, “and she’d have bloody loved knowing that, too,” Ilsa had added.
And now Charlotte was phoning the office, asking Strike to call her back, and Robin, sitting outside the Pizza Express, hungry and exhausted, was pondering the phone call yet again, much as a tongue probes a mouth ulcer. If she was phoning the office, Charlotte clearly wasn’t aware that Strike was in Cornwall with his terminally ill aunt, which didn’t suggest regular contact between them. On the other hand, Charlotte’s slightly amused tone had seemed to hint at an alliance between herself and Strike.
Robin’s mobile, which was lying on the passenger seat beside the bag of almonds, buzzed. Glad of any distraction, she picked it up and saw a text message from Strike.
Are you awake?
Robin texted back:
No
As she’d expected, the mobile rang immediately.
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” said Strike, without preamble. “You must be knackered. What’s it been, three weeks straight on Tufty?”
“I’m still on him.”
“What?” said Strike, sounding displeased. “You’re in Glasgow? Where’s Barclay?”
“In Glasgow. He was ready in position, but Tufty didn’t get on the plane. He drove down to Torquay instead. He’s having pizza right now. I’m outside the restaurant.”
“The hell’s he doing in Torquay, when the mistress is in Scotland?”
“Visiting his original family,” said Robin, wishing she could see Strike’s face as she delivered the next bit of news. “He’s a bigamist.”
Her announcement was greeted with total silence.
“I was outside the house in Windsor at six,” said Robin, “expecting to follow him to Stansted, see him safely onto the plane and let Barclay know he was on the way, but he didn’t go to the airport. He rushed out of the house looking panicky, drove to a lock-up, took his case inside and came out with an entirely different set of luggage and minus his toupee. Then he drove all the way down here.
“Our client in Windsor’s about to find out she’s not legally married,” said Robin. “Tufty’s had this wife in Torquay for twenty years. I’ve been talking to the neighbors. I pretended I was doing a survey. One of the women along the street was at the original wedding. Tufty travels a lot for business, she said, but he’s a lovely man. Devoted to his sons.
“There are two boys,” Robin continued, because Strike’s stunned silence continued unabated, “students, both in their late teens and both the absolute spit of him. One of them came off his motorbike yesterday—I got all this out of the neighbor—he’s got his arm in a cast and looks quite bruised and cut up. Tufty must’ve got news of the accident, so he came haring down here instead of going to Scotland.
“Tufty goes by the name of Edward Campion down here, not John—turns out John’s his middle name, I’ve been searching the online records. He and the first wife and sons live in a really nice villa, view of the sea, massive garden.”
“Bloody hell,” said Strike. “So our pregnant friend in Glasgow—”
“—is the least of Mrs.-Campion-in-Windsor’s worries,” said Robin. “He’s leading a triple life. Two wives and a mistress.”
“And he looks like a balding baboon. There’s hope for all of us. Did you say he’s having dinner right now?”
“Pizza with the wife and kids. I’m parked outside. I didn’t manage to get pictures of him with the sons earlier, and I want to, because they’re a total giveaway. Mini-Tuftys, just like the two in Windsor. Where d’you think he’s been pretending to have been?”
“Oil rig?” suggested Strike. “Abroad? Middle East? Maybe that’s why he’s so
