"Do you really think they'll talk to us?" Robin asked, her eyes fixed on their swaying reflections in the train carriage window. It had been four days and many hours of fruitless online searches since they had agreed to search for Peter Wilson. Now, on the first morning that neither had pressing surveillance duties for their other cases, Strike had suggested an attempt to uncover information through official channels.
"Doubt it," said Strike, shifting his grip on the hanging strap. The tube was crowded this early in the morning, and he had been forced to stand closer to Robin than he preferred. He was becoming discomfited by the occasional press of her arm or hip against him as the carriage rocked and more commuters squeezed in at each stop.
"Then why bother?" Robin asked. "The police already hate you; is it worth annoying them if we aren't going to get anything useful?"
"You can't know how useful an interview will be until you've conducted it, Robin," said Strike. "We might get lucky and find someone in a chatty mood. At the very least, we can see whether the subject of Wilson makes anyone nervous. Might confirm that his daughter's right to be worried."
They remained silent, Robin clearly deep in thought, Strike focusing on keeping his balance, until their carriage finally jerked to a stop at their station. They moved with the flood of commuters and emerged, blinking, into the bright sunlight. Strike inhaled deeply, glad for the fresh air after the cramped stuffiness of the Tube. As they started walking, Robin broke her pensive silence.
"So, how are we going to go about this?" she asked, looking sideways at her boss's surly profile. "Convince them to tell us about Wilson, that is."
"Divide and conquer," Strike said. "I'll interview their CO – commanding officer," he reminded Robin, catching the blank look on her face. "You can feel out the rest of the unit, see if anyone's eager to talk."
Robin nodded. "I suppose." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Strike glance at her with his brows furrowed, clearly concerned by her half-hearted response to a task that she normally loved. Just now, however, Robin was finding it difficult to appear pleased about anything.
She was exhausted and furious with Matthew, who had insisted she attend his office's after-work drinks last night. Since he had spent the greater part of the evening talking to everyone there but her, she was sure that he'd wanted her there not because he wanted her company, but so that he could have her hanging off his arm, as if she were an expensive accessory. He had then spent the entirety of the trip home afterwards criticizing her for what he perceived as snobbery, for an apparent unwillingness on her part to be friendly with his co-workers. The rank hypocrisy of this statement coming from him – who was so vocal about his hatred of Cormoran, who had reacted to her new contract with barely concealed disdain – had so provoked Robin that a squabble had blown up into a full-fledged row. She had thought that marriage might put an end to her having to storm out of their bedroom to sleep on the couch; the aching knots in her back and shoulders were proof that it had been a foolish hope.
She was so absorbed in her simmering anger that she almost crashed straight into Strike, who had stopped walking. She stumbled before catching herself, then looked up at the enormous tower of glass and steel in front of them.
"We're here."
They entered the building together through the revolving doors, stepping into a lobby that was cool and clean, done up in dark marble and laminated woods. Strike strode confidently towards the bank of elevators, ignoring the information desks, while Robin followed only a pace behind. Though she had become used to, and even enjoyed, the subterfuge required in their job, she retained that innate sense of deference to authority which gave her a twinge of discomfort whenever they were forced to infiltrate what she perceived as 'official' spaces. Strike appeared to have no such qualms, seeming perfectly certain in his right to intrude wherever he felt he needed to. Robin squared her shoulders and lifted her chin slightly, trying very hard to look as confident and self-assured as her partner as she lengthened her stride to match his own.
They entered a waiting elevator and Strike pressed the button for the seventeenth floor. Robin leaned close enough so that she wouldn't be heard by their fellow passengers and whispered, "How do you know which floor it is?"
"Old friend works in the building," he responded absently, his eyes locked on the flashing display of rapidly climbing floor numbers.
Strike seemed to have a never-ending supply of old friends and acquaintances willing to do him favours and provide him information. Robin felt her mood sink a little further as she considered the fact that she herself had no such useful connections, that she was ignorant of the labyrinthine structures and policies of the Metropolitan Police. Strike would not have had to explain police jargon to a more experienced partner, someone like the person he had described in that advertisement, the one he'd placed in the Sun during that miserable week that she had spent believing she would never see him again.
Though Strike had explained his reasoning behind placing the ad, and he had assured Robin that he wanted her back at work as his partner, she was still occasionally nagged by thoughts of how poorly she measured up against that stark list of requirements - achievements and skills that she would never possess.
The chime of the elevator doors startled Robin out of her moody reverie, and she was half a step behind Strike as they exited into a short hallway. At one end was a pair of glass doors, frosted into opacity; a keypad and blinking red light set to one side of them suggested that the detectives would not easily be able to gain entry. At the other end, however, the hall opened up into a large open space, and it was towards this that Strike turned. As Robin moved to follow him, he slowed and placed a hand on her arm. "Can you distract the receptionist?" he muttered. She nodded, then strode ahead of Strike.
The room that she walked into could have belonged to any of the offices in which she'd temped so many months ago, with its fluorescent lights and grubby grey carpet, clusters of desks divided by half-height partitions, and walls lined with doors to meeting rooms and offices. There was indeed a reception desk, positioned so that anyone entering would have to walk past it. Robin stopped directly in the line of sight of the young woman manning it, who frowned at her.
Robin flashed her best smile, placing one hand on the desk and leaning forward. "Hi, I wonder if you can help me," she said in a low tone, doing her best to give the impression of someone who had secrets to confide, "I'm looking for someone…"
Behind her, Strike walked unchallenged into the maze of desks. He didn't hesitate, but continued confidently towards the back of the room. He had never been in this particular branch of the Organized Crimes division, but he was familiar with the typical layouts of police departments. He scanned the room casually as he walked, flicking his eyes past nameplates and open doors, until he found what he was looking for.
The office at the far end of the room had large glass windows looking out onto the floor. Visible through them were a bookshelf crammed with binders and trophies, walls lined with framed photographs of men in uniform, and a large, handsome desk. Behind the desk, Strike was relieved to see, sat the man he had come to interview.
As he drew nearer to the door of the office, Strike was disconcerted to see that the officer had been watching his approach, and was staring directly at him with slightly narrowed eyes. He knocked on the door anyway, a perfunctory knock; He opened it without waiting for an answer, and strode confidently into the office, hand held out and cover story ready.
"Hello, DCI Ross? I'm-"
But before he could introduce the persona he'd cooked up, the Detective Chief Inspector cut him off.
"I know who you are."
"Sorry?" Strike said, thrown.
Ross looked young for his position, mid-thirties by Strike's guess; he was handsome, with wavy brown hair and clear green eyes. He leaned back in his chair, a smirk playing across his thin lips.
"Cameron Strike. The private detective," he said, clearly enjoying having the upper hand.
"Cormoran," Strike corrected him, dropping both his hand and the ingratiating smile he'd plastered on his face.
"How can I help you, Mr. Strike?" asked DCI Ross, ignoring the correction. His gaze holding Strike's was calm and confident, but tinged with a hint of spiteful malice. "Here to tell me you've tracked down a drug kingpin and need me to tie up your loose ends? Looking for the medal you've earned for interfering with police business?"
Strike sighed. This was why he had always hated publicity; he would get nothing from this interview, he knew now. He'd shown up the Met one too many times, made one too many coppers look like idiots, and now no police officer in the city would be willing to answer his questions with anything other than snipes and jabs. Well, he could still feel the other man out, try to elicit some kind of response to the mention of his subordinate.
"No, actually," he said, taking a seat in one of the uncomfortable leather and wood armchairs facing the desk. Ross frowned a little at this liberty, but Strike ignored it and pressed on. "I'm looking for someone. An officer of yours, Sergeant Peter Wilson."
Ross was no amateur. Other than a slight upward twitch of his eyebrows, his expression betrayed no emotion other than polite disdain, and he replied smoothly, "I'm not familiar with the name."
"Really?" said Strike. "Because there's a photo online of you standing next to him as he accepted an award last year. Said in the caption that he was part of your unit."
The officer's lips tightened briefly in annoyance. "I'm not about to disclose information concerning any member of my unit, or anyone else's, to a private citizen," he said, swiftly changing tack. "You understand."
"My client has some reason to be concerned for his welfare," Strike said carefully, not wanting to reveal the fact that Natalie had been in contact with her father. "I was hoping you could offer reassurance."
"Who exactly is your client?" Ross leaned forward, abandoning his pretense of disinterest. He looked openly annoyed now, at this intrusion into the affairs of his domain.
Strike shrugged. "Confidential," he said, "you understand." He looked steadily at Ross, not quite challenging him, but not backing down either.
A muscle twitched in the other man's cheek. "Well then," Ross said softly, "I see no reason to allow this interview to continue."
To Robin's frustration, the receptionist was proving to be somewhat more difficult to charm than she had expected, flatly refusing to divulge any information about Peter Wilson's current whereabouts. Instead, she had questioned Robin sharply as to her identity, her business with the man she was looking for, and indeed how she had known where to look for him in the first place. Having failed to receive a satisfactory answer to any of these questions, the woman seemed only moments away from calling security to escort Robin from the building.
"Perhaps you could just tell me where I could reach him?" Robin was feeling slightly desperate now. "I – I lost his number, you see, but he definitely told me I could get in touch with him through work," she said, inventing wildly. The receptionist narrowed her eyes and reached one elegantly manicured hand towards the desk phone's handset.
Robin concentrated on summoning tears to her eyes. It wasn't hard; all she had to do was recall the hurt and rage that she'd felt last night as Matthew had accused her of being selfish, stuck-up and rude. ("Just because you're the junior partner in a two-person detective outfit," he had sneered, derision and mockery etching ugly lines into his handsome face, "suddenly you act like no one else is good enough to kiss the ground you walk on.")
Robin let her face contort in misery and her voice tremble as she said, "It's just that it – it's quite important I speak to him." The tears were pricking and burning at her eyes, and she could feel her face flushing. In a burst of inspiration, she let one hand drift to rest on her stomach, and watched the receptionist's eyes follow it. "It's… a time-sensitive problem," she whispered.
The receptionist's eyebrows shot up. "Oh – ah," she stammered, and her hand stopped moving, hanging indecisively over the handset as Robin had hoped it would, so she pressed her advantage.
"God, he's married, isn't he?" she sobbed, hot, heavy tears rolling down her face now.
("It's not like you make even half of what any of them do," Matthew had shouted, "so you'd think you'd be ashamed to act like you're next in line for the bloody crown!")
The receptionist rose halfway out of her chair, hovering, slightly panicked at being confronted with a sudden emotional meltdown and reaching automatically for the small box of tissues sitting on the desk. She held them out and Robin took a handful, noticing as she did that several of the plainclothes officers at the nearest cluster of desks had looked up and were watching her performance, frowning.
"I knew he was too good to be true, I knew it," Robin wailed, voice louder, falling into her character. "I can't believe I fell for this, not again, I'm so stupid."
"I'll just – I'll just go and find someone," the receptionist sputtered, and hurried out from behind her desk. Robin buried her face in the handful of tissues, shoulders shaking, and watched through her fingers as the receptionist joined the closest group of officers, whispering urgently and gesturing at the crying Robin. Over her ragged sobs, Robin heard the muttered "Wilson… says he told her to come", and saw her exaggeratedly mouth the word "pregnant." One of them, a tall woman dressed in sensible slacks with her badge pinned to her hip, glanced sharply over at Robin before detaching herself from the group to stride rapidly towards her, receptionist hurrying to keep up with the officer's lengthy strides.
"Is there a problem here?"
Robin mopped her eyes, tissues masking the rapid, sweeping glance of assessment she made of the woman. Her thin face was stern, her brown hair tied back into a severe bun and her arms folded tightly across her chest. Robin suspected that her tears would gain little sympathy here. Before she could formulate a new approach, though, some tingle of awareness made her look up: Strike had appeared quite suddenly a few steps away, looking grim and accompanied by a tall, handsome man with an air of authority. At the sight of her tears, he cocked one eyebrow by a miniscule fraction. She gave an infinitesimal shrug in response.
"Mullins, please escort Mr. Strike from the building." The handsome man's voice was cool and brisk; his eyes swept over Robin, and he frowned. "And–" he jerked his head toward her "–deal with this." He turned on his heel and strode back in the direction from which he'd come.
Mullins seemed to be the name of the severe female officer, who was now looking intently at Strike. Her gaze flickered over to Robin, then back. Had she seen their silent communication?
"Let's go," Mullins said, jerking her head towards the bank of elevators and gesturing for Robin and Strike to walk ahead of her. She jabbed the button and, as they were waiting for the doors to open, said, "Strike – as in the private detective?" There was something forced about her casual tone.
"That's right," Strike answered. Mullins nodded, but didn't speak again.
The trip down to the lobby was silent, but as the detectives exited the elevator, Mullins grasped Robin's arm to hold her back.
"Why are you really looking for Peter?" Her tone was low, but urgent, and something in her eyes made Robin bite back the cover story she had been about to spin.
"We want to make sure he's safe," she answered, her low voice mirroring the other woman's. "That's all."
Mullins' pale blue eyes were boring into Robin's, searching for – something. Robin held her gaze, and after a moment, the other woman nodded.
"Blackbird Pub," she said quickly, as though she was worried about changing her mind, "in an hour. It's opposite Earl's Court Station." With that, the woman turned back into the elevator and its doors shut, blocking her from view.
Robin turned, catching Cormoran's curious gaze; he had been standing close enough to overhear the muttered exchange.
"Well," she said, shrugging, "I for one quite fancy a drink."
Notes
I know it's been well over a year since I updated this, and I'm sorry! I've always known exactly where the story is going, and I'm going to finish it no matter what. My goal is to have it complete before Lethal White is published, so I should be posting much more regularly in the future. Thanks for hanging in there :) Thanks so much to bethanyactually, who did a wonderful job of beta-reading this chapter for me!