Title: One couch and two detectives
Flavour: CB Strike
Characters: Robin Ellacott, Cormoran Strike
Rating: T to M
Word Count: ~6400
Beta: My lovely Suzanne. I am still so thankful that you helped me with this story after all the time what has passed.
Synopsis: Robin and Cormoran in their office. A lose collection of three moments only tied together by a case at University of London and their (here not farting) couch.
A/N: Unbelievable what Holliday Granger and Tom Burke did to me. I wrote my last fanfiction four years ago and didn't expect to write again for the next four years. I listed to the audio books of Robert Galbraith over the last couple of years and found out about the tv adaption in March. Since then I watched the whole show and got the books. Today I will finish reading "Career of Evil". I am still in the audio book of Bad Blood. (Yes it's a lot of Strike in my head right now.) So maybe there will be variances to canon. I hope you don't care because the whole third chapter is very AU. My story is set after Robin's divorce but both are still working alone in their office, no Pat, no other investigators. I started to write this story in May and can't believe I wrote over 6000 words.
Chapter One: Spring
What a horrible day, Robin stumbled over loose cobblestones of Charing Cross Road and around the corner onto Denmark Street. Will the construction in this district ever end? Her feet were going to kill her any minute. She would burn these £150 sneakers with a smile on her face, not shedding a single tear over this bad buy. But for the current job she wanted to blend into her surrounding with tight black jeans, a pink crop top and a high ponytail. Only a light coat was necessary. It was a warm spring day.
The day had started promisingly enough. Robin wanted to follow her target, Dr. Elaine Goldbrick Brown, pseudonym: La Doctoressa, a professor at University of London, after the first lecture. Her husband Paul suspected the molecular biologist was using her free time before noon to spend in bed with her charming Icelandic post-doc. Robin had seen photos of Asgeir Magnusson, but they fell short as she laid eyes on the six foot blond with ice blue eyes. Why did he pick Elaine? It couldn't be her personality. Robin would never understand. What Paul didn't know was that his wife had cancelled her afternoon lectures.
Now it was five o'clock in the afternoon and Robin hadn't eaten anything all day as she chased Dr. Goldbrick Brown throughout Camden Town. This woman loved to hurry. The new shoes got in touch with Robin around noon and continued to grind on at least three different spots from two o'clock on.
Robin pushed against the door of Denmark Street number six. Only two more floors and her beloved trashy, but soothing worn flip-flops awaited her. She would be able to walk home in the toe and heel-less plastic shoes. An emergency on the Metropolitan Line forced Robin to switch to the Northern Line so she decided on a detour to the agency before going home.
She was also looking forward to the cookies in the bottom drawer of her desk. She had hidden them from her always-hungry business partner. Just thinking about the glossy chocolate coating made her stomach growl in pleasant anticipation.
C.B. Strike
Private Investigator
The wooden door with the frosted glass window was locked, lights off. The building was quiet, as quiet as it could be with the 12 Bar Club and guitar shop on the ground floor. Either Strike was still following the legacy hunter or he was enjoying his after-work hours at a local pub. Robin didn't expect he would be in his tiny apartment above the office.
Robin closed the door and staggered toward the brown leather couch, kicking off the shoes from hell. Just a few minutes, she thought, and crashed face first onto the soft cushions. A slow moan of relief escaped her mouth. But it was drowned out by her protesting stomach as she smelled grilled pork. Olfactory hallucination? Was that a side effect of arching feet?
"Robin?" Strike entered their office and switched on the ceiling light. He had seen his limping partner enter the three-storey building as he left Earnshaw Street with the Asian takeout. But he didn't expect her to be this miserable. Her face was pressed into the seating and her black and pink stripped socks covering her feet dangling in the air. He spotted her shoes in two different corners of the room. Now he understood the cryptic messages about rubbing shoes, blisters, bitch can't rest for a minute and damn shoes Robin had send him during the day.
Robin turned slowly, propping herself on one elbow with exhaustion.
"Don't," Strike, held her back. "That bad?"
"Even worse."
"Why didn't you go straight home from the British Library?"
"There was some emergency at King's Cross station."
"A jumper?"
"Maybe," Robin replied, and rummaged in her purse for her phone and the notebook. "I thought I could save all the photos, complete the file, write the bill for Mr. Goldbrick Brown and check my appointment book for next week."
"How many times have I told you to take a cab?"
"And spending two hours in the middle of Friday afternoon's rush hour dying from hunger? No thanks."
"Oh," Strike answered guilty. "I ate all your cookies."
"Of course you did," Robin groaned and fell back on the couch.
"You didn't hide them very well," Cormoran defended himself. "And I planned on replacing them tomorrow. You never would have found out."
Robin's stomach protested again. So Strike passed her the box full of rice with crispy pork and spicy vegetables. He also handed the chopsticks to his hungry partner. His mind was already planning a work-free weekend. It was the first in three weeks. Without thinking of the consequences, he lifted his partner's legs, sat down the couch and placed them gently onto his lap.
"Mhm, heavenly," Robin said after a few bites. Cormoran didn't know if her sigh was for the food or her elevated feet. He smiled and placed his palms onto Robin's feet. "Did you get her?" he asked, referring to Goldbrick Brown.
"I did and there is so much more," Robin shook her head in disbelief. She reached again for her phone and opened the photo gallery. "Here," she passed it to Cormoran and regretted it the next moment because he stopped the gentle rubbing of the soles of her feet in order to swipe through the evidence on their client.
"Tell me what happened," Cormoran asked with this habitual side eyes between Robin and the photos.
Robin reported about Dr. Goldbrick Brown's very short intermezzo with Asgeir Magnusson. "They met at Chalton Street in front of his apartment close to the university campus." Cormoran stared at the kissing couple in the photo. Both of Goldbrick Brown's hands were grabbing Asgeir's bum. "He didn't look very happy." Robin nodded in agreement and went on with the report.
Robin had taken a seat at a café across the street from the young scientist's apartment building. But she had finished only half her coffee when Elaine stormed out the front door.
"She wasn't with him for even 20 minutes."
Cormoran shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe they didn't have sex."
"The fumbling on the street screamed sex, flushing cheeks afterwards and she had changed her blouse."
Cormoran nodded. He studied the photos of the lanky woman. The blouse was white in the kissing photo and green afterwards.
"She didn't go back to the university," Robin continued. "I completed our evidence for the husband but continued to follow her. It was just a hunch. And I had no other important appointments today." Cormoran nodded. "You followed your gut."
Robin nodded.
"Excellent."
"I don't like her. It feels wrong how she treats people. It made me curious where she would go next," Robin added, pleased with the compliment from her partner. "Next La Doctoressa entered a nearby branch of London Bank. She took out money, a lot of money. The envelop was thick. £100 notes. Then she headed to Pratt Street." Robin almost forgot her burning feet as Cormoran restarted the foot massage. Did he realize what he was doing?
"The office block also houses BioSolutions, a commercial laboratory with ten employees."
"Why is she visiting a lab? She has her own 500 square meter lab and a 25 person research group at the university?" Cormoran threw in, opening his mouth in surprise when Robin offered him cross baked pork between chopsticks.
"She waved the envelope as she entered BioSolutions." Robin pointed on the corresponding photo.
"How long did she stay?"
"Not 10 minutes," Robin answered, continuing to feed her partner. "She had a huge binder clutched under her arm. She almost ran toward Oval Road with it and met with a young woman. I have seen her before but can't place her."
Strike zoomed the photo on the display. "Her PhD-student, Ann...Anna McCoy."
"Anita McCoy, right," Robin realized. She had studied all the names on the call button panel but hadn't made a connection to McCoy.
She reached for her phone to show the next photo, brushing her partner's thumb slightly. "Oh!" Cormoran's eyebrows shot up.
"Yeah, X-Rated," Robin commenting on the kiss between the two women in public. "They disappeared in the house for an hour."
"No handy bench or café close by for your stakeout?" Cormoran stroked Robin's feet again and was treated with more food. He knew too well that standing still for a long time was even worse than walking.
"No!" Robin answered and continued. "Her last stop was the British Library. She met another woman there."
"The next affair?"
"No, it was Dr. Paula Young," Robin giggled.
"Okay." Strike frowned. He didn't remember the name in context to the case.
"I was able to get really close as they greeted each other. Goldbrick Brown passed the binder to the other woman and told her to hurry," Robin said. "I googled her in the library. She offers scientific ghost writing for master and PhD theses."
"Really?"
"Yeah!"
"What is your theory?" Cormoran got excited with hundreds of thoughts running through his brain. He needed more food.
Robin threw the empty box into the waste-paper basket next to her desk and stood up. The foot rubbing had been more than relaxing.
She had had a lot of time to combine all the information of today. She was happy that she had met Strike in the office so she could run through all her ideas. Robin started to walk in figure eights in front of Strike as he opened the next delicious smelling takeout box. He listened attentively.
"I think Goldbrick Brown is a huge liar."
"Obviously."
"Yes, but she lies about every aspect of her life. She is married and is having at least two affairs, as far as we know."
"Right. We will get paid for this information."
"She uses people for her own benefit. I think she is not doing her own research. She pays another lab for the experiments. She pays or blackmails Paula Young to write her next paper. She sleeps with people of her own research group. With consent? Both Asgeir and Anita depend on her. And when you look closer at the photo of her and Anita, I see shame in Anita's eyes."
Cormoran nodded. He had come to the same conclusions.
"What should we do next?" Robin asked.
"We will present the evidence of the affairs to Paul Goldbrick Brown next week at our Tuesday meeting. This is a personal matter and not illegal."
"Okay," Robin agreed, and stopped in front of Strike. Asgeir and Anita were adults. Maybe they didn't like sleeping with Elaine but she wasn't forcing them as far as Robin could see. "Should we tell the university about our suspicions?"
"We have little evidence to support our speculations. Someone else could interpret them another way."
"True."
"Find out if there is a fraud department at the university. Do you remember all the politicians with their plagiarized PhD theses?" Robin nodded. Every year there was a new scandal about copied science passages with bad or wrong or no references at all. Politicians had given back their academic titles - and in a few cases also their offices. "We can send them all the evidence," Strike said and continued with a big smile, "And offer our help for future investigations. Then the university can decide about the next steps."
"Good idea. I'll do that now..."
"Monday," Strike stopped Robin's efficiency. "Weekend," he claimed.
"Weekend," Robin agreed and smiled. She again sat next to Cormoran and reached for the food box in his hands.
"How are your feet?"
"Better."
"Good, I am the only limping detective in this agency," he said, and leaned his head against Robin's shoulder, who chuckled. This day was no longer as horrible as it had been an hour ago.