Author's Note: The quote is from the novel "Landline", by Rainbow Rowell. Thank you.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Someone is calling Strike's name. He opens his eyes to Robin's concern, and she reveals, "We overslept."

Fuck. A glance at his phone confirms that they might be late for their respective shifts, and they haven't yet had dinner. "Fuck! Uh, you text the guys that we're running late while l slap some sandwiches together; we might just make it."

"Right."

Having established their plan, they implement it without discussion, until Strike remembers, "Turn on the TV!"

She complies, fortunately just in time for the news, so they both hear that a major sting operation, conducted across seven countries on three continents, has resulted in the arrest of thousands of people, including the ringleaders in Germany, who had been running a global betting syndicate and blackmailing ring. The simultaneous raids, conducted by an international taskforce and coordinated by Interpol, netted respective authorities the equivalent of around three billion pounds in illegal profits, and may yet yield more after further investigation into offshore accounts linked to neo-Nazi groups in Germany, England and the United States. By the time the newsreader has moved on, they're both staring at Strike's TV, Robin clutching her forgotten phone and him with a slice of bread in one hand, and a butter knife in the other. They turn to each other, and then Robin expels a laugh, saying only, "Fuck."

Strike laughs too, saying, "That about covers it. Kind of a pity we won't get any credit for our part."

She reminds him, "No, it's not." Strike is already heading back to the kitchen when she turns off the TV, and asks, "Ryan will get credit though?"

"Not publicly, for the same reason we were happy to let this one go, but the fact that he wouldn't tell me a fucking thing suggests that he was heavily involved, so he's bound to get a promotion."

"Good. He deserves it."

She can't see him right now, so Strike permits himself a smile, thinking that she still feels guilty about dumping Murphy.

"I hear you not saying it!"

He laughs and merely asks, "Tea or coffee in your thermos?"

"Tea, please. Coffee makes me want to pee."

Wondering why it never occurred to him before, Strike asks, "What do you do when you need to go?"

She's joined him by then, dressed and carrying her handbag. "On nightshift, hold it in, so I don't drink much until near the end of my shift. I suppose you duck into the nearest alley, and pee behind a skip?"

"Uh, no, if I really need to go, I use whatever appropriate receptacle is handy."

She's already grabbed her now full thermos, and holds it up, eyes wide with horror, as she asks, "Not..?"

He laughs, and amends, "Any appropriate disposable receptacle."

"Oh, okay." Accepting the wrapped sandwiches from him, she mutters a thanks and stows them in her handbag, asking, "What about...you must have served with women?"

He nods, saying, "Like you, they limit intake and delay output, though neither is a healthy long-term plan. My experience was that social norms around urination are pretty much non-existent, so I have peed beside men and women, with no one making comment. I think some use adult diapers or other products, though I never asked. And there was one very memorable night in Berlin when a mate and I picked up a couple of local girls and got very drunk with them. Close to dawn, we were staggering across a road, and a car rightly tooted at us, because we were taking our sweet time about it." Smiling at the memory, the image vivid in his mind, Strike continues, "One of the women, Freida, turned to face them, lifted her skirt, grabbed her crotch somehow, and pissed up the road in their general direction before flipping them off and stumbling away. It remains the single most magnificent thing I've ever seen."

Robin smiles at his enthusiasm, asking, "She was your date?"

"Unfortunately not, or I would have asked how she did it. Don't suppose you know?"

"How to piss at a car? No, they didn't cover that even in Home Ec. Come on. I'll drop you at your garage." As they head downstairs to her car, Robin asks, "Strike, do you actually have eidetic memory?"

"How would I know?"

"I'm sure there must be some test or something. You're not curious?"

"No. A label isn't going to change anything. Why?"

She smiles, saying, "Guess I'm curious for both of us." And then she loses the smile to presume, "You remember bad things with the same clarity?"

"Unfortunately, yes, especially if there's emotion attached. Without much effort at all, I can recall not only the sights and sounds, but the smell of my severed leg after that blast. I retain most of what is said to me, and to a lesser extent things I see. It's one of the reasons...well, other than her untreated mental illness, for my frequent breakups with Charlotte. She told lies like other women breathe, and promptly forgot them, then blamed me for remembering."

"I'm sorry."

"Hardly your fault."

"I'm still sorry."

He stops her with a gentle touch on her shoulder, and then kisses her, saying, "I love you, Robin Ellacott." And she merely smiles.

They're inside the car and belted before Robin asks, "Is there anything...have I done anything that made you feel bad enough to remember it?"

He darts a glance at her, and says, "Once." He answers her wounded expression with, "Outside the Ritz."

Robin blushes, and says, "Oh."

"Yeah. You looked horrified."

"That wasn't...I didn't not want you to kiss me. In that moment, when I knew that's what you wanted, I wanted it too. But then my mind skipped ahead, to maybe the next step, and the one after that. And then I pictured you the next day, awkwardly trying to blame it on the cocktails, or the Ritz, or anything other than what it was."

Strike stairs out the windscreen and says, "Oh. Yeah, I might have done that. I was still convinced that crossing that line would fuck up our friendship and take our business down with it." Finally looking at her, he smiles, and remembers, "But you were incredibly beautiful that night, as you are tonight." When Robin merely blushes and drops her gaze for a moment, he adds, "I thought that I'd fucked up bigtime and misread you."

"No. The horrified look was not about the idea of you kissing me, but of you regretting it. I'm sorry that I made a bad memory for you."

He smiles, and can truthfully answer, "It's a good memory now."

"It is?"

"Because it's now tied to this memory. At the time it rocked me; it really did. But I needed that kick up the arse to start treating you better, like you deserved. And...I owe you an apology."

"Can it wait?"

"No." When she rests her hands in her lap, he says, "I've tried to live my life with courage and honour. Of course, I haven't always succeeded. But the failure I'm most ashamed of it how I treated you. I took you for granted, and even after I knew how I felt about you, and strongly suspected you felt the same, I strung you along, deluded that you'd wait for me to get brave." With a wry grin at his crimes, he admits, "Murphy scared the shit out of me, because he seemed everything a woman like you would want."

"Oh? What's a woman like me?"

He smiles, saying, "Yeah, see, your tone and that look in your eyes right now is what I'm apologising for." She's smiling when he concludes, "I assumed, and presumed and otherwise acted like an ungrateful, cowardly, arrogant prick. And I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted. Can we get to work now?"

Relieved that she genuinely seems okay with it, he inclines his head, consenting, "By all means."

They're underway when Robin giggles and says, "Ilsa still laughs about it."

At first confused, Strike then exclaims, "You told fucking Ilsa that I tried to kiss you?"

She laughs again, and asks, "Who else could I tell?"

Fair point. "Ideally, no one, but I guess there weren't other options. And, yeah, I bet she just about pissed herself laughing."

Eyes on the road, Robin reveals, "She was ecstatic for you to learn some humility, saying that you'd always been able to get the most beautiful women, like Charlotte, and she worried that it was making you arrogant."

"You're beautiful too."

Robin flashes him a smile, and says, "I wasn't fishing, and I'm not blind. Besides, it wasn't just about her looks; you really loved her...or the idea of her, like you said. Even with the mental illness."

Strike grins and says, "Because of the mental illness. It really is true what they say about crazy sex."

"Okay, now you're being a jerk."

He laughs and says, "Yes. But it's still true." When Robin merely smiles and focuses on driving to where his BMW is garaged, he remembers more, "What they don't say is how...alluring it is to be loved by someone who everyone, including them, tells you is incapable of love. It's like a drug, being so treasured. I was addicted to that for a long time."

"I love you more than I hate everything else."

Recognising that she's quoting, he asks, "What's that from?"

Robin is now pulling up outside his garage, so he removes his belt and grabs his bag as she says, "A book, can't recall the name, but that line stuck with me. That's what you're talking about?"

"Yeah. Now that I'm cured of my addiction, I can see so clearly that Charlotte despised everyone, including herself...perhaps herself most of all. But, as far as she was capable, she loved me, and that is something they should warn us about, because it made me willing to endure anything for her...from her."

He can see that Robin is trying not to smile when she says, "Of course, you were warned."

"Oh?"

Her smile is unleashed, and she quotes, "Bitches be crazy."

He laughs long and loud, loving her with every breath, and kisses her before vowing, "Of course, there's a lot to be said for sane sex. I'll call you after work?"

She kisses him back, and says, "Please." Strike is literally half out the door, one foot on the footpath, when his mind does one of those lateral leaps, and decades-old Tetris blocks fall into place to reveal a perfect pattern. "Strike?"

Still processing, he turns his stunned gaze on her and reveals, "I might have just solved Mum's murder."

Robin is still staring at him in open-mouthed shock when he recovers enough to shake his head and move to leave. She grabs for his arm, but misses, begging, "What? Who? Strike! Who did it?"

He's already out of the car, and shuts the door before blowing her a kiss, and saying, "I'll call you."