The Cuckoo's Calling

is not remotely attractive, I’m sure he’s over forty, and…” she had cast around for more aspersions to cast upon Strike’s appearance, “he’s got that sort of pubey hair.”
    Matthew had only really become reconciled to her continuing employment with Strike now that Robin had accepted the media consultancy job.)
    Robin selected two bags of salt and vinegar crisps at random, and headed towards the cash desk. She had not yet told Strike that she would be leaving in two and a half weeks’ time.
    Lucy had moved from the subject of Charlotte only to interrogate Robin on the amount of business coming through the shabby little office. Robin had been as vague as she dared, intuiting that if Lucy did not know how bad Strike’s finances were, it was because he did not want her to know. Hoping that he would be pleased for his sister to think that business was good, she mentioned that his latest client was wealthy.
    “Divorce case, is it?” asked Lucy.
    “No,” said Robin, “it’s a…well, I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement…he’s been asked to reinvestigate a suicide.”
    “Oh God, that won’t be fun for Cormoran,” said Lucy, with a strange note in her voice.
    Robin looked confused.
    “Hasn’t he told you? Mind you, people usually know without telling. Our mother was a famous—groupie, they call it, don’t they?” Lucy’s smile was suddenly forced, and her tone, though she was striving for detachment and unconcern, had become brittle. “It’s all on the internet. Everything is these days, isn’t it? She died of an overdose and they said it was suicide, but Stick always thought her ex-husband did it. Nothing was ever proven. Stick was furious. It was all very sordid and horrible, anyway. Perhaps that’s why the client chose Stick—I take it the suicide was an overdose?”
    Robin did not reply, but it did not matter; Lucy went on without pausing for an answer:
    “That’s when Stick dropped out of university and joined the military police. The family was very disappointed. He’s really bright, you know; nobody in our family had ever been to Oxford; but he just packed up and left and joined the army. And it seemed to suit him; he did really well there. I think it’s a shame he left, to be honest. He could have stayed, even with, you know, his leg…”
    Robin did not betray, by so much as a flicker of her eyelid, that she did not know.
    Lucy sipped her tea.
    “So whereabouts in Yorkshire are you from?”
    The conversation had flowed pleasantly after that, right up until the moment that Strike had walked in on them laughing at Robin’s description of Matthew’s last excursion into DIY.
    But Robin, heading back to the office with sandwiches and crisps, felt even sorrier for Strike than she had done before. His marriage—or, if they had not been married, his live-in relationship—had failed; he was sleeping in his office; he had been injured in the war, and now she discovered that his mother had died in dubious and squalid circumstances.
    She did not pretend to herself that this compassion was untinged with curiosity. She already knew that she would certainly, at some point in the near future, try and find the online particulars of Leda Strike’s death. At the same time, she felt guilty that she had been given another glimpse of a part of Strike she had not been meant to see, like that patch of virtually furry belly he had accidentally exposed that morning. She knew him to be a proud and self-sufficient man; these were the things she liked and admired about him, even if the way these qualities expressed themselves—the camp bed, the boxed possessions on the landing, the empty Pot Noodle tubs in the bin—aroused the derision of such as Matthew, who assumed that anyone living in uncomfortable circumstances must have been profligate or feckless.
    Robin was not sure whether or not she imagined the slightly charged atmosphere in the office when she returned. Strike was sitting in front of her computer monitor, tapping away at the keyboard, and while he thanked her for the sandwiches, he did not (as was usual) turn away from work for ten minutes for a chat about the Landry case.
    “I need this for a couple of minutes; will you be OK on the sofa?” he asked her, continuing to type.
    Robin wondered whether Lucy had told Strike what they had discussed. She hoped not. Then she felt resentful for feeling guilty; after all, she had done nothing wrong. Her aggravation put a temporary stop