Chapter Text
Strike left the pub with a spring in his step, rather grateful to have spoken to her. He felt more benevolent toward the reedy graphic designer at Denmark Street who glowered at him as Strike hauled himself up the stairs, he even felt benign about his camp bed which was both too soft and too hard at the same time as he flopped back on it, his leg still strapped into his prothesis.
Perhaps some of Robin's excitement had rubbed off on him, he thought, shifting back and forth on the creaking bed. But maybe it had just been her honest fascination with the case that had fueled his interest in turn. Still trying to find a comfortable position, one arm tucked under his head, Strike grinned as he dissected his conversation with the younger woman, quietly imagining what he would have done, had Robin walked in on that day in March instead of the incompetent temp he had sacked as soon as she had arrived.
Closing his eyes, his mind swam, pictures of Robin in a tight skirt and a white, no, green, bright poison-green sweater that hugged her in all the right places, bubbling to the surface like sea foam. He wouldn't have sacked her, he thought fuzzily, but kept her on, a bright spot in his drab office and dull life after – He shook his head, he didn't want to think of Charlotte, not when he felt so pleasantly relaxed and while his mind wasn't preoccupied with one worst-case scenario after the other, but had finally turned to (quite literally) greener pastures.
He grinned again. Yes, green would suit Robin.
Occupied with thoughts of the, perhaps not too annoying, bartender – he was after all a man of evidence and new evidence had suggested that Robin was rather agreeable company once he got her talking, with a delightful lilt to her voice and an engaging analytical mind – he kept drifting along, before he, in a last ditch effort to get more comfortable, sat up again to slowly take off his coat, leg and trousers and sinking back and falling asleep, half of his thin covers hanging off the bed.
He should have known that all good things couldn't last; had known it once intimately, had been reminded of it time and time again, but in this moment, in the wake of Robin stripping away the thinest layer of his defenses, he had quietly hoped that fates would grant him this respite.
Just as he was leaving his office a few days later – in good spirits for once – silently humming a rap song under his breath, ostensibly to go to the pub again, hoping to see Robin and to share that he had finally made some headway in his case (as little as it was), perhaps even to tell her that he had finally brought an electric fan to clear out the muggy air that seemed to linger in his office rooms, the phone rang.
"Fuck yo’ meds and fuck Johari," he muttered, trying to get the song out of his head – he disliked rap on any day – and absentmindedly reached over to the receiver.
"Cormoran Strike's office," he began but before he could complete his introduction a familiar voice interrupted him; a pleasant, cultivated voice with a faint suspicion of hoarseness, as though her laugh would be sexy and bold, which, as Strike intimately knew, it was.
"Bluey."
Ice immediately crawled through his veins and a heavy weight sunk low in his stomach.
"Charlotte," he replied, suddenly faint. His hand tightened on the receiver making the cheap plastic whine underneath his grip.
"This is rather embarrassing," Charlotte said, in a breathy tone that never failed to make his insides tighten both in arousal and fear, because Charlotte at her sanest could be both: the sexiest thing he had ever beheld or the cruelest mistress who knew how to wield her words with a deadly precision unknown to most mortals. "I had hoped to reach an assistant or a voicemail but – it's good to hear you," a low laugh that made Strike involuntarily shiver, "But, well, I wanted you to hear it from me."
"What do you want?" It had been a few weeks only, Strike thought, a few weeks only and the first notes of her voice hit him like a freight train; suddenly he felt like an addict who had taken his first hit after being sober for years and now felt nothing else but a bone-deep craving for more of what would seep like poison into the deepest recesses of his being. He knew that his voice wasn't as strong and forbidding as he wanted it to be, wasn't as cool and collected, but held an ugly note of pleading that Strike despised.
"Bluey," Charlotte sounded soft and she never ever sounded like this after a row, especially after a row like theirs, she only used this tone of voice in the quiet, bright, good hours between them, when they had lain under rumpled sheets, nose to nose, her lithe body curved into his bulk, and had planned a future he would never get to see now. Or maybe that was the purpose of this call: to give him a last chance to go back, to leave his office, head out, forgo the pub but journey to Holland Park, ascend the stairs, take her face between his palms and tell her that they would try again – and again and again if necessary. That he would endure, if it meant she was at his side.
But something in him twisted – she had lied to him, used an unforgivable lie. He could have taken the physical hits, the bruises, the cuts, but this? This had been a line he would have never believed she would toe let alone cross. Something had broken within him that night and Strike was reluctant to mend it; uncertain if it could be mended in the first place.
"Bluey," she repeated in the same hoarse whisper before wrenching the rug from underneath him with celerity, "I'm engaged. To Jago."
Years ago, Strike had stood in the ring, fists raised, gloves squished to his face in a defensive stance he didn't feel was necessary. It had been one of the first proper fights against an opponent that wasn't a team-member or his trainer and, riding high on adrenaline and prideful after his previous easy wins, he had not put the same dedication to his stance as he should have, his elbows had been loose, his legs not bent enough to secure him. He had thought, arrogantly, that his size and the sheer strength he could funnel into his punches would get him through every subsequent fight – and when his smaller, older opponent had stepped up to him, Strike had inwardly laughed because there was no way he could lose this fight. Sure, a smaller opponent made it tougher to catch him, sometimes smaller opponents were slippery little fuckers, but with his superior reach and with a well-placed hit, Cormoran Strike had felt this fight would be his.
But Cormoran Strike had been wrong.
No matter his size, his opponent had gone hard on him and, with a few easy jabs and a hard cross to his solar-plexus, had knocked the breath right out of him. Another set of jabs had distracted Strike enough to lower his defense further, a right hook to his face left his ear ringing and a sharp uppercut had rattled his teeth despite the mouthguard, and another cross to his middle had felled him. Lying on the soaked mat, his chest hurting, his breath coming out in gasps, Strike had felt winded and stripped bare and in pain, with both his pride and his body having taken a sound beating. It hadn't been so much the punches themselves that had hurt but the unexpectedness and the single-minded, detached viciousness with which is opponent had attacked that had bothered Strike and, lying in a pool of his own sweat, Strike had vowed to be more careful in the future and to expect an attack especially from those whom he underestimated at first glance.
Charlotte's words felt like those unpredicted punches, but they were also worse because they left no bruises he could nurse, no cuts he could tend to. Instead the words cut deep both in terms of that she was marrying, so soon after they had split up (had they even split up?) and whom she was marrying. He had not seen it coming, but he should have.
He should have.
He had spent the last 16 years with one eye open, poised for an attack, and yet he had not anticipated Charlotte's last parting shot.
"I didn't want you to hear it from anyone," she said, "But Jago's parents put it in the Times, of all places!" Charlotte was still talking as if they were good friends and she had taken on the job of simply notifying him of her changing circumstances. She had moved fast, Strike thought, not even three weeks had passed and he wondered suddenly if Charlotte had been seeing Jago while they had been together after all.
Nausea roiled in his gut.
There was no conceivable way, that Charlotte, with all her mesmeric power over men, had moved from reacquaintance to engagement in that time. She had told him she loved him, him, Strike, all the while meeting Jago when Strike had turned his back.
Bile rose sharply in his throat.
"Bluey?" Charlotte's voice affected a concerned tone he knew all to well. This was planned, this was premeditated, Charlotte had set out to hurt him as much as she could. A last parting shot that would have him choke on his own blood; a parting shot that would be fatal and from which he would never ever recover. "Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
Strike wanted to laugh, to cry and to smash his office into smithereens at the same time. Caught in an all too familiar storm of hurt anger devastation he barely moved his lips as he rasped out: "Congratulations."
"Thank you," she responded coyly, "we'll likely get married soon." She left the reasons as to why open.
"Right."
"I just wanted you to know," she repeated, "and I am so sorr–"
With a snarl Strike slammed the receiver down, uncaring whether he was breaking the phone in the process. He didn't want her apologies, nor her pity, nor her condemnation. It was a ploy, he knew. A ploy to draw him back into her orbit, of having him crawling back on his belly, caving to her whims.
Strike became aware that he was panting and sweating profusely.
Whirling around, he grabbed his jacket and closed his door behind him, not even bothering to lock his office, as he headed out. There wasn't anything worth stealing in his office, there wasn't anything he wanted to keep, and if he returned to his ransacked office, well, what did it matter? He had left his dignity, his heart and his future shattered somewhere, so perhaps his office could reflect some of the desolation he felt.
His steps instantly, subconsciously guided him to The Tottenham. Upon entering he, for the first time in three weeks, ignored Robin completely, didn't even see her, simply ordered his pint and sat down in what was quickly becoming his regular spot.
Jago fucking Ross.
This put a new light on the bombshell she had dropped in the middle of their fight, put the changing dates and lack of proof into perspective. A child, she had told him, his child. But was it? Likely Charlotte hadn't known whose child it was and had bet on the safest horse because, no matter how much Strike disliked children, he would have moved heaven and earth to care for any child of his.
(That child wouldn't have been a mistake, an accident perhaps, but a happy one, it would have been cherished, loved, with his eyes and her face and –)
Strike bought a second pint and a third for good measure, eyes unseeing, willing the thoughts to drown in the woodsy liquid he wasn't tasting. The urge to stride out of the pub and find Ross and break his fucking perfectly sculptured jaw crackled under his skin.
And so he drank.
And somewhere around his tenth or eleventh pint a bright spot of gold swam into his line of vision.
____________________________
Robin had ridden the high of her unexpected interaction with Strike – with Cormoran – for a few days and tried to weasel her way out of any pointed conversation with her colleagues about what had transpired between her and the man in question.
"You seemed rather," Margret had taken an excited breath, "enamored with him."
"I did not," Robin had answered, calmly polishing a glass and putting it back on the rack.
"You were glowing," the older woman added, leaning closer and trying to catch Robin's eye.
"I was not," Robin had denied again, wrapping a dishcloth around the next glass.
"Sure you were, duck, you wouldn't stop staring at him!" she laughed, "Then again with that rugged, masculine bod and those battered looks, well!" Margret had nudged her shoulder. "You know what they say, if it's not in the looks, it's in the –" she had made a rather crude gesture to her crotch and Robin had blushed flaming red.
"Stop it," Robin had hissed, her face uncomfortably hot, "it's not funny."
That had gotten her a smirk but her colleague had laid off, adding that she would keep an eye out for her –Robin's – 'lover-boy'. At that point arguing would have been detrimental, as the older woman refused to let go of her idea that Robin saw a little more in Strike – Cormoran! – than she did and arguing about it would have only confirmed the other woman's bias.
She didn't see more in Cormoran, that much was blatantly obvious to Robin. Robin's type wasn't tall, curly-haired, battered, and like life had not just given him lemons but had beat him with a net full of them, but tall, tawny-haired, toned and pretty. It was Matthew's assets that send heat through Robin (even if Robin felt that 'heat' was a little exaggerated and sounded too much like a cheap romance novel) and Matthew's touch that brought her pleasure (at least most of the time) and Matthew's body that she wanted to stare at for it's beauty (he was close to what classical sculptors had deemed masculine perfection after all). It was certainly not a rude, broody, hairy and slightly overweight guy in a herringbone coat whom Robin found oddly fascinating.
And so Robin worked patiently, decidedly not glancing up every time the door opened in hopes of catching a glimpse of a certain individual.
When her eyes finally spotted Cormoran's large bulk, three days after their conversation, Robin ignored the spike of nerves and elation at seeing him – she was looking forward to talking to him, after all, she had spent every free minute that wasn't taken up by Matt or basic needs like sleep and food, doing research on Lula Landry and she had stored everything in a fresh notebook which, at this moment, was residing in her handbag.
When he approached the bar, his face impassive and eyes downcast, she quickly switched places with another colleague, and pushed his order toward him but he didn't even look up but merely grunted something that, with a lot of imagination could be counted as a 'thank you', and simply turned to make his way to his seat. Robin stood, gobsmacked, her hand still on the lever. What had just happened? Though he wasn't the most communicative on a regular day, he at least made the effort to look at her and engage in small-talk and gentle ribbing. Even if those chats were short and even if he seemed exasperated Robin had been looking forward to those short moments. And especially after their conversation, Robin had hoped – well. Robin had hoped.
Serving other customers, but keeping a weather eye on Strike's hulking frame in the corner seat, Robin distractedly pulled pints, cleaned glasses and made chit-chat with other customers.
Strike kept approaching the bar and ordering one pint after the other, his gaze perpetually downcast.
Despite the pub filling slowly, her concentration wandered back to the man in the corner seat, not even the evening bustle helping her to focus properly elsewhere.
Eventually, her supervisor tapped her on the shoulder and, leaning a little toward her to be heard over the din, noted that he was getting worried about Strike, having just pulled his tenth pint in a little more than an hour. Though the man didn't seem aggressive or disruptive in any case, her manager kept eyeing him, ready to intervene if his drunkenness became a problem.
Yet, knowing that Robin and Cormoran talked sometimes, he asked her, just as quietly, whether she could convince him to go home. A short back and forth ensued and, after making sure she'd be safe, her shift manager let her go a little earlier than usual, with a promise to pick up more hours at a later date. Dropping her apron and snatching her handbag from the back room she approached Cormoran whose entire weight seemed to be resting on his arms.
"Cormoran?"
"D'you 'ave t' wrong t-able," he slurred into the beginnings of his beard.
"Pretty sure I haven't, Strike, Cormoran Strike," she tried – in vain – to make him look up, maybe even coax a smile out of him, but he shook his head, not having heard her words at all. "Come on, look at me?" she cajoled quietly, aware that most of her colleagues were watching.
"Hmm?" he blinked up at her blearily. "R'bin."
Robin was glad that he recognised her easily. So, drunk but perhaps not too drunk.
"W's comin' t' see you," he nodded to himself, "bu' then sh'called." He shook his head. "Then.she.called."
"Who called?"
"M' fiancée."
Robin felt a chill, the brief surge of pleasure at hearing that he'd been on his way to see her gone in an instant.
"She's gettin' married." He said to his glas. "To s'meone else." He added as an afterthought as if that hadn't been clear already. "To fuckin' Ross." He added again, his face contorting with rage. "I'll sm'sh 'm."
"Let's not," Robin said, wondering if she should touch his arm to calm him down, "have you eaten?"
He shook his head again.
"Shall we go and get something?"
He ignored her.
"She wuzz pregnant," his lips were white and the anguish and grief on his face was terrifying, "she told me. An’ then sh’said it was gone." He waved his hand in front of him, nearly knocking his pint over. Robin reacted with the honed reflexes of a bartender and darted forward to steady the glass.
"Can’t’ve been mine. Nev’ added up." Strike went on, spilling his troubles instead of his drink.
Robin said nothing, unable to form any coherent sentence, but also knowing that she did not want him to remember tomorrow that she knew so she kept quiet. For all of Robin's drive to know and understand things, she hadn't wanted this, not an anguished, drunken confession from a man who was obviously grieving both the loss of his fiancée and the loss of his child.
He shook his head again.
"Lucky cunt," he wasn't aggressive as much as he was despondent, "left 'im f' me, now left me f' 'im."
"Come on, let's grab some food, hm?" Robin tried again and briefly hoped for success as he lifted his head.
"Yer a nice person, R'bin," he said, decisively, "real nice."
"Could have fooled me with all the eye-rolling and mockery over the last weeks," she said, with a tiny smile.
"Nah, all a-fr'nt," he flapped his hand. "I think I'm a wee bit pissed," and Robin couldn't help but laugh out loud at his suddenly clear enunciation. He grinned back and if it looked a little pained around the edges she chose to ignore it, taking his smile for the win it was.
When he started to fumble for his cigarettes and went as far as jamming one between his lips, Robin didn't even think before she pulled the cigarette from his mouth.
"You can't smoke in here!" she admonished in a tone reminiscent of their first meeting.
"Can't smoke, can't piss, y' 've go' strange rules here," he was attempting to stuff his packet back into his jacket.
"I'm not making the rules here, it's common decency, Cormoran," Robin huffed. "Come on now," she said, hoisting her handbag further up on her shoulder, before she stepped closer – ignoring his surprised expression at her nearness – looped her hand around his arm and pulled him upward.
It was a little like pulling at a dead weight and he remained unmoved, rather staring fascinated at the place where her hand was wedged underneath his arm and against his torso.
"Come on, Cormoran," Robin urged and tugged at him again and finally Cormoran stood, looming large und ungainly over her, swaying like grass in the wind as he tried to regain his footing. (Later, when Robin went back over her evening with a fine tooth comb, she would wonder why she hadn't even thought about panicking – usually large men, and drunk men in particular, inspired a primal kind of fear in her that was hard to mitigate. But though Cormoran fit that bill more so than any other man, Robin mostly felt pity and the gentle stirrings of what could, with time, become affection.)
"R'bin," he started, his hand raised to stall her, "u'sly I don't drink tha' much."
"I know," Robin kept a steadying hand at his elbow as he passed her in the cramped space between tables, brushing against her as he stumbled forward. Without a second thought Robin took his arm again and and to her great relief he came along meekly. It reminded her of leading the enormous Clydesdale her uncle had kept on his farm out of the stables and unto the fields.
Outside Robin maneuvered Strike along to the address she had extracted from him in a lengthy process, while he kept up a rising and falling commentary about what was going wrong with him (his leg, mostly), his life (everything, it seemed), his love life in particular (which seemed in a state even worse than his business), and Robin's mind, which had been waiting for something to do, filed away each an every tidbit.
Passing a kebab shop, he veered of and lurched into it, bumping into the doorframe on the way to the counter. Robin, quietly, followed along, joining him at a table as he devoured his food. But before long the two of them were on their way again, and, after Strike had to quickly sidestep in order to keep upright, Robin tugged herself underneath his arm to keep him steady. And as he had done when she first touched him, he came to a standstill, muzzily staring at her in something that looked a little like surprised wonder in Robin's eyes and she kept pondering how often the man leaning on her experienced kindness from strangers.
(She also knew that Matthew, should she ever get around to telling him what had transpired this evening, would utterly hate what she was doing.)
"Y're a very nice p'rson, R'bin." He muttered again as Robin essentially steered him to Denmark Street. When they had freed the key that had come tangled in Strike's coat pocket and Robin had pushed the heavy door open, Strike let out a strangled groan and Robin nearly dropped where he stood, retreating in case he was going to throw up – her kindness would only take her so far.
"Stairs," he moaned piteously as he tottered into the dark entryway of the building. Robin remained behind, uncertain whether the open door counted as an invitation and equally unsure whether she wanted to take him up on this implicit invitation. A frisson of fear skittered across her skin, as near impenetrable darkness loomed in front of her. But the sudden cursing from the dark stairwell and the odd clank as if someone had listed precariously to the side and hit the handhold decided it for her: Closing the door and following him, Robin, again, tugged on his arm and, after half an hour of copious amounts of swearing and trying to keep Strike from toppling backwards, both arrived at a glass door, with the words C.B. Strike, Private Investigator, etched on the glass. If encouraging Strike out of the pub and back home had been a test in patience, getting him into what seemed to be his office was comparatively easy as he, again, seemed to follow her lead without complaint.
(Robin couldn't help but compare Cormoran to Matthew who, if a little too drunk, got either handsy, which she hated, or belligerent, which she hated even more.)
"This 's me," he mumbled, making a grand sweeping gesture that seemed to encompass everything from the papers strewn across the desk in the first room, to the leather couch which looked scuffed and was sagging in the middle, to the dirty beige walls that had needed a repaint about 15 years ago.
"Er," Robin said, disillusioned upon seeing the worn office rooms which smelled of stale smoke and laundry detergent, "that's nice."
"Hm," he nodded, absentmindedly wrestling out of his coat before going for his shirt buttons. Robin's heartbeat accelerated. "D' you know wha' a kairos moment is?" He asked in the same distracted manner.
'I hope it's not something weird,' she thought, 'and I hope we're not having one.'
Completely unaware of the latent panic Robin was experiencing – why had she gone with a stranger? Why had she followed him up the stairs? Why had she followed him into his office? What the hell was wrong with her? – Strike went on, abandoning his shirt buttons half-way down. "It's the telling moment. The special moment. The supreme moment," he went on, again surprisingly coherent for someone who had downed more than ten beers, before he dove back into memories he had obviously wanted to share with her. Robin felt both close to tears and laughter; laughter, as Strike inelegantly fought with his clothes and tears as he kept telling her things she felt undeserving to hear.
(Robin also wondered if he had actually talked to anyone about what appeared to be a difficult living situation and an even worse break-up. She chose not to ask.)
As his hands dropped to his trousers, he became aware of her presence again.
"Er, I'll –" he tried to focus on her properly, "I'll just go." He jerked his head into the direction of a second room. "To bed," he added unnecessarily. Then, with a deep breath and with real gratitude that had been missing from these words when he had uttered them before he said: "Thank you."
"You're welcome," she replied, her arms around her middle and a weak smile on her face, as he staggered into the inner office, closing the door with a bang.
"Right," Robin whispered, suddenly hit with the need to move, to do something, to clean up something to re-right her world again. A quick glance around the outer office – the unopened letters, the empty cups on the desk, the newspapers unfolded next to the couch – and Robin, with a careful glance at the inner office, set to work, keeping her hands and mind busy as she cleared away the debris that seemed to cover nearly every surface of Cormoran's office.
____________________________
Cormoran jolted awake the next morning, forcibly dragged out of his erratic dreams in which he had run after an eerie, diaphanous vision of Charlotte in a wedding gown; a vision that would not turn nor stop for him no matter how much he yelled and begged for her to wait. In his dream he had stumbled and been submerged in the icy cold Cornish waters he had enjoyed as a boy only to be rescued by a warm hand, which had pulled him steadily back onto the wet, hard and cold sand. As he had lain there, panting, gasping, coughing, his eyes unseeing and burning, the same hand had come to rest on his cheek and, near tears, Cormoran had leaned into the touch – so much so, that his real self had teetered precariously on the edge of his camp bed and he had barely enough time to keep himself from tumbling to the ground. One hand outstretched on the dusty office floor, the movement had upset his roiling stomach and he had only narrowly avoided being sick right there in his office. Instead he had gingerly gotten up and, with the help of his crutches, made his way through his office.
At first, when he had opened the inner door to the front room, he hadn't noticed the way it looked, his bladder and stomach far more pressing matters than the shambolic mess that pretended to be his reception area on a good day. But, upon his return, and after not clanking into the debris on his floor he had looked around, bleary and stunned.
The front room was clean and neat. His take-away boxes gone, his newspapers stacked neatly in a small rack next to the desk, his cups cleaned and drying on the kitchen counter, his letters stacked and ordered likely according to priority and sender. He blinked, stupefied, before his eyes alit on a bottle of water, a packet of Alka-Seltzer and Ibuprofen and a bar of chocolate. Moving as if in trance – how the fuck did that happen? Why the hell was everything so orderly? – he picked up the folded note next to the bottle.
Dear Cormoran,
I took the liberty to leave you something for your hangover (I'm pretty sure you'll be having one) – if you need plastic bags, just in case, you know, they are in the cupboard under the sink. I also stocked up on tea – I have no idea why you have a kettle, if you don't have tea. (If you're wondering how I could come and go: you need to hide your spare keys better than the bottom drawer of the front desk, that's like hiding a key under your doormat and putting a sign saying 'keys here!' next to it.)
I also took the liberty to clean up the front office – I'm sorry, I know it's an intrusion into your private life and business but I needed to do something and, so, well... Feel free to return to the preferred state of chaos, if you need to.
And, because I'm already apologising: I also read through the list of points to investigate further which you pinned to the front of the Landry file and I might take a look at the first one, Agyeman, if that's alright – I'll be off today, so I have some time to do research. I've left my notebook on the desk, you will find some notes I've made over the last few days, maybe they'll help (don't be mad, I haven't told anyone anything!).Robin (the one without Batman)
P.S.: I've set an alarm for 2 p.m., your schedule said you have an appointment at 5. Just in case.
P.P.S.: My dad swears by coffee with lemon and honey – vile drink but (supposedly) helps with a hangover.
P.P.P.S.: Please don’t be embarrassed about last night. You didn’t say or do anything you should regret.
P.P.P.P.S.: Here's my number. But don't call me just to tell me off!
The paper crinkled in his hand as he kept glancing from the note to the desk and back. Robin had gotten him home – he remembered that much at least – and he had likely talked to her – likely about Charlotte, he thought with a wince –, and Robin had stayed back and sorted out his office?
He looked down again.
And Robin was looking into Agyeman?
His tired brain was sluggishly trying its hardest to connect the dots presented to him. Some distant part of him knew he ought to feel some form of outrage for her blatant invasion of his privacy (as much as there was) and her snooping around. But then again, he had left his files open on the desk and he had taken Robin up to his office (he grimaced again) and then had pissed off to sleep off the copious amount of alcohol he had poured down his own throat.
It was, perhaps, his own fault that Robin had snuck a peak into the case he had, against his own convictions, laid out to her. To a civilian. In a pub. Where everyone and their grandmothers and their grandmothers could hear.
He was an idiot; a careless, thoughtless idiot who had made a clumsy rookie mistake.
(Then again, talking to Robin had felt good; and perhaps he had wanted to impress her and had enjoyed the wide-eyed curiosity the younger woman had exhibited. Like an eager, bright-eyed cadet, Strike had involved a civilian in and likely jeopardized his case.)
Lowering Robin's note – he would call her later, he decided, if only to tell her not to 'have a look' into anything – and with nausea still swishing in his gut, he packed his kitbag, determined to go for a swim and a shower before his interview with Ciara Porter.
But later, he told himself, later he would have a few words with Robin.
There was no need for her to help him out with anything.