Career of Evil

“How’s that important?” he asked, nonplussed.

“Same thing,” she said vaguely, draining her third glass. “I’d like ’nother—”

“You’re having a soft drink this time.”

She examined the ceiling while waiting for him. There were theatrical scenes painted up there: Bottom cavorted with Titania amid a group of fairies.

“Things are going OK with Elin,” he told her when he sat back down, having decided that an exchange of information was the easiest way to make her talk about her own problems. “It suits me, keeping it low key. She’s got a daughter she doesn’t want me getting too close to. Messy divorce.”

“Oh,” said Robin, blinking at him over her glass of Coke. “How did you meet her?”

“Through Nick and Ilsa.”

“How do they know her?”

“They don’t. They had a party and she came along with her brother. He’s a doctor, works with Nick. They hadn’t ever met her before.”

“Oh,” said Robin again.

She had briefly forgotten her own troubles, diverted by this glimpse into Strike’s private world. So normal, so unremarkable! A party and he had gone along and got talking to the beautiful blonde. Women liked Strike—she had come to realize that over the months they had worked together. She had not understood the appeal when she had started working for him. He was so very different from Matthew.

“Does Ilsa like Elin?” asked Robin.

Strike was startled by this flash of perception.

“Er—yeah, I think so,” he lied.

Robin sipped her Coke.

“OK,” said Strike, restraining his impatience with difficulty, “your turn.”

“We’ve split up,” she said.

Interrogation technique told him to remain silent, and after a minute or so the decision was vindicated.

“He… told me something,” she said. “Last night.”

Strike waited.

“And we can’t go back from that. Not that.”

She was pale and composed but he could almost feel the anguish behind the words. Still he waited.

“He slept with someone else,” she said in a small, tight voice.

There was a pause. She picked up her crisp packet, found that she had finished the contents and dropped it on the table.

“Shit,” said Strike.

He was surprised: not that Matthew had slept with another woman, but that he had admitted it. His impression of the handsome young accountant was of a man who knew how to run his life to suit himself, to compartmentalize and categorize where necessary.

“And not just once,” said Robin, in that same tight voice. “He was doing it for months. With someone we both know. Sarah Shadlock. She’s an old friend of his from university.”

“Christ,” said Strike. “I’m sorry.”

He was sorry, genuinely sorry, for the pain she was in. Yet the revelation had caused certain other feelings—feelings he usually kept under tight rein, considering them both misguided and dangerous—to flex inside him, to test their strength against their restraining bonds.

Don’t be a stupid fucker, he told himself. That’s one thing that can never happen. It’d screw everything up royally.

“What made him tell you?” Strike asked.

She did not answer, but the question brought back the scene in awful clarity.

Their magnolia sitting room was far too tiny to accommodate a couple in such a state of fury. They had driven all the way home from Yorkshire in the Land Rover that Matthew had not wanted. Somewhere along the way, an incensed Matthew had asserted that it was a matter of time before Strike made a pass at Robin and what was more, he suspected that she would welcome the advance.

“He’s my friend, that’s all!” she had bellowed at Matthew from beside their cheap sofa, their weekend bags still in the hall. “For you to suggest I’m turned on by the fact he’s had his leg—”

“You’re so bloody naive!” he had bellowed. “He’s your friend until he tries to get you into bed, Robin—”

“Who are you judging him by? Are you biding your time before you jump on your coworkers?”

“Of course I’m bloody not, but you’re so frigging starry-eyed about him—he’s a man, it’s just the two of you in the office—”

“He’s my friend, like you’re friends with Sarah Shadlock but you’ve never—”

She had seen it in his face. An expression she had never noticed before passed across it like a shadow. Guilt seemed to slide physically over the high cheekbones, the clean jaw, the hazel eyes she had adored for years.

“—have you?” she said, her tone suddenly wondering. “Have you?”

He hesitated too long.

“No,” he had said forcefully, like a paused film jerking back into action. “Of course n—”

“You have,” she said. “You’ve slept with her.”

She could see it in his face. He did not believe in male-female friendships because he had never had one. He and Sarah had been sleeping together.

“When?” she had asked. “Not… was it then?”

“I didn’t—”

She heard the feeble protestation of a man who knows he has lost, who had even wanted to lose. That had haunted her all night and all day: on some level, he had wanted Robin to know.

Her strange calm, more stu

“She was comforting you?” Robin had repeated. Rage had come then, at last, unfreezing her from her state of stu

“It was a difficult time for me too, you know!” he had shouted.

Strike watched as Robin shook her head unconsciously, trying to clear it, but the recollections had turned her pink and her eyes were sparkling again.

“What did you say?” she asked Strike, confused.

“I asked what made him tell you.”

“I don’t know. We were in the middle of a row. He thinks…” She took a deep breath. Two-thirds of a bottle of wine on an empty stomach was leading her to emulate Matthew’s honesty. “He doesn’t believe you and I are just friends.”

This was no surprise to Strike. He had read suspicion in every look Matthew had ever given him, heard insecurity in every chippy comment thrown his way.

“So,” Robin went on unsteadily, “I pointed out that we are just friends, and that he’s got a platonic friend himself, dear old Sarah Shadlock. So then it all came out. He and Sarah had an affair at university while I was… while I was at home.”

“That long ago?” Strike said.

“You think I shouldn’t mind if it was seven years ago?” she demanded. “If he’s lied about it ever since and we constantly see her?”

“I was just surprised,” said Strike evenly, refusing to be drawn into a fight, “that he’s owned up to it after all this time.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “Well, he was ashamed. Because of when it happened.”

“At university?” said Strike, confused.

“It was right after I dropped out,” said Robin.

“Ah,” said Strike.

They had never discussed what had made her leave her psychology degree and return to Masham.

Robin had not intended to tell Strike the story, but all resolutions were adrift tonight on the little sea of alcohol with which she had filled her hungry and exhausted body. What did it matter if she told him? Without that information he would not have the full picture or be able to advise her what to do next. She was relying on him, she realized dimly, to help her. Whether she liked it or not—whether he liked it or not—Strike was her best friend in London. She had never looked that fact squarely in the face before. Alcohol buoyed you up and it washed your eyes clean. In vino veritas, they said, didn’t they? Strike would know. He had an odd, occasional habit of quoting Latin.

“I didn’t want to leave uni,” said Robin slowly, her head swimming, “but something happened and afterwards I had problems…”