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He remembers thinking it was cold.
Halyards clang in the harbour; clouds scud past an icy moon; white surf crests grey waves beyond the sea wall. The evidence suggests cold, but cold is not what he’s feeling.
His blood races, heat prickling his skin.
“I’m ready,” Robin says, re-appearing. Framed in the doorway of the Victory Inn, golden light behind her and her hair blowing across her face, her expression is hidden from view. He half extends an arm towards her at the same time as she reaches across to wrap the jacket closer round her, burying her hands deep in the pockets.
His leg throbs in protest at the walk back up the hill, but the deep lungfuls of air he breathes in are more invigorating than anything London can provide. By the time they reach the top, his heavy winter coat feels oppressive and he stops to take it off, catching his breath.
“So tell me about St Mawes,” Robin says, turning to face him.
“See for yourself,” he answers, nodding behind them. She follows his gaze, and he watches the view play across her face as she takes it in, leaning into the wind.
The estuary stretches out in front of them, the swell of the waves lulled a little by the distance. Across the inky water, the blur of distant lights glimmer on the horizon. Beyond the rows of houses the dark mound of the castle looms, unlit out-of-season, the criss-cross of lights set up ahead of Christmas festivities rattling in the wind. A lone gull soars and sinks, silhouetted against the racing clouds, as the wind picks up the sound of voices and the sweep of the sea below them.
Beside him, Robin yawns.
He raises an eyebrow at her in mock indignation. “Am I boring you?”
“Not yet.” She laughs. “It’s the sea air.”
“Sea air and driving half-way across the country, maybe,” he says.
“Got another one of those tomorrow,” she acknowledges.
“We should head back.”
He pulls his coat back on, catching her glance his way, that momentary hesitation before she returns her hands to her pockets.
His leg objects sharply as he steps onto it, and right now it’s all the justification he needs. “Would you mind?” he says, holding out an elbow, and she tucks her hand through, steadying him as he leans more heavily than he intends to, hoping he can shield her from the wind a little in return.
Janet has nodded off when they arrive back, the late-night panel show playing to no-one in particular.
“Just resting my eyes,” she says, roused by the movement. “Ted’s asleep.” She waves away their thanks as she picks up her coat from the back of the chair. “No trouble at all. Lovely to have met you.” She stifles a yawn.
“See?” Robin says as they turn back in, after seeing Janet home. “Sea air. It’s catching.”
Somebody has helpfully found the bag containing Joan’s remaining clothes and left it on the coffee table.
“That’s really sweet,” Robin says, “I just don’t think - ” and Strike shakes his head.
“There’s some stuff of mine left here,” he says, “There’s got to be a t-shirt or something. It’s all up in the spare room; I’ll show you.”
At the top of the wardrobe, beyond perhaps even Ted’s reach nowadays, he finds a navy blue t-shirt with the words ‘Oxford University’ loudly emblazoned across the front.
“It was a present,” he says, “Ted and Joan, when they came to visit. Only the tourists wore these though. Don’t know that I ever did.”
He does know he did, he remembers where, and when, but he says it because he thinks it might be simpler all round to keep the personal out of it.
“Thank you,” she says, her hand noticably cool against his as she takes it from him. Maybe it’s that, or the words, or the look that she gives him from under heavy eyelids, but for a moment he’s back there on the seafront, rising heat keeping the cold at bay.
She yawns again, bringing him back to the present.
He rubs the back of his head, the urge to prolong the moment giving way to a sense of responsibility.
“The bathroom’s all yours; kitchen sink’ll do me.” He indicates across the hallway as he heads for the stairs. “There might be a spare toothbrush somewhere.”
“It’s OK, I can improvise,” she says.
“Night then,” he says, pausing in the doorway, and she doesn’t reply straight away. He’s already announced his exit, he tells himself; what is he waiting for? And then she looks up, blue-grey eyes fixed on his with sudden purpose, and he knows exactly what he was waiting for.
“You don’t have to take the sofa.”
He looks at her a long moment.
“OK,” he answers, lightly, or at least, lightly’s what he’s aiming for.
Downstairs in the kitchen he allows himself the grin that had threatened to flood his face, there in the doorway. Why did he not think to at least grab some toothpaste on his way down? Looking at his choice of hand soap, washing up liquid and fabric softener he decides that a swig of water and a mint will have to do.
He’s not normally nervous at this point in proceedings. Afterwards, yes. Afterwards gets complicated.
But this is Robin.
This is his business - their business - that they’ve built up with sweat and blood and the odd heated argument and that never quite taken for granted trust.
This is a seven hour drive home tomorrow, and - if nothing else - protecting that from awkwardness matters.
This is also his uncle’s house, which is really not how he would have imagined it, if he had imagined it.
She is not just the promise of that softly clinging jumper, those limpid eyes and the curve of her lips. She is the scar running down her arm when she’d rolled up her sleeves in the warmth of the pub earlier; the dark circles under her eyes and the disappointment that he’s sometimes met there; that brittle wariness that still surfaces on occasion.
In other words, he thinks, spitting into the sink, he’s involved.
He reaches the top of the stairs, the pain in his leg strangely insubstantial as he crosses the landing, light pooling from the open door.
She’s curled into herself, covers half pulled up, the rise and fall of her breath in the telltale cadence of sleep.
“Robin?” he says, very softly.
She stirs slightly, her mouth falling open.
He waits for a moment, and then he switches off the light, pulling the door to as he steps back out onto the landing, this time his leg reminding him that he’s really, really not a fan of stairs.
He and the sofa have a difficult relationship at the best of times, but tonight things are particularly strained. On the sofa’s part, because its long-suffering springs really aren’t made for a man of Strike’s size tossing and turning all night, and on his, because he’s not exactly primed for sleep right now.
It’s still dark when he hears the stairs creak, and footsteps pad across the carpet behind him. He drags himself upright, addressing the dim outline he can just about make out through the gloom.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” she hisses, “But the seagulls are very sure it’s time to get up.” In a more conciliatory tone, she adds, “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Not unless it was you that started the gulls off,” he answers.
“I’m getting water. Did you want some?”
“Go on then,” he says.
He shifts over instinctively as she hands him the glass, holding out a corner of duvet almost without thinking as he makes space on the sofa beside him.
“It’s freezing in here,” he says, “For a generous man, Ted has a spartan approach to central heating.”
She smiles. “I’ve been thinking,” she says, settling in next to him and pulling the duvet over her knees.
“Dangerous,” he says. Like the fact that her bare thigh is resting against his, and she can’t be oblivious to it.
“Devoted dad, that Barclay’s been on the last few weeks?”
The rules about mixing business and pleasure have got complicated lately, but right now the two are well and truly entangled.
“His wife was so sure he was using the maths classes as a cover,” she continues.
It takes him a moment, but he remembers. “Always showers afterwards and seems embarrassed when asked about it. Sounds suspicious on paper but let’s face it, maths has that effect on a lot of people.”
She laughs. “I know, and Barclay saw him go into the school, every time. But something about it just doesn’t - ”
“You were going to say, ‘add up’, weren’t you,” he cuts in, “We know that. It’s why they invited him along.”
She rolls her eyes at him, shifting her weight a little in a way that touches phantom nerve endings he knows he doesn’t have.
“It was his son’s maths that needed ‘a boost’, as they put it in the letter,” she qualifies, settling back. “They wanted to teach their new fancy methods to the parents of children who needed a bit more support.”
“They should count themselves lucky they got the letter,” Strike comments, remembering screwed up paper at the bottom of school bags and various missiles fired across the classroom. “Do schools even send letters any more? Thought it was all emails, or texts, or whatever it is Lucy’s always complaining about.”
He knows that expression, the line of concentration on her forehead as the glow of an idea dawns in her eyes.
“Maybe they don’t,” she says, slowly. She bites her lip, thinking. “But it was on headed paper. It was signed by the teacher.”
He turns his head towards her at the same time as she looks up at him, the same thought striking them both.
Her eyes darken with mischief.
“Don’t you want to know what exactly Miss Harris is teaching him, in those exclusive evening classes that none of the other families they know were invited to?”
“We’ve got no evidence,” Strike says, unable to resist smiling himself.
“But you like it.” She hugs her knees up under the duvet.
Oh, he likes it, he thinks, helplessly. “I think we should get Barclay to check it out.” He pauses for a moment. “We should do this more often.”
“Work away days to Cornwall? I’m up for that.” She grins. “Or did you mean hanging out in pyjamas in the early hours of the morning?”
“Are you up for that?” he asks, before he can stop himself.
Oh sweet lord, is this how he’s going to proposition her? Outside a gull lets off a gale of raucous laughter and he can’t say he blames it.
She doesn’t say anything right away, and he feels her feet against his leg suddenly still.
Where is he heading with this? Being caught fumbling with a girl on the sofa in his uncle’s house like it’s 1990 all over again?
“What I was thinking,” he says - before she can reply, before he can find out what that silence might mean - “Is we’re both so busy we don’t get enough time to talk things through. We should schedule something in. I could ask Pat to clear a slot once a week maybe.”
That’s it, bring Pat into it. That’s guaranteed cold water on any thoughts straying beyond that line they tread so carefully.
“I like your thinking,” she says, smiling.
“It’s mutual,” he answers, “That’s exactly why we should.”
She meets his eyes with that smile again, her hand resting just briefly on his leg as she gets to her feet. “I’m going to go and have a shower before Ted wakes up.”
The wind has dropped when Strike ventures outside, but there’s a chill in the air and no sign of sun to lift the traces of sea mist clinging to the morning. His night on the sofa hasn’t done his leg any favours, and he turns up his collar against the cold, unable to make sufficient pace to stave it off. He remembers the nearby shop as a newsagent, but nowadays it’s more a convenience store, although in keeping with the picture-postcard setting, the produce is from a local organic farm and priced accordingly. It’s worth it, he thinks, filling his basket with thick-cut bacon, eggs and creamy butter; it’s not as if anyone else will know it’s his second in as many days. The girl at the till is plugged into headphones and doesn’t look old enough to buy cigarettes, let alone sell them, but Strike suspects that says more about his age than hers.
He arrives back to find Ted sitting with Robin at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of coffee, bending over something revealed to be Ted’s long-neglected phone.
“Got your number saved,” Ted says to Strike, who feels a strange mix of things he can’t exactly place at the thought of Robin (he knows it was Robin) checking it.
“Hope you’re feeling hungry,” Strike says, emptying out the bag, “I’ve got you the breakfast of kings.”
Ted retrieves a leaflet held up by a fridge magnet. “They gave me this at the hospital,” he says, opening it out. “No fry-ups. They’re on the red list.”
A cloud descends as Strike glances over the ‘heart-healthy’ diet chart. “Mushrooms on toast it is then,” he says, trying not to think how much better they’d be cooked in golden, salty butter and served on fried bread.
He catches Robin’s eye, the mixture of sympathy and amusement not escaping him.
“Looks like it’s bacon butties for the journey home then,” she says, “For us and about ten passengers, by the looks of it.”
“Lucy rang,” Ted says, “She’s coming down; she said she’ll bring lunch. Anyone would think I’d never made a sandwich before. Janet’s already been round with a casserole.”
“Bet she strayed from the green zone,” Strike says, with a petulance that surprises him and makes Robin shake with quiet laughter.
“I’d say Janet’s style is firmly amber,” she says, refilling Ted’s mug and pouring one for Strike at the same time. “Cheer up, this is the good stuff.”
“I’m going there for Christmas,” Ted says, “Lucy’s, I mean. Are you going to be there?”
It’s not clear if he’s addressing Strike or Robin, and there’s a slightly too-long pause in which Strike catches himself waiting to see what she might reply.
“Not got anything planned yet,” he says, at the same time as Robin starts, “I don’t - ” and stops, and he wishes he’d held off a moment more.
“I expect you’ll want to get off early,” Ted says.
“We’ll stay until Lucy gets here,” Robin says, “There’s no rush to get back,” and Strike clocks his own response to that, an odd sense of satisfaction as if somehow he’d planned this trip and she’d just given it the thumbs up.
“Can we get anything sorted for you while we’re here?” he asks, the ‘we’ dropped in so easily that it’s only afterwards he wonders if appropriating Robin is OK, even though she’s proved a willing enough accomplice so far. Heaven knows, not just in this.
Ted thinks for a moment. “The mobile library’s down here this morning,” he says, “They’ve got a couple of audio books waiting for me, if you don’t mind.” He catches Strike’s face. “I know what you’re thinking, Joan was the reader. But it’s company.”
The view from the sea wall that morning is a pale imitation of the night before, but they stop there, nevertheless. Strike thinks of all the times he’s stood here, basking in the lazy blue of summer, and feels a pang of something for the fact that Robin’s first time here the best he can offer is a cold, November grey.
First time. As if he’s imagining other times.
“Mum took us crabbing here on Christmas Eve one year,” he says.
It catches him unawares: both the memory, and the fact that he says it out loud. Robin doesn’t reply, but she’s listening.
“We didn’t know if she was coming,” he remembers, “but she turned up that night and brought us down here. Lucy was in her pyjamas, but Mum took her along anyway.”
“Is it Christmas Eve if you’re not in your PJs?” Robin responds. “I went to midnight mass in mine one year. I was all set for an early night, but my brothers were going so I tagged along.”
He grins. “You’re telling me that like it’s a childhood memory, but ‘set for an early night’? I’m willing to bet it was more recent.”
She laughs. “Anyone ever told you you should be a detective?” Something flickers behind the merriment, and he wonder’s if the memory’s tinged with something less bright. There’s a momentary lull as the waves break, indistinctly, below them. She glances down. “You were saying about your mum.”
He’s brought back there, the same wintry chill breaching his coat and the tang of salt in the air. “There was a chap in a Santa suit down on his boat, effing and blinding. It killed the magic a bit - but sort of added to it, too.”
Robin smiles. “Did you catch anything?”
“Lucy did,” he replies, “A cold.” He rubs his hands together, his fingers starting to numb. It reminds him. “When we got back Joan told us all off, but she made us hot chocolate. Could do with one now - couldn’t you?”
A bell jangles as they enter the quayside coffee shop, summoning the proprietor from the back somewhere. The table Robin picks is near the window, although the sea view is obscured by the steam fogging up the glass, and each time the door opens a cold draft catches them.
Robin cradles her latte, as Strike breaks off a generous chunk of sticky-sided ginger cake.
“Home-made cake,” he says, wolfing it down, “I’ve missed this. Penguins just don’t quite cut it.”
Since the affair of the Christmas chocolates, they’ve had to introduce a strict office policy on food gifts. No more batches of brownies from grateful clients; no more biscuit selection boxes; no more chocolates, even sealed and wrapped. Between them, they’ve substituted with supermarket purchases, but it isn’t quite the same. One week Pat, in a fit of domesticity, had attempted some courgette and oatmeal cookies from a Slimmers’ World recipe, with mixed results. “I’d rather have poison,” had been Strike’s verdict, at least to Robin from the safety of their office.
“What we need,” Robin says, helping herself to a piece of the ginger cake, “Is an office dog to test things.”
“Wow,” he says, “Bit harsh. It’s like those poor canaries isn’t it: dog keels over, we leave well alone.” He sips his coffee, pretending to consider it. “Think your Wolfgang would give it a go?”
Robin gives him a hard glare, although he doesn’t miss the twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I was thinking maybe a retired sniffer dog, one that could pick out anything suspect.” The hard glare gives way to puppy eyes. “Michelle would know where we could get one.”
“We are not getting an office dog,” Strike says,
“Even for biscuits?” Robin cajoles.
“If I’ll do anything for biscuits, what do you need a dog for?” he rejoins, illogically.
The mention of the office reminds him that they’re expecting an update from Pat about this morning’s client. He gets out his phone, only to find it’s out of battery.
“Use mine,” Robin says, tapping in a passcode and pushing it across the table towards him. “I’ve got loads of data left this month.” She gets up, before he has time to think of a reason to object. “Back in a minute.”
The way she’d typed in her password, four fingers and barely glancing down, gives him a moment of longing for a simpler time. When it was just the two of them in the office, and sometimes he’d sit on the sofa and they’d talk through a case together. The way she’d follow up leads almost before he’d mentioned them, fingers skimming the keys smooth as silk (has his brain really just given him ‘silky’ as an adverb for typing?) rather than the office ringing with Pat’s brave fortissimo.
He puts the moment of nostalgia aside. She is the best partner he could have asked for, one who has just handed over her phone which means that she trusts him. Either that, or she doesn’t really rate him as a detective.
If there was anything incriminating on it she wouldn’t have handed it over so readily, he thinks, trying not to register that something about that gives him a twinge of disappointment. He’s just logged into email when a notification of a new text pops up on screen, the name one he knows well. Oh, Ilsa. He’s never thought before that he wants to be party to anything Ilsa and Robin might discuss. Is it a reply to something Robin’s sent her?
“Turns out it’s another cold case,” he says, when Robin returns. “They left out the ‘fifteen years ago’ part on the phone. We should get Pat to check that in future.”
Solving not just one, but two high-profile cold cases has brought them a glut of similar requests, everyone believing they can find answers to the long ache of mysteries left unsolved. But cold cases are a labyrinth of false starts and dead ends. There’s a certain immediacy to what they do that he appreciates. Playing the long game isn’t his bag.
Except - well.
“Unless you think we should take it?” he says. “There’s a market for it, evidently. Make a change from endless affairs.”
“We’re good at affairs,” Robin says with momentary wickedness as she takes her phone back from him, “And they pay my rent.”
He sees her glance down at the message from Ilsa, the small smile she gives igniting his curiosity again about what it might contain.
“Anyway,” she continues, “Cold cases rely too much on memory. The ones people play over and over, distorting it over time. And they’re altered by the way questions are worded, or things that happen later. Retroactive interference; we studied it in Psychology.”
And memories of traumatic events are retained more vividly, he thinks, but he knows how well she knows that. He won’t admit it, not to himself and definitely not to Robin, but buried in the reason he’d taken on the Bamborough case was a hope that investigating something so long removed from the initial danger might keep Robin safe.
He offers Robin the last of the cake, and she accepts, which surprises him.
“People pay us for a lot of things,” he muses. “Answers. Justice. Payback. But with cold cases they’re paying for hope, and most of the time there isn’t any.” He drains his coffee. “There’s two kinds of cold cases: people who can’t accept the truth, or the ones where everyone knows the truth but they’re never going to find enough evidence.”
“You would know,” Robin says, quietly.
“Touché.” He raises his coffee cup to her. “Still studying Psychology, I see.”
It’s a conversation he replays later - one of many - on the journey home. They’re both quiet; it’s been a long couple of days. They’d arrived back at Ted’s to meet Lucy unloading a carload of M&S ready meals, all green-striped with the brand of its healthy range. She’d thanked them both, a little teary-eyed, and Robin had smiled and said it was a pleasure, and three hours on he still half wants to ask her ‘Did you mean that?’. But she’s concentrating on the road, and the radio’s on, and beyond a half-hearted competition over the afternoon quiz of whatever local station they’re picking up, she doesn’t seem much inclined to talk.
They’ve spent enough time in cars together, on road trips and stake-outs, to have mastered both easy conversation and companionable silence. He thinks it’s that, rather than some kind of residual awkwardness from the night before, or the morning after. Things had been easy enough at breakfast, and later in the coffee shop: why should it be awkward now? Maybe he should invite her in for a beer - no, a cup of tea, she’s driving - it’s the least he can do, after everything. Except there’s that double yellow line, so stopping isn’t really an option.
It’s a habit, analysing every last detail, scrutinising interactions for the things unsaid. It’s one thing at work, he thinks, but not this. Their partnership has long been the thing that makes everything else make sense; he needs to just let it be. He wills himself to focus on something else, anticipating an evening catching up on the football results, the promise of leftover bacon sandwiches and the chance to finally have a cigarette in peace.
But maybe because the Land Rover isn’t exactly toasty, his mind slips back to the previous evening on the seafront.
It was a thank you, he reminds himself, but he hasn’t let go, and neither has she.
Did she mean to turn her head when she’d said, “You’re welcome”, the imprint of the words still warm against his neck?
The wind stirs up the waves, gulls squabbling on the shoreline and scattered suddenly by a dog barking, out for a late-night walk. It’s a wind sharp with mingled scents, brine and beer and that perfume he’d know anywhere.
Restlessness thrums around them, but her soft weight against him stills him; she’s smaller than he is, but solid, like an anchor holding him there.
It’s not a flattering analogy, but he thinks she’d understand.
He feels a heart beating, and he’s not sure if it’s hers or his, pressed together through both his coats.
“One more drink?” he asks.
“Janet,” she says, still into his neck, and he feels her sigh as she pulls back. “We should go; it’s getting late.”
It’s for the best, he tells himself, but as she extracts herself and heads inside to get her things, he’s not entirely convinced.
It’s dark when they pull up in Denmark Street, the early evening news on the radio. Robin switches it off.
They’re on that double yellow line, and he only has a moment.
“Last night - ” he says.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t - mean to.”
Didn’t mean to what? Didn’t mean to fall asleep? Or didn’t mean to imply anything more than a sympathetic offer to give up one half of a king-size bed?
“It’s fine,” he says, “Circumstances were - what they were.”
She can make of that what she will, he thinks, moving to open the door beside him, but when he turns back to thank her he’s met with that same blue-grey intent that stopped him the night before, and he knows he didn’t mistake it. He lets go the door handle.
“You know what you always say,” she says, smiling slowly.
“Do I?”
“Means before motive,” she says, “Just need to fix the first part.”
“I’m on it,” he replies.
She leans forward, very deliberately, and in that moment his brain forgets to think about double yellow lines, or anything at all.