1 The Cuckoo's Calling

Strike did not speak immediately. Then he said, with palpable difficulty:
“Right. Thanks.”
He walked into the inner office, and closed the door.
Robin sat back down at her desk, feeling like an executioner. She could not
settle to anything. She considered knocking on the door again, and offering a cup
of tea, but decided against. For five minutes she restlessly reorganized the items
on her desk, glancing regularly at the closed inner door, until it opened again, and
she jumped, and pretended to be busy at the keyboard.
“Robin, I’m just going to nip out,” he said.
“OK.”
“If I’m not back at five, you can lock up.”
“Yes, of course.”
“See you tomorrow.”
He took down his jacket, and left with a purposeful tread that did not deceive
her.
The roadworks were spreading like a lesion; every day there was an extension
of the mayhem, and of the temporary structures to protect pedestrians and enable
them to pick their way through the devastation. Strike noticed none of it. He
walked automatically over trembling wooden boards to the Tottenham, the place
he associated with escape and refuge.
Like the Ordnance Arms, it was empty but for one other drinker; an old man
just inside the door. Strike bought a pint of Doom Bar and sat down on one of the
low red leather seats against the wall, almost beneath the sentimental Victorian
maid who scattered rosebuds, sweet and silly and simple. He drank as though his
beer was medicine, without pleasure, intent on the result.
Jago Ross. She must have been in touch with him, seeing him, while they were
still living together. Even Charlotte, with all her mesmeric power over men, her
astonishing sure-handed skill, could not have moved from reacquaintance to
engagement in three weeks. She had been meeting Ross on the sly, while
swearing undying love to Strike.
This put a very different light on the bombshell she had dropped on him a
month before the end, and the refusal to show him proof, and the shifting dates,
and the sudden conclusion of it all.