1 The Cuckoo's Calling

9
ROBIN RAN UP THE CLANGING metal stairs in the same low heels that she had worn
the previous day. Twenty-four hours ago, unable to dislodge the word “gumshoe”
from her mind, she had selected her frumpiest footwear for a day’s walking;
today, excited by what she had achieved in the old black shoes, they had taken on
the glamour of Cinderella’s glass slippers. Hardly able to wait to tell Strike
everything she had found out, she had almost run to Denmark Street through the
sunlit rubble. She was confident that any lingering awkwardness after Strike’s
drunken escapades of two nights previously would be utterly eclipsed by their
mutual excitement about her dazzling solo discoveries of the previous day.
But when she reached the second landing, she pulled up short. For the third
time, the glass door was locked, and the office beyond it unlit and silent.
She let herself in and made a swift survey of the evidence. The door to the
inner office stood open. Strike’s camp bed was folded neatly away. There was no
sign of an evening meal in the bin. The computer monitor was dark, the kettle
cold. Robin was forced to conclude that Strike had not (as she phrased it to
herself) spent the night at home.
She hung up her coat, then took from her handbag a small notebook, turned on
the computer and, after a few minutes’ hopeful but fruitless wait, began to type
up a precis of what she had found out the day before. She had barely slept for the
excitement of telling Strike everything in person. Typing it all out was a bitter
anticlimax. Where was he?
As her fingers flew over the keyboard, an answer she did not much like
presented itself for her consideration. Devastated as he had been at the news of
his ex’s engagement, was it not likely that he had gone to beg her not to marry
this other man? Hadn’t he shouted to the whole of Charing Cross Road that
Charlotte did not love Jago Ross? Perhaps, after all, it was true; perhaps Charlotte
had thrown herself into Strike’s arms, and they were now reconciled, lying
asleep, entwined, in the house or flat from which he had been ejected four weeks
ago. Robin remembered Lucy’s oblique inquiries and insinuations about
Charlotte, and suspected that any such reunion would not bode well for her job
security. Not that it matters, she reminded herself, typing furiously, and with
uncharacteristic inaccuracy. You’re leaving in a week’s time. The reflection made
her feel even more agitated.
Alternatively, of course, Strike had gone to Charlotte and she had turned him
away. In that case, the matter of his current whereabouts became a matter of more
pressing, less personal concern. What if he had gone out, unchecked and
unprotected, hell-bent on intoxication again? Robin’s busy fingers slowed and
stopped, mid-sentence. She swiveled on her computer chair to look at the silent
office telephone.