‘Which’ll be when?’ said Strike, who now wanted nothing more than to leave the hospital before they could stick any more probes or needles into him.
‘Shouldn’t be long,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back when we’ve got them.’
The doctor left again, leaving Strike to wonder whether he was indeed deficient in calcium. He ate plenty of cheese, didn’t he? And it wasn’t as though he’d broken any bones lately: surely, if he was calcium deficient, he’d have fractured something in one of his recent falls?
But thinking of these brought back memories of the time he’d fallen downstairs several years previously, and of the time his hamstring had packed up while following a suspect, leaving him crumpled on the pavement. He thought of the junk food that made up most of his diet, of the smoker’s cough that attacked him every morning, and remembered crawling through the gutter last night, pausing only to pick up the cigarette he’d dropped. He felt like calling the doctor back and saying, ‘I know why this has all happened. It’s because I take no care of myself. Write that on the chart and let me go home.’
Seeking distraction from self-recrimination, he picked up his mobile again and scrolled on down through the Twitter comments about Kea Niven.
Max R @mreger#5
replying to @drekscokkk @dickymacD @marnieb89
SJW slags pretend they want pacifists but only real men get them wet #FuckKeaNiven
Max R @mreger#5
replying to @drekscokkk @dickymacD @marnieb89
she fucked Wally because she knew he was a killer. That’s what slags like.
The curtain opened: the doctor was back.
‘All right, your bloods look normal, which is good. It’s possible,’ she added, ‘that these spasms are psychogenic.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They could be caused by psychological factors. Are you under a lot of stress at the moment?’
‘No more than usual,’ said Strike. ‘Any chance of painkillers?’
‘What have you been taking?’
‘Ibuprofen, but they’re having about as much effect as Smarties.’
‘All right, I’ll give you something stronger, just to get you through the next week, but they’re no substitute for rest and ice packs, all right?’
After the doctor had left, and while Strike was pulling his trousers back on, two contradictory thoughts fought for dominance inside his head. His rational side was telling him firmly that the investigation into Anomie was finished, at least as far as their agency was concerned. With the senior partner off his feet for at least a month, and a dearth of available subcontractors, there was simply no way to cover the necessary work.
But that streak of stubborn self-reliance that more than one ex-girlfriend had called arrogance insisted it wasn’t over yet. Barclay hadn’t reported back on Paperwhite, and there was a chance Strike’s forthcoming visit to Grant Ledwell, if handled correctly, might at last lead them to Anomie.
97
Was she a wicked girl? What then?
She didn’t care a pin!
She was not worse than all those men
Who looked so shocked in public, when
They made and shared her sin.
When Strike woke at eight o’clock the following morning, it was to a realisation that the whisky he’d drunk the previous evening definitely didn’t mix well with tramadol. Now he felt sick and unbalanced, sensations that hadn’t entirely worn off by eleven, when he received a phone call from Barclay.
‘News,’ said the Scot.
‘Already?’ said Strike, who’d been hopping unsteadily to the bathroom when Barclay called, and now stood clutching a chair back to balance.
‘Yeah, but it’s no’ whut you’re expecting.’
‘Nicole’s not at her parents’?’
‘She’s here, aye, I’m with her now. She’d like tae talk tae you. FaceTime, preferably.’
‘Great,’ said Strike. ‘Would she be OK if Robin joins the call?’
He heard Barclay relay the question.
‘Aye, she’d be OK wi’ that.’
‘Give me five,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll let Robin know.’
Strike’s phone call found Robin still in her dressing gown in her claustrophobic bedroom at the Z Hotel, even though she’d been hard at work for three hours. What was the point in getting dressed if you never left your room?
‘She wants to speak to us? Fantastic,’ said Robin, jumping up and trying to throw off her dressing gown one-handed.
‘I’ll send you details, just give me a couple of minutes,’ said Strike, who was still desperate for a pee.
Robin hurried to pull on a T-shirt and brush her hair, lest Strike imagine she’d been sleeping all morning, then hurried back to the bed, which was the only place to sit, and opened her laptop. Meanwhile Strike, whose hair looked the same brushed or unbrushed, had exchanged his own shirt for one that looked less crumpled, and sat back down at his small kitchen table.
When the call commenced, both Strike and Robin were surprised to find themselves looking not only at the pre-Raphaelite beauty that was Nicole Crystal, but two more people who could only be her parents. Though neither had red hair, her mother had the same high cheekbones and heart-shaped face, and her strong-jawed father looked precisely as tense and angry as Strike would expect a man to look on finding out that his daughter’s erotic photograph had led to an entanglement with private detectives.
‘Good morning,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks very much for talking to us.’
‘No problem,’ said Nicole cheerfully. Her accent was nowhere near as thick as Barclay’s. The room behind the Crystal family had a stylish simplicity that Strike suspected had been achieved through the use of a very expensive interior decorator. ‘Um… I’m not Paperthing. White. Whatever. In that game.’
She spoke without a trace of constraint, unease or embarrassment. If anything, she seemed intrigued by the situation in which she found herself.
‘I don’t know how my picture got in that game. I seriously don’t. I don’t even like The Ink Black Heart!’
‘Right,’ said Strike, who couldn’t see any tell-tale sign of lying in her merry face. ‘You’ve heard of the cartoon, though?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Nicole brightly. ‘A friend of mine’s big into it. She loves it.’
‘Did this friend ever have access to your photograph?’
‘No, never,’ said Nicole.
‘Could she have got hold of the picture without you knowing?’
‘She’d have had to go into my photos on my phone. Anyway, she’s Christian Union. She’s really, you know… I mean, there’s no way she’d be into that. Sending nudes.’
Judging by the expression on the face of Nicole’s father, he very much wished that the same could be said of his daughter.
‘When was the photo taken, can you remember?’ asked Robin.
‘’Bout… two and a half years ago?’ said Nicole.
‘And did you send it to anyone?’ asked Robin.
‘Yeah,’ said Nicole. ‘My ex-boyfriend. We were dating during our last year in school, but then he went off to study at RADA and I stayed up here to do art.’
‘He’s an actor?’ said Strike.
‘Wants to be, yeah. I sent him pictures while we were doing the long-distance thing for a term.’