Robin sprinted up the second flight of stairs, passing a dropped mobile, but she had no time to pick it up because she could hear Gus running after her again. On the top landing, a door that had already been attacked with the machete opened, and Robin flung herself through it, realised she was in a bathroom, turned and rammed home the bolt on the door seconds before Gus began throwing his weight against it. As the door shuddered, Robin saw, by the dim glow from a skylight, Katya slumped on the floor beside the bath, blood all over the hands she was pressing against her stomach.
‘Flavia, help your mum – press that over the wound!’ Robin shouted, snatching a towel from the rail and throwing it at the terrified girl. She felt for her own phone, then realised it had been in the jacket Strike had pulled off her.
Gus was now hacking at the bathroom door with the machete. One of the panels splintered and she could see his livid face.
‘I’m going to fuck you then kill you – fucking whore – fucking bitch—’
Robin looked around: a heavy brass pot containing a cactus sat on a washstand. She grabbed it, ready to smash it into his face as he entered, but suddenly he turned away, and with a shock of relief, Robin heard male voices.
‘Easy, Gus – easy, son—’
Looking down at white-faced Flavia, she pressed her finger to her lips, then quietly unbolted the door. Gus had his back to her, facing two men, the larger of whom was wearing pyjamas. Gus was slashing the air between them with the machete.
Robin raised the brass pot and brought it down, hard, on the back of Gus’s head. He staggered as the cactus and earth showered everywhere, and then the two men had him, one seizing the arm holding the machete and snapping it with his knee, so that the knife fell to the floor, the other grabbing Gus’s neck and forcing him face down onto the floor.
‘Call an ambulance,’ panted Robin. ‘He’s stabbed his mother—’
‘We’ve already called,’ said the pyjamaed man, who was now kneeling on the struggling Gus. ‘He stabbed a guy just inside the door.’
‘I’m a doctor,’ said the other man, and he hurried into the bathroom.
But Robin was now hurtling downstairs, jumping steps, bouncing off walls. The rape alarm continued to wail from the sitting room as she passed the open door, flying towards where Strike was slumped against the wall beside the open front door, a hand pressed to his upper chest, smears of blood on the wall behind him.
‘Oh God, Strike—’
As she knelt beside him he gasped,
‘… think… he’s punctured… m’lung…’
Jumping up, Robin opened Gus’s bedroom door and ran inside, looking for something to press to Strike’s back. The place stank: a place where nobody went, where nobody visited, where filthy clothes lay everywhere on the floor. Grabbing a sweatshirt, she dashed back to Strike, making him lean forwards so that she could press the cloth hard against his upper back.
‘What’s… happened?’
‘Inigo dead, Katya stabbed, Flavia OK,’ said Robin rapidly. ‘Don’t talk… Did you let those two men in?’
‘Thought… you didn’t want me… to talk?’
‘You could’ve nodded!’ said Robin furiously. She could feel his warm blood soaking the sweatshirt. ‘Oh, thank Christ…’
Blue flashing lights had appeared in the street at last, and as more and more neighbours gathered to peer at the house, from which the alarm continued to scream, police and paramedics came running up the path, past the fallen sculpture of the woman’s torso lying in broken glass.
CODA
The heart continues increasing in weight,
and also in length, breadth and thickness,
up to an advanced period of life:
this increase is more marked in men than in women.
107
Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart
Divided, neither here nor there at rest!
That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth
That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth,
Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part: —
Oh fool among the foolish, in thy quest.
‘Nicotine patches,’ said Robin, ‘grapes… bananas… nuts… oat bars…’
‘Seriously?’
‘You told me you wanted healthy stuff,’ said Robin over the top of the open supermarket bag.
‘Yeah, I know,’ sighed Strike.
Five days had elapsed since Anomie had been dragged, struggling, out of his parents’ house in handcuffs, but this was only Robin’s second visit to her partner’s hospital bed. Strike’s sister Lucy and his Uncle Ted had dominated visiting hours, and Robin supposed Madeline must have been in regular attendance too. Robin had been desperate to talk to Strike, but her only previous visit had been unsatisfactory, because he’d been full of morphine, dazed and sleepy. Her guilt and anxiety about his injury hadn’t been assuaged by the definite coldness in Lucy’s voice when she had called to tell Robin that Strike would like to see her again today. Evidently Robin wasn’t the only person blaming herself for what had befallen her partner. She wondered why Madeline or Lucy couldn’t have brought Strike the supplies he’d texted her for but, grateful to be permitted to do something for him, she hadn’t queried it.
‘… and also dark chocolate, because I’m not inhumane.’
‘Now you’re talking… Dark, though?’
‘Better for you. Antioxidants. Less sugar. And Pat insisted on making you a fruitcake.’
‘Always liked that woman,’ said Strike, watching Robin put the foil-wrapped, brick-shaped package into his bedside cabinet.
Each of the four men on the small ward had visitors this afternoon. The two elderly patients who were recovering from unspecified operations were talking quietly to their families, but the man who was recovering from a heart attack at the age of thirty-three had just persuaded his girlfriend into a walk where, Strike knew, he was hoping to have a quiet cigarette. The smell of smoke his wardmate trailed in his wake every time he returned from one of these walks was a constant reminder of a habit Strike had now vowed to kick for ever. He’d even advised the young man censoriously that he shouldn’t be smoking after a heart attack. Strike was perfectly aware of his own gross hypocrisy, but sanctimony was the only pleasure in which he could currently indulge.
‘… and these two flasks are strong tea, but before you tell me they taste funny, they’ve got stevia in them instead of sugar.’
‘The fuck’s stevia?’
‘A calorie-free sweetener. And that,’ said Robin, drawing the last item out of the bag, ‘is from Flavia and Katya.’
‘Why’re they giving me a card?’ said Strike, taking it and examining the picture of a puppy holding balloons. ‘You did all the work.’
‘If you hadn’t managed to open that front door and let the neighbours in,’ said Robin, dropping her voice as the wife of one of the old men passed the foot of the bed to refill his water jug, ‘we’d all be dead.’
‘How are they?’
‘Katya’s devastated, unsurprisingly. She’s still on the ward upstairs. I visited her yesterday, that’s when Flavia gave me your card. I don’t think Katya had any idea what… what Gus is. Ryan Murphy told me that when the police searched Gus’s room they found terrible drawings everywhere. Women being knifed and hanged and tortured… He’d put his foot through his cello, too.’