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Troubled Blood
Part Three - 28
The Faerie Queene
Somehow, Pat had managed to track down a vintage film projector. It had been promised for delivery at four, but Strike and Robin were still waiting for it at a quarter to six, at which time Robin told Strike she really did need to leave. She hadn’t yet packed for her trip home to Yorkshire, she wanted an early night before catching the train and, if she was honest, she was feeling insulted by Strike’s gift of unwrapped salted caramel chocolates, which he’d pulled hastily out of a Liberty bag when he saw her, and which she now suspected was the whole lousy reason he had forced her to come back to the office in the first place. As this had necessitated a long trip back to Denmark Street on a packed Tube, it was hard not to feel resentful about the time and trouble she had taken to find and wrap the DVD of two old Tom Waits concerts he’d mentioned wanting to watch, a few weeks previously. Robin had never heard of the singer: it had taken her some trouble to identify the man Strike had been talking about, and the concerts he’d never seen as those on No Visitors After Midnight. And in return, she got chocolates she was sure had been grabbed at random.
She left Strike’s present behind, untouched, in Max’s kitchen, before boarding the crowded train to Harrogate next morning. As she traveled north in her mercifully pre-booked seat, Robin tried to tell herself that her feeling of emptiness was merely tiredness. Christmas at home would be a wonderful break. She’d be meeting her new niece for the first time; there’d be lie-ins and home-cooked food and hours in front of the telly.