Page 269 of Troubled Blood

“D’you know what I did last night?” said Strike, ignoring this interjection. “Looked up Kara Wolfson’s birth certificate online.”

“Why? Oh,” said Robin, and Strike could hear her smiling, “star sign?”

“Yeah. I know it breaks the means before motive rule,” he added, before Robin could point it out, “but it struck me that someone might’ve told Margot about Kara’s murder. Doctors know things, don’t they? In and out of people’s houses, having confidential consultations. They’re like priests. They hear secrets.”

“You were checking whether Kara was a Scorpio,” said Robin. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Exactly. And wondering whether Ricci looked into that party to show his goons which woman they were going to pick off.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Was Kara a Scorpio?”

“Oh. No. Taurus—seventeenth of May.”

Strike now heard pages turning at Robin’s end of the call.

“Which means, according to Schmidt…” said Robin, and there was a brief pause, “… she was Cetus.”

“Huh,” said Strike, who’d now finished his cigarette. “Well, wish me luck. I’m going in.”

“Good l—”

“Cormoran Strike!” said somebody gleefully, behind him.

As Strike hung up on Robin, a slender black woman in a cream coat came alongside him, beaming.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “Selly Oak. I’m—”

“Marjorie!” said Strike, the memory coming back to him. “Marjorie the physiotherapist. How are you? What’re you—?”

“I do a few hours in the old folks’ home up the road!” said Marjorie. “And look at you, all famous…”

Fuck.

It took Strike twenty-five minutes to extricate himself from her.

“… so that’s bloody that,” he told Robin later at the office. “I pretended I was in the area to visit my accountant, but if she’s working at St. Peter’s, there’s no chance of us getting in to see Ricci.”

“No chance of you getting in there—”

“I’ve already told you,” said Strike sharply. The state of Robin’s face was a visible warning against recklessness, of the perils of failing to think through consequences. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

“I’ve got Miss Jones on the line,” Pat called from the outer office.

“Put her through to me,” said Robin, as Strike mouthed “thanks.”

Robin talked to Miss Jones while continuing to readjust the rota on her computer, which, given Robin’s own temporary unavailability for surveillance, and Morris’s permanent absence, was like trying to balance a particularly tricky linear equation. She spent the next forty minutes making vague sounds of agreement whenever Miss Jones paused to draw breath. Their client’s objective, Robin could tell, was staying on the line long enough for Strike to come back to the office. Finally, Robin got rid of her by pretending to get a message from Pat saying Strike would be out all day.

It was her only lie of the day, Robin thought, while Strike and Pat discussed Barclay’s expenses in the outer office. Given that Strike was adept himself at avoiding pledging his own word when he didn’t want to, he really ought to have noticed that Robin had made no promises whatsoever about staying away from Mucky Ricci.

61

Then when the second watch was almost past,

That brasen dore flew open, and in went Bold Britomart…

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