Cormoran Strike 05 - Troubled Blood, page 97
“So where—?” asked Robin.
“I’m taking you to the Ritz for champagne,” said Strike.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. It’s why I’m wearing a suit.”
For a moment Robin simply looked at him, then she reached up and hugged him tightly. Surrounded by banked flowers, both remembered the hug they’d shared at the top of the stairs on her wedding day, but this time, Robin turned her face and kissed Strike deliberately on the cheek, lips to stubble.
“Thanks, Strike. This really means a lot.”
And that, thought her partner, as the two of them headed away toward the Ritz in the golden glow of the early evening, really was well worth sixty quid and a bit of an effort…
Out of his subconscious rose the names Mazankov and Krupov, and it was a second or two before he remembered where he’d heard them, why they sounded Cornish, and why he thought of them now. The corners of his mouth twitched, but as Robin didn’t see him smiling, he felt no compulsion to explain.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks, as ever, to my superb editor David Shelley, who always makes the job a pleasure; to my wonderful agent Neil Blair; to the management team who keep me sane, Mark Hutchinson, Rebecca Salt and Nicky Stonehill; to my home and office team, without whom this book would never have been finished: Di Brooks, Simon Brown, Danny Cameron, Angela Milne, Ross Milne, Fi Shapcott and Kaisa Tiensuu; to Neil Murray, the world’s best reader of works-in-progress; to Kenzie, for spotting that cross of the Knights of St. John where I didn’t expect to find one; to William Leone and Lynne Corbett, for inspiration and for checking my calculations; to Russell Townsend, for helping me check out all these locations and for saving my dead laptop; and to Tom Burke, for fascinating Crowleyana and the Atlantis bookshop.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT GALBRAITH is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy. The four previous Strike novels, The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil and Lethal White, topped the national and international bestseller lists, and the series has been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television.
Robert Galbraith, Cormoran Strike 05 - Troubled Blood
