Troubled Blood

31

Strike’s gastric upset added days to his illness, and he spent New Year’s Eve in bed, reliant on takeaway pizzas but hardly able to touch them when they arrived. For the first time in his life he didn’t fancy chocolate, because the truffles he’d consumed after his out-of-date chicken had been the first things to reappear during his prolonged vomiting. The only enjoyable thing he did was to watch the DVD of Tom Waits’s No Visitors After Midnight, the taped concerts Robin had bought him for Christmas, which he finally unwrapped on New Year’s Day. His text thanking her elicited a short “you’re welcome.”

By the time he felt fit enough to travel down to Cornwall, clutching his belated Christmas gifts, Strike had lost over a stone, and this was the first thing an anxious Joan commented on when he finally appeared at her house in St. Mawes, full of apologies for his absence at Christmas.

If he’d waited one more day to come down to Joan and Ted’s, he’d have been unable to reach them, because no sooner had he arrived than a vicious weather front crashed over the south of Britain. Storms lashed the Cornish coast, train services were suspended, tons of sand washed off the beaches and flooding turned the roads of coastal towns into freezing canals. The Cornish peninsula was temporarily cut off from the rest of England, and while St. Mawes had not fared as badly as Mevagissey and Fowey along the coast, sandbags had appeared at the entrances of buildings on the seafront. Waves smashed against the harbor wall, khaki and gunmetal gray. The tourists had melted out of sight like the seals: locals in sodden oilskins greeted each other with nods as they made their way in and out of local shops. All the gaudy prettiness of summertime St. Mawes was wiped away and, like an actress when the stage-paint is removed, the town’s true self was revealed, a place of hard stone and stiff backbone.

Though pelted with rain and pummeled by gales, Ted and Joan’s house was, mercifully, set on high ground. Trapped there, Strike remembered Lucy telling him he was better suited to a crisis than to keeping a commitment going, and knew that there was truth in the accusation. He was well suited to emergencies, to holding his nerve, to quick thinking and fast reactions, but found the qualities demanded by Joan’s slow decline harder to summon.

Strike missed the absence of an overriding objective, in pursuit of which he could shelve his sadness; missed the imperative to dismiss pain and distress in the service of something greater, which had sustained him in the military. None of his old coping strategies were admissible in Joan’s kitchen, beside the flowered casserole dishes and her old oven gloves. Dark humor and stoicism would be considered unfeeling by the kindly neighbors who wanted him to share and show his pain. Craving diversionary action, Strike was instead expected to provide small talk and homely acts of consideration.

Joan was quietly delighted: hours and days alone with her nephew were compensation for the Christmas he’d missed. Resigned, Strike gave her what she wanted: as much companionship as possible, sitting with her and talking to her all day long. Chemotherapy had been discontinued, because Joan wasn’t strong enough for it: she wore a headscarf over the wispy hair she had left, and her husband and nephew watched anxiously as she picked at food, and held themselves constantly ready to assist her when she moved between rooms. Either of them could have carried her with ease, now.

As the days went by, Strike noticed another change in his aunt that surprised him. Just as her storm-ravaged birthplace had revealed a different aspect in adversity, so an unfamiliar Joan was emerging, a Joan who asked open-ended questions that were not designed to elicit confirmation of her own biases, or thinly veiled requests for comforting lies.

“Why haven’t you ever married, Cormoran?” she asked her nephew at midday on Saturday morning, when they sat together in the sitting room, Joan in the comfiest armchair, Strike on the sofa. The lamp beside her, which they’d turned on because of the overcast, rainy day, made her skin look as finely translucent as tissue paper.

Strike was so conditioned to tell Joan what she wanted to hear that he was at a loss for an answer. The honest response he’d given Dave Polworth seemed impossible here. She’d probably take it as her fault if he told her that he wasn’t the marrying kind; she must have done something wrong, failed to teach him that love was essential to happiness.

“Dunno,” he said, falling back on cliché. “Maybe I haven’t met the right woman.”

“If you’re waiting for perfection,” said the new Joan, “it doesn’t exist.”

“You don’t wish I’d married Charlotte, do you?” he asked her. He knew perfectly well that both Joan and Lucy considered Charlotte little short of a she-devil.

“I most certainly don’t,” said Joan, with a spark of her old fight, and they smiled at each other.

Ted popped his head around the door.

“That’s Kerenza here, love,” he said. “Her car’s just pulled up.”

The Macmillan nurse, whom Strike had met on his first day there, was a blessing such as he could never have imagined. A slender, freckled woman his age, she brought into the house no aura of death, but of life continuing, simply with more comfort and support. Strike’s own prolonged exposure to the medical profession had inured him to a certain brand of hearty, impersonal cheerfulness, but Kerenza seemed to see Ted and Joan as individuals, not as simple-minded children, and he heard her talking to Ted, the ex-lifeguard, about people trying to take selfies with their backs to the storm waves while she took off her raincoat in the kitchen.

“Exactly. Don’t understand the sea, do they? Respect it, or stay well away, my dad would’ve said… Morning, Joan,” she said, coming into the room. “Hello, Cormoran.”

“Morning, Kerenza,” said Strike, getting to his feet. “I’ll get out of the way.”

“And how’re you feeling today, my love?” the nurse asked Joan.

“Not too bad,” said Joan. “I’m just a bit…”

She paused, to let her nephew pass out of earshot. As Strike closed the door on the two women, he heard more crunching footsteps on the gravel path outside. Ted, who was reading the local paper at the table, looked up.

“Who’s that, now?”

A moment later, Dave Polworth appeared at the glass panel in the back door, a large rucksack on his back. He entered, rainswept and grinning.

“Morning, Diddy,” he said, and they exchanged the handshake and hug that had become the standard greeting in their later years. “Morning, Ted.”

“What’re you doing here?” asked Ted.

Polworth swung his rucksack off, undid it and lifted out a couple of polythene-wrapped, frozen dishes onto the table.

“Penny baked a couple of casseroles. I’m gonna get some provisions in, wanted to know what you needed.”

The flame of pure, practical kindness that burned in Dave Polworth had never been more clearly visible to Strike, except perhaps on his very first day at primary school, when the diminutive Polworth had taken Strike under his protection.

“You’re a good lad,” said Ted, moved. “Say thanks very much to Penny, won’t you?”

“Yeah, she sent her love and all that,” said Polworth dismissively.

“Wanna keep me company while I have a smoke?” Strike asked him.

“Go on, then,” said Polworth.

“Use the shed,” suggested Ted.

So Strike and Polworth headed together across the waterlogged garden, heads bowed against the strong wind and rain, and entered Ted’s shed. Strike lit up with relief.

“You been on a diet?” asked Polworth, looking Strike up and down.

“Flu and food poisoning.”

“Oh, yeah, Lucy said you’d been ill.” Polworth jerked his head in the direction of Joan’s window. “How is she?”

“Not great,” said Strike.

“How long you down for?”

“Depends on the weather. Listen, seriously, I really appreciate everything you’ve been—”

“Shut up, you ponce.”

“Can I ask another favor?”

“Go on.”

“Persuade Ted to get a pint with you this lunchtime. He needs to get out of this house for a bit. He’ll do it if he knows I’m with her, but otherwise he won’t leave.”

“Consider it done,” said Polworth.

“You’re—”

“—a prince among men, yeah, I know I am. Arsenal through to the knockout stages, then?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Bayern Munich next, though.”

He’d missed watching his team qualify before Christmas, because he’d been tailing Shifty through the West End. The Champions League, which should have been a pleasure and a distraction, was failing to grip him as it usually did.

“Robin running things in London while you’re down here?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

She’d texted him earlier, asking for a brief chat about the Bamborough case. He’d replied that he’d call her when he had a moment. He, too, had news on the case, but Margot Bamborough had been missing for nearly forty years and, like Kerenza the nurse, Strike was currently prioritizing the living.

When he’d finished his cigarette, they returned to the house to find Ted and Kerenza in conversation in the kitchen.

“She’d rather talk to you than to me today,” said Kerenza, smiling at Strike as she shrugged on her raincoat. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Ted.”

As she moved toward the back door, Polworth said,

“Ted, come and have a pint.”

“Oh, no, thanks, lad,” said Ted. “I’ll bide here just now.”

Kerenza stopped with her hand on the door knob.

“That’s a very good idea. Get a bit of fresh air, Ted—fresh water, today, I should say,” she added, as the rain clattered on the roof. “Bye-bye, now.”

She left. Ted required a little more persuasion, but finally agreed that he’d join Polworth for a sandwich at the Victory. Once they’d gone, Strike took the local paper off the table and carried it back into the sitting room.

He and Joan discussed the flooding, but the pictures of waves battering Mevagissey meant far less to her than they would have a couple of months ago. Strike could tell that Joan’s mind was on the personal, not the general.

“What does my horoscope say?” she asked, as he turned the page of the paper.

“I didn’t know you believed in that stuff, Joan.”

“Don’t know whether I do or not,” said Joan. “I always look, though.”

“You’re…” he said, trying to remember her birthday. He knew it was in the summer.

“Cancer,” she said, and then she gave a little laugh. “In more ways than one.”

Strike didn’t smile.

“‘Good time for shaking up your routine,’” he informed her, scanning her horoscope so he could censor out anything depressing, “‘so don’t dismiss new ideas out of hand. Jupiter retrograde encourages spiritual growth.’”

“Huh,” said Joan. After a short pause, she said, “I don’t think I’ll be here for my next birthday, Corm.”

The words hit him like a punch in the diaphragm.

“Don’t say that.”

“If I can’t say it to you, who can I say it to?”

Her eyes, which had always been a pale forget-me-not blue, were faded now. She’d never spoken to him like this before, as an equal. Always, she’d sought to stand slightly above him, so that from her perspective the six-foot-three soldier might still be her little boy.

“I can’t say it to Ted or Lucy, can I?” she said. “You know what they’re like.”

“Yeah,” he said, with difficulty.

“Afterward… you’ll look after Ted, won’t you? Make sure you see him. He does love you so much.”

Fuck.

For so long, she’d demanded a kind of falseness from all around her, a rose-tinted view of everything, and now at last she offered simple honesty and plain-speaking and he wished more than anything that he could be simply nodding along to news of some neighborhood scandal. Why hadn’t he visited them more often?

“I will, of course,” he said.

“I want the funeral at St. Mawes church,” she said quietly, “where I was christened. But I don’t want to be buried, because it’d have to be in the cemetery all the way up in Truro. Ted’ll wear himself out, traveling up and down, taking me flowers. I know him.

“We always said we wanted to be together, afterward, but we never made a plan and he won’t talk to me about it now. So, I’ve thought about it, Corm, and I want to be cremated. You’ll make sure this happens, won’t you? Because Ted starts crying every time I try and talk about it and Lucy just won’t listen.”

Strike nodded and tried to smile.

“I don’t want the family at the cremation. I hate cremations, the curtains and the conveyor belt. You say goodbye to me at the church, then take Ted to the pub and let the undertakers deal with the crematorium bit, all right? Then, after, you can pick up my ashes, take me out on Ted’s boat and scatter me in the sea. And when his turn comes, you can do the same for Ted, and we’ll be together. You and Lucy won’t want to be worrying about looking after graves all the way from London. All right?”

The plan had so much of the Joan he knew in it: it was full of practical kindness and forethought, but he hadn’t expected the final touch of the ashes floating away on the tide, no tombstone, no neat dates, instead a melding with the element that had dominated her and Ted’s lives, perched on their seaside town, in thrall to the ocean, except during that strange interlude where Ted, in revolt against his own father, had disappeared for several years into the military police.

“All right,” he said, with difficulty.

She sank back a little in her chair with an air of relief at having got this off her chest, and smiled at him.

“It’s so lovely, having you here.”

Over the past few days he’d become used to her short reveries and her non-sequiturs, so it was less of a surprise than it might have been to hear her say, a minute later,

“I wish I’d met your Robin.”

Strike, whose mind’s eye was still following Joan’s ashes into the sunset, pulled himself together.

“I think you’d like her,” he said. “I’m sure she’d like you.”

“Lucy says she’s pretty.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“Poor girl,” murmured Joan. He wondered why. Of course, the knife attack had been reported in the press, when Robin had given evidence against the Shacklewell Ripper.

“Funny, you talking about horoscopes,” Strike said, trying to ease Joan off Robin, and funerals, and death. “We’re investigating an old disappearance just now. The bloke who was in charge of the case…”

He’d never before shared details of an investigation with Joan, and he wondered why not, now he saw her rapt attention.

“But I remember that doctor!” she said, more animated than he had seen her in days. “Margot Bamborough, yes! She had a baby at home…”

“Well, that baby’s our client,” said Strike. “Her name’s Anna. She and her partner have got a holiday home in Falmouth.”

“That poor family,” said Joan. “Never knowing… and so the officer thought the answer was in the stars?”

“Yep,” said Strike. “Convinced the killer was a Capricorn.”

“Ted’s a Capricorn.”

“Thanks for the tip-off,” said Strike seriously, and she gave a little laugh. “D’you want more tea?”

While the kettle boiled, Strike checked his texts. Barclay had sent an update on Two-Times’ girlfriend, but the most recent message was from an unknown number, and he opened it first.

Hi Cormoran, it’s your half-sister, Prudence Donleavy, here. Al gave me your number. I do hope you’ll take this in the spirit it’s meant. Let me firstly say that I absolutely understand and sympathize with your reasons for not wanting to join us for the Deadbeats anniversary/album party. You may or may not know that my own journey to a relationship with Dad has been in many ways a difficult one, but ultimately I feel that connecting with him—and, yes, forgiving him—has been an enriching experience. We all hope very much that you’ll reconsider—

“What’s the matter?” said Joan.

She’d followed him into the kitchen, shuffling, slightly stooped.

“What are you doing? I can fetch anything you want—”

“I was going to show you where I hide the chocolate biscuits. If Ted knows, he scoffs the lot, and the doctor’s worried about his blood pressure. What were you reading? I know that look. You were angry.”

He didn’t know whether her new appreciation for honesty would stretch as far as his father, but somehow, with the wind and rain whipping around them, an air of the confessional had descended upon the house. He told her about the text.

“Oh,” said Joan. She pointed at a Tupperware box on a top shelf. “The biscuits are in there.”

They returned to the sitting room with the biscuits, which she’d insisted he put on a plate. Some things never changed.

“You’ve never met Prudence, have you?” asked Joan, when she was resettled in her chair.

“Haven’t met Prudence, or the eldest, Maimie, or the youngest, Ed,” said Strike, trying to sound matter of fact.

Joan said nothing for a minute or so, then a great sigh inflated, then collapsed, her thin chest, and she said,

“I think you should go to your father’s party, Corm.”

“Why?” said Strike. The monosyllable rang in his ears with an adolescent, self-righteous fury. To his slight surprise, she smiled at him.

“I know what went on,” she said. “He behaved very badly, but he’s still your father.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Strike. “Ted’s my dad.”

He’d never said it out loud before. Tears filled Joan’s eyes.

“He’d love to hear you say that,” she said softly. “Funny, isn’t it… years ago, years and years, I was just a girl, and I went to see a proper gypsy fortune teller. They used to camp up the road. I thought she’d tell me lots of nice things. You expect them to, don’t you? You’ve paid your money. D’you know what she said?”

Strike shook his head.

“‘You’ll never have children.’ Just like that. Straight out.”

“Well, she got that wrong, didn’t she?” said Strike.

Tears started again in Joan’s bleached eyes. Why had he never said these things before, Strike asked himself. It would have been so easy to give her pleasure, and instead he’d held tightly to his divided loyalties, angry that he had to choose, to label, and in doing so, to betray. He reached for her hand and she squeezed it surprisingly tightly.

“You should go to that party, Corm. I think your father’s at the heart of… of a lot of things. I wish,” she added, after a short pause, “you had someone to look after you.”

“Doesn’t work that way these days, Joan. Men are supposed to be able to look after themselves—in more ways than one,” he added, smiling.

“Pretending you don’t need things… it’s just silly,” she said quietly. “What does your horoscope say?”

He picked up the paper again and cleared his throat.

“‘Sagittarius: with your ruler retrograde, you may find you aren’t your usual happy-go-lucky self…’”

32

It was three o’clock in the afternoon and Robin, who was sitting in her Land Rover close to the nondescript house in Stoke Newington that Strike had watched before Christmas, had seen nothing of interest since arriving in the street at nine o’clock that morning. As rain drizzled down her windscreen she half-wished she smoked, just for something to do.

She’d identified the blonde owner-occupier of the house online. Her name was Elinor Dean, and she was a divorcée who lived alone. Elinor was definitely home, because Robin had seen her pass in front of a window two hours previously, but the squally weather seemed to be keeping her inside. Nobody had visited the house all day, least of all Shifty’s Boss. Perhaps they were relatives, after all, and his pre-Christmas visit was simply one of those things you did in the festive season: pay social debts, give presents, check in. The patting on the head might have been a private joke. It certainly didn’t seem to suggest anything sexual, criminal or deviant, which was what they were looking for.

Robin’s mobile rang.

“Hi.”

“Can you talk?” asked Strike.

He was walking down the steeply sloping street where Ted and Joan’s house lay, leaning on the collapsible walking stick he’d brought with him, knowing that the roads would be wet and possibly slippery. Ted was back in the house; they’d just helped Joan upstairs for a nap, and Strike, who wanted to smoke and didn’t much fancy the shed again, had decided to go for a short walk in the relentless rain.

“Yes,” said Robin. “How’s Joan?”

“Same,” said Strike. He didn’t feel like talking about it. “You said you wanted a Bamborough chat.”

“Yeah,” said Robin. “I’ve got good news, no news and bad news.”

“Bad first,” said Strike.

The sea was still turbulent, spray exploding into the air above the wall of the dock. Turning right, he headed into the town.

“The Ministry of Justice isn’t going to let you interview Creed. The letter arrived this morning.”

“Ah,” said Strike. The teeming rain ripped through the bluish haze of his cigarette smoke, destroying it. “Well, can’t say I’m surprised. What’s it say?”

“I’ve left it back at the office,” said Robin, “but the gist is that his psychiatrists agree non-cooperation isn’t going to change at this stage.”

“Right,” said Strike. “Well, it was always a long shot.”

But Robin could hear his disappointment, and empathized. They were five months into the case, they had no new leads worth the name, and now that the possibility of interviewing Creed had vanished, she somehow felt that she and Strike were pointlessly searching rockpools, while yards away the great white slid away, untouchable, into dark water.

“And I went back to Amanda White, who’s now Amanda Laws, who thought she saw Margot at the printers’ window. She wanted money to talk, remember? I offered her expenses if she wants to come to the office—she’s in London, it wouldn’t be much—and she’s thinking it over.”

“Big of her,” grunted Strike. “What’s the good news?” he asked.

“Anna’s persuaded her stepmother to speak to us. Cynthia.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but alone. Roy still doesn’t know anything about us,” said Robin. “Cynthia’s meeting us behind his back.”

“Well, Cynthia’s something,” said Strike. “A lot, actually,” he added, after a moment’s reflection.

His feet were taking him automatically toward the pub, his wet trouser leg chilly on his remaining ankle.

“Where are we going to meet her?”

“It can’t be at their house, because Roy doesn’t know. She’s suggesting Hampton Court, because she works part time as a guide there.”

“A guide, eh? Reminds me: any news of Postcard?”

“Barclay’s at the gallery today,” said Robin. “He’s going to try and get pictures of her.”

“And what’re Morris and Hutchins up to?” Strike asked, now walking carefully up the wide, slippery steps that led to the pub.

“Morris is on Two-Times’ girl, who hasn’t put a foot wrong—Two-Times really is out of luck this time—and Hutchins is on Twinkletoes. Speaking of which, you’re scheduled to submit a final report on Twinkletoes next Friday. I’ll see the client for you, shall I?”

“That’d be great, thanks,” said Strike, stepping inside the Victory with a sense of relief. The rain dripped off him as he removed his coat. “I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to get back. You probably saw, the trains have been suspended.”

“Don’t worry about the agency. We’ve got everything covered. Anyway, I haven’t finished giving you the Bamborough—oh, hang on,” said Robin.

“D’you need to go?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Robin.

She’d just seen Elinor Dean’s front door open. The plump blonde emerged wearing a hooded coat which, conveniently, circumscribed her field of vision. Robin slid out of the Land Rover, closed the door and set off in pursuit, still speaking on her mobile.

“Our blonde friend’s on the move,” she said quietly.

“Did you just say you’ve got more good news on Bamborough?” asked Strike.

He’d reached the bar, and by simply pointing, was able to secure himself a pint, which he paid for, then carried to the corner table at which he’d sat with Polworth in the summer.

“I have,” said Robin, turning the corner at the end of the road, the oblivious blonde walking ahead of her. “Wish I could say I’d found Douthwaite or Satchwell, but the last person to see Margot alive is something, right?”

“You’ve found Gloria Conti?” said Strike sharply.

“Don’t get too excited,” said Robin, still trudging along in the rain. Elinor seemed to be heading for the shops. Robin could see a Tesco in the distance. “I haven’t managed to speak to her yet, but I’m almost sure it’s her. I found the family in the 1961 census: mother, father, one older son and a daughter, Gloria, middle name Mary. By the looks of things, Gloria’s now in France, Nîmes, to be precise, and married to a Frenchman. She’s dropped the ‘Gloria,’ and she’s now going by Mary Jaubert. She’s got a Facebook page, but it’s private. I found her through a genealogical website. One of her English cousins is trying to put together a family tree. Right date of birth and everything.”

“Bloody good work,” said Strike. “You know, I’m not sure she isn’t even more interesting than Satchwell or Douthwaite. Last to see Margot alive. Close to her. The only living person to have seen Theo, as well.”

Strike’s enthusiasm did much to allay Robin’s suspicion that he’d added himself to her action points because he thought she wasn’t up to the job.

“I’ve tried to ‘friend’ her on Facebook,” Robin continued, “but had no response yet. If she doesn’t answer, I know the company her husband works for, and I thought I might email him to get a message to her. I thought it was more tactful to try the private route first, though.”

“I agree,” said Strike. He took a sip of Doom Bar. It was immensely consoling to be in the warm, dry pub, and to be talking to Robin.

“And there’s one more thing,” said Robin. “I think I might have found out which van was seen speeding away from Clerkenwell Green the evening Margot disappeared.”

“What? How?” said Strike, stunned.

“It occurred to me over Christmas that what people thought might’ve been a flower painted on the side could have been a sun,” she said. “You know. The planet.”

“It’s technically a st—”

“Sod off, I know it’s a star.”

The hooded blonde, as Robin had suspected, was heading into Tesco. Robin followed, enjoying the warm blast of heat as she entered the shop, though the floor underfoot was slippery and dirty.

“There was a wholefoods shop in Clerkenwell in 1974 whose logo was a sun. I found an ad for it in the British Library newspaper archive, I checked with Companies House and I’ve managed to talk to the director, who’s still alive. I know I couldn’t talk to him if he weren’t,” she added, forestalling any more pedantry.

“Bloody hell, Robin,” said Strike, as the rain battered the window behind him. Good news and Doom Bar were certainly helping his mood. “This is excellent work.”

“Thank you,” said Robin. “And get this: he sacked the bloke he had making deliveries, he thinks in mid-1975, because the guy got done for speeding while driving the van. He remembered his name—Dave Underwood—but I haven’t had time to—”

Elinor turned abruptly, midway up the aisle of tinned foods, and walked back toward her. Robin pretended to be absorbed in choos­ing a packet of rice. Letting her quarry pass, she finished her sentence.

“—haven’t had time to look for him yet.”

“Well, you’re putting me to shame,” admitted Strike, rubbing his tired eyes. Though he now had a spare bedroom to himself rather than the sofa, the old mattress was only a small step up in terms of comfort, its broken springs jabbing him in the back and squealing every time he turned over. “The best I’ve done is to find Ruby Elliot’s daughter.”

“Ruby-who-saw-the-two-women-struggling-by-the-phone-boxes?” Robin recited, watching her blonde target consulting a shopping list before disappearing down a new aisle.

“That’s the one. Her daughter emailed to say she’s happy to have a chat, but we haven’t fixed up a time yet. And I called Janice,” said Strike, “mainly because I couldn’t face Irene, to see whether she can remember the so-called Applethorpe’s real name, but she’s in Dubai, visiting her son for six weeks. Her answer machine message literally says ‘Hi, I’m in Dubai, visiting Kevin for six weeks.’ Might drop her a line advising her it’s not smart to advertise to random callers that you’ve left your house empty.”

“So did you call Irene?” Robin asked. Elinor, she saw, was now looking at baby food.

“Not yet,” said Strike. “But I have—”

At that very moment, a bleeping on his phone told him that someone else was trying to reach him.

“Robin, that might be him. I’ll call you back.”

Strike switched lines.

“Cormoran Strike.”

“Yes, hello,” said Gregory Talbot. “It’s me—Greg Talbot. You asked me to call.”

Gregory sounded worried. Strike couldn’t blame him. He’d hoped to divest himself of a problem by handing the can of old film to Strike.

“Yeah, Gregory, thanks very much for calling me back. I had a couple more questions, hope that’s OK.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve been through your father’s notebook and I wanted to ask whether your father happened to know, or mention, a man called Niccolo Ricci? Nicknamed ‘Mucky’?”

“Mucky Ricci?” said Gregory. “No, he didn’t really know him. I remember Dad talking about him, though. Big in the Soho sex shop scene, if that’s the one I’m thinking of?”

It sounded as though talking about the gangster gave Gregory a small frisson of pleasure. Strike had met this attitude before, and not just in members of the fascinated public. Even police and lawyers were not immune to the thrill of coming within the orbit of criminals who had money and power to rival their own. He’d known senior officers talk with something close to admiration of the orga­nized crime they were attempting to prevent, and barristers whose delight at drinking with high-profile clients went far beyond the hope of an anecdote to tell at a dinner party. Strike suspected that to Gregory Talbot, Mucky Ricci was a name from a fondly remembered childhood, a romantic figure belonging to a lost era, when his father was a sane copper and a happy family man.

“Yeah, that’s the bloke,” said Strike. “Well, it looks as though Mucky Ricci was hanging around Margot Bamborough’s practice, and your father seems to have known about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Strike, “and it seems odd that information never made it into the official records.”

“Well, Dad was ill,” said Gregory defensively. “You’ve seen the notebook. He didn’t know what he was up to, half the time.”

“I appreciate that,” said Strike, “but once he’d recovered, what was his attitude to the evidence he’d collected while on the case?”

“What d’you mean?”

Gregory sounded suspicious now, as though he feared Strike was leading him somewhere he might not want to go.

“Well, did he think it was all worthless, or—?”

“He’d been ruling out suspects on the basis of their star signs,” said Gregory quietly. “He thought he saw a demon in the spare room. What d’you think he thought? He was… he was ashamed. It wasn’t his fault, but he never got over it. He wanted to go back and make it right, but they wouldn’t let him, they forced him out. The Bamborough case tainted everything for him, all his memories of the force. His mates were all coppers and he wouldn’t see them any more.”

“He felt resentful at the way he was treated, did he?”

“I wouldn’t say—I mean, he was justified, I’d say, to feel they hadn’t treated him right,” said Gregory.

“Did he ever look over his notes, afterward, to make sure he’d put everything in there in the official record?”

“I don’t know,” said Gregory, a little testy now. “I think his attitude was, they’ve got rid of me, they think I’m a big problem, so let Lawson deal with it.”

“How did your father get on with Lawson?”

“Look, what’s all this about?” Before Strike could answer, Gregory said, “Lawson made it quite clear to my father that his day was done. He didn’t want him hanging around, didn’t want him anywhere near the case. Lawson did his best to completely discredit my father, I don’t mean just because of his illness. I mean, as a man, and as the officer he’d been before he got ill. He told everyone on the case they were to stay away from my father, even out of working hours. So if information didn’t get passed on, it’s down to Lawson as much as him. Dad might’ve tried and been rebuffed, for all I know.”

“I can certainly see it from your father’s point of view,” said Strike. “Very difficult situation.”

“Well, exactly,” said Gregory, slightly placated, as Strike had intended.

“To go back to Mucky Ricci,” Strike said, “as far as you know, your father never had direct dealings with him?”

“No,” said Gregory, “but Dad’s best mate on the force did, name of Browning. He was Vice Squad. He raided one of Mucky’s clubs, I know that. I remember Dad talking about it.”

“Where’s Browning now? Can I talk to him?”

“He’s dead,” said Gregory. “What exactly—?”

“I’d like to know where that film you passed to me came from, Gregory.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Gregory. “Dad just came home with it one day, Mum says.”

“Any idea when this was?” asked Strike, hoping not to have to find a polite way of asking whether Talbot had been quite sane at the time.

“It would’ve been while Dad was working on the Bamborough case. Why?”

Strike braced himself.

“I’m afraid we’ve had to turn the film over to the police.”

Hutchins had volunteered to take care of this, on the morning that Strike had headed down to Cornwall. As an ex-policeman who still had good contacts on the force, he knew where to take it and how to make sure it got seen by the right people. Strike had asked Hutchins not to talk to Robin about the film, or to tell her what he’d done with it. She was currently in ignorance of the contents.

“What?” said Gregory, horrified. “Why?”

“It isn’t porn,” said Strike, muttering now, in deference to the elderly couple who had just entered the Victory and stood, disorientated by the storm outside, dripping and blinking mere feet from his table. “It’s a snuff movie. Someone filmed a woman being gang-raped and stabbed.”

There was another silence on the end of the phone. Strike watched the elderly couple shuffle to the bar, the woman taking off her plastic rain hat as she went.

“Actually killed?” said Gregory, his voice rising an octave. “I mean… it’s definitely real?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

He wasn’t about to give details. He’d seen people dying and dead: the kind of gore you saw on horror movies wasn’t the same, and even without a soundtrack, he wouldn’t quickly forget the hooded, naked woman twitching on the floor of the warehouse, while her killers watched her die.

“And I suppose you’ve told them where you got it?” said Gregory, more panicked than angry.

“I’m afraid I had to,” said Strike. “I’m sorry, but some of the men involved could still be alive, could still be charged. I can’t sit on something like that.”

“I wasn’t concealing anything, I didn’t even know it was—”

“I wasn’t meaning to suggest you knew, or you meant to hide it,” said Strike.

“If they think—we foster kids, Strike—”

“I’ve told the police you handed it over to me willingly, without knowing what was on there. I’ll stand up in court and testify that I believe you were in total ignorance of what was in your attic. Your family’s had forty-odd years to destroy it and you didn’t. Nobody’s going to blame you,” said Strike, even though he knew perfectly well that the tabloids might not take that view.

“I was afraid something like this was going to happen,” said Gregory, now sounding immensely stressed. “I’ve been worried, ever since you came round for coffee. Dragging all this stuff up again…”

“You told me your father would want to see the case solved.”

There was another silence, and then Gregory said,

“He would. But not at the cost of my mother’s peace of mind, or me and my wife having our foster kids taken off us.”

A number of rejoinders occurred to Strike, some of them unkind. It was far from the first time he’d encountered the tendency to believe the dead would have wanted whatever was most convenient to the living.

“I had a responsibility to hand that film over to the police once I’d seen what was on it. As I say, I’ll make it clear to anyone who asks that you weren’t trying to hide anything, that you handed it over willingly.”

There was little more to say. Gregory, clearly still unhappy, rang off, and Strike called Robin back.

She was still in Tesco, now buying a packet of nuts and raisins, chewing gum and some shampoo for herself while, two tills away, the object of her surveillance bought baby powder, baby food and dummies along with a range of groceries.

“Hi,” Robin said into her mobile, turning to look out of the shopfront window while the blonde walked past her.

“Hi,” said Strike. “That was Gregory Talbot.”

“What did he—? Oh yes,” said Robin with sudden interest, turning to follow the blonde out of the store, “what was on that can of film? I never asked. Did you get the projector working?”

“I did,” said Strike. “I’ll tell you about the film when I see you. Listen, there’s something else I wanted to say. Leave Mucky Ricci to me, all right? I’ve got Shanker putting out a few feelers. I don’t want you looking for him, or making inquiries.”

“Couldn’t I—?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“All right, calm down!” said Robin, surprised. “Surely Ricci must be ninety-odd by—?”

“He’s got sons,” said Strike. “Sons Shanker’s scared of.”

“Oh,” said Robin, who fully appreciated the implication.

“Exactly. So we’re agreed?”

“We are,” Robin assured him.

After Strike had hung up, Robin followed Elinor back out into the rain, and back to her terraced house. When the front door had closed again, Robin got back into her Land Rover and ate her packet of dried fruit and nuts, watching the front door.

It had occurred to her in Tesco that Elinor might be a childminder, given the nature of her purchases, but as the afternoon shaded into evening, no parents came to drop off their charges, and no baby’s wail was heard on the silent street.

33

Now that the blonde in Stoke Newington had also become a person of interest, the Shifty case became a two-to-three-person job. The agency was watching Elinor Dean’s house in addition to tracking the movements of Shifty’s Boss and Shifty himself, who continued to go about his business, enjoying the fat salary to which nobody felt he was entitled, but remaining tight-lipped about the hold he had over his boss. Meanwhile, Two-Times was continuing to pay for surveillance on his girlfriend more, it seemed, out of desperation than hope, and Postcard had gone suspiciously quiet. Their only suspect, the owlish guide at the National Portrait Gallery, had vanished from her place of work.

“I hope to God it’s flu, and she hasn’t killed herself,” Robin said to Barclay on Friday afternoon, when their paths crossed at the office. Strike was still stuck in Cornwall and she’d just seen the Twinkletoes client out of the office. He’d paid his sizable final bill grudgingly, having found out only that the West End dancer with whom his feckless daughter was besotted was a clean-living, monogamous and apparently heterosexual young man.

Barclay, who was submitting his week’s receipts to Pat before heading out to take over surveillance of Shifty overnight, looked surprised.

“The fuck would she’ve killed herself?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin. “That last message she wrote sounded a bit panicky. Maybe she thought I’d come to confront her, holding the postcards she’d sent.”

“You need tae get some sleep,” Barclay advised her.

Robin moved toward the kettle.

“No fer me,” Barclay told her, “I’ve gottae take over from Andy in thirty. We’re back in Pimlico, watchin’ Two-Times’ bird never cop off wi’ any fucker.”

Pat counted out tenners for Barclay, toward whom her attitude was tolerant rather than warm. Pat’s favorite member of the agency, apart from Robin, remained Morris, whom Robin had met only three times since New Year: twice when swapping over at the end of a surveillance shift and once when he’d come into the office to leave his week’s report. He’d found it difficult to meet her eye and talked about nothing but work, a change she hoped would be permanent.

“Who’s next on the client waiting list, Pat?” she asked, while making coffee.

“We havenae got the manpower for another case the noo,” said Barclay flatly, pocketing his cash. “Not wi’ Strike off.”

“He’ll be back on Sunday, as long as the trains are running,” said Robin, putting Pat’s coffee down beside her. They’d arranged to meet Cynthia Phipps the following Monday, at Hampton Court Palace.

“I need a weekend back home, end o’ the month,” Barclay told Pat, who in Strike’s absence was in charge of the rota. As she opened it up on her computer, Barclay added, “Migh’ as well make the most of it, while I dinnae need a passport.”

“What d’you mean?” asked the exhausted Robin, sitting down on the sofa in the outer office with her coffee. She was, technically, off duty at the moment, but couldn’t muster the energy to go home.

“Scottish independence, Robin,” said Barclay, looking at her from beneath his heavy eyebrows. “I ken you English’ve barely noticed, but the union’s about tae break up.”

“It won’t really, will it?” said Robin.

“Every fucker I know’s gonna vote Yes in September. One o’ me mates from school called me an Uncle Tam last time I wus home. Arsehole won’t be doin’ that again,” growled Barclay.

When Barclay had left, Pat asked Robin,

“How’s his aunt?”

Robin knew Pat was referring to Strike, because she never referred to her boss by name if she could help it.

“Very ill,” said Robin. “Not fit for more chemotherapy.”

Pat jammed her electronic cigarette between her teeth and kept typing. After a while, she said,

“He was on his own at Christmas, upstairs.”

“I know,” said Robin. “He told me how good you were to him. Buying him soup. He was really grateful.”

Pat sniffed. Robin drank her coffee, hoping for just enough of an energy boost to get her off this sofa and onto the Tube. Then Pat said,

“I’d’ve thought he’d’ve had somewhere to go, other than the attic.”

“Well, he had flu really badly,” said Robin. “He didn’t want to give it to anyone else.”

But as she washed up her mug, put on her coat, bade Pat farewell and set off downstairs, Robin found herself musing on this brief exchange. She’d often pondered the, to her, inexplicable animosity that Pat seemed to feel toward Strike. It had been clear from her tone that Pat had imagined Strike somehow immune to loneliness or vulnerability, and Robin was puzzled as to why, because Strike had never made any secret of where he was living or the fact that he slept there alone.

Robin’s mobile rang. Seeing an unknown number, and remembering that Tom Turvey had been on the other end of the line the last time she’d answered one, she paused outside Tottenham Court Road station to answer it, with slight trepidation.

“Is this Robin Ellacott?” said a Mancunian voice.

“It is,” said Robin.

“Hiya,” said the woman, a little nervously. “You wanted to talk to Dave Underwood. I’m his daughter.”

“Oh, yes,” said Robin. “Thank you so much for getting back to me.”

Dave Underwood was the man who’d been employed to drive a wholefoods shop van at the time that Margot Bamborough went missing. Robin, who’d found his address online and written him a letter three days previously, hadn’t expected such a quick response. She’d become inured to people ignoring her messages about Margot Bamborough.

“It was a bit of a shock, getting your letter,” said the woman on the phone. “The thing is, Dad can’t talk to you himself. He had a tracheotomy three weeks ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Robin, one finger in the ear not pressed to the phone, to block out the rumbling traffic.

“Yeah,” said the woman. “He’s here with me now, though, and he wants me to say… look… he’s not going to be in trouble, is he?”

“No, of course not,” said Robin. “As I said in my letter, it really is just about eliminating the van from inquiries.”

“All right then,” said Dave’s daughter. “Well, it was him. Amazing, you working it out, because they all swore it was a flower on the side of the van, didn’t they? He was glad at the time, because he thought he’d get in trouble, but he’s felt bad about it for years. He went the wrong way on a delivery and he was speeding through Clerkenwell Green to try and put himself right. He didn’t want to say, because the boss had had a go at him that morning for not getting deliveries out on time. He saw in the paper they were thinking maybe he’d been Dennis Creed and he just… well, you know. Nobody likes getting mixed up with stuff like that, do they? And the longer he kept quiet, the worse he thought it would look, him not coming forward straight away.”

“I see,” said Robin. “Yes, I can understand how he felt. Well, this is very helpful. And after he’d made his delivery, did he—?”

“Yeah, he went back to the shop and he got a right telling-off anyway, because they opened the van and saw he’d delivered the wrong order. He had to go back out again.”

So Margot Bamborough clearly hadn’t been in the back of the wholefoods van.

“Well, thanks very much for getting back to me,” said Robin, “and please thank your father for being honest. That’s going to be a great help.”

“You’re welcome,” said the woman, and then, quickly, before Robin could hang up. “Are you the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed?”

For a moment, Robin considered denying it, but she’d signed the letter to Dave Underwood with her real name.

“Yes,” she said, but with less warmth than she’d put into her thank you for the information about the van. She didn’t like being called “the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed.”

“Wow,” said the woman, “I told Dad I thought it was you. Well, at least Creed can’t get you, eh?”

She said it almost jauntily. Robin agreed, thanked her again for her cooperation, hung up the phone and proceeded down the stairs into the Tube.

At least Creed can’t get you, eh?

The cheery sign-off stayed with Robin as she descended to the Tube. That flippancy belonged only to those who had never felt blind terror, or come up against brute strength and steel, who’d never heard pig-like breathing close to their ear, or seen defocused eyes through balaclava holes, or felt their own flesh split, yet barely registered pain, because death was so close you could smell its breath.

Robin glanced over her shoulder on the escalator, because the careless commuter behind her kept touching the backs of her upper thighs with his briefcase. Sometimes she found casual physical contact with men almost unbearable. Reaching the bottom of the escalator she moved off fast to remove herself from the commuter’s vicinity. At least Creed can’t get you, eh? As though being “got” was nothing more than a game of tag.

Or was it being in the newspaper had somehow made Robin seem less human to the woman on the end of the phone? As Robin settled herself into a seat between two women on the Tube, her thoughts returned to Pat, and to the secretary’s surprise that Strike had nowhere to go when he was ill, and nobody to look after him. Was that at the root of her antipathy? An assumption that newsworthiness meant invulnerability?

When Robin let herself into the flat forty minutes later, carrying a bag of groceries and looking forward to an early night, she found the place empty except for Wolfgang, who greeted her exuberantly, then whined in a way that indicated a full bladder. With a sigh, Robin found his lead and took him downstairs for a quick walk around the block. After that, too tired to cook a proper meal, she scrambled herself some eggs and ate them with toast while watching the news on TV.

She was running herself a bath when her mobile rang again. Her heart sank a little when she saw that it was her brother Jonathan, who was in his final year of university in Manchester. She thought she knew what he was calling about.

“Hi, Jon,” she said.

“Hey, Robs. You didn’t answer my text.”

She knew perfectly well that she hadn’t. He’d sent it that morning, while she’d been watching Two-Times’ girlfriend having a blameless coffee, alone with a Stieg Larsson novel. Jon wanted to know whether he and a female friend could come and stay at her flat on the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth of February.

“Sorry,” said Robin, “I know I didn’t, it’s been a busy day. I’m not sure, to be honest, Jon. I don’t know what Max’s plans—”

“He wouldn’t mind us crashing in your room, would he? Courtney’s never been to London. There’s a comedy show we want to see on Saturday. At the Bloomsbury Theatre.”

“Is Courtney your girlfriend?” asked Robin, smiling now. Jonathan had always been quite cagey with the family about his love life.

“Is she my girlfriend,” repeated Jonathan mockingly, but Robin had an idea that he was quite pleased with the question really, and surmised that the answer was “yes.”

“I’ll check with Max, OK? And I’ll ring you back tomorrow,” said Robin.

Once she’d disposed of Jonathan, she finished running the bath and headed into her bedroom to fetch pajamas, dressing gown and something to read. The Demon of Paradise Park lay horizontally across the top of her neat shelf of novels. After hesitating for a moment, she picked it up and took it back to the bathroom with her, trying as she did so to imagine getting ready for bed with her brother and an unknown girl in the room, as well. Was she prudish, stuffy and old before her time? She’d never finished her university degree: “crashing” on floors in the houses of strangers had never been part of her life, and in the wake of the rape that had occurred in her halls of residence, she’d never had any desire to sleep anywhere except in an environment over which she had total control.

Sliding into the hot bubble bath, Robin let out a great sigh of pleasure. It had been a long week, sitting in the car for hours or else trudging through the rainy streets after Shifty or Elinor Dean. Eyes closed, enjoying the heat and the synthetic jasmine of her cheap bubble bath, her thoughts drifted back to Dave Underwood’s daughter.

At least Creed can’t get you, eh? Setting aside the offensively jocular tone, it struck her as significant that a woman who’d known for years that Creed hadn’t been driving the sun-emblazoned van was nevertheless certain that he’d abducted Margot.

Because, of course, Creed hadn’t always used a van. He’d killed two women before he ever got the job at the dry cleaner’s, and managed to persuade women to walk into his basement flat even after he’d acquired the vehicle.

Robin opened her eyes, reached for The Demon of Paradise Park and turned to the page where she had last left it. Holding the book clear of the hot, foamy water, she continued to read.

There was a loud bang from the hall and Robin jumped so severely that water slopped over the edge of the bath.

“Just me!” called Max, who sounded uncharacteristically cheerful, and she heard him greeting Wolfgang. “Hello, you. Yes, hello, hello…”

“Hi,” called Robin. “I took him out earlier!”

“Thanks very much,” said Max, “Come join me, I’m celebrating!”

She heard Max climbing the stairs. Pulling out the plug, she continued to sit in the bath as the water ebbed away, crisp bubbles still clinging to her as she finished the chapter.

The chapter ended here. Robin got out of the bath, mopped up the spilled water, dressed in pajamas and dressing gown, then headed upstairs to the living area where Max sat watching television, looking positively beatific. Wolfgang seemed to have been infected by his owner’s good mood: he greeted Robin as though she’d been away on a long journey and set to work licking the bath oil off her ankles until she asked him kindly to desist.

“I’ve got a job,” Max told Robin, muting the TV. Two champagne glasses and a bottle were sitting on the coffee table in front of him. “Second lead, new drama, BBC One. Have a drink.”

“Max, that’s fantastic!” said Robin, thrilled for him.

“Yeah,” he said, beaming. “Listen. D’you think your Strike would come over for dinner? I’m playing a veteran. It’d be good to speak to someone who’s actually ex-army.”

“I’m sure he would,” said Robin, hoping she was right. Strike and Max had never met. She accepted a glass of champagne, sat down and held up her glass in a toast. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. “I’ll cook, if Strike comes over. It’ll be good, actually. I need to meet more people. I’m turning into one of those ‘he always kept himself to himself’ blokes you see on the news.”

“And I’ll be the dumb flatmate,” said Robin, her thoughts still with Vi Cooper, “who thought you were lovely and never questioned why I kept coming across you hammering the floorboards back down.”

Max laughed.

“And they’ll blame you more than me,” said Max, “because they always do. The women who didn’t realize… mind you, some of them… who was that guy in America who made his wife call him on an intercom before he’d let her into the garage?”

“Jerry Brudos,” said Robin. Brudos had been mentioned in The Demon of Paradise Park. Like Creed, Brudos had been wearing women’s clothing when he abducted one of his victims.

“I need to get a bloody social life going again,” said Max, more expansive than Robin had ever known him under the influence of alcohol and good news. “I’ve been feeling like hell ever since Matthew left. Kept wondering whether I shouldn’t just sell this place and move on.”

Robin thought her slight feeling of panic might have shown in her face, because Max said,

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to. But it’s half-killed me, keeping it going. I really only bought the place because of him. ‘Put it all into property, you can’t lose with property,’ he said.”

He looked as though he was going to say something else, but if so, decided against it.

“Max, I wanted to ask you something,” said Robin, “but it’s totally fine if the answer’s no. My younger brother and a girlfriend are looking for a place to stay in London for the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth of February. But if you don’t—”

“Don’t be silly,” said Max. “They can sleep on this,” he said, patting the sofa. “It folds out.”

“Oh,” said Robin, who hadn’t known this. “Well, great. Thanks, Max.”

The champagne and the hot bath had made Robin feel incredibly sleepy, but they talked on for a while about Max’s new drama, until at last Robin apologized and said she really did need to go to bed.

As she pulled the duvet over herself, Robin decided against starting a new chapter on Creed. It was best not to have certain things in your head if you wanted to get to sleep. However, once she’d turned out her bedside lamp she found her mind refusing to shut down, so she reached for her iPod.

She never listened to music on headphones unless she knew Max was in the flat. Some life experiences made a person forever conscious of their ability to react, to have advance warning. Now, though, with the front door safely double-locked (Robin had checked, as she always did), and with her flatmate and a dog mere seconds away, she inserted her earbuds and pressed shuffle on the four albums of Joni Mitchell’s she’d now bought, choosing music over another bottle of perfume she didn’t like.

Sometimes, when listening to Mitchell, which Robin was doing frequently these days, she could imagine Margot Bamborough smiling at her through the music. Margot was forever frozen at twenty-nine, fighting not to be defeated by a life more complicated than she had ever imagined it would be, when she conceived the ambition of raising herself out of poverty by brains and hard work.

An unfamiliar song began to play. The words told the story of the end of a love affair. It was a simpler, more direct lyric than many of Mitchell’s, with little metaphor or poetry about it. Last chance lost/The hero cannot make the change/Last chance lost/The shrew will not be tamed.

Robin thought of Matthew, unable to adapt himself to a wife who wanted more from life than a steady progression up the property ladder, unable to give up the mistress who had always, in truth, been better suited to his ideals and ambitions than Robin. So did that make Robin the shrew, fighting for a career that everyone but she thought was a mistake?

Lying in the dark, listening to Mitchell’s voice, which was deeper and huskier on her later albums, an idea that had been hovering on the periphery of Robin’s thoughts for a couple of weeks forced its way into the forefront of her mind. It had been lurking ever since she’d read the letter from the Ministry of Justice, refusing Strike permission to see the serial killer.

Strike had accepted the Ministry of Justice’s decision, and indeed, so had Robin, who had no desire to increase the suffering of the victims’ families. And yet the man who might save Anna from a lifetime of continued pain and uncertainty was still alive. If Irene Hickson had been bursting to talk to Strike, how much more willing might Creed be, after decades of silence?

Last chance lost/the hero cannot make the change.

Robin sat up abruptly, pulled out her earphones, turned the lamp back on, sat up and reached for the notebook and pen she always kept beside her bed these days.

There was no need to tell Strike what she was up to. The possibility that her actions might backfire on the agency must be taken. If she didn’t try, she’d forever wonder whether there hadn’t been a chance of reaching Creed, after all.

34

The train service between Cornwall and London resumed at last. Strike packed his bags, but promised his aunt and uncle he’d be back soon. Joan clung to him in silence at parting. Incredibly, Strike would have preferred one of the emotional-blackmail-laden farewells that had previously antagonized him.

Riding the train back to London, Strike found his mood mirrored in the monochrome winter landscape of mud and shivering trees he was watching through the dirt-streaked window. Joan’s slow decline was a different experience to the deaths with which Strike was familiar, which had almost all been of the unnatural kind. As a soldier and an investigator, he’d become inured to the need to assimilate, without warning, the sudden, brutal extinction of a human being, to accept the sudden vacuum where once a soul had flickered. Joan’s slow capitulation to an enemy inside her own body was something new to him. A small part of Strike, of which he was ashamed, wanted everything to be over, and for the mourning to begin in earnest, and, as the train bore him east, he looked forward to the temporary sanctuary of his empty flat, where he was free to feel miserable without either the need to parade his sadness for the neighbors, or to sport a veneer of fake cheerfulness for his aunt.

He turned down two invitations for dinner on Saturday night, one from Lucy, one from Nick and Ilsa, preferring to deal with the agency’s books and review case files submitted by Barclay, Hutchins and Morris. On Sunday he spoke again to Dr. Gupta and to a couple of relatives of deceased witnesses in the Bamborough case, preparatory to a catch-up with Robin the following day.

But on Sunday evening, while standing beside the spaghetti boiling on his single hob, he received a second text from his unknown half-sister, Prudence.

Hi Cormoran, I don’t know whether you received my first text. Hopefully this one will reach you. I just wanted to say (I think) I understand your reasons for not wanting to join us for Dad’s group photo, or for the party. There’s a little more behind the party than a new album. I’d be happy to talk to you about that in person, but as a family we’re keeping it confidential. I hope you won’t mind me adding that, like you, I’m the result of one of Dad’s briefer liaisons (!) and I’ve had to deal with my own share of hurt and anger over the years. I wonder whether you’d like to have a coffee to discuss this further? I’m in Putney. Please do get in touch. It would be great to meet. Warmest wishes, Pru

His spaghetti now boiling noisily, Strike lit a cigarette. Pressure seemed to be building behind his eyeballs. He knew he was smoking too much: his tongue ached, and ever since his Christmas flu, his morning cough had been worse than ever. Barclay had been extolling the virtues of vaping the last time they’d met. Perhaps it was time to try that, or at least to cut down on the cigarettes.

He read Prudence’s text a second time. What confidential reason could be behind the party, other than his father’s new album? Had Rokeby finally been given his knighthood, or was he making a fuss over the Deadbeats’ fiftieth anniversary in an attempt to remind those who gave out honors that he hadn’t yet had one? Strike tried to imagine Lucy’s reaction, if he told her he was off to meet a host of new half-siblings, when her small stock of relatives was about to be diminished by one. He tried to picture this Prudence, of whom he knew nothing at all, except that her mother had been a well-known actress.

Turning off the hob, he left the spaghetti floating in its water, and began to text a response, cigarette between his teeth.

Thanks for the texts. I’ve got no objection to meeting you, but now’s not a good time. Appreciate that you’re doing what you think is the right thing but I’ve never been much for faking feelings or maintaining polite fictions to suit public celebrations. I don’t have a relationship with—

Strike paused for a full minute. He never referred to Jonny Rokeby as “Dad” and he didn’t want to say “our father,” because that seemed to bracket himself and Prudence together in a way that felt uncomfortable, as she was a total stranger.

And yet some part of him didn’t feel she was a stranger. Some part of him felt a tug toward her. What was it? Simple curiosity? An echo of the longing he’d felt as a child, for a father who never turned up? Or was it something more primitive: the calling of blood to blood, an animal sense of connection that couldn’t quite be eradicated, no matter how much you tried to sever the tie?

—Rokeby and I’ve got no interest in faking one for a few hours just because he’s putting out a new album. I hold no ill will toward you and, as I say, I’d be happy to meet when my life is less—

Strike paused again. Standing in the steam billowing from his saucepan, his mind roved over the dying Joan, over the open cases on the agency’s books, and, inexplicably, over Robin.

—complicated. Best wishes, Cormoran.

He ate his spaghetti with a jar of shop-bought sauce, and fell asleep that night to the sound of rain hammering on the roof slates, to dream that he and Rokeby were having a fist fight on the deck of a sailing ship, which pitched and rolled until both of them fell into the sea.

Rain was still falling at ten to eleven the following morning, when Strike emerged from Earl’s Court Tube station to wait for Robin, who was going to pick him up before driving to meet Cynthia Phipps at Hampton Court Palace. Standing beneath the brick overhang outside the station exit, yet another cigarette in his mouth, Strike read two recently arrived emails off his phone: an update from Barclay on Two-Times, and one from Morris on Shifty. He’d nearly finished them when the mobile rang. It was Al, and rather than let the call go to voicemail, Strike decided to put an end to this badgering once and for all.

“Hey, bruv,” said Al. “How’re you?”

“Been better,” said Strike.

He deliberately didn’t reciprocate the polite inquiry.

“Look,” said Al, “um… Pru’s just rung me. She told me what you sent her. Thing is, we’ve got a photographer booked for next Saturday, but if you’re not going to be in the picture—the whole point is that it’s from all of us. First time ever.”

“Al, I’m not interested,” said Strike, tired of being polite.

There was a brief silence. Then Al said,

“You know, Dad keeps trying to reach out—”

“Is that right?” said Strike, anger suddenly piercing the fog of fatigue, of his worry about Joan, and the mass of probable irrelevancies he’d found out on the Bamborough case, which he was trying to hold in his head, so he could impart them to Robin. “When would this be? When he set his lawyers on me, chasing me for money that was legally mine in the first—?”

“If you’re talking about Peter Gillespie, Dad didn’t know how heavy he was getting with you, I swear he didn’t. Pete’s retired now—”

“I’m not interested in celebrating his new fucking album,” said Strike. “Go ahead and have fun without me.”

“Look,” said Al, “I can’t explain right now—if you can meet me for a drink, I’ll tell you—there’s a reason we want to do this for him now, the photo and the party—”

“The answer’s no, Al.”

“You’re just going to keep sticking two fingers up at him forever, are you?”

“Who’s sticking two fingers up? I haven’t said a word about him publicly, unlike him, who can’t give a fucking interview without mentioning me these days—”

“He’s trying to put things right, and you can’t give an inch!”

“He’s trying to tidy up a messy bit of his public image,” said Strike harshly. “Tell him to pay his fucking taxes if he wants his knighthood. I’m not his pet fucking black sheep.”

He hung up, angrier than he’d expected, his heart thumping uncomfortably hard beneath his coat. Flicking his cigarette butt into the road, his thoughts traveled inescapably back to Joan, with her headscarf hiding her baldness, and Ted weeping into his tea. Why, he thought, furiously, couldn’t it have been Rokeby who lay dying, and his aunt who was well and happy, confident she’d reach her next birthday, striding through St. Mawes, chatting to lifelong friends, planning dinners for Ted, nagging Strike over the phone about coming to visit?

When Robin turned the corner in the Land Rover a few minutes later, she was taken aback by Strike’s appearance. Even though he’d told her by phone about the flu and the out-of-date chicken, he looked noticeably thinner in the face, and so enraged she automatically checked her watch, wondering whether she was late.

“Everything all right?” she asked, when he opened the passenger seat door.

“Fine,” he said shortly, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door.

“Happy New Year.”

“Haven’t we already said that?”

“No, actually,” said Robin, somewhat aggravated by his surliness. “But please don’t feel pressured into saying it back. I’d hate you to feel railroaded—”

“Happy New Year, Robin,” muttered Strike.

She pulled out into the road, her windscreen wipers working hard to keep the windscreen clear, with a definite sense of déjà vu. He’d been grumpy when she’d picked him up on his birthday, too, and in spite of everything he was going through, she too was tired, she too had personal worries, and would have appreciated just a little effort.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

They drove for a few minutes in silence, until Robin said,

“Did you see Barclay’s email?”

“About Two-Times and his girlfriend? Yeah, just read it,” said Strike. “Ditched, and she’ll never realize it was because she was too faithful.”

“He’s such a freak,” said Robin, “but as long as he pays his bill…”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Strike, making a conscious effort to throw off his bad temper. After all, none of it—Joan, Pru, Al, Rokeby—was Robin’s fault. She’d been holding the agency together while he dealt with matters in Cornwall. She was owed better.

“We’ve got room for another waiting list client now,” he said, trying for a more enthusiastic tone. “I’ll call that commodities broker who thinks her husband’s shagging the nanny, shall I?”

“Well,” said Robin, “the Shifty job’s taking a lot of manpower at the moment. We’re covering him, his boss and the woman in Stoke Newington. The boss went back to Elinor Dean yesterday evening, you know. Same thing all over again, including the pat on the head.”

“Really?” said Strike, frowning.

“Yeah. The clients are getting quite impatient for proper evidence, though. Plus, we haven’t got any resolution on Postcard yet and Bamborough’s taking up quite a bit of time.”

Robin didn’t want to say explicitly that with Strike moving constantly between London and Cornwall, she and the subcontractors were covering the agency’s existing cases by forfeiting their days off.

“So you think we should concentrate on Shifty and Postcard, do you?”

“I think we should accept that Shifty’s currently a three-person-job and not be in a hurry to take anything else on just now.”

“All right, fair enough,” grunted Strike. “Any news on the guide at the National Portrait Gallery? Barclay told me you were worried she might’ve topped herself.”

“What did he tell you that for?” Robin said. She regretted blurting out her anxiety now: it felt soft, unprofessional.

“He didn’t mean anything by it. Has she reappeared?”

“No,” said Robin.

“Any more postcards to the weatherman?”

“No.”

“Maybe you’ve scared her off.”

Strike pulled his notebook out of his pocket and opened it, while the rain continued to drum against the windscreen.

“I’ve got a few bits and pieces on Bamborough, before we meet Cynthia Phipps. That was great work of yours, eliminating the wholefoods van, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said Robin.

“But there’s a whole new van on the scene,” said Strike.

“What?” said Robin sharply.

“I spoke to the daughter of Ruby Elliot yesterday. You ­remember Ruby—”

“The woman who saw the two women struggling from her car.”

“That’s the one. I also spoke to a nephew of Mrs. Fleury, who was crossing Clerkenwell Green, trying to get her senile mother home out of the rain.”

Strike cleared his throat, and said, reading from his notes:

“According to Mark Fleury, his aunt was quite upset by the description in the papers of her ‘struggling’ and even ‘grappling’ with her mother, because it suggested she’d been rough with the old dear. She said she was chivvying her mother along, not forcing her, but admitted that otherwise the description fitted them to a tee: right place, right time, rain hat, raincoat, etc.

“But Talbot leapt on the ‘we weren’t grappling’ discrepancy and tried to pressure Mrs. Fleury into retracting her story and admitting that she and the old lady couldn’t have been the people Ruby Elliot saw. Mrs. Fleury wasn’t having that, though. The description of them was too good: she was sure they were the right people.

“So Talbot went back to Ruby and tried to force her to change her story. You’ll remember that there was another phone box at the opening of Albemarle Way. Talbot tried to persuade Ruby that she’d seen two people struggling in front of that phone box instead.

“Which is where things get mildly interesting,” said Strike, turning a page in his notebook. “According to Ruby’s daughter, Ruby was an absentminded woman, a nervous driver and a poor map reader, with virtually no sense of direction. On the other hand, her daughter claims she had a very retentive memory for small visual details. She might not remember what street she’d met an acquaintance on, but she could describe down to the color of a shoelace what they’d been wearing. She’d been a window dresser in her youth.

“Given her general vagueness, Talbot should have found it easy to persuade her she’d mistaken the phone box, but the harder he pushed, the firmer she stood, and the reason she stood firm, and said the two women couldn’t have been in front of the Albemarle phone box, was because she’d seen something else happen beside that particular phone box, something she’d forgotten all about until Talbot mentioned the wedge-shaped building. Don’t forget, she didn’t know Clerkenwell at all.

“According to her daughter, Ruby kept driving around in a big circle that night, continually missing Hayward’s Place, where her daughter’s new house was. When he said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t see these two struggling women beside the other phone box, near the wedge-shaped building on the corner of Albemarle Way?’ Ruby suddenly remembered that she’d had to brake at that point in the road, because a transit van ahead of her had stopped beside the wedge-shaped building without warning. It was picking up a dark, stocky young woman who was standing in the pouring rain, beside the phone box. The woman—”

“Wait a moment,” said Robin, momentarily taking her eyes off the rainy road to glance at Strike. “‘Dark and stocky?’ It wasn’t Theo?”

“Ruby thought it was, once she compared her memory of the girl in the rain with the artist’s impressions of Margot’s last patient. Dark-skinned, solid build, thick black hair—plastered to her face because it was so wet—and wearing a pair of—”

Strike sounded the unfamiliar name out, reading from his notebook.

“—Kuchi earrings.”

“What are Kuchi earrings?”

“Romany-style, according to Ruby’s daughter, which might account for Gloria calling Theo ‘gypsyish.’ Ruby knew clothes and jewelry. It was the kind of detail she noticed.

“The transit van braked without warning to pick up the-girl-who-could-have-been-Theo, temporarily holding up traffic. Cars behind Ruby were tooting their horns. The dark girl got into the front passenger seat, the transit van moved off in the direction of St. John Street and Ruby lost sight of it.”

“And she didn’t tell Talbot?”

“Her daughter says that by the time she remembered the second incident, she was exhausted by the whole business, sick to death of being ranted at by Talbot and told she must have been mistaken in thinking the two struggling women hadn’t been Margot and Creed in drag, and regretting she’d ever come forward in the first place.

“After Lawson took over the case, she was afraid of what the police and the press would say to her if she suddenly came up with a story of seeing someone who resembled Theo. Rightly or wrongly, she thought it might look as though, having had her first sighting proven to be worthless, she wanted another shot at being important to the inquiry.”

“But her daughter felt OK about telling you all this?”

“Well, Ruby’s dead, isn’t she? It can’t hurt her now. Her daughter made it clear she doesn’t think any of this is going to amount to anything, so she might as well tell me the lot. And when all’s said and done,” said Strike, turning a page in his notebook, “we don’t know the girl was Theo… although personally, I think she was. Theo wasn’t registered with the practice, so probably wasn’t familiar with the area. That corner would make an easily identifiable place to meet the transit van after she’d seen a doctor. Plenty of space for it to pull over.”

“True,” said Robin slowly, “but if that girl really was Theo, this lets her out of any involvement with Margot’s disappearance, doesn’t it? She clearly left the surgery alone, got a lift and drove—”

“Who was driving the van?”

“I don’t know. Anyone. Parent, friend, sibling…”

“Why didn’t Theo come forward after all the police appeals?”

“Maybe she was scared. Maybe she had a medical problem she didn’t want anyone to know about. Plenty of people would rather not get mixed up with the police.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong,” admitted Strike. “Well, I still think it’s worth knowing that one of the last people to see Margot alive might’ve left the area in a vehicle big enough to hide a woman in.

“And speaking of the last person to see Margot alive,” Strike added, “any response from Gloria Conti?”

“No,” said Robin. “If nothing’s happened by the end of next week, I’ll try and contact her through her husband.”

Strike turned a page in his notebook.

“After I spoke to Ruby’s daughter and the Fleury bloke, I called Dr. Gupta back. Dunno whether you remember, but in my summary of the horoscope notes I mentioned ‘Scorpio,’ whose death, accord­ing to Talbot, worried Margot.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “You speculated Scorpio might be Steve Douthwaite’s married friend, who killed herself.”

“Well remembered,” said Strike. “Well, Gupta can’t remember any patient dying in unexplained circumstances, or in a way that troubled Margot, although he emphasized that all this is forty years ago and he can’t swear there wasn’t such a patient.

“Then I asked him whether he knew who Joseph Brenner might have been visiting in a block of flats on Skinner Street on the evening Margot disappeared. Gupta says they had a number of patients in Skinner Street, but he can’t think of any reason why Brenner would have lied about going on a house call there.

“Lastly, and not particularly helpfully, Gupta remembers that a couple of men came to pick Gloria up at the end of the practice Christmas party. He remembers one of the men being a lot older, and says he assumed that was Gloria’s father. The name ‘Mucky Ricci’ meant nothing to him.”

Midway across Chiswick Bridge, the sun sliced suddenly through a chink in the rain clouds, dazzling their eyes. The dirty Thames beneath the bridge and the shallow puddles flashed laser bright, but, seconds later, the clouds closed again and they were driving again through rain, in the dull gray January light, along a straight dual carriageway bordered by shrubs slick with rain and naked trees.

“What about that film?” said Robin, glancing sideways at Strike. “The film that came out of Gregory Talbot’s attic? You said you’d tell me in person.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Yeah.”

He hesitated, looking past the windscreen wipers at the long straight road ahead, glimmering beneath a diagonal curtain of rain.

“It showed a hooded woman being gang-raped and killed.”

Robin experienced a slight prickling over her neck and scalp.

“And people get off on that,” she muttered, in disgust.

He knew from her tone that she hadn’t understood, that she thought he was describing a pornographic fiction.

“No,” he said, “it wasn’t porn. Someone filmed… the real thing.”

Robin looked around in shock, before turning quickly back to face the road. Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Repulsive images were suddenly forcing their way into her mind. What had Strike seen, that made him look so closed up, so blank? Had the hooded woman’s body resembled Margot’s, the body Oonagh Kennedy had said was “all legs”?

“You all right?” asked Strike.

“Fine,” she almost snapped. “What—what did you see, how—?”

But Strike chose to answer a question she hadn’t asked.

“The woman had a long scar over the ribcage. There was never any mention of Margot having a scarred ribcage in press reports or police notes. I don’t think it was her.”

Robin said nothing but continued to look tense.

“There were four men, ah, involved,” Strike continued, “all Caucasian, and all with their faces hidden. There was also a fifth man looking on. His arm came briefly into shot. It could’ve been Mucky Ricci. There was an out-of-focus big gold ring.”

He was trying to reduce the account to a series of dry facts. His leg muscles had tensed up quite as much as Robin’s hands, and he was primed to grab the wheel. She’d had a panic attack once before while they were driving.

“What are the police saying?” Robin asked. “Do they know where it came from?”

“Hutchins asked around. An ex-Vice Squad guy thinks it’s part of a batch they seized in a raid made on a club in Soho in ’75. The club was owned by Ricci. They took a load of hardcore pornography out of the basement.

“One of Talbot’s best mates was also Vice Squad. The best guess is that Talbot nicked or copied it, after his mate showed it to him.”

“Why would he do that?” said Robin, a little desperately.

“I don’t think we’re going to get a better answer than ‘because he was mentally ill,’” said Strike. “But the starting point must have been his interest in Ricci. He’d found out Ricci was registered with the St. John’s practice and attended the Christmas party. In the notes, he called Ricci—”

“—Leo three,” said Robin. “Yes, I know.”

Strike’s leg muscles relaxed very slightly. This degree of focus and recall on Robin’s part didn’t suggest somebody about to have a panic attack.

“Did you learn my email off by heart?” he asked her.

It was Robin’s turn to remember Christmas, and the brief solace it had been, to bury herself in work at her parents’ kitchen table.

“I pay attention when I’m reading, that’s all.”

“Well, I still don’t understand why Talbot didn’t chase up this Ricci lead, although judging by the horoscope notes, there was a sharp deterioration in his mental state over the six months he was in charge of the case. I’m guessing he stole that can of film not long before he got kicked off the force, hence no mention of it in the police notes.”

“And then hid it so nobody else could investigate the woman’s death,” said Robin. Her sympathy for Bill Talbot had just been, if not extinguished, severely dented. “Why the hell didn’t he take the film back to the police when he was back in his right mind?”

“I’d guess because he wanted his job back and, failing that, wanted to make sure he got his pension. Setting aside basic integrity, I can’t see that he had a great incentive to admit he’d tampered with evidence on another case. Everyone was already pissed off at him: victims’ families, press, the force, all blaming him for having fucked up the investigation. And then Lawson, a bloke he doesn’t like, takes over and tells him to stay the fuck out of it. He probably told himself the dead woman was only a prostitute or—”

“Jesus,” said Robin angrily.

“I’m not saying ‘only a prostitute,’” Strike said quickly. “I’m guessing at the mindset of a seventies policeman who’d already been publicly shamed for buggering up a high-profile case.”

Robin said nothing, but remained stony-faced for the rest of the journey, while Strike, the muscles of his one-and-a-half legs so tense they ached, tried not to make it too obvious that he was keeping a covert eye on the hands gripping the steering wheel.

35

“Ever been here before?” Strike asked Robin, as she parked in the Hampton Court car park. She’d been silent since he’d told her about the film, and he was trying to break the tension.

“No.”

They got out of the Land Rover and set off across the car park in the chilly rain.

“Where exactly are we meeting Cynthia?”

“The Privy Kitchen Café,” said Robin. “I expect they’ll give us a map at the ticket office.”

She knew that the film hidden in Gregory Talbot’s attic wasn’t Strike’s fault. He hadn’t put it there, hadn’t hidden it for forty years, couldn’t have known, when he inserted it in the projector, that he was about to watch a woman’s last, terrified, excruciating moments. She wouldn’t have wanted him to withhold the truth about what he’d seen. Nevertheless, his dry and unemotional description had grated on Robin. Reasonably or not, she’d wanted some sign that he had been repulsed, or disgusted, or horrified.

But perhaps this was unrealistic. He’d been a military policeman long before Robin had known him, where he’d learned a detachment she sometimes envied. Beneath her determinedly calm exterior, Robin felt shaken and sick, and wanted to know that when Strike had watched the recording of the woman’s dying moments, he’d recognized her as a person as real as he was.

Only a prostitute.

Their footsteps rang out on the wet tarmac as the great red-brick palace rose up before them, and Robin, who wanted to drive dreadful images out of her mind, tried to remember everything she knew about Henry VIII, that cruel and corpulent Tudor king who’d beheaded two of his six wives, but somehow found herself thinking about Matthew, instead.

When Robin had been brutally raped by a man in a gorilla mask who’d been lurking beneath the stairs of her hall of residence, Matthew had been kind, patient and understanding. Robin’s lawyer might be mystified by the source of Matthew’s vindictiveness over what should have been a straightforward divorce, but Robin had come to believe that the end of the marriage had been a profound shock to Matthew, because he thought he was owed infinite credit for having helped her through the worst period of her life. Matthew, Robin felt sure, thought she was forever in his debt.

Tears prickled in Robin’s eyes. Angling her umbrella so that Strike couldn’t see her face, she blinked hard until her eyes were clear again.

They walked across a cobbled courtyard in silence until Robin came to a sudden halt. Strike, who never enjoyed navigating uneven surfaces with his prosthesis, wasn’t sorry to pause, but he was slightly worried that he was about to be on the receiving end of an outburst.

“Look at that,” Robin said, pointing down at a shining cobblestone.

Strike looked closer and saw, to his surprise, a small cross of St. John engraved upon a small square brick.

“Coincidence,” he said.

They walked on, Robin looking around, forcing herself to take in her surroundings. They passed into a second courtyard, where a school party in hooded raincoats was being addressed by a guide in a medieval jester’s costume.

“Oh wow,” said Robin quietly, looking over her shoulder and then walking backward for a few paces, the better to see the object set high in the wall above the archway. “Look at that!”

Strike did as he was bidden and saw an enormous, ornate, sixteenth-century astronomical clock of blue and gold. The signs of the zodiac were marked on the perimeter, both with the glyphs with which Strike had become unwillingly familiar, and with pictures representing each sign. Robin smiled at Strike’s expression of mingled surprise and annoyance.

“What?” he said, catching her look of amusement.

“You,” she said, turning to walk on. “Furious at the zodiac.”

“If you’d spent three weeks wading through all Talbot’s bollocks, you wouldn’t be keen on the zodiac, either,” said Strike.

He stood back to allow Robin to enter the palace first. Following the map Strike had been given, they headed along a flagged, covered walkway toward the Privy Kitchen Café.

“Well, I think there’s a kind of poetry to astrology,” said Robin, who was consciously trying to keep her mind off Talbot’s old can of film, and her ex-husband. “I’m not saying it works, but there’s a kind of—of symmetry to it, an order…”

Through a door to the right, a small Tudor garden came into view. Brightly colored heraldic beasts stood sentinel over square beds full of sixteenth-century herbs. The sudden appearance of the spotted leopard, the white hart and the red dragon seemed to Robin to cheer her on, asserting the potency and allure of symbol and myth.

“It makes a kind of—not literal sense,” Robin said, as the whimsically strange creatures passed out of sight, “but it’s survived for a reason.”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “People will believe any old shit.”

Slightly to his relief, Robin smiled. They entered the white-walled café, which had small leaded windows and dark oak furniture,

“Find us a discreet table, I’ll get the drinks in. What d’you want, coffee?”

Choosing a deserted side room, Robin sat down at a table beneath one of the leaded windows and glanced through the potted history of the palace they’d received with their tickets. She learned that the Knights of St. John had once owned the land on which the palace stood, which explained the cross on the cobblestone, and that Cardinal Wolsey had given Henry VIII the palace in a futile bid to stave off his own decline in influence. However, when she read that the ghost of nineteen-year-old Catherine Howard was supposed to run, screaming, along the Haunted Gallery, eternally begging her fifty-year-old husband, the King, not to have her beheaded, Robin closed the pamphlet without reading the rest. Strike arrived with the coffees to find her with her arms folded, staring into space.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Just thinking about star signs.”

“Still?” said Strike, with a slight eye roll.

“Jung says it was man’s first attempt at psychology, did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” said Strike, sitting down opposite her. Robin, as he knew, had been studying psychology at university before she dropped out. “But there’s no excuse to keep using it now we’ve got actual psychology, is there?”

“Folklore and superstition haven’t gone away. They’ll never go away. People need them,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “I think a purely scientific world would be a cold place. Jung also talked about the collective unconscious, you know. The archetypes lurking in all of us.”

But Strike, whose mother had ensured that he’d spent a large portion of his childhood in a fug of incense, dirt and mysticism, said shortly,

“Yeah, well. I’m Team Rational.”

“People like feeling connected to something bigger,” said Robin, looking up at the rainy sky outside. “I think it makes you feel less lonely. Astrology connects you to the universe, doesn’t it? And to ancient myths and ideas—”

“—and incidentally feeds your ego,” said Strike. “Makes you feel less insignificant. ‘Look how special the universe is telling me I am.’ I don’t buy the idea that I’ve got anything more in common with other people born on November the twenty-third than I think being born in Cornwall makes me a person better than someone born in Manchester.”

“I never said—”

“You might not, but my oldest mate does,” said Strike. “Dave Polworth.”

“The one who gets ratty when Cornish flags aren’t on strawberries?”

“That’s him. Committed Cornish nationalist. He gets defensive about it if you challenge him—‘I’m not saying we’re better than anyone else’—but he thinks you shouldn’t be able to buy property down there unless you can prove Cornish ethnicity. Don’t remind him he was born in Birmingham if you value your teeth.”

Robin smiled.

“Same kind of thing, though, isn’t it?” said Strike. “‘I’m special and different because I was born on this bit of rock.’ ‘I’m special and different because I was born on June the twelfth—’”

“Where you’re born does influence who you are, though,” said Robin. “Cultural norms and language have an effect. And there have been studies showing people born at different times of the year are more prone to certain health conditions.”

“So Roy Phipps bleeds a lot because he was born—? Hello there!” said Strike, breaking off suddenly, his eyes on the door.

Robin turned and saw, to her momentary astonishment, a slender woman wearing a long green Tudor gown and headdress.

“I’m so sorry!” said the woman, gesturing at her costume and laughing nervously as she advanced on their table. “I thought I’d have time to change! I’ve been doing a school group—we finished late—”

Strike stood up and held out a hand to shake hers.

“Cormoran Strike,” he said. Eyes on her reproduction pearl necklace with its suspended initial “B,” he said, “Anne Boleyn, I presume?”

Cynthia’s laughter contained a couple of inadvertent snorts, which increased her odd resemblance, middle-aged though she was, to a gawky schoolgirl. Her movements were unsuited to the sweeping velvet gown, being rather exaggerated and ungainly.

“Hahaha, yes, that’s me! Only my second time as Anne. You think you’ve thought of all the questions the kids might ask you, then one of them says ‘How did it feel to get your head cut off?,’ hahahaha!”

Cynthia wasn’t at all what Robin had expected. She now realized that her imagination had sketched in a young blonde, the stereotypical idea of a Scandinavian au pair… or was that because Sarah Shadlock had almost white hair?

“Coffee?” Strike asked Cynthia.

“Oh—coffee, yes please, wonderful, thank you,” said Cynthia, over-enthusiastically. When Strike had left, Cynthia made a small pantomime of dithering over which seat to take until Robin, smiling, pulled out the seat beside her and offered her own hand, too.

“Oh, yes, hello!” said Cynthia, sitting down and shaking hands. She had a thin, sallow face, currently wearing an anxious smile. The irises of her large eyes were heavily mottled, an indeterminate color between blue, green and gray, and her teeth were rather crooked.

“So you lead the tour in character?” asked Robin.

“Yes, exactly, as poor Anne, hahaha,” said Cynthia, with another nervous, snorting laugh. “‘I couldn’t give the King a son! They said I was a witch!’ Those are the sort of things children like to hear; I have to work quite hard to get the politics in, hahaha. Poor Anne.” Her thin hands fidgeted.

“Oh, I’m still—I can take this off, at least, hahaha!”

Cynthia set to work unpinning her headdress. Even though she could tell that Cynthia was very nervous, and that her constant laughter was more of a tic than genuine amusement, Robin was again reminded of Sarah Shadlock, who tended to laugh a lot, and loudly, especially in the vicinity of Matthew. Wittingly or not, Cynthia’s laughter imposed a sort of obligation: smile back or seem hostile. Robin remembered a documentary on monkeys she had watched one night when she was too tired to get up and go to bed: chimps, too, laughed back at each other to signal social cohesion.

When Strike returned to the table with Cynthia’s coffee, he found her newly bare-headed. Her dark hair was fifty percent gray, and smoothed back into a short, thin ponytail.

“It’s very good of you to meet us, Mrs. Phipps,” he said, sitting back down.

“Oh, no, not at all, not at all,” said Cynthia, waving her thin hands and laughing some more. “Anything I can do to help Anna with—but Roy hasn’t been well, so I don’t want to worry him just now.”

“I’m sorry to hear—”

“Yes, thank you, no, it’s prostate cancer,” said Cynthia, no longer laughing. “Radiation therapy. Not feeling too chipper. Anna and Kim came over this morning to sit with him, or I wouldn’t have been able—I don’t like leaving him at the moment, but the girls are there, so I thought I’d be fine to…”

The end of the sentence was lost as she took a sip of coffee. Her hand trembled slightly as she replaced the cup onto the saucer.

“Your stepdaughter’s probably told—” Strike began, but Cynthia immediately interrupted him.

“Daughter. I don’t ever call Anna my stepdaughter. Sorry, but I feel just the same about her as I do about Jeremy and Ellie. No difference at all.”

Robin wondered whether that was true. She was uncomfortably aware that part of her was standing aside, watching Cynthia with judgmental eyes. She isn’t Sarah, Robin reminded herself.

“Well, I’m sure Anna’s told you why she hired us, and so on.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cynthia. “No, I must admit, I’ve been expecting something like this for a while. I hope it isn’t going to make things worse for her.”

“Er—well, we hope that, too, obviously,” said Strike, and Cynthia laughed and said, “Oh, no, of course, yes.”

Strike took out his notebook, in which a few photocopied sheets were folded, and a pen.

“Could we begin with the statement you gave the police?”

“You’ve got it?” said Cynthia, looking startled. “The original?”

“A photocopy,” he said, unfolding it.

“How… funny. Seeing it again, after all this time. I was eighteen. Eighteen! It seems a century ago, hahaha!”

The signature at the bottom of the uppermost page, Robin saw, was rounded and rather childish. Strike handed the photocopied pages to Cynthia, who took them looking almost frightened.

“I’m afraid I’m awfully dyslexic,” she said. “I was forty-two before I was diagnosed. My parents thought I was bone idle, hahaha… um, so…”

“Would you rather I read it to you?” Strike suggested. Cynthia handed it back to him at once.

“Oh, thank you—this is how I learn all my guiding notes, by listening to audio disks, hahaha…”

Strike flattened out the photocopied papers on the table.

“Please interrupt if you want to add or change anything,” he told Cynthia, who nodded and said that she would.

““Name, Cynthia Jane Phipps… date of birth, July the twentieth 1957… address, ‘The Annexe, Broom House, Church Road’… that would be Margot’s—?”

“I had self-contained rooms over the double garage,” said Cynthia. Robin thought she laid slight emphasis on “self-contained.”

“‘I am employed as nanny to Dr. Phipps and Dr. Bamborough’s infant daughter, and I live in their house—’”

“Self-contained studio,” said Cynthia. “It had its own entrance.”

“‘My hours…’ Don’t think we need any of that,” muttered Strike. “Here we go. ‘On the morning of the eleventh of October I began work at 7 a.m. I saw Dr. Bamborough before she left for work. She seemed entirely as usual. She reminded me that she would be late home because she was meeting her friend Miss Oonagh Kennedy for drinks near her place of work. As Dr. Phipps was bedbound due to his recent accident—’”

“Anna told you about Roy’s von Willebrand Disease?” said Cynthia anxiously.

“Er—I don’t think she told us, but it’s mentioned in the police report.”

“Oh, didn’t she say?” said Cynthia, who seemed unhappy to hear it. “Well, he’s a Type Three. That’s serious, as bad as hemophilia. His knee swelled up and he was in a lot of pain, could hardly move,” said Cynthia.

“Yes,” said Strike, “it’s all in the police—”

“No, because he’d had an accident on the seventh,” said Cynthia, who seemed determined to say this. “It was a wet day, pouring with rain, you can check that. He was walking around a corner of the hospital, heading for the car park, and an out-patient rode right into him on a pushbike. Roy got tangled up in the front wheel, slipped, hit his knee and had a major bleed. These days he has prophylactic injections so it doesn’t happen the way it used to, but back then, if he injured himself, it could lay him up for weeks.”

“Right,” said Strike, and judging it to be the most tactful thing to do, he made careful note of all these details, which he’d already read in Roy’s own statements and police interviews.

“No, Anna knows her dad was ill that day. She’s always known,” Cynthia added.

Strike continued reading the statement aloud. It was a retelling of facts Strike and Robin already knew. Cynthia had been in charge of baby Anna at home. Roy’s mother had come over during the day. Wilma Bayliss had cleaned for three hours and left. Cynthia had taken occasional cups of tea to the invalid and his mother. At 6 p.m., Evelyn Phipps had gone home to her bungalow to play bridge with friends, leaving a tray of food for her son.

“‘At 8 p.m. in the evening I was watching television in the sitting room downstairs when I heard the phone ring in the hall. I would usually only ever answer the phone if both Dr. Phipps and Dr. Bamborough were out. As Dr. Phipps was in, and could answer the phone from the extension beside his bed, I didn’t answer.

“‘About five minutes later, I heard the gong that Mrs. Evelyn Phipps had placed beside Dr. Phipps’s bed, in case of emergency. I went upstairs. Dr. Phipps was still in bed. He told me that it had been Miss Kennedy on the phone. Dr. Bamborough hadn’t turned up at the pub. Dr. Phipps said he thought she must have been delayed at work or forgotten. He asked me to tell Dr. Bamborough to go up to their bedroom as soon as she came in.

“‘I went back downstairs. About an hour later, I heard the gong again and went upstairs and found Dr. Phipps now quite worried about his wife. He asked me whether she’d come in yet. I said that she hadn’t. He asked me to stay in the room while he phoned Miss Kennedy at home. Miss Kennedy still hadn’t seen or heard from Dr. Bamborough. Dr. Phipps hung up and asked me what Dr. Bamborough had been carrying when she left the house that morning. I told him just a handbag and her doctor’s bag. He asked me whether Dr. Bamborough had said anything about visiting her parents. I said she hadn’t. He asked me to stay while he called Dr. Bamborough’s mother.

“‘Mrs. Bamborough hadn’t heard from her daughter or seen her. Dr. Phipps was now quite worried and asked me to go downstairs and look in the drawer in the base of the clock on the mantelpiece in the sitting room and see whether there was anything in there. I went and looked. There was nothing there. I went back upstairs and told Dr. Phipps that the clock drawer was empty. Dr. Phipps explained that this was a place he and his wife sometimes left each other private notes. I hadn’t known about this previously.

“‘He asked me to stay with him while he called his mother, because he might have something else for me to do. He spoke to his mother and asked her advice. It was a brief conversation. When he hung up, Dr. Phipps asked me whether I thought he ought to call the police. I said I thought he should. He said he was going to. He told me to go downstairs and let the police in when they arrived and show them up to his bedroom. The police arrived about half an hour later and I showed them up to Dr. Phipps’s bedroom.

“‘I didn’t find Dr. Bamborough to be unusual in her manner when she left the house that morning. Relations between Dr. Phipps and Dr. Bamborough seemed completely happy. I’m very surprised at her disappearance, which is out of character. She is very attached to her daughter and I cannot imagine her ever leaving the baby, or going away without telling her husband or me where she was going.

“‘Signed and dated Cynthia Phipps, 12 October 1974.’”

“Yes, no, that’s… I haven’t got anything to add to that,” said Cynthia. “Odd to hear it back!” she said, with another little snorting laugh, but Robin thought her eyes were frightened.

“This is obviously, ah, sensitive, but if we could go back to your statement that relations between Roy and Margot—”

“Yes, sorry, no, I’m not going to talk about their marriage,” said Cynthia. Her sallow cheeks became stained with a purplish blush. “Everyone rows, everyone has ups and downs, but it’s not up to me to talk about their marriage.”

“We understand that your husband couldn’t have—” began Robin.

“Margot’s husband,” said Cynthia. “No, you see, they’re two completely different people. Inside my head.”

Convenient, said a voice inside Robin’s.

“We’re simply exploring the possibility that she went away,” said Strike, “maybe to think or—”

“No, Margot wouldn’t have just walked out without saying anything. That wouldn’t have been like her.”

“Anna told us her grandmother—” said Robin.

“Evelyn had early onset Alzheimer’s and you couldn’t take what she said seriously,” said Cynthia, her tone higher and more brittle. “I’ve always told Anna that, I’ve always told her that Margot would never have left her. I’ve always told her that,” she repeated.

Except, continued the voice inside Robin’s head, when you were pretending to be her real mother, and hiding Margot’s existence from her.

“Moving on,” said Strike, “you received a phone call on Anna’s second birthday, from a woman purporting to be Margot?”

“Um, yes, no, that’s right,” said Cynthia. She took another shaky sip of coffee. “I was icing the birthday cake in the kitchen when the phone rang, so not in any danger of forgetting what day it was, hahaha. When I picked up, the woman said, ‘Is that you, Cynthia?’ I said ‘Yes,’ and she said ‘It’s Margot here. Wish little Annie a happy birthday from her mummy. And make sure you look after her.’ And the line went dead.

“I just stood there,” she mimed holding an invisible implement in her hand, and tried to laugh again, but no sound came out, “holding the spatula. I didn’t know what to do. Anna was playing in the sitting room. I was… I decided I’d better ring Roy at work. He told me to call the police, so I did.”

“Did you think it was Margot?” asked Strike.

“No. It wasn’t—well, it sounded like her, but I don’t think it was her.”

“You think somebody was imitating it?”

“Putting it on, yes. The accent. Cockney, but… no, I didn’t get that feeling you get when you just know who it is…”

“You’re sure it was a woman?” said Strike. “It couldn’t have been a man imitating a woman?”

“I don’t think so,” said Cynthia.

“Did Margot ever call Anna ‘little Annie’?” asked Robin.

“She called her all kinds of pet names,” said Cynthia, looking glum. “Annie Fandango, Annabella, Angel Face… somebody could have guessed, or maybe they’d just got the name wrong… But the timing was… they’d just found bits of Creed’s last victim. The one he threw off Beachy Head—”

“Andrea Hooton,” said Robin. Cynthia looked slightly startled that she had the name on the tip of her tongue.

“Yes, the hairdresser.”

“No,” said Robin. “That was Susan Meyer. Andrea was the PhD student.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cynthia. “Of course… I’m so bad with names… Well, Roy had just been through the whole identification business with, um, you know, the bits of the body that washed up, so we’d had our hopes—not our hopes!” said Cynthia, looking terrified at the word that had escaped her, “I don’t mean that! No, we were obviously relieved it wasn’t Margot, but you think, you know, maybe you’re going to get an answer…”

Strike thought of his own guilty wish that Joan’s slow and protracted dying would be over soon. A corpse, however unwelcome, meant anguish could find both expression and sublimation among flowers, speeches and ritual, consolation drawn from God, alcohol and fellow mourners; an apotheosis reached, a first step taken toward grasping the awful fact that life was extinct, and life must go on.

“We’d already been through it once when they found the other body, the one in Alexandra Lake,” said Cynthia.

“Susan Meyer,” muttered Robin.

“Roy was shown pictures, both times… And then this phone call, coming right after he’d had to… for the second time… it was…”

Cynthia was suddenly crying, not like Oonagh Kennedy, with her head up and tears sparkling on her cheeks, but hunched over the table, hiding her face, her shaking hands supporting her forehead.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I knew this would be awful… we never talk about her any—any more… I’m sorry…”

She sobbed for a few more seconds, then forced herself to look up again, her large eyes now pink and wet.

“Roy wanted to believe it had been Margot on the phone. He kept saying ‘Are you sure, are you sure, it didn’t sound like her?’ He was on tenterhooks while the police traced the call…

“You’re being very polite,” she said, and her laugh this time was slightly hysterical, “but I know what you want to know, and what Anna wants to know, too, even though I’ve told her and told her… There was nothing going on between me and Roy before Margot disappeared, and not for four years afterward… Did she tell you that Roy and I are related?”

She said it as though forcing herself to say it, although a third cousin was not, after all, a very close relationship. But Robin, thinking of Roy’s bleeding disorder, wondered whether the Phippses, like the Romanovs, mightn’t be well advised not to marry their cousins.

“Yes, she did,” said Strike.

“I was sick of the sound of his name before I went to work for them, actually. It was all, ‘Just look at Cousin Roy, with all his health problems, getting into Imperial College and studying medicine. If you’d only work harder, Cynthia…’ I used to hate the very idea of him, hahaha!”

Robin recalled the picture of young Roy in the press: the sensitive face, the floppy hair, the poet’s eyes. Many women found injury and illness romantic in a handsome man. Hadn’t Matthew, in his worst effusions of jealousy against Strike, invoked his amputated leg, the warrior’s wound against which he, whole-bodied and fit, felt unable to compete?

“You might not believe this, but as far as I was concerned at seventeen, the best thing about Roy was Margot! No, I thought she was marvelous, so—so fashionable and, you know, lots of opinions and things…

“She asked me over for dinner, after she heard I plowed all my exams. Well, I hero-worshipped her, so I was thrilled. I poured my heart out, told her I couldn’t face resits, I just wanted to get out in the real world and earn my own money. And she said, ‘Look, you’re wonderful with children, how about coming and looking after my baby when I go back to work? I’ll get Roy to do up the rooms over the garage for you.’

“My parents were livid,” said Cynthia, with another brave but unsuccessful stab at a laugh. “They were furious with her, and Roy, although actually, he didn’t want me there in the first place, because he wanted Margot to stay at home and look after Anna herself. Mummy and Daddy said she was just after cheap labor. These days I do see it more from their point of view. I’m not sure I’d have been delighted if a woman had persuaded one of my girls to leave school and move in with them, and look after their baby. But no, I loved Margot. I was excited.”

Cynthia fell silent for a moment, a faraway look in her doleful eyes, and Robin wondered whether she was thinking about the huge and unalterable consequences of accepting the job as nanny, which instead of being a springboard to her own independent life had placed her in a house she would never leave, led to her raising Margot’s child as her own, sleeping with Margot’s husband, forever stuck in the shadow of the doctor she claimed to have loved. What was it like to live with an absence that huge?

“My parents wanted me to go away after Margot disappeared. They didn’t like me being alone at the house with Roy, because people were starting to gossip. There were even hints in the press, but I swear to you on the lives of my children,” said Cynthia, with a kind of dull finality, “there was nothing between Roy and me, ever, before Margot disappeared, and not for a long time afterward, either. I stayed for Anna, because I couldn’t bear to leave her… she’d become my daughter!”

She hadn’t, said the implacable voice in Robin’s head. And you should have told her so.

“Roy didn’t date anyone for a long time after Margot disappeared. Then there was a colleague at work for a while,” Cynthia’s thin face flushed again, “but it only lasted a few months. Anna didn’t like her.

“I had a kind of on-off boyfriend, but he packed me in. He said it was like dating a married woman with a child, because I put Anna and Roy first, always.

“And then I suppose…” said Cynthia shakily, one hand balled in a fist, the other clutching it, “… over time… I realized I’d fallen in love with Roy. I never dreamed he’d want to be with me, though. Margot was so clever, such a—such a big personality, and he was so much older than me, so much more intelligent and sophisticated…

“One evening, after I’d put Anna to bed, I was about to go back to my rooms and he asked me what had happened with Will, my boyfriend, and I said it was over, and he asked what had happened, and we got talking, and he said… he said, ‘You’re a very special person and you deserve far better than him.’ And then… then, we had a drink…

“That was four years after she’d disappeared,” Cynthia repeated. “I was eighteen when she vanished and I was twenty-two when Roy and I… admitted we had feelings for each other. We kept it secret, obviously. It was another three years before Roy could get a death certificate for Margot.”

“That must have been very hard,” said Strike.

Cynthia looked at him for a moment, unsmiling. She seemed to have aged since arriving at the table.

“I’ve had nightmares about Margot coming back and throwing me out of the house for nearly forty years,” she said, and she tried to laugh. “I’ve never told Roy. I don’t want to know whether he dreams about her, too. We don’t talk about her. It’s the only way to cope. We’d said everything we had to say to the police, to each other, to the rest of the family. We’d raked it all over, hours and hours of talking. ‘It’s time to close the door,’ that’s how Roy put it. He said, ‘We’ve left the door open long enough. She’s not coming back.’

“There were a couple of spiteful things said in the press, you know, when we got married. ‘Husband of vanished doctor marries young nanny.’ It’s always going to sound sordid, isn’t it? Roy said not to mind them. My parents were appalled by the whole thing. It was only when I had Jeremy that they came around.

“We never meant to mislead Anna. We were waiting… I don’t know… trying to find the right moment, to explain… but how are you supposed to do it? She used to call me ‘Mummy,’” whispered Cynthia, “she was h-happy, she was a completely happy little girl, but then those children at school told her about Margot and it ruined every—”

From somewhere close by came a loud synthesizer version of “Greensleeves.” All three of them looked startled until Cynthia, laughing her snorting laugh, said, “It’s my phone!” She pulled the mobile from a deep pocket in her dress and answered it.

“Roy?” she said.

Robin could hear Roy talking angrily from where she sat. Cynthia looked suddenly alarmed. She tried to get up, but stepped on the hem of her dress and tripped forwards. Trying to disentangle herself, she said,

“No, I’m—oh, she hasn’t. Oh, God—Roy, I didn’t want to tell you because—no—yes, I’m still with them!”

Finally managing to free herself from both dress and table, Cynthia staggered away and out of the room. The headdress she’d been wearing slid limply off her seat. Robin stooped to pick it up, put it back on the seat of Cynthia’s chair and looked up to see Strike watching her.

“What?” asked Robin.

He was about to answer when Cynthia reappeared. She looked stricken.

“Roy knows—Anna’s told him. He wants you to come back to Broom House.”

36

Cynthia hurried away to change out of her Anne Boleyn costume and reappeared ten minutes later in a pair of poorly fitting jeans, a gray sweater and trainers. She appeared extremely anxious as they walked together back through the palace, setting a fast pace that Strike found challenging on cobblestones still slippery with the rain which had temporarily ceased, but the heavy gray clouds, gilt-edged though they were, promised an imminent return. Glancing upward as they passed back through the gatehouse of the inner court, Robin’s eye was caught by the gleaming gold accents on the astronomical clock, and noticed that the sun was in Margot’s sign of Aquarius.

“I’ll see you there,” said Cynthia breathlessly, as they approached the car park, and without waiting for an answer she half-ran toward a blue Mazda3 in the distance.

“This is going to be interesting,” said Robin.

“Certainly is,” said Strike.

“Grab the map,” said Robin, once both were back in the car. The old Land Rover didn’t have a functioning radio, let alone satnav. “You’ll have to navigate.”

“What d’you think of her?” asked Strike, while he looked up Church Road in Ham.

“She seems all right.”

Robin became aware that Strike was looking at her, as he had in the café, a slightly quizzical expression on his face.

“What?” she said again.

“I had the impression you weren’t keen.”

“No,” said Robin, with a trace of defensiveness, “she’s fine.”

She reversed out of the parking space, remembering Cynthia’s snorting laughter and her habit of jumbling affirmatives and negatives together.

“Well—”

“Thought so,” said Strike, smugly.

“Given what might’ve happened to Margot, I wouldn’t have kicked off the conversation with cheery decapitation jokes.”

“She’s lived with it for forty years,” said Strike. “People who live with something that massive stop being able to see it. It’s the backdrop of their lives. It’s only glaringly obvious to everyone else.”

It started to rain again as they left the car park: a fine veil laying itself swiftly over the windscreen.

“OK, I’m prejudiced,” Robin admitted, switching on the wipers. “Feeling a bit sensitive about second wives right now.”

She drove on for a few moments before becoming aware that Strike was looking at her again.

“What?” she asked, for a third time.

“Why’re you sensitive about second wives?”

“Because—oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I told Morris.” She’d tried not to think, since, about her drunken Boxing Day spent texting, of the small amount of comfort she had derived from it, or the immense load of discomfort. “Matthew and Sarah Shadlock are together officially now. She left her fiancé for him.”

“Shit,” said Strike, still watching her profile. “No, you didn’t tell me.”

But he mentally docketed the fact that she’d told Morris, which didn’t fit with the idea that he’d formed of Robin and Morris’s relationship. From what Barclay had told him about Morris’s challenges to Robin’s authority, and from Robin’s generally lukewarm comments on his new hire, he’d assumed that Morris’s undoubted sexual interest in Robin had fizzled out for lack of a return. And yet she’d told Morris this painful bit of personal information, and not told him.

As they drove in silence toward Church Road, he wondered what had been going on in London while he had been in Cornwall. Morris was a good-looking man and he, like Robin, was divorcing. Strike wondered why he hadn’t previously considered the implications of this obvious piece of symmetry. Comparing notes on lawyers, on difficult exes, on the mechanics of splitting two lives: they’d have plenty to talk about, plenty of opportunities for mutual sympathy.

“Straight up here,” he said, and they drove in silence across the Royal Paddocks, between high, straight red walls.

“Nice street,” commented Robin, twenty minutes after they’d left Hampton Court Palace, as she turned the Land Rover into a road that might have been deep in countryside. To their left was dense woodland, to the right, several large, detached houses that stood back from the road behind high hedges.

“It’s that one,” said Strike, pointing at a particularly sprawling house with many pointed, half-timbered gables. The double gates stood open, as did the front door. They turned into the drive and parked behind the blue Mazda3.

As soon as Robin switched off the engine, they heard shouting coming from inside the house: a male voice, intemperate and high pitched. Anna Phipps’s wife, Kim, tall, blonde and wearing jeans and a shirt as before, came striding out of the house toward them, her expression tense.

“Big scenes,” she said, as Strike and Robin got out of the car into the mist of rain.

“Would you like us to wait—?” Robin began.

“No,” Kim said, “he’s determined to see you. Come in.”

They walked across the gravel and entered Broom House. Somewhere inside, male and female voices continued to shout.

Every house has its own deep ingrained smell, and this one was redolent of sandalwood and a not entirely unpleasant fustiness. Kim led them through a long, large-windowed hall that seemed frozen in the mid-twentieth century. There were brass light fittings, water­colors and an old rug on polished floorboards. With a sudden frisson, Robin thought that Margot Bamborough had once walked this very floor, her metallic rose perfume mingling with the scents of polish and old carpet.

As they approached the door of the drawing room, the argument taking place inside became suddenly comprehensible.

“—and if I’m to be talked about,” a man was shouting, “I should have right of reply—my family deciding to investigate me behind my back, charming, charming, it really is—”

“Nobody’s investigating you, for God’s sake!” they heard Anna say. “Bill Talbot was incompetent—”

“Oh, was he really? Were you there? Did you know him?”

“I didn’t have to be there, Dad—”

Kim opened the door. Strike and Robin followed Kim inside.

It was like coming upon a tableau. The three people standing inside froze at their entrance. Cynthia’s thin fingers were pressed to her mouth. Anna stood facing her father across a small antique table.

The romantic-looking poet of 1974 was no more. Roy Phipps’s remaining hair was short, gray and clung only around his ears and the back of his head. In his knitted sweater vest, with his high, domed, shining pate and his wild eyes, slightly sunken in a blotchy face, he’d now be better suited to the role of mad scientist.

So furious did Roy Phipps look, that Robin quite expected him to start shouting at the newcomers, too. However, the hematologist’s demeanor changed when his eyes met Strike’s. Whether this was a tribute to the detective’s bulk, or to the aura of gravity and calm he managed to project in highly charged situations, Robin couldn’t tell, but she thought she saw Roy decide against yelling. After a brief hesitation, the doctor accepted Strike’s proffered hand, and as the two men shook, Robin wondered how aware men were of the power dynamics that played out between them, while women stood watching.

“Dr. Phipps,” said Strike.

Roy appeared to have found the gear change between intemperate rage and polite greeting a difficult one, and his immediate response was slightly incoherent.

“So you’re—you’re the detective, are you?” he said. Bluish-red blotches lingered in his pale cheeks.

“Cormoran Strike—and this is my partner, Robin Ellacott.”

Robin stepped forwards.

“How d’you do?” Roy said stiffly, shaking her hand, too. His was hot and dry.

“Shall I make coffee?” said Cynthia, in a half-whisper.

“Yes—no, why not,” said Roy, his ill-temper clearly jockeying with the nervousness that seemed to increase while Strike stood, large and unmoving, watching him. “Sit, sit,” he said, pointing Strike to a sofa, at right angles to another.

Cynthia hurried out of the room to make coffee, and Strike and Robin sat where they’d been instructed.

“Going to help Cyn,” muttered Anna and she hurried out of the room, and Kim, after a moment’s hesitation, followed her, leaving Strike and Robin alone with Roy. The doctor settled himself into a high-backed velvet armchair and glared around him. He didn’t look well. The flush of temper receded, leaving him looking wan. His socks had bunched up around his skinny ankles.

There ensued one of the most uncomfortable silences Robin had ever endured. Mainly to avoid looking at Roy, she allowed her eyes to roam around the large room, which was as old fashioned as the hall. A grand piano stood in the corner. More large windows looked out onto an enormous garden, where a long rectangular fish pond lay just beyond a paved area, at the far end of which lay a covered, temple-like stone structure where people could either sit and watch the koi carp, now barely visible beneath the rain-flecked surface of the water, or look out over the sweeping lawn, with its mature trees and well-tended flower-beds.

An abundance of leather-bound books and bronzes of antique subjects filled bookcases and cabinets. A tambour frame stood between the sofas, on which a very beautiful piece of embroidery was being worked in silks. The design was Japanese influenced, of two koi swimming in opposite directions. Robin was debating whether to pass polite comment on it, and to ask whether Cynthia was responsible, when Strike spoke.

“Who was the classicist?”

“What?” said Roy. “Oh. My father.”

His crazy-looking eyes roamed over the various small bronzes and marbles dotted around the room. “Took a first in Classics at Cambridge.”

“Ah,” said Strike, and the glacial silence resumed.

A squall of wind threw more rain at the window. Robin was relieved to hear the tinkling of teaspoons and the footsteps of the three returning women.

Cynthia, who re-entered the room first, set a tea tray down on the antique table standing between the sofas. It rocked a little with the weight. Anna added a large cake on a stand.

Anna and Kim sat down side by side on the free sofa, and when Cynthia had drawn up spindly side tables to hold everyone’s tea, and cut slices of cake for those who wanted some, she sat herself down beside her stepdaughter-in-law, looking scared.

“Well,” said Roy at last, addressing Strike. “I’d be interested to hear what you think your chances are of finding out what the Metropolitan Police has been unable to discover in four decades.”

Robin was sure Roy had been planning this aggressive opening during the long and painful silence.

“Fairly small,” said Strike matter-of-factly, once he’d swallowed a large piece of the cake Cynthia had given him, “though we’ve got a new alleged sighting of your first wife I wanted to discuss with you.”

Roy looked taken aback.

“Alleged sighting,” Strike emphasized, setting down his plate and reaching inside his jacket for his notebook. “But obviously… Excellent cake, Mrs. Phipps,” he told Cynthia.

“Oh, thank you,” she said in a small voice. “Coffee and walnut was Anna’s favorite when she was little—wasn’t it, love?” she said, but Anna’s only response was a tense smile.

“We heard about it from one of your wife’s ex-colleagues, Janice Beattie.”

Roy shook his head and shrugged impatiently, to convey non-recognition of the names.

“She was the practice nurse at the St. John’s surgery,” said Strike.

“Oh,” said Roy. “Yes. I think she came here once, for a barbecue. She seemed quite a decent woman… Disaster, that afternoon. Bloody disaster. Those children were atrocious—d’you remember?” he shot at Cynthia.

“Yes,” said Cynthia quickly, “no, there was one boy who was really—”

“Spiked the punch,” barked Roy. “Vodka. Someone was sick.”

“Gloria,” said Cynthia.

“I don’t remember all their names,” said Roy, with an impatient wave of the hand. “Sick all over the downstairs bathroom. Disgusting.”

“This boy would’ve been Carl Oakden?” asked Strike.

“That’s him,” said Roy. “We found the vodka bottle empty, later, hidden in a shed. He’d sneaked into the house and taken it out of the drinks cabinet.”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, “and then he smashed—”

“Crystal bowl of my mother’s and half a dozen glasses. Hit a cricket ball right across the barbecue area. The nurse cleaned it all up for me, because—decent of her. She knew I couldn’t—broken glass,” said Roy, with an impatient gesture.

“On the bright side,” said Cynthia, with the ghost of a laugh, “he’d smashed the punch, so nobody else got sick.”

“That bowl was art deco,” said Roy, unsmiling. “Bloody disaster, the whole thing. I said to Margot,” and he paused for a second after saying the name, and Robin wondered when he’d last spoken it, “‘I don’t know what you think this is going to achieve.’ Because he didn’t come, the one she was trying to conciliate—the doctor she didn’t get on with, what was his—?”

“Joseph Brenner,” said Robin.

“Brenner, exactly. He’d refused the invitation, so what was the point? But no, we still had to give up our Saturday to entertain this motley collection of people, and our reward was to have our drink stolen and our possessions smashed.”

Roy’s fists lay on the arms of his chair. He uncoiled the long fingers for a moment in a movement like a hermit crab unflexing its legs, then curled them tightly in upon themselves again.

“That same boy, Oakden, wrote a book about Margot later,” he said. “Used a photograph from that damn barbecue to add credibility to the notion that he and his mother knew all about our private lives. So, yes,” said Roy coldly, “not one of Margot’s better ideas.”

“Well, she was trying to make the practice work better together, wasn’t she?” said Anna. “You’ve never really needed to manage different personalities at work—”

“Oh, you know all about my work, too, do you, Anna?”

“Well, it wasn’t the same as being a GP, was it?” said Anna. “You were lecturing, doing research, you didn’t have to manage cleaners and receptionists and a whole bunch of non-medics.”

“They were quite badly behaved, Anna,” said Cynthia, hurrying loyally to support Roy. “No, they really were. I never told—I didn’t want to cause trouble—but one of the women sneaked upstairs into your mum and dad’s bedroom.”

“What?” barked Roy.

“Yes,” said Cynthia, nervously. “No, I went upstairs to change Anna’s nappy and I heard movement in there. I walked in and she was looking at Margot’s clothes in the wardrobe.”

“Who was this?” asked Strike.

“The blonde one. The receptionist who wasn’t Gloria.”

“Irene,” said Strike. “Did she know you’d seen her?”

“Oh yes. I walked in, holding Anna.”

“What did she say when she saw you?” asked Robin.

“Well, she was a bit embarrassed,” said Cynthia. “You would be, wouldn’t you? She laughed and said ‘just being nosy’ and walked back out past me.”

“Good God,” said Roy Phipps, shaking his head. “Who hired these people?”

“Was she really just looking?” Robin asked Cynthia. “Or d’you think she’d gone in there to—”

“Oh, I don’t think she’d taken anything,” said Cynthia. “And you never—Margot never missed anything, did she?” she asked Roy.

“No, but you should still have told me this at the time,” said Roy crossly.

“I didn’t want to cause trouble. You were already… well, it was a stressful day, wasn’t it?”

“About this alleged sighting,” said Strike, and he told the family the third-hand tale of Charlie Ramage, who claimed to have seen Margot wandering among graves in a churchyard in Leamington Spa.

“… and Robin’s now spoken to Ramage’s widow, who confirmed the basic story, though she couldn’t swear to it that it was Margot he thought he’d seen, and not another missing woman. The sighting doesn’t seem to have been passed to the police, so I wanted to ask whether Margot had any connection with Leamington Spa that you know of?”

“None,” said Roy, and Cynthia shook her head.

Strike made a note.

“Thank you. While we’re on the subject of sightings,” said Strike, “I wonder whether we could run through the rest of the list?”

Robin thought she knew what Strike was up to. However uncomfortable the idea that Margot was still alive might be for the people in this room, Strike wanted to start the interview from a standpoint that didn’t presume murder.

“The woman at the service station in Birmingham, the mother in Brighton, the dog walker down in Eastbourne,” Roy rattled off, before Strike could speak. “Why would she have been out and about, driving cars and walking dogs? If she’d disappeared voluntarily, she clearly didn’t want to be found. The same goes for wandering around graveyards.”

“True,” said Strike. “But there was one sighting—”

“Warwick,” said Roy. “Yes.”

A look passed between husband and wife. Strike waited. Roy set down his cup and saucer on the table in front of him and looked up at his daughter.

“You’re quite sure you want to do this, Anna, are you?” he asked, looking at his silent daughter. “Quite, quite sure?”

“What d’you mean?” she snapped back. “What d’you think I hired detectives for? Fun?”

“All right, then,” said Roy, “all right. That sighting caught… caught my attention, because my wife’s ex-boyfriend, a man called Paul Satchwell, hailed originally from Warwick. This was a man she’d… reconnected with, before she disappeared.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Anna, with a tight little laugh, “did you honestly think I don’t know about Paul Satchwell? Of course I do!” Kim reached out and put a hand on her wife’s leg, whether in comfort or warning, it was hard to tell. “Have you never heard of the internet, Dad, or press archives? I’ve seen Satchwell’s ridiculous photograph, with all his chest hair and his medallions, and I know my mother went for a drink with him three weeks before she vanished! But it was only one drink—”

“Oh, was it?” said Roy nastily. “Thanks for your reassurance, Anna. Thanks for your expert knowledge. How marvelous to be all-knowing—”

“Roy,” whispered Cynthia.

“What are you saying, that it was more than a drink?” said Anna, looking shaken. “No, it wasn’t, that’s a horrible thing to say! Oonagh says—”

“Oh, right, yes, I see!” said Roy loudly, his sunken cheeks turning purple as his hands gripped the arms of his chair, “Oonagh says, does she? Everything is explained!”

“What’s explained?” demanded Anna.

“This!” he shouted, pointing a trembling, rope-veined, swollen-knuckled hand at Strike and Robin. “Oonagh Kennedy’s behind it all, is she? I should have known I hadn’t heard the last of her!”

“For God’s sake, Roy,” said Kim loudly, “that’s a preposterous—”

“Oonagh Kennedy wanted me arrested!”

“Dad, that’s simply not true!” said Anna, forcibly removing Kim’s restraining hand from her leg. “You’ve got a morbid fixation about Oonagh—”

“Badgering me to complain about Talbot—”

“Well, why the bloody hell didn’t you?” said Anna loudly. “The man was in the middle of a fully fledged breakdown!”

“Roy!” whimpered Cynthia again, as Roy leaned forwards to face his daughter across the too-small circular table, with its precariously balanced cake. Gesticulating wildly, his face purple, he shouted,

“Police swarming all over the house going through your mother’s things—sniffer dogs out in the garden—they were looking for any reason to arrest me, and I should lodge a formal complaint against the man in charge? How would that have looked?”

“He was incompetent!”

“Were you there, Miss Omniscient? Did you know him?”

“Why did they replace him? Why does everything written about the case say he was incompetent? The truth is,” said Anna, stabbing the air between her and her father with a forefinger, “you and Cyn loved Bill Talbot because he thought you were innocent from the off and—”

“Thought I was innocent?” bellowed Roy. “Well, thank you, it’s good to know that nothing’s changed since you were thirteen years old—”

“Roy!” said Cynthia and Kim together.

“—and accused me of building the koi pond over the place I’d buried her!”

Anna burst into tears and fled the room, almost tripping over Strike’s legs as she went. Suspecting there was about to be a mass exodus, he retracted his feet.

“When,” Kim said coldly to her father-in-law, “is Anna going to be forgiven for things she said when she was a confused child, going through a dreadful time?”

“And my dreadful time is nothing, of course? Nothing!” shouted Roy, and as Strike expected, he, too, left the room at the fastest pace he could manage, which was a speedy hobble.

“Christ’s sake,” muttered Kim, striding after Roy and Anna and almost colliding at the door with Cynthia, who’d jumped up to follow Roy.

The door swung shut. The rain pattered on the pond outside. Strike blew out his cheeks, exchanged looks with Robin, then picked up his plate and continued eating his cake.

“Starving,” he said thickly, in response to Robin’s look. “No lunch. And it’s good cake.”

Distantly they heard shouting, and the slamming of another door.

“D’you think the interview’s over?” muttered Robin.

“No,” said Strike, still eating. “They’ll be back.”

“Remind me about the sighting in Warwick,” said Robin.

She’d merely skimmed the list of sightings that Strike had emailed her. There hadn’t seemed anything very interesting there.

“A woman asked for change in a pub, and the landlady thought she was Margot. A mature student came forward two days later to identify herself, but the landlady wasn’t convinced that was who she’d seen. The police were, though.”

Strike took another large mouthful of cake before saying,

“I don’t think there’s anything in it. Well…” he swallowed and shot a meaningful look at the sitting room door, “there’s a bit more now.”

Strike continued to eat cake, while Robin’s eyes roamed the room and landed on an ormolu mantel clock of exceptional ugliness. With a glance at the door, she got up to examine it. A gilded classical goddess wearing a helmet sat on top of the ornate, heavy case.

“Pallas Athena,” said Strike, watching her, pointing his fork at the figure.

In the base of the clock was a drawer with a small brass handle. Remembering Cynthia’s statement about Roy and Margot leaving notes for each other here, she pulled the drawer open. It was lined in red felt and empty.

“D’you think it’s valuable?” she asked Strike, sliding the drawer shut.

“Dunno. Why?”

“Because why else would you keep it? It’s horrible.”

There were two distinct kinds of taste on view in this room and they didn’t harmonize, Robin thought, as she looked around, all the time listening for the return of the family. The leather-bound copies of Ovid and Pliny, and the Victorian reproductions of classical statues, among them a pair of miniature Medici lions, a reproduction Vestal virgin and a Hermes poised on tiptoe on his heavy bronze base, presumably represented Roy’s father’s taste, whereas she suspected that his mother had chosen the insipid watercolor landscapes and botanical subjects, the dainty antique furniture and the chintz curtains.

Why had Roy never made a clean sweep and redecorated, Robin wondered. Reverence for his parents? Lack of imagination? Or had the sickly little boy, housebound no doubt for much of his childhood, developed an attachment to these objects that he couldn’t put aside? He and Cynthia seemed to have made little impression on the room other than in adding a few family pictures to faded black and white photos featuring Roy’s parents and Roy as a child. The only one to hold Robin’s interest was a family group that looked as though it had been taken in the early nineties, when Roy had still had all his hair, and Cynthia’s had been thick and wavy. Their two biological children, a boy and a girl, looked like Anna. Nobody would have guessed that she’d had a different mother.

Robin moved to the window. The surface of the long, formal koi pond outside, with its stone pavilion at the end, was now so densely rain-pocked that the vivid red, white and black shapes moving beneath the surface were barely discernible as fish. There was one particularly big creature, pearl white and black, that looked as though it might be over two feet long. The miniature pavilion would normally be reflected in the pond’s smooth surface, but today it merely added an extra layer of diffuse gray to the far end of the pond. It had a strangely familiar design on the floor.

“Cormoran,” Robin said, at the exact moment Strike said,

“Look at this.”

Both turned. Strike, who’d finished his cake, was now standing beside one of Roy’s father’s statuettes, which Robin had overlooked. It was a foot-high bronze of a naked man with a cloth around his shoulders, holding a snake. Momentarily puzzled, Robin realized after a second or two why Strike was pointing at it.

“Oh… the snaky invented sign Talbot gave Roy?”

“Precisely. This is Asclepius,” said Strike. “Greek god of medicine. What’ve you found?”

“Look on the floor of the gazebo thing. Inlaid in the stone.”

He joined her at the window.

“Ah,” he said. “You can see the beginnings of that in one of the photographs of Margot’s barbecue. It was under construction.”

A cross of St. John lay on the floor of the gazebo, inlaid in darker granite. “Interesting choice of design,” said Strike.

“You know,” said Robin, turning to look at the room, “people who’re manic often think they’re receiving supernatural messages. Things the sane would call coincidences.”

“I was thinking exactly that,” said Strike, turning to look at the figure of Pallas Athena, on top of the ugly mantel clock. “To a man in Talbot’s state of mental confusion, I’m guessing this room would’ve seemed crammed with astrological—”

Roy’s voice sounded in the hall outside.

“—then don’t blame me—”

The door opened and the family filed back inside.

“—if she hears things she doesn’t like!” Roy finished, addressing Cynthia, who was immediately behind him, and looked scared. Roy’s face was an unhealthy purple again, though the skin around his eyes remained a jaundiced yellow.

He seemed startled to see Strike and Robin standing at the window.

“Admiring your garden,” said Strike, as he and Robin returned to their sofa.

Roy grunted and took his seat again. He was breathing heavily.

“Apologies,” he said, after a moment or two. “You aren’t seeing the family at its best.”

“Very stressful for everyone,” said Strike, as Anna and Kim re-entered the room and resumed their seats on the sofa, where they sat holding hands. Cynthia perched herself beside them, watching Roy anxiously.

“I want to say something,” Roy told Strike. “I want to make it perfectly clear—”

“Oh for God’s sake, I’ve had one phone call with her!” said Anna.

“I’d appreciate it, Anna,” said Roy, his chest laboring, “if I could finish.”

Addressing Strike, he said,

“Oonagh Kennedy disliked me from the moment Margot and I first met. She was possessive toward Margot, and she also happened to have left the church, and she was one of those who had to make an enemy of everyone still in it. Moreover—”

“Dr. Phipps,” interrupted Strike, who could foresee the afternoon degenerating into a long row about Oonagh Kennedy. “I think you should know that when we interviewed Oonagh, she made it quite clear that the person she thought we should be concentrating our energies on is Paul Satchwell.”

For a second or two, Roy appeared unable to fully grasp what had just been said to him.

“See?” said Anna furiously. “You just implied that there was more between my mother and Satchwell than one drink. What did you mean? Or were you,” she said, and Robin heard the underlying hope, “just angry and lashing out?”

“People who insist on opening cans of worms, Anna,” said Roy, “shouldn’t complain when they get covered in slime.”

“Well, go on then,” said Anna, “spill your slime.”

“Anna,” whispered Cynthia, and was ignored.

“All right,” said Roy. “All right, then.” He turned back to Strike and Robin. “Early in our relationship, I saw a note of Satchwell’s Margot had kept. ‘Dear Brunhilda’ it said—it was his pet name for her. The Valkyrie, you know. Margot was tall. Fair.”

Roy paused and swallowed.

“Some three weeks before she disappeared, she came home and told me she’d run into Satchwell in the street and that they’d gone for an… innocent drink.”

He cleared his throat. Cynthia poured him more tea.

“After she—after she’d disappeared, I had to go and collect her things from the St. John’s practice. Among them I found a small—”

He held his fingers some three inches apart.

“—wooden figure, a stylized Viking which she’d been keeping on her desk. Written in ink on this figure’s base was ‘Brunhilda,’ with a small heart.”

Roy took a sip of coffee.

“I’d never seen it before. Of course, it’s possible that Satchwell was carrying it around with him for years, on the off chance that he’d one day bump into Margot in the street. However, I concluded that they’d seen each other again and that he’d given her this—this token—on a subsequent occasion. All I know is, I’d never seen it before I collected her things from her surgery.”

Robin could tell that Anna wanted to suggest an alternative explanation, but it was very difficult to find a flaw in Roy’s reasoning.

“Did you tell the police what you suspected?” Strike asked.

“Yes,” said Phipps, “and I believe Satchwell claimed that there’d been no second meeting, that he’d given the figurine to Margot years before, when they were first involved. They couldn’t prove it either way, of course. But I’d never seen it before.”

Robin wondered which would be more hurtful: finding out that a spouse had hidden a love token from a former partner, and taken to displaying it many years later, or that they’d been given it recently.

“Tell me,” Strike was saying, “did Margot ever tell you anything about a ‘pillow dream’?”

“A what?” said Roy.

“Something Satchwell had told her, concerning a pillow?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Roy, suspiciously.

“Did Inspector Talbot ever happen to mention that he believed Satchwell lied about his whereabouts on the eleventh of October?”

“No,” said Roy, now looking very surprised. “I understood the police were entirely satisfied with his alibi.”

“We’ve found out,” Strike said, addressing Anna, “that Talbot kept his own separate case notes—separate from the official police record, I mean. After appearing to rule out Aries, he went back to him and started digging for more information on him.”

“‘Aries’?” repeated Anna, confused.

“Sorry,” said Strike, irritated by his own lapse into astrological speak. “Talbot’s breakdown manifested itself as a belief he could solve the case by occult means. He started using tarot cards and looking at horoscopes. He referred to everyone connected with the case by their star signs. Satchwell was born under the sign of Aries, so that’s what he’s called in Talbot’s private notes.”

There was a brief silence, and then Kim said,

“Jesus wept.”

“Astrology?” said Roy, apparently confounded.

“You see, Dad?” said Anna, thumping her knee with her fist. “If Lawson had taken over earlier—”

“Lawson was a fool,” said Roy, who nevertheless looked shaken. “An idiot! He was more interested in proving that Talbot had been inept than in finding out what happened to Margot. He insisted on going back over everything. He wanted to personally interview the doctors who’d treated me for the bleed on my knee, even though they’d given signed statements. He went back to my bank to check my accounts, in case I’d paid someone to kill your mother. He put pressure…”

He stopped and coughed, thumping his chest. Cynthia began to rise off the sofa, but Roy indicated with an angry gesture that she should stay put.

“… put pressure on Cynthia, trying to get her to admit she’d lied about me being in bed all that day, but he never found out a shred of new information about what had happened to your mother. He was a jobsworth, a bullying, unimaginative jobsworth whose priority wasn’t finding her, it was proving that Talbot messed up. Bill Talbot may have been… he clearly was,” Roy added, with a furious glance at Strike, “unwell, but the simple fact remains: nobody’s ever found a better explanation than Creed, have they?”

And with the mention of Creed, faces of the three women on the sofa fell. His very name seemed to conjure a kind of black hole in the room, into which living women had disappeared, never to be seen again; a manifestation of almost supernatural evil. There was a finality in the very mention of him: the monster, now locked away for life, untouchable, unreachable, like the women locked up and tortured in his basement. And Robin’s thoughts darted guiltily to the email she had now written, and sent, without telling Strike what she’d done, because she was afraid he might not approve.

“Do any of you know,” Roy asked abruptly, “who Kara Wolfson and Louise Tucker were?”

“Yes,” said Robin, before Strike could answer. “Louise was a teenage runaway and Kara was a nightclub hostess. Creed was suspected of killing both of them, but there was no proof.”

“Exactly,” said Roy, throwing her the kind of look he might once have given a medical student who had made a correct diagnosis. “Well, in 1978 I met up with Kara’s brother and Louise’s father.”

“I never knew you did that!” said Anna, looking shocked.

“Of course not. You were five years old,” snapped Roy. He turned back to Strike and Robin. “Louise’s father had made his own study of Creed’s life. He’d gone to every place Creed had ever lived or worked and interviewed as many people who’d admit to knowing him. He was petitioning Merlyn-Rees, the then Home Secretary, to let him go and dig in as many of these places as possible.

“The man was half-insane,” said Roy. “I saw then what living with something like this could do to you. The obsession had taken over his entire life. He wanted buildings dismantled, walls taken down, foundations exposed. Fields where Creed might once have walked, dug up. Streams dragged, which some schoolboy friend said Creed might have once gone fishing in. Tucker was shaking as he talked, trying to get me and Wolfson, who was a lorry driver, to join him in a TV campaign. We were to chain ourselves to the railings outside Downing Street, get ourselves on the news… Tucker’s marriage had split up. He seemed on bad terms with his living children. Creed had become his whole life.”

“And you didn’t want to help?” asked Anna.

“If,” said Roy quietly, “he’d had actual evidence—any solid clue that linked Margot and Creed—”

“I’ve read you thought one of the necklaces in the basement might’ve been—”

“If you will get your information from sensationalist books, Anna—”

“Because you’ve always made it so easy for me to talk to you about my mother,” said Anna. “Haven’t you?”

“Anna,” whispered Cynthia again.

“The locket they found in Creed’s basement wasn’t Margot’s, and I should know, because I gave it to her,” said Roy. His lips trembled, and he pressed them together.

“Just a couple more questions, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Strike, before Anna could say anything else. He was determined to avert further conflict if he could. “Could we talk for a moment about Wilma, the cleaner who worked at the practice and did housework for you here, as well?”

“It was all Margot’s idea, hiring her, but she wasn’t very good,” said Roy. “The woman was having some personal difficulties and Margot thought the solution was more money. After Margot disappeared, she walked out. Never turned up again. No loss. I heard afterward she’d been sacked from the practice. Pilfering, I heard.”

“Wilma told police—”

“That there was blood on the carpet upstairs, the day Margot went missing,” interrupted Roy. From Anna and Kim’s startled expressions, Robin deduced that this was entirely new information to them.

“Yes,” said Strike.

“It was menstrual,” said Roy coldly. “Margot’s period had started overnight. There were sanitary wrappers in the bathroom, my mother told me. Wilma sponged the carpet clean. This was in the spare room, at the opposite end of the house to the marital bedroom. Margot and I were sleeping apart at that time, because of,” there was a slight hesitation, “my injury.”

“Wilma also said that she thought she’d seen you—”

“Walking across the garden,” said Roy. “It was a lie. If she saw anyone, it would have been one of the stonemasons. We were finishing the gazebo at that time,” he said, pointing toward the stone folly at the end of the fishpond.

Strike made a note and turned over a page in his notebook.

“Can either of you remember Margot talking about a man called Niccolo Ricci? He was a patient at the St. John’s practice.”

Both Roy and Cynthia shook their heads.

“What about a patient called Steven Douthwaite?”

“No,” said Roy. “But we heard about him afterward, from the press.”

“Someone at the barbecue mentioned that Margot had been sent chocolates by a patient,” said Cynthia. “That was him, wasn’t it?”

“We think so. She never talked about Douthwaite, then? Never mentioned him showing an inappropriate interest in her, or told you he was gay?”

“No,” said Roy again. “There’s such a thing as patient confidenti­ality, you know.”

“This might seem an odd question,” said Strike, “but did Margot have any scars? Specifically, on her ribcage?”

“No,” said Roy, unsettled. “Why are you asking that?”

“To exclude one possibility,” said Strike, and before they could ask for further details, he said,

“Did Margot ever tell you she’d received threatening notes?”

“Yes,” said Roy. “Well, not notes in the plural. She told me she’d got one.”

“She did?” said Strike, looking up.

“Yes. It accused her of encouraging young women into promiscuity and sin.”

“Did it threaten her?”

“I don’t know,” said Roy. “I never saw it.”

“She didn’t bring it home?”

“No,” said Roy shortly. He hesitated, then said, “We had a row about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There can be serious consequences,” said Roy, turning redder, “societal consequences, when you start enabling things that don’t take place in nature—”

“Are you worried she told some girl it was OK to be gay?” asked Anna, and yet again Cynthia whispered, “Anna!”

“I’m talking,” said Roy, his face congested, “about giving reckless advice that might lead to marital breakdown. I’m talking about facilitating promiscuity, behind the backs of parents. Some very angry man had sent her that note, and she never seemed to have considered—considered—”

Roy’s face worked. For a moment, it looked as though he was going to shout, but then, most unexpectedly, he burst into noisy tears.

His wife, daughter and daughter-in-law sat, stunned, in a row on the sofa; nobody, even Cynthia, went to him. Roy was suddenly crying in great heaving gulps, tears streaming down over his sunken cheeks, trying and failing to master himself, and finally speaking through the sobs.

“She—never seemed—to remember—that I couldn’t—protect her—couldn’t—do anything—if somebody tried—to hurt—because I’m a useless—bleeder… useless… bloody… bleeder…”

“Oh Dad,” whispered Anna, horrified, and she slid off the sofa and walked to her father on her knees. She tried to place her hands on his leg, but he batted her consoling hands away, shaking his head, still crying.

“No—no—I don’t deserve it—you don’t know everything—you don’t know—”

“What don’t I know?” she said, looking scared. “Dad, I know more than you think. I know about the abortion—”

“There was never—never—never an abortion!” said Roy, gulping and sobbing. “That was the one—one thing Oonagh Kennedy and I—we both knew—she’d never—never—not after you! She told me—Margot told me—after she had you—changed her views completely. Completely!”

“Then what don’t I know?” whispered Anna.

“I was—I was c-cruel to her!” wailed Roy. “I was! I made things difficult! Showed no interest in her work. I drove her away! She was going to l-leave me… I know what happened. I know. I’ve always known. The day before—before she went—she left a message—in the clock—silly—thing we used to—and the note said—Please t-talk to me…”

Roy’s sobs overtook him. As Cynthia got up and went to kneel on Roy’s other side, Anna reached for her father’s hand, and this time, he let her hold it. Clinging to his daughter, he said,

“I was waiting—for an apology. For going to drink—with Satchwell. And because she hadn’t—written an apology—I didn’t t-talk to her. And the next day—

“I know what happened. She liked to walk. If she was upset—long walks. She forgot about Oonagh—went for a walk—trying to decide what to do—leave me—because I’d made her—so—so sad. She wasn’t—paying attention—and Creed—and Creed—must have…”

Still holding his hand, Anna slid her other arm around her father’s shaking shoulders and drew her to him. He cried inconsolably, clinging to her. Strike and Robin both pretended an interest in the flowered rug.

“Roy,” said Kim gently, at last. “Nobody in this room hasn’t said or done things they don’t bitterly regret. Not one of us.”

Strike, who’d got far more out of Roy Phipps than he’d expected, thought it was time to draw the interview to a close. Phipps was in such a state of distress that it felt inhumane to press him further. When Roy’s sobs had subsided a little, Strike said formally,

“I want to thank you very much for talking to us, and for the tea. We’ll get out of your hair.”

He and Robin got to their feet. Roy remained entangled with his wife and daughter. Kim stood up to show them out.

“Well,” Kim said quietly, as they approached the front door, “I have to tell you, that was… well, close to a miracle. He’s never talked about Margot like that, ever. Even if you don’t find out anything else… thank you. That was… healing.”

The rain had ceased and the sun had come out. A double rainbow lay over the woods opposite the house. Strike and Robin stepped outside, into clean fresh air.

“Could I ask you one last thing?” said Strike, turning back to Kim who stood in the doorway.

“Yes, of course.”

“It’s about that summer house thing in the garden, beside the koi pond. I wondered why it’s got a cross of St. John on the floor,” said Strike.

“Oh,” said Kim. “Margot chose the design. Yes, Cynthia told me, ages ago. Margot had just got the job at St. John’s—and funnily enough, this area’s got a connection to the Knights Hospitaller, too—”

“Yes,” said Robin. “I read about that, at Hampton Court.”

“So, she thought it would be a nice allusion to the two things… You know, now you mention it, I’m surprised nobody ever changed it. Every other trace of Margot’s gone from the house.”

“Expensive, though,” said Strike, “to remove slabs of granite.”

“Yes,” said Kim, her smile fading a little. “I suppose it would be.”

37

Rain fell almost ceaselessly into February. On the fifth, the most savage storm yet hit the south. Thousands of homes lost power, part of the sea wall supporting the London-South West railway line collapsed, swathes of farmland disappeared under flood water, roads became rivers and the nightly news featured fields turned to seas of gray water and houses waist-deep in mud. The Prime Minister promised financial assistance, the emergency services scrambled to help the stranded, and high on her hill above the flooded St. Mawes, Joan was deprived of a promised visit from Strike and Lucy, because they were unable to reach her either by road or train.

Strike sublimated the guilt he felt for not heading to Cornwall before the weather rendered the journey impossible by working long hours and skimping on sleep. Masochistically, he chose to work back-to-back shifts, so that Barclay and Hutchins could take some of the leave due to them because of his previous trips to see Joan. In consequence, it was Strike, not Hutchins, who was sitting in his BMW in the everlasting rain outside Elinor Dean’s house in Stoke Newington on Wednesday evening the following week, and Strike who saw a man in a tracksuit knock on her door and be admitted.

Strike waited all night for the man to reappear. Finally, at six in the morning, he emerged onto the still dark street with his hand clamped over his lower face. Strike, who was watching him through night vision glasses, caught a glimpse of Elinor Dean in a cozy quilted dressing gown, waving him off. The tracksuited man hurried back to his Citroën with his right hand still concealing his mouth and set off in a southerly direction.

Strike tailed the Citroën until they reached Risinghill Street in Pentonville, where Strike’s target parked and entered a modern, red-brick block of flats, both hands now in his pockets and nothing unusual about his mouth as far as the detective could see. Strike waited until the man was safely inside, took a note of which window showed a light five minutes later, then drove away, parking shortly afterward in White Lion Street.

Early as it was, people were already heading off to work, umbrellas angled against the continuing downpour. Strike wound down the car window, because even he, inveterate smoker though he was, wasn’t enjoying the smell of his car after a night’s surveillance. Then, though his tongue ached from too much smoking, he lit up again and phoned Saul Morris.

“All right, boss?”

Strike, who didn’t particularly like Morris calling him “boss,” but couldn’t think of any way to ask him to stop without sounding like a dickhead, said,

“I want you to switch targets. Forget Shifty today; I’ve just followed a new guy who spent the night at Elinor Dean’s.” He gave Morris the address. “He’s second floor, flat on the far left as you’re looking at the building. Fortyish, graying hair, bit of a paunch. See what you can find out about him—chat up the neighbors, find out where he works and have a dig around online, see if you can find out what his interests are. I’ve got a hunch he and SB are visiting that woman for the same reason.”

“See, this is why you’re the head honcho. You take over for one night and crack the case.”

Strike wished Morris would stop brown-nosing him, too. When he’d hung up, he sat smoking for a while, while the wind nipped at his exposed flesh, and rain hit his face in what felt like icy needle pricks. Then, after checking the time to make sure his early-rising uncle would be awake, he phoned Ted.

“All right, boy?” said his uncle, over the crackling phone line.

“Fine. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” said Ted. “Just having some breakfast. Joanie’s still asleep.”

“How is she?”

“No change. Bearing up.”

“What about food, have you got enough?”

“We’re fine for food, don’t you worry about that,” said Ted. “Little Dave Polworth come over yesterday with enough to feed us for a week.”

“How the hell did he get to you?” asked Strike, who knew that a large chunk of the land between his aunt and uncle and Polworth’s house was under several feet of water.

“Rowed part of the way,” said Ted, sounding amused. “He made it sound like one of his Ironman competitions. All covered in oilskins he was when he got here. Big backpack full of shopping. He’s all right, that Polworth.”

“Yeah, he is,” said Strike, momentarily closing his eyes. It oughtn’t to be Polworth looking after his aunt and uncle. It should be him. He ought to have left earlier, knowing the weather was looking bad, but for months now he’d been juggling guilt about his aunt and uncle with the guilt he felt about the load he was putting on his subcontractors, and Robin especially. “Ted, I’ll be there as soon as they put the trains back on.”

“Aye, I know you will, lad,” said Ted. “Don’t worry about us. I won’t take you to her, because she needs her rest, but I’ll tell her you called. She’ll be chuffed.”

Tired, hungry and wondering where he might get some breakfast, Strike typed out a text to Dave Polworth, his cigarette jammed between his teeth, using the nickname he’d had for Polworth ever since the latter had got himself bitten by a shark at the age of eighteen.

Ted’s just told me what you did yesterday. I’ll never be able to repay all this, Chum. Thank you.

He flicked his cigarette end out of the car, wound up the window and had just turned on the engine when his mobile buzzed. Expecting to see a response from Polworth, doubtless asking him when he’d turned into such a poof or a big girl (Polworth’s language being always as far from politically correct as you could get), he looked down at the screen, already smiling in anticipation, and read:

Dad wants to call you. When would be a good time?

Strike read the text twice before understanding that it was from Al. At first, he felt only blank surprise. Then anger and profound resentment rose like vomit.

“Fuck off,” he told his phone loudly.

He turned out of the side street and drove away, jaw clenched, wondering why he should be hounded by Rokeby now, of all times in his life, when he was so worried about relatives who’d cared about him when there’d been no kudos to be gained from the association. The time for amends had passed; the damage was irreparable; blood wasn’t thicker than fucking water. Consumed by thoughts of frail Joan, with whom he shared no shred of DNA, marooned in her house on the hill amid floods, anger and guilt writhed inside him.

A matter of minutes later, he realized he was driving through Clerkenwell. Spotting an open café on St. John Street he parked, then headed through the rain into warmth and light, where he ordered himself an egg and tomato sandwich. Choosing a table by the window, he sat down facing the street, eye to eye with his own unshaven and stony-faced reflection in the rain-studded window.

Hangovers apart, Strike rarely got headaches, but something resembling one was starting to build on the left side of his skull. He ate his sandwich, telling himself firmly that food was making him feel better. Then, after ordering a second mug of tea, he pulled out his mobile again and typed out a response to Al, with the dual objective of shutting down Rokeby once and for all, and of concealing from both his half-brother and his father how much their persistence was disturbing his peace.

I’m not interested. It’s too late. I don’t want to fall out with you, but take this “no” as final.

He sent the text and then cast around immediately for something else to occupy his tired mind. The shops opposite were ablaze with red and pink: February the fourteenth was almost here. It now occurred to him that he hadn’t heard from Charlotte since he’d ignored her text at Christmas. Would she send him a message on Valentine’s Day? Her desire for contact seemed to be triggered by special occasions and anniversaries.

Automatically, without considering what he was doing, but with the same desire for comfort that had pushed him into this café, Strike pulled his phone out of his pocket again and called Robin, but the number was engaged. Shoving the mobile back in his pocket, stressed, anxious and craving action, he told himself he should make use of being in Clerkenwell, now he was here.

This café was only a short walk from the old St. John’s surgery. How many of these passers-by, he wondered, had lived in the area forty years previously? The hunched old woman in her raincoat with her tartan shopping trolley? The gray-whiskered man trying to flag down a cab? Perhaps the aging Sikh man in his turban, texting as he walked? Had any of them consulted Margot Bamborough? Could any of them remember a dirty, bearded man called something like Applethorpe, who’d roamed these very streets, insisting to strangers that he’d killed the doctor?

Strike’s absent gaze fell on a man walking with a strange, rolling gait on the opposite side of the road. His fine, mousy hair was rain-soaked and plastered to his head. He had neither coat nor umbrella, but wore a sweatshirt with a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog on the front. The lack of coat, the slightly lumbering walk, the wide, childlike stare, the slightly gaping mouth, the stoic acceptance of becoming slowly drenched to the skin: all suggested some kind of cognitive impairment. The man passed out of Strike’s line of vision as the detective’s mobile rang.

“Hi. Did you just call me?” said Robin, and Strike felt a certain release of tension, and decided the tea was definitely soothing his head.

“I did, yeah. Just for an update.”

He told her the story of the tracksuited man who’d visited Elinor Dean overnight.

“And he was covering up his mouth when he left? That’s weird.”

“I know. There’s definitely something odd going on in that house. I’ve asked Morris to dig a bit on the new bloke.”

“Pentonville’s right beside Clerkenwell,” said Robin.

“Which is where I am right now. Café on St. John Street. I th—think,” a yawn overtook Strike, “sorry—I think, seeing as I’m in the area, I might have another dig around on the late Applethorpe. Try and find someone who remembers the family, or knows what might’ve happened to them.”

“How’re you going to do that?”

“Walk the area,” said Strike, and he became conscious of his aching knee even as he said it, “have an ask around in any businesses that look long-established. I kn—know,” he yawned again, “it’s a long shot, but we haven’t got anyone else claiming to have killed Margot.”

“Aren’t you knackered?”

“Been worse. Where are you right now?”

“Office,” said Robin, “and I’ve got a bit of Bamborough news, if you’ve got time.”

“Go on,” said Strike, happy to postpone the moment when he had to go back out into the rain.

“Well, firstly, I’ve had an email from Gloria Conti’s husband. You know, the receptionist who was the last to see Margot? It’s short. ‘Dear Mr. Ellacott—’”

“Mister?”

“‘Robin’ often confuses people. ‘I write for my wife, who is been very afflicted by your communications. She has not proofs or information that concern Margot Bamborough and it is not convenient that you contact her at my offices. Our family is private and desires to remain like that. I would like your assurances that you will not contact my wife another time. Yours sincerely, Hugo Jaubert.’”

“Interesting,” agreed Strike, scratching his unshaven chin. “Why isn’t Gloria emailing back herself? Too afflicted?”

“I wonder why she’s so affli—upset, I mean? Maybe,” Robin said, answering her own question, “because I contacted her through her husband’s office? But I tried through Facebook and she wouldn’t answer.”

“You know, I think it might be worth getting Anna to contact Gloria. Margot’s daughter might tug at her heartstrings better than we can. Why don’t you draft another request and send it over to Anna, see whether she’d be comfortable letting you put her name to it?”

“Good thinking,” said Robin, and he heard her scribbling a note. “Anyway, in better news, when you called me just now, I was talking to Wilma Bayliss’s second-oldest daughter, Maya. She’s the deputy headmistress. I think I’m close to persuading her to talk to us. She’s worried about her older sister’s reaction, but I’m hopeful.”

“Great,” said Strike, “I’d like to hear more about Wilma.”

“And there’s one other thing,” said Robin. “Only, you might think this is a bit of a long shot.”

“I’ve just told you I’m about to go door to door asking about a dead nutter who definitely wasn’t called Applethorpe,” said Strike, and Robin laughed.

“OK, well, I was back online last night, having another look for Steve Douthwaite, and I found this old ‘Memories of Butlin’s’ website, where ex-Redcoats chat to each other and reminisce and organize reunions and stuff—you know the kind of thing. Anyway, I couldn’t find any mention of Douthwaite, or Jacks, as he was call­ing himself in Clacton-on-Sea, but I did find—I know it’s probably totally irrelevant,” she said, “and I don’t know whether you remember, but a girl called Julie Wilkes was quoted in Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough? She said she was shocked that Stevie Jacks hadn’t told his friends that he’d been caught up in a missing woman case.”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Strike.

“Well… that girl drowned,” said Robin. “Drowned at the holiday camp at the end of the 1985 holiday season. Her body was found one morning in the camp swimming pool. A group of them were discussing her death on the message boards on the website. They think she got drunk, slipped, hit her head and slid into the pool.

“Maybe it’s horrible luck,” said Robin, “but women do have a habit of dying in Douthwaite’s vicinity, don’t they? His married girlfriend kills herself, his doctor goes missing, and then there’s this co-worker who drowns… Everywhere he goes, unnatural death follows… it’s just odd.”

“Yeah, it is,” said Strike, frowning out at the rain. He was about to wonder aloud where Douthwaite had hidden himself, when Robin said in a slight rush,

“Listen, there’s something else I wanted to ask you, but it’s absolutely fine if the answer’s no. My flatmate Max—you know he’s an actor? Well, he’s just been cast in a TV thing as an ex-soldier and he doesn’t know anyone else to ask. He wondered whether you’d come over to dinner so he can ask you some questions.”

“Oh,” said Strike, surprised but not displeased. “… yeah, OK. When?”

“I know it’s short notice, but would tomorrow suit you? He really needs it soon.”

“Yeah, that should be all right,” said Strike. He was holding himself ready to travel down to St. Mawes as soon as it became practicable, but the sea wall looked unlikely to be repaired by the following day.

When Robin had hung up, Strike ordered a third mug of tea. He was procrastinating, and he knew why. If he was genuinely going to have a poke around Clerkenwell for anyone who remembered the dead man who claimed to have killed Margot Bamborough, it would help if he knew the man’s real name, and as Janice Beattie was still in Dubai, his only recourse was Irene Hickson.

The rain was as heavy as ever. Minute to minute, he postponed the call to Irene, watching traffic moving through the rippling sheets of rain, pedestrians navigating the puddle-pocked street, and thinking about the long-ago death of a young Redcoat, who’d slipped, knocked her head and drowned in a swimming pool.

Water everywhere, Bill Talbot had written in his astrological notebook. It had taken Strike some effort to decipher that particular passage. He’d concluded that Talbot was referring to a cluster of water signs apparently connected with the death of the unknown Scorpio. Why, Strike asked himself now, sipping his tea, was Scorpio a water sign? Scorpions lived on land, in heat; could they even swim? He remembered the large fish sign Talbot had used in the notebook for Irene, which at one point he’d described as “Cetus.” Picking up his mobile, Strike Googled the word.

The constellation Cetus, he read, known also as the whale, was named for a sea monster slain by Perseus when saving Andromeda from the sea god Poseidon. It resided in a region of the sky known as “The Sea,” due to the presence there of many other water-associated constellations, including Pisces, Aquarius the water bearer, and Capricorn, the fish-tailed goat.

Water everywhere.

The astrological notes were starting to tangle themselves around his thought processes, like an old net snagged in a propeller. A pernicious mixture of sense and nonsense, they mirrored, in Strike’s opinion, the appeal of astrology itself, with its flattering, comforting promise that your petty concerns were of interest to the wide universe, and that the stars or the spirit world would guide you where your own hard work and reason couldn’t.

Enough, he told himself sternly. Pressing Irene’s number on his mobile, he waited, listening to her phone ringing and visualizing it beside the bowl of pot-pourri, in the over-decorated hall, with the pink flowered wallpaper and the thick pink carpet. At exactly the point where he’d decided, with a mixture of relief and regret, that she wasn’t in, she answered.

“Double four five nine,” she trilled, making it into a kind of jingle. Joan, too, always answered her landline by telling the caller the number they’d just dialed.

“Is that Mrs. Hickson?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Cormoran Strike here, the—”

“Oh, hello!” she yelped, sounding startled.

“I wondered whether you might be able to help me,” said Strike, taking out his notebook and opening it. “When we last met, you mentioned a patient of the St. John’s practice who you thought might’ve been called Apton or Applethorpe—”

“Oh, yes?”

“—who claimed to have—”

“—killed Margot, yes,” she interrupted him. “He stopped Dorothy in broad daylight—”

“Yes—”

“—but she thought it was a load of rubbish. I said to her, ‘What if he really did, Dorothy—?’”

“I haven’t been able to find anyone of that name who lived in the area in 1974,” said Strike loudly, “so I wondered whether you might’ve misremembered his na—”

“Possibly, yes, I might have done,” said Irene. “Well, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Have you tried directory inquiries? Not directory inquiries,” she corrected herself immediately. “Online records and things.”

“It’s difficult to do a search with the wrong name,” said Strike, just managing to keep his tone free of exasperation or sarcasm. “I’m right by Clerkenwell Road at the moment. I think you said he lived there?”

“Well, he was always hanging around there, so I assumed so.”

“He was registered with your practice, wasn’t he? D’you remember his first—?”

“Um, let me think… It was something like… Gilbert, or—no, I can’t remember, I’m afraid. Applethorpe? Appleton? Apton? Everyone knew him locally by sight because he looked so peculiar: long beard, filthy, blah blah blah. And sometimes he had his kid with him,” said Irene, warming up, “really funny-looking kid—”

“Yes, you said—”

“—with massive ears. He might still be alive, the son, but he’s probably—you know…”

Strike waited, but apparently he was supposed to infer the end of the sentence by Irene’s silence.

“Probably—?” he prompted.

“Oh, you know. In a place.”

“In—?”

“A home or something!” she said, a little impatiently, as though Strike were being obtuse. “He was never going to be right, was he?—with a druggie father and a retarded mother, I don’t care what Jan says. Jan hasn’t got the same—well, it’s not her fault—her family was—different standards. And she likes to look—in front of strangers—well, we all do—but after all, you’re after the truth, aren’t you?”

Strike noted the fine needle of malice directed at her friend, glinting among the disconnected phrases.

“Have you found Duckworth?” Irene asked, jumping subject.

“Douthwaite?”

“Oh, what am I like, I keep doing that, hahaha.” However little pleased she’d been to hear from him, he was at least someone to talk to. “I’d love to know what happened to him, I really would, he was a fishy character if ever there was one. Jan played it down with you, but she was a bit disappointed when he turned out to be gay, you know. She had a soft spot for him. Well, she was very lonely when I first knew her. We used to try and set her up, Eddie and I—”

“Yes, you said—”

“—but men didn’t want to take on a kid and Jan was a bit you know, when a woman’s been alone, I don’t mean desperate, but clingy—Larry didn’t mind, but Larry wasn’t exactly—”

“I had one other thing I wanted to ask—”

“—only he wouldn’t marry her, either. He’d been through a bad divorce—”

“It’s about Leamington Spa—”

“You’ll have checked Bognor Regis?”

“Excuse me?” said Strike.

“For Douthwaite? Because he went to Bognor Regis, didn’t he? To a holiday camp?”

“Clacton-on-Sea,” said Strike. “Unless he went to Bognor Regis as well?”

“As well as what?”

Jesus fucking Christ.

“What makes you think Douthwaite was ever in Bognor Regis?” Strike asked, slowly and clearly, rubbing his forehead.

“I thought—wasn’t he there, at some point?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, but we know he worked in Clacton-on-Sea in the mid-eighties.”

“Oh, it must’ve been that—yes, someone must’ve told me that, they’re all—old-fashioned seaside—you know.”

Strike seemed to remember he’d asked both Irene and Janice whether they had any idea where Douthwaite had gone after he left Clerkenwell, and that both had said they didn’t know.

“How did you know he went to work in Clacton-on-Sea?” he asked.

“Jan told me,” said Irene, after a tiny pause. “Yes, Jan would’ve told me. She was his neighbor, you know, she was the one who knew him. Yes, I think she tried to find out where he’d gone after he left Percival Road, because she was worried about him.”

“But this was eleven years later,” said Strike.

“What was?”

“He didn’t go to Clacton-on-Sea until eleven years after he left Percival Road,” said Strike. “When I asked you both if you knew where he’d gone—”

“Well, you meant now, didn’t you?” said Irene, “where he is now? I’ve no idea. Have you looked into that Leamington Spa business, by the way?” Then she laughed, and said, “All these seaside places! No, wait—it isn’t seaside, is it, not Leamington Spa? But you know what I mean—water—I do love water, it’s—Greenwich, Eddie knew I’d love this house when he spotted it for sale—was there anything in that Leamington Spa thing, or was Jan making it up?”

“Mrs. Beattie wasn’t making it up,” said Strike. “Mr. Ramage definitely saw a missing—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean Jan would make it up, no, I don’t mean that,” said Irene, instantly contradicting herself. “I just mean, you know, odd place for Margot to turn up, Leamington—have you found any connection,” she asked airily, “or—?”

“Not yet,” said Strike. “You haven’t remembered anything about Margot and Leamington Spa, have you?”

“Me? Goodness, no, how should I know why she’d go there?”

“Well, sometimes people do remember things after we’ve talked to—”

“Have you spoken to Jan since?”

“No,” said Strike. “D’you know when she’s back from Dubai?”

“No,” said Irene. “All right for some, isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind some sunshine, the winter we’re—but it’s wasted on Jan, she doesn’t sunbathe, and I wouldn’t fancy the flight all that way in Economy, which is how she has to—I wonder how she’s getting on, six weeks with her daughter-in-law! Doesn’t matter how well you get on, that’s a long—”

“Well, I’d better let you get on, Mrs. Hickson.”

“Oh, all right,” she said. “Yes, well. Best of luck with everything.”

“Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

The rain pattered on the window. With a sigh, Strike retired to the café bathroom for a long overdue pee.

He was just paying his bill when he spotted the man in the Sonic the Hedgehog sweatshirt walking past the window, now on the same side of the street as the café. He was heading back the way he’d come, two bulging bags of Tesco shopping hanging from his hands, moving with that same odd, rocking, side-to-side gait, his soaking hair flat to his skull, his mouth slightly open. Strike’s eyes followed him as he passed, watching the rain drip off the bottom of his shopping bags and from the lobes of his particularly large ears.

38

Asking himself whether he could possibly have got as lucky as he hoped, Strike threw a tip on the table and hurried outside into the driving rain, pulling on his coat as he went.

If the mentally impaired adult in the sopping Sonic sweatshirt was indeed the big-eared child once marched around these streets by his eccentric parent, he’d have been living in this corner of Clerkenwell for forty years. Well, people did that, of course, Strike reflected, particularly if they had support there and if their whole world was a few familiar streets. The man was still within sight, heading stolidly toward Clerkenwell Road in the pelting rain, neither speeding up, nor making any attempt to prevent himself becoming progressively more sodden. Strike turned up his coat collar and followed.

A short distance down St. John Street, Strike’s target turned right past a small ironmonger’s on the corner, and headed into Albemarle Way, the short street with an old red telephone box at the other end, and tall, unbroken buildings on either side. Strike’s interest quickened.

Just past the ironmonger’s, the man set down both of his shopping bags on the wet pavement and took out a door key. Strike kept walking, because there was nowhere to hide, but made a note of the door number as he passed. Was it possible that the late Applethorpe had lived in this very flat? Hadn’t Strike thought that Albemarle Way presented a promising place to lie in wait for a victim? Not, perhaps, as good as Passing Alley, nor as convenient as the flats along Jerusalem Passage, but better by far than busy Clerkenwell Green, where Talbot had been convinced that Margot had struggled with a disguised Dennis Creed.

Strike heard the front door close behind the large-eared man and doubled back. The dark blue door needed painting. A small push-button bell was beside it, beneath which was stuck the printed name “Athorn.” Could this be the name Irene had misremembered as Applethorpe, Appleton or Apton? Then Strike noticed that the man had left the key in the lock.

With a feeling that he might have been far too dismissive of the mysterious ways of the universe, Strike pulled out the key and pressed the doorbell, which rang loudly inside. For a moment or two, nothing happened, then the door opened again and there stood the man in the wet Sonic sweatshirt.

“You left this in the lock,” said Strike, holding out the key.

The man addressed the third button of Strike’s overcoat rather than look him in eye.

“I did that before and Clare said not to again,” he mumbled, holding out his hand for the key, which Strike gave him. The man began to close the door.

“My name’s Cormoran Strike. I wonder whether I could come in and talk to you about your father?” Strike said, not quite putting his foot in the door, but preparing to do so should it be required.

The other’s big-eared face stood out, pale, against the dark hall.

“My-Dad-Gwilherm’s dead.”

“Yes,” said Strike, “I know.”

“He carried me on his shoulders.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. Mum told me.”

“D’you live alone?”

“I live with Mum.”

“Is her name Clare?”

“No. Deborah.”

“I’m a detective,” said Strike, pulling a card out of his pocket. “My name’s Cormoran Strike and I’d really like to talk to your mum, if that’s OK.”

The man didn’t take the card, but looked at it out of the corner of his eye. Strike suspected that he couldn’t read.

“Would that be all right?” Strike asked, as the cold rain continued to fall.

“Yer, OK. You can come in,” said the other, still addressing Strike’s coat button, and he opened the door fully to admit the detective. Without waiting to see whether Strike was following, he headed up the dark staircase inside.

Strike felt some qualms about capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of a man like Athorn, but the prospect of looking around what he now strongly suspected was the flat in which the self-proclaimed killer of Margot Bamborough had been living in 1974 was irresistible. After wiping his feet carefully on the doormat, Strike closed the door behind him, spotting as he did so a couple of letters lying on the floor, which the son of the house had simply walked over; one of them carried a wet footprint. Strike picked up the letters, then climbed the bare wooden stairs, over which hung a naked, non-functioning lightbulb.

As he climbed, Strike indulged himself with the fantasy of a flat which nobody other than the inhabitants had entered for forty years, with locked cupboards and rooms, or even—it had been known to happen—a skeleton lying in open view. For a split-second, as he stepped out onto the landing, his hopes surged: the oven in the tiny kitchen straight ahead looked as though it dated from the seventies, as did the brown wall tiles, but unfortunately, from a detective point of view, the flat looked neat and smelled fresh and clean. There were even recent Hoover marks on the old carpet, which was patterned in orange and brown swirls. The Tesco bags sat waiting to be unpacked on lino that was scuffed, but that had been recently washed.

To Strike’s right stood an open door onto a small sitting room. The man he’d followed was standing there, facing a much older woman, who was sitting crocheting in an armchair beside the window. She looked, as well she might, shocked to see a large stranger standing in her hall.

“He wants to talk to you,” announced the man.

“Only if you’re comfortable with that, Mrs. Athorn,” Strike called from the landing. He wished Robin was with him. She was particularly good at putting nervous women at their ease. He remembered that Janice had said that this woman was agoraphobic. “My name’s Cormoran Strike and I wanted to ask a few questions about your husband. But if you’re not happy, of course, I’ll leave immediately.”

“I’m cold,” said the man loudly.

“Change your clothes,” his mother advised him. “You’ve got wet. Why don’t you wear your coat?”

“Too tight,” he said, “you silly woman.”

He turned and walked out of the room past Strike, who stood back to let him pass. Gwilherm’s son disappeared into a room opposite, on the door of which the name “Samhain” appeared in painted wooden letters.

Samhain’s mother didn’t appear to enjoy eye contact any more than her son did. At last, addressing Strike’s knees, she said,

“All right. Come in, then.”

“Thanks very much.”

Two budgerigars, one blue, one green, chirruped in a cage in the corner of the sitting room. Samhain’s mother had been crocheting a patchwork blanket. A number of completed woolen squares were piled on the wide windowsill beside her and a basket of wools sat at her feet. A huge jigsaw mat was spread out on a large ottoman in front of the sofa. It bore a two-thirds completed puzzle of unicorns. As far as tidiness went, the sitting room compared very favorably with Gregory Talbot’s.

“You’ve got some letters,” Strike said, and he held up the damp envelopes to show her.

“You open them,” she said.

“I don’t think—”

“You open them,” she repeated.

She had the same big ears as Samhain and the same slight underbite. These imperfections notwithstanding, there was a prettiness in her soft face and in her dark eyes. Her long, neatly plaited hair was white. She had to be at least sixty, but her smooth skin was that of a much younger woman. There was a strangely otherworldly air about her as she sat, plying her crochet hook beside the rainy window, shut away from the world. Strike wondered whether she could read. He felt safe to open the envelopes that were clearly junk mail, and did so.

“You’ve been sent a seed catalog,” he said, showing her, “and a letter from a furniture shop.”

“I don’t want them,” said the woman beside the window, still talking to Strike’s legs. “You can sit down,” she added.

He sidled carefully between the sofa and the ottoman which, like Strike himself, was far too big for this small room. Having successfully avoided nudging the enormous jigsaw, he took a seat at a respectful distance from the crocheting woman.

“This one,” said Strike, referring to the last letter, “is for Clare Spencer. Do you know her?”

The letter didn’t have a stamp. Judging by the address on the back, the letter was from the ironmonger downstairs.

“Clare’s our social worker,” she said. “You can open it.”

“I don’t think I should do that,” said Strike. “I’ll leave it for Clare. You’re Deborah, is that right?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

Samhain reappeared in the door. He was now barefoot but wearing dry jeans and a fresh sweatshirt with Spider-Man on the front.

“I’m going to put things in the fridge,” he announced, and disap­peared again.

“Samhain does the shopping now,” Deborah said, with a glance at Strike’s shoes. Though timid, she didn’t seem averse to talking to him.

“Deborah, I’m here to ask you about Gwilherm,” Strike said.

“He’s not here.”

“No, I—”

“He died.”

“Yes,” said Strike. “I’m sorry. I’m really here because of a doctor who used to work—”

“Dr. Brenner,” she said at once.

“You remember Dr. Brenner?” said Strike, surprised.

“I didn’t like him,” she said.

“Well, I wanted to ask you about a different doc—”

Samhain reappeared at the sitting room door and said loudly to his mother,

“D’you want a hot chocolate, or not?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you want a hot chocolate, or not?” Samhain demanded of Strike.

“Yes please,” Strike said, on the principle that all friendly gestures should be accepted in such situations.

Samhain lumbered out of sight. Pausing in her crocheting, Deborah pointed at something straight ahead of her and said,

“That’s Gwilherm, there.”

Strike looked around. An Egyptian ankh, the symbol of eternal life, had been drawn on the wall behind the old TV. The walls were pale yellow everywhere except behind the ankh, where a patch of dirty green survived. In front of the ankh, on top of the flat-topped television set, was a black object which Strike at first glance took for a vase. Then he spotted the stylized dove on it, realized that it was an urn and understood, finally, what he was being told.

“Ah,” said Strike. “Those are Gwilherm’s ashes, are they?”

“I told Tudor to get the one with the bird, because I like birds.”

One of the budgerigars fluttered suddenly across the cage in a blur of bright green and yellow.

“Who painted that?” asked Strike, pointing at the ankh.

“Gwilherm,” said Deborah, continuing to dextrously ply her crochet hook.

Samhain re-entered the room, holding a tin tray.

“Not on my jigsaw,” his mother warned him, but there was no other free surface.

“Should I—?” offered Strike, gesturing toward the puzzle, but there was no space anywhere on the floor to accommodate it.

“You close it,” Deborah told him, with a hint of reproach, and Strike saw that the jigsaw mat had wings, which could be fastened to protect the puzzle. He did so, and Samhain laid the tray on top. Deborah stuck her crochet hook carefully in the ball of wool and accepted a mug of instant hot chocolate and a Penguin biscuit from her son. Samhain kept the Batman mug for himself. Strike sipped his drink and said, “Very nice,” not entirely dishonestly.

“I make good hot chocolate, don’t I, Deborah?” said Samhain, unwrapping a biscuit.

“Yes,” said Deborah, blowing on the surface of the hot liquid.

“I know this was a long time ago,” Strike began again, “but there was another doctor, who worked with Dr. Brenner—”

“Old Joe Brenner was a dirty old man,” said Samhain Athorn, with a cackle.

Strike looked at him in surprise. Samhain directed his smirk at the closed jigsaw.

“Why was he a dirty old man?” asked the detective.

“My Uncle Tudor told me,” said Samhain. “Dirty old man. Hahahaha. Is this mine?” he asked, picking up the envelope addressed to Clare Spencer.

“No,” said his mother. “That’s Clare’s.”

“Why is it?”

“I think,” said Strike, “it’s from your downstairs neighbor.”

“He’s a bastard,” said Samhain, putting the letter back down. “He made us throw everything away, didn’t he, Deborah?”

“I like it better now,” said Deborah mildly. “It’s good now.”

Strike allowed a moment or two to pass, in case Samhain had more to add, then asked,

“Why did Uncle Tudor say Joseph Brenner was a dirty old man?”

“Tudor knew everything about everyone,” said Deborah placidly.

“Who was Tudor?” Strike asked her.

“Gwilherm’s brother,” said Deborah. “He always knew about people round here.”

“Does he still visit you?” asked Strike, suspecting the answer.

“Passed-away-to-the-other side,” said Deborah, as though it was one long word. “He used to buy our shopping. He took Sammy to play football and to the swimming.”

“I do all the shopping now,” piped up Samhain. “Sometimes I don’t want to do the shopping but if I don’t, I get hungry, and Deborah says, ‘It’s your fault there’s nothing to eat.’ So then I go shopping.”

“Good move,” said Strike.

The three of them drank their hot chocolate.

“Dirty old man, Joe Brenner,” repeated Samhain, more loudly. “Uncle Tudor used to tell me some stories. Old Betty and the one who wouldn’t pay, hahahaha. Dirty old Joe Brenner.”

“I didn’t like him,” said Deborah quietly. “He wanted me to take my pants off.”

“Really?” said Strike.

While this had surely been a question of a medical examination, he felt uncomfortable.

“Yes, to look at me,” said Deborah. “I didn’t want it. Gwilherm wanted it, but I don’t like men I don’t know looking at me.”

“No, well, I can understand that,” said Strike. “You were ill, were you?”

“Gwilherm said I had to,” was her only response.

If he’d still been in the Special Investigation Branch, there would have been a female officer with him for this interview. Strike wondered what her IQ was.

“Did you ever meet Dr. Bamborough?” he asked. “She was,” he hesitated, “a lady doctor.”

“I’ve never seen a lady doctor,” said Deborah, with what sounded like regret.

“D’you know whether Gwilherm ever met Dr. Bamborough?”

“She died,” said Deborah.

“Yes,” said Strike, surprised. “People think she died, but no one knows for s—”

One of the budgerigars made the little bell hanging from the top of its cage tinkle. Both Deborah and Samhain looked around, smiling.

“Which one was it?” Deborah asked Samhain.

“Bluey,” he said. “Bluey’s cleverer’n Billy Bob.”

Strike waited for them to lose interest in the budgerigars, which took a couple of minutes. When both Athorns’ attention had returned to their hot chocolates, he said,

“Dr. Bamborough disappeared and I’m trying to find out what happened to her. I’ve been told that Gwilherm talked about Dr. Bamborough, after she went missing.”

Deborah didn’t respond. It was hard to know whether she was listening, or deliberately ignoring him.

“I heard,” said Strike—there was no point not saying it; this was the whole reason he was here, after all—“that Gwilherm told people he killed her.”

Deborah glanced at Strike’s left ear, then back at her hot chocolate.

“You’re like Tudor,” she said. “You know what’s what. He probably did,” she added placidly.

“You mean,” said Strike carefully, “he told people about it?”

She didn’t answer.

“… or you think he killed the doctor?”

“Was My-Dad-Gwilherm doing magic on her?” Samhain inquired of his mother. “My-Dad-Gwilherm didn’t kill that lady. My uncle Tudor told me what really happened.”

“What did your uncle tell you?” asked Strike, turning from mother to son, but Samhain had just crammed his mouth full of chocolate biscuit, so Deborah continued the story.

“He woke me up one time when I was asleep,” said Deborah, “and it was dark. He said, ‘I killed a lady by mistake.’ I said, ‘You’ve had a bad dream.’ He said, ‘No, no, I’ve killed her, but I didn’t mean it.’”

“Woke you up to tell you, did he?”

“Woke me up, all upset.”

“But you think it was just a bad dream?”

“Yes,” said Deborah, but then, after a moment or two, she said, “but maybe he did kill her, because he could do magic.”

“I see,” said Strike untruthfully, turning back to Samhain.

“What did your Uncle Tudor say happened to the lady doctor?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Samhain, suddenly grinning. “Uncle Tudor said not to tell. Never.” But he grinned with a Puckish delight at having a secret. “My-Dad-Gwilherm did that,” he went on, pointing at the ankh on the wall.

“Yes,” said Strike, “your mum told me.”

“I don’t like it,” said Deborah placidly, looking at the ankh. “I’d like it if the walls were all the same.”

“I like it,” said Samhain, “because it’s different from the other walls… you silly woman,” he added abstractedly.

“Did Uncle Tudor—” began Strike, but Samhain, who’d finished his biscuit, now got to his feet and left the room, pausing in the doorway to say loudly,

“Clare says it’s nice I still got things of Gwilherm’s!”

He disappeared into his bedroom and closed the door firmly behind him. With the feeling he’d just seen a gold sovereign bounce down a grate, Strike turned back to Deborah.

“Do you know what Tudor said happened to the doctor?”

She shook her head, uninterested. Strike looked hopefully back toward Samhain’s bedroom door. It remained closed.

“Can you remember how Gwilherm thought he’d killed the doctor?” he asked Deborah.

“He said his magic killed her, then took her away.”

“Took her away, did it?”

Samhain’s bedroom door suddenly opened again and he trudged back into the room, holding a coverless book in his hand.

“Deborah, is this My-Dad-Gwilherm’s magic book, is it?”

“That’s it,” said Deborah.

She’d finished her hot chocolate, now. Setting down the empty mug, she picked up her crochet again.

Samhain held the book wordlessly out to Strike. Though the cover had come off, the title page was intact: The Magus by Francis Barrett. Strike had the impression that being shown this book was a mark of esteem, and he therefore flicked through it with an expression of deep interest, his main objective to keep Samhain happy and close at hand for further questioning.

A few pages inside was a brown smear. Strike halted the cascade of pages to examine it more closely. It was, he suspected, dried blood, and had been wiped across a few lines of writing.

“You can do magic, with that book,” said Samhain. “But it’s my book, because it was My-Dad-Gwilherm’s, so it’s mine now,” and he held out his hand before Strike could examine it any further, suddenly jealous of his possession. When Strike handed it back, Samhain clutched the book to his chest with one hand and bent to take a third chocolate biscuit.

“No more, Sammy,” said Deborah.

“I went in the rain and got them,” said Samhain loudly. “I can have what I want. Silly woman. Stupid woman.”

He kicked the ottoman, but it hurt his bare foot, and this increased his sudden, childish anger. Pink-faced and truculent, he looked around the room: Strike suspected he was looking for something to disarrange, or perhaps break. His choice landed on the budgies.

“I’ll open the cage,” he threatened his mother, pointing at it. He let The Magus fall onto the sofa as he clambered onto the seat, looming over Strike.

“No, don’t,” said Deborah, immediately distressed. “Don’t do that, Sammy!”

“And I’ll open the window,” said Samhain, now trying to walk his way along the sofa seats, but blocked by Strike. “Hahaha. You stupid woman.”

“No—Samhain, don’t!” said Deborah, frightened.

“You don’t want to open the cage,” said Strike, standing up and moving in front of it. “You wouldn’t want your budgies to fly away. They won’t come back.”

“I know they won’t,” said Samhain. “The last ones didn’t.”

His anger seemed to subside as fast as it had come, in the face of rational opposition. Still standing on the sofa, he said grumpily, “I went out in the rain. I got them.”

“Have you got Clare’s phone number?” Strike asked Deborah.

“In the kitchen,” she said, without asking why he wanted it.

“Can you show me where that is?” Strike asked Samhain, although he knew perfectly well. The whole flat was as big as Irene Hickson’s sitting room. Samhain frowned at Strike’s midriff for a few moments, then said,

“All right, then.”

He walked the length of the sofa, jumped off the end with a crash that made the bookcase shake, and then lunged for the biscuits.

“Hahaha,” he taunted his mother, both hands full of Penguins. “I got them. Silly woman. Stupid woman.”

He walked out of the room.

As Strike inched back out of the space between ottoman and sofa, he stooped to pick up The Magus, which Samhain had dropped, and slid it under his coat. Crocheting peacefully by the window, Deborah Athorn noticed nothing.

A short list of names and numbers was attached to the kitchen wall with a drawing pin. Strike was pleased to see that several people seemed interested in Deborah and Samhain’s welfare.

“Who’re these people?” he asked, but Samhain shrugged and Strike was confirmed in his suspicion that Samhain couldn’t read, no matter how proud he was of The Magus. He took a photo of the list with his phone, then turned to Samhain.

“It would really help me if you could remember what your Uncle Tudor said happened to the lady doctor.”

“Hahaha,” said Samhain, who was unwrapping another Penguin. “I’m not telling.”

“Your Uncle Tudor must have really trusted you, to tell you.”

Samhain chewed in silence for a while, then swallowed and said, with a proud little upward jerk of the chin, “Yer.”

“It’s good to have people you can trust with important information.”

Samhain seemed pleased with this statement. He ate his biscuit and, for the first time, glanced at Strike’s face. The detective had the impression that Samhain was enjoying another man’s presence in the flat.

“I did that,” he said suddenly and, walking to the sink, he picked up a small clay pot, which was holding a washing-up brush and a sponge. “I go to class on Tuesdays and we make stuff. Ranjit teaches us.”

“That’s excellent,” said Strike, taking it from him and examining it. “Where were you, when your uncle told you what happened to Dr. Bamborough?”

“At the football,” said Samhain. “And I made this,” he told Strike, prising a wooden photo frame off the fridge, where it had been attached with a magnet. The framed picture was a recent one of Deborah and Samhain, both of whom had a budgerigar perched on their finger.

“That’s very good,” said Strike, admiring it.

“Yer,” said Samhain, taking it back from him and slapping it on the fridge. “Ranjit said it was the best one. We were at the football and I heard Uncle Tudor telling his friend.”

“Ah,” said Strike.

“And then he said to me, ‘Don’t you tell no one.’”

“Right,” said Strike. “But if you tell me, I can maybe help the doctor’s family. They’re really sad. They miss her.”

Samhain cast another fleeting look at Strike’s face.

“She can’t come back now. People can’t be alive again when they’re dead.”

“No,” said Strike. “But it’s nice when their families know what happened and where they went.”

“My-Dad-Gwilherm died under the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“My Uncle Tudor died in the hospital.”

“You see?” said Strike. “It’s good you know, isn’t it?”

“Yer,” said Samhain. “I know what happened.”

“Exactly.”

“Uncle Tudor told me it was Nico and his boys done it.”

It came out almost indifferently.

“You can tell her family,” said Samhain, “but nobody else.”

“Right,” said Strike, whose mind was working very fast. “Did Tudor know how Nico and the boys did it?”

“No. He just knew they did.”

Samhain picked up another biscuit. He appeared to have no more to say.

“Er—can I use your bathroom?”

“The bog?” said Samhain, with his mouth full of chocolate.

“Yes. The bog,” said Strike.

Like the rest of the flat, the bathroom was old but perfectly clean. It was papered in green, with a pattern of pink flamingos on it, which doubtless dated from the seventies and now, forty years later, was fashionably kitsch. Strike opened the bathroom cabinet, found a pack of razor blades, extracted one and cut the blood-stained page of The Magus out with one smooth stroke, then folded it and slipped it in his pocket.

Out on the landing, he handed Samhain the book back.

“You left it on the floor.”

“Oh,” said Samhain. “Ta.”

“You won’t do anything to the budgies if I leave, will you?”

Samhain looked up at the ceiling, grinning slightly.

“Will you?” asked Strike.

“No,” sighed Samhain at last.

Strike returned to the doorway of the sitting room.

“I’ll be off now, Mrs. Athorn,” he said. “Thanks very much for talking to me.”

“Goodbye,” said Deborah, without looking at him.

Strike headed downstairs, and let himself back onto the street. Once outside, he stood for a moment in the rain, thinking hard. So unusually still was he, that a passing woman turned to stare back at him.

Reaching a decision, Strike turned left, and entered the iron­monger’s which lay directly below the Athorns’ flat.

A sullen, grizzled and aproned man behind the counter looked up at Strike’s entrance. One of his eyes was larger than the other, which gave him an oddly malevolent appearance.

“Morning,” said Strike briskly. “I’ve just come from the Athorns, upstairs. I gather you want to talk to Clare Spencer?”

“Who’re you?” asked the ironmonger, with a mixture of surprise and aggression.

“Friend of the family,” said Strike. “Can I ask why you’re putting letters to their social worker through their front door?”

“Because they don’t pick up their phones at the bloody social work department,” snarled the ironmonger. “And there’s no point talking to them, is there?” he added, pointing his finger at the ceiling.

“Is there a problem I can help with?”

“I doubt it,” said the ironmonger shortly. “You’re probably feeling pretty bloody pleased with the situation, are you, if you’re a friend of the family? Nobody has to put their hand in their pocket except me, eh? Quick bit of a cover-up and let someone else foot the bill, eh?”

“What cover-up would this be?” asked Strike.

The ironmonger was only too willing to explain. The flat upstairs, he told Strike, had long been a health risk, crammed with the hoarded belongings of many years and a magnet for vermin, and in a just world, it ought not to be he who was bearing the costs of living beneath a pair of actual morons—

“You’re talking about friends of mine,” said Strike.

“You do it, then,” snarled the ironmonger. “You pay a bleeding fortune to keep the rats down. My ceiling’s sagging under the weight of their filth—”

“I’ve just been upstairs and it’s perfectly—”

“Because they mucked it out last month, when I said I was going to bloody court!” snarled the ironmonger. “Cousins come down from Leeds when I threaten legal action—nobody give a shit until then—and I come back Monday morning and they’ve cleaned it all up. Sneaky bastards!”

“Didn’t you want the flat cleaned?”

“I want compensation for the money I’ve had to spend! Structural damage, bills to Rentokil—that pair shouldn’t be living together without supervision, they’re not fit, they should be in a home! If I have to take it to court, I will!”

“Bit of friendly advice,” said Strike, smiling. “If you behave in any way that could be considered threatening toward the Athorns, their friends will make sure it’s you who ends up in court. Have a nice day,” he added, heading for the door.

The fact that the Athorns’ flat had recently been mucked out by helpful relatives tended to suggest that Margot Bamborough’s remains weren’t hidden on the premises. On the other hand, Strike had gained a bloodstain and a rumor, which was considerably more than he’d had an hour ago. While still disinclined to credit supernatural intervention, he had to admit that deciding to eat breakfast on St. John Street that morning had been, at the very least, a most fortuitous choice.

39

Robin’s alarm went off at half past six on Friday morning, in the middle of a dream about Matthew: he’d come to her in the Earl’s Court flat, and begged her to return to him, saying that he’d been a fool, promising he’d never again complain about her job, imploring her to admit that she missed what they’d once had. He’d asked her whether she honestly liked living in a rented flat, without the security and companionship of marriage, and in the dream Robin felt a pull back toward her old relationship, before it had become complicated by her job with Strike. He was a younger Matthew in the dream, a far kinder Matthew, and Sarah Shadlock was dismissed as a mistake, a blip, a meaningless error. In the background hovered Robin’s flatmate, no longer the disengaged and courteous Max, but a pale, simpering girl who echoed Matthew’s persuasions, who giggled when he looked at her and urged Robin to give him what he wanted. Only when she’d managed to silence her alarm, and dispel the fog of sleep, did Robin, who was lying face down on her pillow, realize how closely the dream-flatmate had resembled Cynthia Phipps.

Struggling to understand why she’d set her alarm so early, she sat up in bed, the cream walls of her bedroom a blueish mauve in the dawn light, then remembered that Strike had planned a full team meeting, the first in two months, and that he’d asked her to come in an hour earlier than the others again, so that they could discuss the Bamborough case before everyone else got there.

Extremely tired, as she always seemed to be these days, Robin showered and dressed, fumbling over buttons, forgetting where she’d put her phone, realizing there was a stain on her sweater only when halfway upstairs to the kitchen and generally feeling disgruntled at life and early starts. When she reached the upper floor, she found Max sitting at the dining table in his dressing gown, poring over a cookbook. The TV was on: the breakfast television presenter was asking whether Valentine’s Day was an exercise in commercial cynicism or an opportunity to inject some much-needed romance into a couple’s life.

“Has Cormoran got any special dietary requirements?” Max asked her, and when Robin looked blank, he said, “For tonight. Dinner.”

“Oh,” said Robin, “no. He’ll eat anything.”

She checked her emails on her phone as she drank a mug of black coffee. With a small stab of dread, she saw one from her lawyer titled “Mediation.” Opening it, she saw that an actual date was being proposed: Wednesday, March the nineteenth, over a month away. She pictured Matthew talking to his own lawyer, consulting his diary, asserting his power, as ever. I’m tied up for the whole of next month. Then she imagined facing him across a boardroom table, their lawyers beside them, and felt panic mixed with rage.

“You should eat breakfast,” said Max, still reading cookbooks.

“I’ll get something later,” said Robin, closing her email.

She picked up the coat she’d left draped over the arm of the sofa and said,

“Max, you haven’t forgotten my brother and his friend are spending the weekend, have you? I doubt they’ll be around much. It’s just a base.”

“No, no, all good,” said Max vaguely, lost in recipes.

Robin headed out into the cool, damp early morning, getting all the way to the Tube before she realized that she didn’t have her purse on her.

“Shit!”

Robin was usually tidy, efficient and organized; she rarely made this kind of mistake. Hair flying, she ran back to the flat, asking herself what the hell she could have done with it, and wondering, now panicking, whether she’d dropped it in the street or had it stolen out of her bag.

Meanwhile, in Denmark Street, the groggy Strike was hopping on his one foot out of the shower, eyes puffy, and similarly exhausted. The after-effects of a week spent covering Barclay’s and Hutchins’s shifts were now catching up with him, and he slightly regretted having asked Robin to come into work so early.

However, just after pulling on his trousers, his mobile rang and with a stab of fear, he saw Ted and Joan’s number.

“Ted?”

“Hi, Corm. There’s no need to panic, now,” said Ted. “I just wanted to give you an update.”

“Go on,” said Strike, standing bare-chested and frozen in the cold gray light filtered by the too-thin curtains of his attic flat.

“She’s not looking too clever. Kerenza was talking about trying to get her to hospital, but Joanie doesn’t want to go. She’s still in bed, she—didn’t get up, yesterday,” said Ted, his voice cracking. “Couldn’t manage it.”

“Shit,” muttered Strike, sinking down onto his bed. “Right, Ted, I’m coming.”

“You can’t,” said his uncle. “We’re surrounded by flood water. It’s dangerous. Police are telling everyone to stay put, not to travel. Kerenza can… she says she can manage her pain at home. She’s got drugs they can inject… because she’s not eating a lot now. Kerenza doesn’t think it’s… you know… she thinks it’ll be…”

He began to cry in earnest.

“… not immediate, but… she says… not long.”

“I’m coming,” said Strike firmly. “Does Lucy know how bad Joan is?”

“I called you first,” said Ted.

“I’ll tell her, don’t worry about that. I’ll ring you when we’ve put a plan together, all right?”

Strike hung up and called Lucy.

“Oh God, no,” his sister gasped, when he’d given her an unemotional summary of what Ted had said. “Stick, I can’t leave right now—Greg’s stuck in Wales!”

“The hell’s Greg doing in Wales?”

“It’s for work—oh God, what are we going to do?”

“When’s Greg back?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Then we’ll go down Sunday morning.”

“How? The trains are all off, the roads are flooded—”

“I’ll hire a jeep or something. Polworth’ll meet us the other end with a boat if we have to. I’ll ring you back when I’ve got things sorted.”

Strike dressed, made himself tea and toast, carried them downstairs to the partners’ desk in the inner office and called Ted back, overriding his objections, telling him that, like it or not, he and Lucy were coming on Sunday. He could hear his uncle’s yearning for them, his desperate need for company to share the burden of dread and grief. Strike then called Dave Polworth, who thoroughly approved of the plan and promised to be ready with boat, tow ropes and scuba equipment if necessary.

“I’ve got fuck all else to do. My place of work’s underwater.”

Strike called a few car hire companies, finally finding one that had a jeep available. He was giving his credit card details when a text arrived from Robin.

Really sorry, I lost my purse, just found it, on my way now.

Strike had entirely forgotten that they were supposed to be catching up on the Bamborough case before the team meeting. Having finished hiring the jeep, he began to assemble the items he’d intended to discuss with Robin: the blood-smeared page he’d cut out of The Magus, which he’d now put into a plastic pouch, and the discovery he’d made the previous evening on his computer, which he brought up on his monitor, ready to show her.

He then opened up the rota, to check what shifts he’d have to reallocate now that he was heading back to Cornwall, and saw “Dinner with Max” written in for that evening.

“Bollocks,” he said. He didn’t suppose he could get out of it now, having agreed to it the previous day, but this was the last thing he needed.

At that very moment, Robin, who was climbing the escalator at Tottenham Court Road two steps at a time, heard her mobile ringing in her bag.

“Yes?” she gasped into the phone, as she emerged into the station, one among many bustling commuters.

“Hey, Robs,” said her younger brother.

“Hi,” she said, using her Oyster card at the barrier. “Everything OK?”

“Yeah, fine,” said Jonathan, though he didn’t sound quite as cheerful as the last time they’d spoken. “Listen, is it all right if I bring another guy with me to crash at yours?”

“What?” said Robin, as she emerged into the blustery rain and controlled chaos of the intersection of Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road, at which there had now been building works for three and a half years. She hoped she’d misheard what Jonathan had said.

“Another guy,” he repeated. “Is that OK? He’ll sleep anywhere.”

“Oh Jon,” Robin moaned, half-jogging along Charing Cross Road now, “we’ve only got one sofa bed.”

“Kyle’ll sleep on the floor, he doesn’t care,” said Jonathan. “It’s not that big a deal is it? One more person?”

“OK, fine,” sighed Robin. “You’re still planning on getting here at ten, though?”

“I’m not sure. We might get an earlier train, we’re thinking of skipping lectures.”

“Yeah, but the thing is,” said Robin, “Cormoran’s coming over to dinner to talk to Max—”

“Oh great!” said Jonathan, sounding slightly more enthusiastic. “Courtney’d love to meet him, she’s obsessed with crime!”

“No—Jon, I’m trying to tell you, Max needs to interview Cormoran about a part he’s playing. I don’t think there’ll be enough food for another three—”

“Don’t worry about that, if we get there earlier, we’ll just order ourselves a takeaway.”

How was she supposed to say, “Please don’t come during dinner”? After he’d hung up, Robin broke into a jog, hoping that Jonathan’s time management, which she knew from experience could use improvement, might see him miss enough trains south to delay his arrival.

Taking the corner into Denmark Street at a run, she saw, with a sinking feeling, Saul Morris ahead of her, walking toward the office and carrying a small, wrapped bunch of pink gerberas.

They’d better not be for me.

“Hey, Robs,” he said, turning as she ran up behind him. “Oh dear,” he added, grinning, “someone overslept. Pillow face,” he said, pointing at the spot on his cheek where, Robin surmised, her own still bore a faint crease from the way she’d slept, face down and unmoving, because she was so tired. “For Pat,” he added, displaying his straight white teeth along with the gerberas. “Says her husband never gets her anything on Valentine’s.”

God, you’re smarmy, Robin thought, as she unlocked the door. She noticed that he was calling her “Robs” again, yet another sign that his discomfort in her presence post-Christmas had evaporated over the succeeding seven weeks. She wished she could as easily shrug off the lingering, unreasonable but no less potent sense of shame she felt, forever having seen his erection on her phone.

Upstairs, the harassed Strike was checking his watch when his mobile rang. It was unusually early for his old friend Nick Herbert to be calling him, and Strike, now sensitized to expect bad news, picked up with a sense of foreboding.

“All right, Oggy?”

Nick sounded hoarse, as though he’d been shouting.

“I’m fine,” said Strike, who thought he could hear footsteps and voices on the metal stairs outside. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” said Nick. “Wondered whether you fancied a pint tonight. Just you and me.”

“Can’t,” said Strike, very much regretting that this was so. “Sorry, I’ve got something on.”

“Ah,” said Nick. “OK. What about lunchtime, you free then?”

“Yeah, why not?” said Strike, after a slight hesitation. God knew he could use a pint away from work, from family, from his hundred other problems.

Through the open door he saw Robin enter the outer office, followed by Saul Morris, who was holding a bunch of flowers. He closed the dividing door on them, then his tired brain processed the flowers and the date.

“Hang on. Aren’t you busy with Valentine’s shit?” he asked Nick.

“Not this year,” said Nick.

There was a short silence. Strike had always considered Nick and Ilsa, a gastroenterologist and a lawyer respectively, the happiest couple he knew. Their house on Octavia Street had often been a place of refuge to him.

“I’ll explain over a pint,” said Nick. “I need one. I’ll come to you.”

They agreed a pub and a time and rang off. Strike checked his watch again: he and Robin had fifteen minutes left of what he’d hoped would be an hour on Bamborough. Opening the door, he said,

“Ready? We haven’t got long.”

“Sorry,” said Robin, hurrying inside. “You got my text, didn’t you? About the purse?”

“Yeah,” said Strike, closing the door on Morris and pointing at the page from The Magus, which he’d laid in front of Robin’s seat. “That’s the page from the book in the Athorns’ house.”

He’d called Robin about finding the Athorns straight after leaving the ironmonger, and she’d responded with excitement and congratulations. His present grumpiness aggravated her. Presumably it was due to her lateness, but was she not allowed a little human fallibility, after all the extra hours she’d put in lately, covering her own work and Strike’s, managing the subcontractors, trying as hard as she could not to put extra stress on him when his aunt was dying? However, outside she could hear Barclay and Hutchins entering the outer office, which reminded her that not so very long ago, she’d been the temp, that Strike had laid down his expectations of a partner in uncompromising terms at the start of their professional relationship. There were three men outside who undoubtedly considered themselves better qualified for her position than she was. So, Robin simply sat down, picked up the page and read the passage beneath the smear.

“The writing mentions blood.”

“I know.”

“How fresh does blood have to be, to analyze?”

“The oldest sample I’ve heard of that was successfully analyzed was twenty-something years old,” said Strike. “If this is blood, and it dates from when Gwilherm Athorn was alive, it’s a good decade older. On the other hand, it’s been kept away from light and damp, inside that book, which might help. Anyway, I’m going to call Roy Phipps and ask him what Margot’s blood group was and then I’ll try and find someone to analyze it for us. Might try that bloke your friend Vanessa used to date in forensics, what was his name?”

“Oliver,” said Robin, “and he’s now her fiancé.”

“Well, him, yeah. One other interesting thing came out of my conversation with Samhain…”

He told her about Uncle Tudor’s belief that “Nico and his boys” had killed Margot Bamborough.

“‘Nico’—d’you think—?”

“Niccolo ‘Mucky’ Ricci? Odds on,” said Strike. “He wasn’t living far away and he must’ve been a local personality, although no one from the practice seems to have realized who’d walked into their Christmas party.

“I’ve left a message with the Athorns’ social worker, because I want to know how much store we can put in Deborah and Samhain’s memories. Shanker’s supposed to be digging around on Ricci for me, but I’ve heard sod all from him. Might give him a prod.”

He held out his hand and Robin passed the blood-smeared page back.

“Anyway, the only other development is that I’ve found C. B. Oakden,” said Strike.

“What? How?”

“Last night,” said Strike. “I was thinking about names. Irene getting them wrong—Douthwaite and Duckworth, Athorn and Applethorpe. Then I started thinking about how people often don’t stray too far from their original name if they change it.”

He swung his computer monitor around to face her, and Robin saw a picture of a man in early middle age. He was slightly freckled, his eyes fractionally too close together and his hair thinning, though he still had enough to sweep across his narrow forehead. He was still just recognizable as the boy screwing up his face at the camera, at Margot Bamborough’s barbecue.

The story below read:

“The paper’s misspelled his real name,” said Robin. “They’ve printed ‘Oaken,’ not Oakden.”

“Which is why he wouldn’t have shown up on a basic Google search,” said Strike.

Feeling subtly criticized, because she was the one who was supposed to be looking for Oakden, Robin glanced at the date on the news story, which was five years old.

“He’ll be out of jail by now.”

“He is,” said Strike, turning the monitor back toward himself, typing another couple of words and turning it to face Robin again. “I did a bit more searching on variations of his name, and…”

She saw an author page of the Amazon website, listing the books written by an author called Carl O. Brice. The photograph showed the same man from the newspaper, a little older, a little balder, a little more creased around the eyes. His thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets, he wore a black T-shirt with a white logo on it: a clenched fist inside the Mars symbol.

Robin glanced down the list of books beneath the author biography. The covers were cheap and amateurish. All featured pictures of women in various slightly pornified costumes and poses. A scantily dressed blonde wearing a crown was sitting on a throne for From Courtly Love to Family Courts, A History of Gynocentrism, whereas a brunette dressed in a rubber stormtrooper outfit pointed at the camera for Shamed: The Modern War on Masculinity.

“He’s got his own website,” said Strike, turning the monitor back to himself. “He self-publishes books, offers to coach men on how to get access to their kids, and flogs protein shakes and vitamins. I don’t think he’ll pass up the chance to talk to us. He seems the type to come running at the sniff of notoriety or money.

“Speaking of which,” said Strike, “how’re you getting on with that woman who thinks she saw Margot at the window on—?”

“Amanda Laws,” said Robin. “Well, I went back to her offering her expenses if she’ll come into the office, and she hasn’t answered yet.”

“Well, chase her,” said Strike. “You realize we’re now six months in—?”

“Yes, I do realize that,” said Robin, unable to help herself. “I learned counting at school.”

Strike raised his eyebrows.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just tired.”

“Well, so am I, but I’m also mindful of the fact we still haven’t traced some fairly important people yet. Satchwell, for instance.”

“I’m working on him,” said Robin, glancing at her watch and getting to her feet. “I think they’re all out there, waiting for us.”

“Why’s Morris brought flowers?” said Strike.

“They’re for Pat. For Valentine’s Day.”

“Why the hell?”

Robin paused at the door, looking back at Strike.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

She let herself out of the room, leaving Strike to frown after her, wondering what was obvious. He could imagine only two reasons to buy a woman flowers: because you were hoping to sleep with her, or to avoid being criticized for not buying flowers on a day when flowers might be expected. Neither seemed to apply in this case.

The team was sitting in a cramped circle outside, Hutchins and Barclay on the fake leather sofa, Morris on one of the fold-up plastic chairs that had been bought when the team outgrew the existing seats, and Pat on her own wheeled desk chair, which left another two uncomfortable plastic chairs for the partners. Robin noticed how all three men stopped talking when Strike emerged from the inner office: when she’d led the meeting alone, she’d had to wait until Hutchins and Morris finished discussing a mutual police acquaintance who’d been caught taking bribes.

The bright pink daisy-like gerberas sat in a small vase on Pat’s desk now. Strike glanced at them before saying,

“All right, let’s start with Shifty. Morris, did you get anywhere with that bloke in the tracksuit?”

“Yeah, I did,” said Morris, consulting his notes. “His name’s Barry Fisher. He’s divorced with one kid and he’s a manager at Shifty’s gym.”

Appreciative, low-toned growls of approval and interest issued from Strike, Barclay and Hutchins. Robin contented herself with a slight eyebrow raise. It was her experience that the slightest hint of warmth or approval from her was interpreted by Morris as an invitation to flirtation.

“So, I’ve booked myself in for a trial session with one of their trainers,” said Morris.

Bet it’s with a woman, thought Robin.

“While I was talking to her, I saw him wandering about talking to some of the other girls. He’s definitely hetero, judging by how he was looking at one of the women on the cross-trainer. I’m going back Monday for a workout, if that’s all right with you, boss. Try and find out more about him.”

“Fine,” said Strike. “Well, this looks like our first solid lead: a link between Shifty and whatever’s going on inside Elinor Dean’s house.”

Robin, who’d spent the night before last sitting in her Land Rover outside Elinor’s house, said,

“It might not be relevant, but Elinor took an Amazon delivery yesterday morning. Two massive boxes. They looked quite light, but—”

“We should open a book,” Morris told Strike, talking over Robin. “Twenty on dominatrix.”

“Never seen the appeal in bein’ whipped,” said Barclay thoughtfully. “If I want pain, I jus’ forget to put the bins oot.”

“Bit mumsy-looking, though, isn’t she?” said Hutchins. “If I had SB’s money, I’d go for something a bit more—”

He sketched a slimmer figure in mid-air. Morris laughed.

“Ach, there’s no accountin’ for taste,” said Barclay. “Army mate o’ mine wouldnae look at anythin’ under thirteen stone. We usedtae call him the Pork Whisperer.”

The men laughed. Robin smiled, mainly because Barclay was looking at her, and she liked Barclay, but she felt too tired and demoralized to be truly amused. Pat was wearing a “boys will be boys” expression of bored tolerance.

“Unfortunately, I’ve got to go back to Cornwall on Sunday,” said Strike, “which I appreciate—”

“The fuck are ye gonna get tae Cornwall?” asked Barclay, as the office windows shook with the wind.

“Jeep,” said Strike. “My aunt’s dying. Looks like she’s got days.”

Robin looked at Strike, startled.

“I appreciate that leaves us stretched,” Strike continued matter-of-factly, “but it can’t be helped. I think it’s worth continuing to keep an eye on SB himself. Morris’ll do some digging with this bloke at the gym and the rest of you can divvy up shifts on Elinor Dean. Unless anyone’s got anything to add,” said Strike, pausing for comments. The men all shook their heads and Robin, too tired to mention the Amazon boxes again, remained silent. “Let’s have a look at Postcard.”

“I’ve got news,” said Barclay laconically. “She’s back at work. I’ve talked tae her. Yer woman,” he added, to Robin, “short. Big round glasses. Ambled over and started askin’ questions.”

“What about?” asked Morris, a smirk playing around his lips.

“Light effects in the landscapes o’ James Duffield Harding,” said Barclay. “What d’ye think I asked, who she fancied for the Champions League?”

Strike laughed, and so did Robin, this time, glad to see Morris looking foolish.

“Yeah, I read the notice by his portrait an’ looked him up on my phone round the corner,” said Barclay. “Wanted a way o’ getting ontae the subject o’ weather wi’ her. Anyway,” said the Glaswegian, “coupla minutes intae the conversation, talkin’ light effects an’ broodin’ skies an’ that, she brought up oor weatherman friend. Turned pink when she mentioned him. Said he’d described a viewer’s picture as ‘Turneresque’ last week.

“It’s her,” said Barclay, addressing Robin. “She wanted tae mention him for the pleasure of sayin’ his name. She’s Postcard.”

“Bloody well done,” Strike told Barclay.

“It’s Robin’s win,” said Barclay. “She made the pass. I jus’ tapped it in.”

“Thanks, Sam,” said Robin, pointedly, not looking at Strike, who registered both the tone and her expression.

“Fair point,” said Strike, “well done, both of you.”

Aware that he’d been short with Robin during their meeting about the Bamborough case, Strike sought to make amends by asking her opinion on which of the waiting list clients they ought to contact, now that the Postcard case was as good as wrapped up, and she said she thought the commodities broker who thought her husband was sleeping with their nanny.

“Great,” said Strike. “Pat, can you get in touch and tell her we’re ready to roll if she still wants him under surveillance? If nobody’s got anything else—”

“I have,” said Hutchins, generally the quietest person in the agency. “It’s about that roll of film you wanted passed to the Met.”

“Oh yeah?” said Strike. “Is there news?”

“My mate rang last night. There’s nothing to be done with it. You won’t get any prosecutions now.”

“Why not?” said Robin.

She sounded angrier than she’d meant to. The men all looked at her.

“Perpetrators’ faces all hidden,” said Hutchins. “That arm that appears for a moment: you can’t build a prosecution case on an out-of-focus ring.”

“I thought your contact said the roll had come out of a raid on one of Mucky Ricci’s brothels?” said Robin.

“He thinks it did,” Hutchins corrected her. “You won’t get DNA evidence off a can that old, that’s been kept in a shed and an attic and handled by a hundred people. It’s a no-go. Shame,” he said indifferently, “but there you are.”

Strike now heard his mobile ringing back on the partners’ desk, where he’d left it. Worried it might be Ted, he excused himself from the meeting and retreated into the inner office, closing the door behind him.

There was no caller ID on the number ringing his mobile.

“Cormoran Strike.”

“Hello, Cormoran,” said an unfamiliar, husky voice. “It’s Jonny.”

There was a brief silence.

“Your father,” Rokeby added.

Strike, whose tired mind was full of Joan, of the agency’s three open cases, of guilt about being grumpy with his partner, and the logistical demands he was placing on his employees by disappearing to Cornwall again, said nothing at all. Through the dividing door, he could hear the team still discussing the roll of film.

“Wanted a chat,” said Rokeby. “Is that all right?”

Strike felt suddenly disembodied; completely detached from everything, from the office, from his fatigue, from the concerns that had seemed all-important just seconds ago. It was as though he and his father’s voice existed alone and nothing else was fully real, except Strike’s adrenaline, and a primal desire to leave a mark that Rokeby wouldn’t quickly forget.

“I’m listening,” he said.

Another silence.

“Look,” said Rokeby, sounding slightly uneasy, “I don’t wanna do this by phone. Let’s meet. It’s been too fucking long. Water under the bridge. Let’s meet, let’s… I wanna—this can’t go on. This fucking—feud, or whatever it is.”

Strike said nothing.

“Come to the house,” said Rokeby. “Come over. Let’s talk, and… you’re not a kid any more. There are two sides to every story. Nothing’s black and white.”

He paused. Strike still said nothing.

“I’m proud of you, d’you know that?” said Rokeby. “I’m really fucking proud of you. What you’ve done and…”

The sentence petered out. Strike stared, motionless, at the blank wall in front of him. Beyond the partition wall, Pat was laughing at something Morris had said.

“Look,” repeated Rokeby, with just a tiny hint of temper now, because he was a man used to getting his own way. “I get it, I do, but what the fuck can I do? I can’t time travel. Al’s told me what you’ve been saying, and there’s a bunch of stuff you don’t know, about your mother and all her fucking men. If you just come over, we can have a drink, we can have it all out. And,” said Rokeby, quietly insinuating, “maybe I can help you out a bit, maybe there’s something you want I can help out with, peace offering, I’m open to suggestions…”

In the outer office, Hutchins and Barclay were taking their leave, ready to get back to their separate jobs. Robin was thinking only about how much she wanted to go home. She was supposed to have the rest of the day off, but Morris was hanging around, and she was sure he was waiting because he wanted to walk with her to the Tube. Pretending to have paperwork to look at, she was rifling through a filing cabinet while Morris and Pat chatted, hoping he’d leave. She’d just opened an old file on a prolific adulterer, when Strike’s voice filled the room from the inner office. She, Pat and Morris turned their heads. Several pages of the file Robin was balancing on top of the drawer slid to the floor.

“… so GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

Before Robin could exchange looks with Morris or Pat, the dividing door between inner and outer offices opened. Strike looked alarming: white, livid, his breath coming fast. He stormed through the outer office, grabbed his coat and could be heard heading down the metal staircase outside.

Robin picked up the fallen pages.

“Shit,” said Morris, grinning. “Wouldn’t have wanted to be on the end of that call.”

“Nasty temper,” said Pat, who looked weirdly satisfied. “Knew it, the moment I laid eyes on him.”

40

Robin found no polite way of avoiding walking to the Tube with Morris and in consequence was obliged to listen to two off-color jokes, and to lie about her Valentine’s plans, because she could just imagine Morris’s response if she told him Strike was coming over. Pretending that she hadn’t heard or registered Morris’s suggestion that they should get together one night to compare notes on lawyers, she parted from him at the bottom of the escalator with relief.

Tired and mildly depressed, Robin’s thoughts lingered on Morris as the Tube sped her back toward Earl’s Court. Was he so used to women responding readily to his undeniable handsomeness that he took it for granted he was eliciting a positive response? Or did the fault lie in Robin herself, who, for the sake of politeness, for the cohesion of the team, because she didn’t want to make trouble when the agency was so busy, continued to smile at his stupid jokes and chose not to say, loudly and clearly, “I don’t like you. We’re never going to date.”

She arrived home to find the flat full of the cheering and delicious smell of simmering beef and red wine. Max appeared to have gone out, but a casserole was sitting in the oven and Wolfgang was lying as close to the hot door as he could manage without burning himself, reminding Robin of fans who camped out overnight in hope of catching a glimpse of pop stars.

Instead of lying down on her bed and trying to get a few hours’ sleep before dinner, Robin, who’d been stung by Strike’s reminders that she hadn’t chased up Amanda Laws or found Paul Satchwell, made herself more coffee, opened her laptop and sat down at the small dining table. After sending Amanda Laws another email, she opened Google. When she did so, each letter of the logo turned one by one into a pastel-colored, heart-shaped candy with a slogan on it: MR. RIGHT, PUPPY LUV and BLIND DATE, and for some reason, her thoughts moved to Charlotte Campbell. It would, of course, be very difficult for a married woman to meet her lover tonight. And who, she wondered, had Strike been telling to fuck off over the phone?

Robin set to work on Satchwell, trying to emulate Strike’s success in finding C. B. Oakden. She played around with Satchwell’s three names, reversing Paul and Leonard, trying initials and deliberate misspellings, but the men who appeared in answer to her searches didn’t look promising.

Was it possible that Margot’s tight-jeaned, hairy-chested artist had turned, over the space of four decades, into classic car collector Leo Satchwell, a rotund man with a goatee who wore tinted glasses? Unlikely, Robin decided, after wasting ten minutes on Leo: judging by the photographs on his Facebook page, in which he stood alongside other enthusiasts, he was barely five feet tall. There was a Brian Satchwell in Newport, but he had a lazy eye and was five years too young, and a Colin Satchwell in Eastbourne who ran an antiques business. She was still trying to find an image of Colin when she heard the front door open. A few minutes later, Max walked into the kitchen, with a bag of shopping in his hand.

“How’s the casserole doing?” he asked.

“Great,” said Robin, who hadn’t checked it.

“Get out of the way, Wolfgang, unless you want to be burned,” said Max, as he opened the oven door. To Robin’s relief, the casserole appeared to be doing well, and Max shut the door again.

Robin closed her laptop. A feeling that it was rude to sit typing while someone else was cooking in her vicinity persisted from the days when she’d lived with a husband who’d always resented her bringing work home.

“Max, I’m really sorry about this, but my brother’s bringing another friend with him tonight.”

“That’s fine,” said Max, unpacking his shopping.

“And they might be arriving early. They aren’t expecting to eat with us—”

“They’re welcome. This casserole serves eight. I was going to freeze the rest, but we can eat the lot tonight, I don’t mind.”

“That’s really nice of you,” said Robin, “but I know you want to talk to Cormoran alone, so I could take them—”

“No, the more the merrier,” said Max, who seemed mildly cheerful at the prospect of company. “I told you, I’ve decided to give up the recluse life.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “OK, then.”

She had some misgivings about what she feared might be quite an ill-assorted group, but telling herself her tiredness was making her pessimistic, she retired to her bedroom, where she spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a photograph of Colin Satchwell. Finally, at six o’clock, after a great deal of cross-referencing, she located a picture on the website of a local church, where he appeared to be an alderman. Portly, with a low hairline, he in no way resembled the artist she sought.

Aware that she really ought to change and go upstairs to help Max, she was on the point of closing her laptop when a new email arrived. The subject line was one word: “Creed,” and with a spurt of nervous excitement, Robin opened it.

Robin read this email through and allowed herself a flicker of optimism, though she didn’t intend to tell Strike what she was up to just yet. With luck, they’d be allowed to talk to the police interviewer before he or she went into Broadmoor. She typed an email of thanks, then began to get ready for dinner.

Her slightly improved mood survived looking in the mirror and seeing how tired she looked, with gray shadows under her slightly bloodshot eyes, and hair that definitely needed washing. Making do with dry shampoo, Robin tied back her hair, changed into clean jeans and her favorite top, applied undereye concealer and was on the point of leaving her room when her mobile rang.

Afraid that it would be Strike canceling, she was positively relieved to see Ilsa’s name.

“Hi, Ilsa!”

“Hi, Robin. Are you with Corm?”

“No,” said Robin. Instead of leaving her bedroom, she sat back down on the bed. “Are you OK?”

Ilsa sounded odd: weak and numb.

“D’you know where Corm is?”

“No, but he should be here in ten minutes. D’you want me to give him a message?”

“No. I—d’you know whether he’s been with Nick today?”

“No,” said Robin, now worried. “What’s going on, Ilsa? You sound terrible.”

Then she remembered that it was Valentine’s Day and registered the fact that Ilsa didn’t know where her husband was. Something more than worry overtook Robin: it was fear. Nick and Ilsa were the happiest couple she knew. The five weeks she’d lived with them after leaving Matthew had restored some of Robin’s battered faith in marriage. They couldn’t split up: not Nick and Ilsa.

“It’s nothing,” said Ilsa.

“Tell me,” Robin insisted. “What—?”

Wrenching sobs issued through the phone.

“Ilsa, what’s happened?”

“I… I miscarried.”

“Oh God,” gasped Robin. “Oh no. Ilsa, I’m so sorry.”

She knew that Nick and Ilsa had been trying for some years to have a child. Nick never talked about it and Ilsa, only rarely. Robin had had no idea she was pregnant. She suddenly remembered Ilsa not drinking, on the night of her birthday.

“It happened—in the—in the supermarket.”

“Oh no,” whispered Robin. “Oh God.”

“I started bleeding… at court… we’re in the middle of a… mas­sive case… couldn’t leave…” said Ilsa. “And then… and then… heading home…”

She became incoherent. Tears started in Robin’s eyes as she sat with the phone clamped to her ear.

“… knew… something bad… so I got out of the cab… and I went… into the supermarket… and I was in… the loo… and I felt… felt… and then… a little… blob… a tiny bod—bod—body…”

Robin put her face in her hands.

“And… I didn’t know… what to do… but… there was a woman… in the loo with… and she… it had happened… to her… so kind…”

She dissolved again into incoherence. Snorts, gulps and hiccups filled Robin’s ear before words became intelligible again.

“And Nick said… it was my fault. Said… all my fault… working… too hard… I didn’t take… enough care… didn’t put… the baby first.”

“He didn’t,” said Robin. She liked Nick. She couldn’t believe he’d have said such a thing to his wife.

“He did, he said I should’ve… come home… that I… put w—work… before the b—baby—”

“Ilsa, listen to me,” said Robin. “If you got pregnant once, you can get pregnant again.”

“No, no, no, I can’t,” said Ilsa, dissolving again into tears, “it was our third go at IVF. We agreed… agreed… no more after this. No more.”

The doorbell rang.

“Ilsa, I’ve got to get the door, it might be Cormoran—”

“Yes, yes, go… it’s fine… it’s all fine.”

Before Robin could stop her, Ilsa had hung up. Hardly knowing what she was doing, Robin ran downstairs and flung open the door.

But naturally, it wasn’t Strike. He’d never arrived on time for any out-of-work event to which she’d invited him, whether drinks, house-warming party or even her wedding. Instead she found herself facing Jonathan, the brother who most resembled her: tall and slender, with the same strawberry blond hair and blue eyes. The resemblance was even closer this evening, because both siblings looked peaky. Jonathan, too, had shadows under his eyes, not to mention a slightly gray cast to his skin.

“Hey, Robs.”

“Hi,” said Robin, accepting Jonathan’s hug and trying to act pleased to see him, “come in.”

“This is Courtney,” said Jonathan, “and that’s Kyle.”

“Hiya,” giggled Courtney, who was holding a can. She was an exquisitely pretty girl, with large dark eyes and long black hair, and she seemed slightly tipsy. Kyle, who accidentally bashed Robin with his large rucksack on entering, was a couple of inches taller than she was, skinny, with a high-fade haircut, large, bloodshot eyes and a neatly groomed beard.

“Hi there,” he said, holding out his hand and smiling down at Robin. A stranger might have thought he was welcoming her to his flat, rather than the other way around. “Robin, yeah?”

“Yes,” said Robin, forcing a smile. “Lovely to meet you. Come upstairs; we’re eating on the top floor.”

Lost in thoughts of Ilsa, she followed the three students. Courtney and Kyle were giggling and whispering together, Courtney a little clumsy on her feet. On reaching the living area, Robin introduced all three guests to Max, while Kyle dumped his none-too-clean rucksack on their host’s cream sofa.

“Thanks very much for letting us stay,” said Jonathan to Max, who’d laid the table for six. “Something smells really good.”

“I’m vegan,” piped up Courtney. “But I can just eat, like, pasta, or whatever.”

“I’ll do some pasta, don’t you worry about that,” Robin told Max hastily, as she surreptitiously lifted Kyle’s dirty rucksack off the sofa, trying not to make a big deal of what she was doing. Courtney promptly knelt on the sofa with her damp trainers still on, and said to Robin,

“Is this the sofa bed?”

Robin nodded.

“We’ll have to sort out who sleeps where,” said Courtney, with a glance at Kyle. Robin thought she saw her brother’s smile falter.

“Actually, why don’t we put all the bags in my bedroom for now?” Robin suggested, as Jonathan swung his holdall onto the sofa, too. “And keep this area clear for after dinner?”

Neither Courtney nor Kyle showed any inclination to move, so Robin and Jonathan took the bags downstairs together. Once they were in Robin’s room, Jonathan took a box of chocolates out of his holdall and gave them to his sister.

“Thanks, Jon, that’s lovely. D’you feel OK? You look a bit pale.”

“I was blunted last night. Listen, Robs… don’t say anything to Courtney about her being, like, my girlfriend or whatever.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good, because…”

“You’ve split up?” Robin suggested sympathetically.

“We weren’t ever—we hooked up a couple of times,” muttered Jonathan, “but—I dunno, I think she might be into Kyle now.”

Courtney’s laugh rang out from the upper floor. With a perfunctory smile at his sister, Jonathan returned to his friends.

Robin tried to call Ilsa back, but her number was engaged. Hoping this meant that she’d located Nick, Robin texted:

Just tried to call you. Please let me know what’s going on. I’m worried about you. Robin xxx

She went back upstairs and started cooking pumpkin ravioli for Courtney. Apparently sensing that the casserole would soon be leaving the oven, Wolfgang slunk around Max’s and Robin’s ankles. Checking her watch, Robin noted that Strike was already fifteen minutes late. His record was an hour and a half. She tried, without much success, not to feel angry. After the way he’d treated her for being late this morning…

Robin was just draining the ravioli when the doorbell finally rang.

“D’you want me—?” said Max, who was pouring drinks for Jonathan, Courtney and Kyle.

“No, I’ll do it,” said Robin shortly.

When she opened the door, she knew immediately that Strike, who was peering down at her with unfocused eyes, was drunk.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said thickly. “Can I have a pee?”

She stood back to let him pass. He reeked of Doom Bar and cigarettes. Tense as she was, Robin noted that he hadn’t thought to bring Max a bottle of anything, in spite of the fact he’d apparently spent all afternoon in the pub.

“The bathroom’s there,” she said, pointing. He disappeared inside. Robin waited on the landing. He seemed to take a very long time.

“We’re eating up here,” she said, when at last he emerged.

“More stairs?” mumbled Strike.

When they reached the open-plan living area, he seemed to pull himself together. He shook hands with Max and Jonathan in turn and said quite coherently that he was pleased to meet them. Courtney temporarily abandoned Kyle and bounced over to say hello to the famous detective, and Strike looked positively enthusiastic as he took in her looks. Suddenly very conscious of her own washed-out and puffy-eyed appearance, Robin turned back to the kitchen area to put Courtney’s ravioli in a bowl for her. Behind her, she heard Courtney saying,

“And this is Kyle.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re the detective?” Kyle said, determinedly unimpressed.

Jonathan, Courtney, Kyle and Max already had drinks, so Robin poured herself a large gin and tonic. While she was adding ice, a cheerful Max came back into the kitchen to fetch Strike a beer, then got the casserole out of the oven and onto the table. Wolfgang whined as the object of his devotion was lifted out of his reach.

While Max served everyone at the table, Robin set Courtney’s ravioli down in front of her.

“Oh God, no, wait,” said Courtney. “Is this vegan? Where’s the packet?”

“In the bin,” said Robin.

“Tuh,” said Courtney, and she got up and walked into the kitchen. Max and Robin were the only two people at the table whose eyes didn’t automatically follow Courtney. Robin downed half her gin before picking up her knife and fork.

“No, it’s OK,” called Courtney, from beside the bin. “It’s vegan.”

“Oh good,” said Robin.

To Robin’s left, Max began asking Strike’s opinion on various aspects of his character’s personality and past. Courtney returned to the table and began to wolf down her pasta, drinking and topping up her wine regularly as she went while telling Jonathan and Kyle her plans about a protest march at university. Robin joined in neither conversation, but ate and drank in silence, one eye on the mobile beside her plate in case Ilsa texted or rang back.

“… couldn’t happen,” Strike was saying. “He wouldn’t’ve been allowed to join up in the first place, conviction for possession with intent to supply. Total bollocks.”

“Really? The writers did quite a lot of research—”

“Should’ve known that, then.”

“… so yeah, basically, you dress up in your underwear and short skirts and stuff,” Courtney was saying, and when Kyle and Jon laughed she said, “Don’t, it’s serious—”

“… no, this is useful,” said Max, scribbling in a notebook. “So if he’d been in jail before the army—”

“If he’d done more than thirty months, the army wouldn’t’ve taken him…”

“I’m not wearing suspenders, Kyle—anyway, Miranda doesn’t want—”

“I don’t know how long he’s supposed to have done,” said Max. “I’ll check. Tell me about drugs in the army, how common—?”

“—so she says, ‘D’you not understand how problematic the word ‘slut’ is, Courtney?’ And I’m like, ‘Er, what d’you think—’”

“‘What d’you think a fucking SlutWalk’s for?’” said Kyle, talking over Courtney. He had a deep voice and the air of a young man who was used to being listened to.

The screen of Robin’s mobile lit up. Ilsa had texted back.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, though nobody was paying her any attention, and she headed into the kitchen area to read what Ilsa had said.

Didn’t mean to worry you. Nick home, shitfaced. He’s been in the pub with Corm. We’re talking. He says he didn’t mean it the way I took it. What other way was there? X

Robin, who felt entirely on Ilsa’s side, nevertheless texted back:

He’s a dickhead but I know he really loves you. Xxx

As she poured herself another double gin and tonic, Max called to her, asking her to bring Strike another beer from the fridge. When Robin set the open bottle down in front of Strike he didn’t thank her, but merely took a long pull on it and raised his voice, because he was having difficulty trying to make himself heard over Kyle and Courtney, whose conversation had now migrated to the unknown Miranda’s views on pornography.

“… so I’m, like, you do understand that women can actually choose what to do with their own bodies, Miran—Oh shit, sorry—”

Courtney’s expansive gesture had knocked over her wine glass. Robin jumped up to get the kitchen roll. By the time she got back, Courtney’s glass had been refilled by Kyle. Robin mopped up the wine while the two separate conversations grew steadily louder on either side of her, binned the sodden kitchen roll, then sat back down, wishing she could just go to bed.

“… troubled background, that’s fucking original, guess what, plenty of people join the army because they want to serve, not to escape…”

“Pure whorephobia,” boomed Kyle. “I s’pose she thinks waitresses love every fucking minute of their jobs, does she?”

“… and he can’t have been in 1 Rifles if he’s your age. The bat­talion was only formed…”

“… labor for hire, where’s the fucking difference?”

“… think it was end 2007…”

“… and some women enjoy watching porn, too!”

Courtney’s words fell loudly into a temporary lull. Everyone looked round at Courtney, who’d blushed and was giggling with her hand over her mouth.

“It’s all right, we’re talking feminism,” said Kyle, with a smirk. “Courtney isn’t suggesting, y’know—after-dinner entertainment.”

“Kyle!” gasped Courtney, slapping his upper arm and dissolving into further giggles.

“Who wants pudding?” Robin asked, standing up to collect the empty plates. Max, too, got to his feet.

“I’m sorry Strike’s so pissed,” Robin murmured to Max, as she tipped a few uneaten pieces of ravioli into the bin.

“Are you kidding?” said Max, with a slight smile. “This is pure gold. My character’s an alcoholic.”

He’d gone, bearing a homemade cheesecake to the table, before Robin could tell him that Strike didn’t usually drink this much; indeed, this was only the second time she’d ever known him drunk. The first time he’d been sad and quite endearing, but tonight there was a definite undercurrent of aggression. She remembered the shouted “Go fuck yourself” she’d heard through the office door that afternoon and again wondered to whom Strike had been talking.

Robin followed Max back to the table, carrying a lemon tart and a third large gin and tonic. Kyle was now treating the entire table to his views on pornography. Robin didn’t much like the expression on Strike’s face. He’d often displayed an instinctive antipathy toward the kind of young man you could least imagine in the army; she trusted he was going to keep his feelings to himself tonight.

“… form of entertainment, just like any other,” Kyle was saying, with an expansive gesture. Fearful of more accidents, Robin discreetly moved the almost empty wine bottle out of hitting range. “When you look at it objectively, strip it from all the puritanical bullshit—”

“Yeah, exactly,” said Courtney, “women have got agency over their own—”

“—movies, gaming, it all stimulates the pleasure centers in your brain,” said Kyle, now pointing at his own immaculately groomed head. “You could make an argument that movies are emotional pornography. All this moralistic, manufactured outrage about porn—”

“I can’t eat either of those if they’ve got dairy in them,” Courtney whispered to Robin, who pretended she hadn’t heard.

“—women want to make a living out of their own bodies, that’s the literal definition of female empowerment and you could argue it has more societal benefit than—”

“When I was in Kosovo,” said Strike unexpectedly and all three students turned to look at him, with startled expressions. Strike paused, fumbling to get his cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Cormoran,” said Robin, “you can’t smo—”

“No problem,” said Max, getting up, “I’ll bring an ashtray.”

It took Strike three attempts to make his lighter work and in the meantime everybody watched him in silence. Without raising his voice, he’d dominated the room.

“Who’d like cheesecake?” Robin said into the silence, her voice artificially cheery.

“I can’t,” said Courtney, with a slight pout. “But I might be able to have the lemon tart, if it’s—?”

“When I was in Kosovo,” Strike repeated, exhaling as Max returned, placed an ashtray in front of him and sat back down again, “—cheers—I investigated a porn case—well, human trafficking. Coupla soldiers had paid for sex with underage girls. They were filmed without their knowledge an’ the videos ended up on PornHub. Case ended up part of an international civilian investigation. Whole load of pre-pubescent boys and girls had been trafficked into porn. The youngest was seven.”

Strike took a large drag of his cigarette, squinting through the smoke at Kyle.

“What societal benefit would you say that had?” he asked.

There was a short, nasty silence in which the three students stared at the detective.

“Well, obviously,” said Kyle, with a small half-laugh, “that’s—that’s a completely different thing. Nobody’s talking about kids—that’s not—that’s illegal, isn’t it? I’m talking about—”

“Porn industry’s full of trafficking,” said Strike, still watching Kyle through his smoke. “Women and kids from poor countries. One of the little girls in my case was filmed with a plastic bag over her head, while a bloke anally raped her.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Kyle and Courtney throw her darting looks and knew, with an elevator drop in the area of her solar plexus, that her brother must have shared her history with his friends. Max was the only person at the table who seemed entirely relaxed. He was watching Strike with the dispassionate attention of a chemist checking an ongoing experiment.

“The video of that kid was viewed over a hundred thousand times online,” said Strike. Cigarette jammed in his mouth, he now helped himself to a large piece of cheesecake, effectively demolishing it to get a third of it onto his plate. “Plenty of pleasure centers stimulated there, eh?” he went on, looking up at Kyle.

“No, but that’s completely different, though,” said Courtney, rallying to Kyle’s defense. “We were talking about women who—it’s up to women, grown women, to decide what they want to do with their own bod—”

“Did you cook all this?” Strike asked Max through a mouthful of cheesecake. He still had a lit cigarette in his left hand.

“Yes,” said Max.

“Bloody good,” said Strike. He turned back to Kyle. “How many waitresses d’you know who got trafficked into it?”

“Well, obviously none but—I mean, you’re bound to’ve seen that bad stuff, aren’t you, being police—”

“As long as you don’t have to see it, all good, eh?”

“Well, if you feel like that…” said Kyle, red in the face now, “if you’re so against it, you must never’ve—you’ve never used porn, then, you don’t—?”

“If nobody else wants pudding,” said Robin loudly, standing up and pointing toward the sofa area, “shall we have coffee over there?”

Without waiting for an answer, she headed for the kitchen area. Behind her, she heard the scraping of a couple of chairs. After switching on the kettle, she headed downstairs to the bathroom, where, after she’d peed, she sat for five minutes on the toilet with her face in her hands.

Why had Strike turned up drunk? Why did they have to talk about rape and porn? Her attacker had been a voracious consumer of violent pornography, with a particular emphasis on choking, but his internet search history had been deemed inadmissible evidence by the judge. Robin didn’t want to know whether Strike used porn; she didn’t want to think about trafficked children being filmed, just as she didn’t want to remember Morris’s dick pic on her phone, or the snuff movie Bill Talbot had stolen. Tired and low, she asked herself why Strike couldn’t leave the students alone, if not out of consideration for his host, then for her, his partner.

She headed back upstairs. Halfway to the living area she heard Kyle’s heated voice and knew the argument had escalated. Arriving on the top floor, Robin saw the other five sitting around the coffee table, on which stood a cafetière, a bottle and the chocolates Jonathan had brought. Strike and Max were both holding glasses of brandy while Courtney, who was now very obviously drunk, though nowhere near as much as Strike, was nodding along with Kyle’s argument, a cup of coffee balanced precariously in her hands. Robin sat back down at the abandoned dining table, away from the rest of the group, took a piece of beef out of the casserole and fed it to a pathetically grateful Wolfgang.

“The point is to destigmatize and reclaim derogatory language about women,” Kyle was saying to Strike. “That’s the point.”

“And that’ll be ’chieved by a bunch’f nice middle-class girls going f’ra walk in their underwear, will it?” said Strike, his voice thick with alcohol.

“Well, not necessar’ly under—” began Courtney.

“It’s about ending victim-blaming,” said Kyle loudly. “Surely you can—?”

“An’ how’s it end victim-blaming?”

“Well, obv’sly,” said Courtney loudly, “by changing the adertu—the underlying attitudes—”

“You think rapists’ll see you all marching ’long and think ‘better jack in the raping,’ do you?”

Courtney and Kyle both began shouting at Strike. Jonathan glanced anxiously at his sister, who felt another of those sickening drops in her stomach.

“It’s about destigmatizing—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, plen’y of men will enjoy watching you all strut past in your bras,” said Strike, taking a sloppy gulp of brandy, “’n’ I’m sure you’ll look great on Instagram—”

“It’s not about Instagram!” said Courtney, who sounded almost tearful now. “We’re making a serious point about—”

“Men who call women sluts, yeah, you said,” said Strike, talking over her again. “I’m sure they’ll feel properly rebuked, watching you prounce—prance by in your mini-skirt.”

“It’s not about rebuking,” said Kyle, “you’re missing the—”

“I’m not missing your super-subtle fucking point,” snapped Strike. “I’m telling you that in the real world, this f’cking Whore Walk—”

“SlutWalk,” said Kyle and Courtney loudly.

“—’ll make fuck-all difference. The kind of man who calls women sluts’ll look at your fucking sideshow and think ‘there go a load of sluts, look.’ Reclaim fucking language all you fucking like. You don’t change real altit—att—real-world attitudes by deciding slurs aren’t derug—derogat’ry.”

Wolfgang, who was still quivering at Robin’s ankle in the hope of getting more beef, emitted a loud whimper, which made Strike glance around. He saw Robin sitting there, pale and impassive.

“What d’you think ’bout all this?” Strike asked her loudly, waving his glass in the direction of the students, so that brandy slopped over the rim onto the carpet.

“I think it would be a good idea to change the subject,” said Robin, whose heart was beating so fast it hurt.

“Would you go on a fucking Whore—?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” said Robin, blood thumping in her ears, wanting only for the conversation to end. Her rapist had grunted “whore” over and over again during the attack. If her would-be killer had squeezed her neck for another thirty seconds, it would have been the last word she heard on earth.

“She’s b’ng polite,” said Strike, turning back to the students.

“Talking for women now, are you?” sneered Kyle.

“For an actual rape victim!” said Courtney.

The room seemed to warp. A clammy silence descended. On the edge of Robin’s field of vision she saw Max turn to look at her.

Strike got to his feet at the second attempt. Robin knew he was saying something to her, but it was all noise: her ears felt full of cotton wool. Strike lurched off toward the door: he was leaving. He bounced off the doorframe and disappeared from sight.

Everyone continued to stare at Robin.

“Oh God, I’m really sorry if I shouldn’t have said that,” whispered Courtney through the fingers she’d pressed to her mouth. Her eyes were brimming with tears. From downstairs came the sound of the door slamming.

“It’s fine,” said a distant voice that sounded quite like Robin’s own. “Excuse me a moment.”

She got to her feet, and followed Strike.

41

The dark, unfamiliar road took the exceptionally drunk Strike by surprise. Rain and high winds battered him as he stood, swaying, wondering which direction the Tube was. His usually reliable sense of direction was telling him to turn right, so he lurched off that way, searching his pockets for cigarettes as he went, savoring the delicious release of tension and temper he’d just enjoyed. The memory of what had just happened presented itself in a few scattered fragments: Kyle’s angry red face. Tosser. Fucking students. Max laughing at something Strike had said. Lots of food. Even more drink.

Rain sparkled in the street lights and blurred Strike’s vision. Objects seemed to shrink and enlarge around him, particularly the parked car that suddenly put itself in his path as he attempted to walk in a straight line down the street. His thick fingers fumbled fruitlessly in his pockets. He couldn’t find his cigarettes.

That last brandy might have been a mistake. He could still taste it. He didn’t like brandy, and he’d had a hell of a lot of Doom Bar with Nick in the pub.

It was a mighty effort to walk in these high winds. His glow of well-being was wearing off, but he definitely didn’t feel sick, even after all that beef casserole and a sizable bit of cheesecake, though he didn’t really want to think about them, nor about the forty or so cigarettes he’d consumed in the past twenty-four hours, nor about the brandy he could still taste.

Without warning, his stomach contracted. Strike staggered to a gap between two cars, bent double and vomited as copiously as he’d done at Christmas, over and over, for several minutes, until he was standing with his hands on his knees, still heaving, but bringing nothing else up.

Sweaty-faced, he stood up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, pistons banging in his head. It was several seconds before he became aware of the pale figure standing watching him, its fair hair blowing wildly in the wind.

“Wh—? Oh,” he said, as Robin came into focus. “It’s you.”

It occurred to him that she might have followed him to bring his forgotten cigarettes and looked hopefully at her hands, but they were empty. Strike moved away from the puddle of vomit in the gutter and leaned up against another parked car.

“I was in the pub with Nick all afternoon,” he said thickly, under the impression that Robin might be concerned about him.

Something hard was pressing into his buttock. Now he realized that he did have his cigarettes on him, after all, and he was glad of this, because he’d rather taste tobacco than vomit. He tugged the pack out of his back pocket and, after a few false starts, managed to light up.

At last, it penetrated his consciousness that Robin’s demeanor was unusual. Focusing on her face, he registered it as white and oddly pinched.

“What?”

“‘What?’” she repeated. “Fucking ‘what?’”

Robin swore far less often than Strike did. The damp night air, which felt icy on Strike’s sweaty face, was rapidly sobering him up. Robin appeared to be angry: angrier, in fact, than he’d ever seen her. But drink was still slowing his reactions, and nothing better occurred to him than to repeat,

“What?”

“You arrive late,” she said, “because of course you do, because when have you ever shown me the common fucking courtesy of turning up on time—”

“Wha—?” said Strike again, this time less because he was looking for information than in disbelief. She was the unique woman in his life who’d never tried to change him. This wasn’t the Robin he knew.

“You arrive rat-arsed, because of course you do, because what do I matter? It’s only Robin who’ll be embarrassed, and my flatmate, and my fam—”

“He wasn’t bothered,” Strike managed to say. His memories of the evening weren’t particularly distinct, but he was sure of that, at least: Max hadn’t minded him being drunk. Max had given him more booze. Max had laughed at a joke he’d made, which he couldn’t now remember. He liked Max.

“And then you launch an attack on my guests. And then,” said Robin, “you lay me open to having something I wanted to keep priv—to keep—”

Her eyes were suddenly wet, her fists clenched, her body rigid.

“—to keep private bandied about in a fucking argument, in front of strangers. Did it once occur—”

“Hang on,” said Strike, “I never—”

“—once occur to you that I might not want rape discussed, in front of people I barely know?”

“I never—”

“Why were you asking me whether I think SlutWalks are a good idea?”

“Well, obv’sly b’cause—”

“Did we need to talk about child rape over dinner?”

“I was making a p—”

“And then you walk out, and leave me to—”

“Well,” said Strike, “by the sounds of it, the sooner I left, the bett—”

“Better for you,” she said, advancing on him, her teeth bared: he’d never seen her like this before, “because you got to dump all your aggression at my house, then walk out and let me clean up your fucking mess, as per usual!”

“‘As per fucking usual?’” said Strike, eyebrows raised. “Wait a—”

“Now I’ve got to go back in there, and make it all right, soothe everyone’s feelings—”

“No, you haven’t,” Strike contradicted her. “Go to fucking bed if you—”

“It’s. What. I. DO!” shouted Robin, thumping herself hard on the sternum with each word. Shocked into silence, Strike stared at her. “Like I remember to say please and thank you to the secretary, when you don’t give a toss! Like I excuse your bad moods to other people when they get offended! Like I suck up a ton of shit on your behalf—”

“Whoa,” said Strike, pushing himself off the stationary car, and looking down at her from his full height. “Where’s all this—?”

“—and you can’t be fucking bothered, with all I do for you, to arrive sober for one dinner—”

“If you must know,” said Strike, temper rising anew from the ashes of his previous euphoria, “I was in the pub with Nick, who—”

“—whose wife just lost their baby! I know—and what the fuck was he doing in the pub with you, leaving her to—”

“She threw him out!” barked Strike. “Did she tell you that, during the Great Sisterhood Grievance Meeting? And I’m not going to apologize for wanting some fucking R&R after the week I’ve just had—”

“—whereas I don’t need R&R, do I? I haven’t forfeited half my annual leave—”

“How many times have I thanked you for covering for me when I’m in Corn—?”

“So what was with you being an arsehole to me this morning, when I was late for the first fucking time ever—”

“I’d had three and a half hours’ sleep—”

“You live over the bloody office!”

“Fuck this,” said Strike, throwing his cigarette down. He began to walk away from her, certain now of the direction to the Tube, thinking of the things he could have said: that it was guilt about the pressure he was putting on Robin that had kept him in London, when he should be in St. Mawes with his dying aunt; Jonny Rokeby on the phone that morning; and Nick’s tears in the pub, and the relief it had been to sit with an old mate and drink, and listen to someone else’s troubles instead of fret about his own.

“And don’t,” bellowed Robin from behind him, “buy me any more fucking flowers!”

“No danger of that!” yelled Strike over his shoulder, as he strode away into the darkness.

42

When Strike woke on Saturday morning, with a thumping headache and a foul-tasting mouth, it took him a while to piece together exactly what had happened the previous evening. Aside from the memory of vomiting, which he felt he’d done far too much of lately, all he could at first recall were Kyle’s bright red face and Robin’s pinched white one.

But then, slowly, he reconstructed Robin’s complaints: arriving late and drunk, being rude to her brother and upsetting a dinner party by telling a couple of students what he considered home truths about the real world. He also thought there’d been mention of him being insufficiently touchy-feely with staff.

Gingerly, he got out of bed and, with the aid of the furniture, hopped his way to the bathroom and then into the shower.

As Strike washed, two separate impulses did battle within him. One was the urge to self-justify, which patted him on the back and awarded him a win for what he could remember of his argument with the students. The other was an innate honesty about his motives that forced him to recognize that his instant antagonism to Robin’s guests had been rooted in their resemblance to the kinds of people toward whom his mother would have instantly gravitated.

Leda Strike’s whole life had been a battle against constraint of any kind: going for a march in her underwear would have seemed to her just one more fabulous blow against limitations. Strike, who never forgot Leda’s generous heart or her ineradicable love of the underdog, was nevertheless clear-eyed about the fact her activism had mostly taken the form of enthusiastic exhibitionism. Not for Leda the tedious toil of door-to-door canvassing, the difficult business of compromise, or the painstaking work structural change entailed. Never a deep or critical thinker, she’d been a sucker for what Strike thought of as intellectual charlatans. The basis for her life’s philosophy, if such a word could be used for the loose collection of whims and kneejerk reactions she called beliefs, was that everything of which the bourgeoisie disapproved must be good and right. Naturally, she’d have sided with Kyle and Courtney in championing pornography and SlutWalks, and she’d have seen her son’s quibbles as something he must have picked up from her killjoy sister-in-law.

While Strike dried himself and put on his prosthesis, moving cautiously in deference to his throbbing head, the idea of phoning Robin occurred, only to be dismissed. His long-established habit, in the aftermath of a row with a woman, was to wait for her to make the next move, which he considered mere common sense. If she apologized, all well and good; if she wanted further discussion, there was a chance she’d be calmer after a spell of reflection; if she was still angry, it was simply masochistic to volunteer for further grief until she came looking for it. While Strike wasn’t in principle opposed to offering an unsolicited apology in the event that he felt himself to have been in the wrong, in practice his apologies tended to be delivered late, and only when it became clear that resolution would come no other way.

This modus operandi owed much to his experiences with Charlotte. Attempting to make up with Charlotte before every last ounce of her fury had been spent had been like trying to rebuild a house during an earthquake. Sometimes, after he refused to accede to some new demand—usually leaving the army, but sometimes giving up contact with another female friend or refusing to spend money he didn’t have, all of which were seen by Charlotte as proof he didn’t love her—Charlotte would walk out, and only after she came back, by which time Strike might well have met or slept with someone else, would the row be discussed. Their arguments had often lasted a week or more. A couple of times, Strike had returned to postings abroad before anything was resolved.

Yet, as he ate a much-needed bacon roll, drank coffee and downed a couple of Nurofen; after he’d called Ted, heard that Joan was still holding out, and assured him that he and Lucy would be there the following day; while opening a couple of bits of post, and ripping up a large gilt-edged invitation to the Deadbeats’ fiftieth anniversary party in May; while food shopping in the everlasting wind and rain, stocking up for what might be a journey of many hours; while he packed clothes for the trip, spoke to Lucy and checked the weather forecast, his thoughts kept returning to Robin.

Gradually he realized that what was bothering him most was the fact that he’d got used to Robin being on his side, which was one of the main reasons he tended to seek reasons to call her if he was at a loose end or feeling low. Over time, they’d developed a most soothing and satisfying camaraderie, and Strike hadn’t imagined it could be disrupted by what he categorized as a dinner party row.

When his phone rang at four o’clock in the afternoon, he surprised himself by snatching it up in hopes that it was his partner, only to see yet another unknown number. Wondering whether he was about to hear Rokeby again, or some other unknown blood relative, he answered.

“Strike.”

“What?” said a sharp, middle-class female voice.

“Cormoran Strike here. Who’s this?”

“Clare Spencer, the Athorns’ social worker. You left a message for me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Strike, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down. “Thanks for getting back to me, Mrs.—er—Ms. Spencer.”

“Mrs.,” she said, sounding very slightly amused. “Can I just ask—are you the Cormoran Strike?”

“I doubt there are many others,” said Strike.

He reached for his cigarettes, then pushed them away again. He really did need to cut down.

“I see,” said Clare Spencer. “Well, it was a bit of a shock to get a message from you. How d’you know the Athorns?”

“Their name came up,” said Strike, thinking how very inaccurate a statement that was, “in the course of a case I’m investigating.”

“Was it you who went into their downstairs neighbor’s shop, and threatened him?”

“I didn’t threaten him,” said Strike. “But his attitude seemed aggressive, so I pointed out that they had friends who might take it amiss if he bullied them.”

“Ha,” said Clare, sounding warmer. “He’s a horror, that man. He’s been trying to get them out of that flat for ages. Wants to buy the whole building. He removed a supporting wall, then tried to blame Deborah and Samhain for his ceiling sagging. He’s caused them a lot of stress.”

“The flat was—” Strike almost said “mucked out,” but tried to find a politer way of saying it, “—thoroughly cleaned recently, he said?”

“Yes. I’m not denying it was pretty messy, but we’ve sorted that out now, and as for saying they’ve caused structural damage, we got a surveyor in who went through the whole place and agreed there’s nothing wrong with it. What a chancer the man is. Anyway, you did a good thing, there, warning him off. He thinks because they haven’t got many close relatives, he can get away with browbeating them. So, what’s this case you’re investigating?”

Briefly, Strike told her about Margot Bamborough, her disappearance in 1974, and the information that had led him to the Athorns’ door.

“… and so,” he concluded, “I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me how much reliance I can put on what they’ve told me.”

There was a brief silence.

“I see,” said Clare, who sounded a little more guarded now. “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got a duty of confidentiality as their social worker, so—”

“Could I ask you some questions? And if you can’t answer, obviously I’ll accept that.”

“All right,” she said. He had the impression that his actions with regard to the bullying ironmonger had put her on his side.

“They’re clearly competent to live alone,” said Strike.

“With support, yes,” said Clare. “They’ve done very well, actually. They’ve got a strong mutual bond. It’s probably kept both of them out of institutionalized care.”

“And what exactly—?” Strike wondered how to word the ­question sensitively. Clare came to his aid.

“Fragile X syndrome,” she said. “Deborah’s relatively high-functioning, although she’s got some social difficulties, but she can read and so forth. Samhain copes better socially, but his cognitive impairment’s greater than his mother’s.”

“And the father, Gwilherm—?”

Clare laughed.

“I’ve only been their social worker for a couple of years. I never knew Gwilherm.”

“You can’t tell me how sane he was?”

There was a longer pause.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose… it seems to be common knowledge that he was very odd. Various family members have spoken to me about him. Apparently he thought he could hex people. With black magic, you know.”

“Deborah told me something I found… slightly concerning. It involved a doctor called Dr. Brenner, who was a partner of Dr. Bamborough’s at the St. John’s practice. She might’ve been referring to a medical examination, but—”

He thought Clare had said something.

“Sorry?”

“No, nothing. What exactly did she tell you?”

“Well,” said Strike, “she mentioned having to take her pants off, and not wanting to, but she said Gwilherm told her she had to. I assumed—”

“This was a doctor?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

There was another, longer pause.

“I don’t really know what to tell you,” said Clare finally. “It’s possible that was a medical examination, but… well, a lot of men used to visit that flat.”

Strike said nothing, wondering whether he was being told what he thought he was being told.

“Gwilherm had to get drink and drugs money somewhere,” said Clare. “From what Deborah’s disclosed to social workers over the years, we think he was—well, not to put too fine a point on it, we think he was pimping her out.”

“Christ,” muttered Strike, in disgust.

“I know,” said Clare. “From bits and piece she’s told caregivers, we think Gwilherm used to take Samhain out whenever she was with a client. It is dreadful. She’s so vulnerable. On balance, I can’t be sorry Gwilherm died young. But please—don’t mention any of this to Deborah’s family, if you speak to them. I’ve no idea how much they know, and she’s happy and settled these days. There’s no need to upset anyone.”

“No, of course not,” said Strike, and he remembered Samhain’s words: old Joe Brenner was a dirty old man.

“How reliable would you say Samhain’s memory is?”

“Why? What’s he told you?”

“A couple of things his Uncle Tudor said.”

“Well, people with Fragile X usually have quite good long-term memories,” said Clare cautiously. “I’d say he’d be more reliable about things his Uncle Tudor told him than on many subjects.”

“Apparently Uncle Tudor had a theory about what happened to Margot Bamborough. It involved some people called ‘Nico and his boys.’”

“Ah,” said Clare, “yes. D’you know who that is?”

“Go on.”

“There was an old gangster who used to live in Clerkenwell,” said Clare, “called Niccolo Ricci. Samhain likes talking about ‘Nico and his boys.’ Like they’re folk heroes, or something.”

They talked for a couple more minutes, but Clare had nothing more of interest to tell.

“Well, thanks very much for getting back to me,” said Strike. “Social workers work Saturdays as well as detectives, I see.”

“People don’t stop needing help at weekends,” she said drily. “Good luck. I hope you find out what happened to that poor doctor.”

But he could tell by her tone, however friendly, that she thought it highly unlikely.

Strike’s headache had now settled into a dull throb that increased if he bent over or stood up too suddenly. He returned to his methodical arrangements for next day’s departure to Cornwall, emptying his fridge of perishables, making sandwiches for the trip; listening to the news, which told him that three people had died that day as a result of the adverse weather conditions; packing his kit bag; ensuring his emails were up to date, setting up an out-of-office message redirecting potential clients to Pat, and checking the rota, to make sure it had been altered to accommodate his absence. Through all these tasks he kept an ear out for his mobile, in case a text from Robin arrived, but nothing came.

Finally, at eight o’clock, while he was finishing cooking the fry-up he felt he was owed given his hangover and how hard he’d worked all day, his mobile buzzed at last. From across the table, he saw that three long consecutive texts had arrived. Knowing that he was leaving the following morning without any clear idea of when he’d be back, Robin appeared to have begun the reconciliation process as women were wont to do, with an essay on her various grievances. He opened the first message, magnanimously prepared to accept almost any terms for a negotiated peace, and only then realized that it was from an unknown number.

I thought today was Valentine’s day but I’ve just realized it’s the 15th. They’ve got me on so many drugs in here I can hardly remember my name. I’m in a place again. This isn’t my phone. There’s another woman here who’s allowed one & she lent it to me. Yours is the only mobile number I know by heart. Why didn’t you ever change it? Was it because of me or is that my vanity. I’m so full of drugs I cant feel anything but I know I love you. I wonder how much they’d have to give me before that went too. Engouh to kill me I suppose.

The next message, from the same number, read:

How did you spent valentines day. Did you have sex. I’m here partly because I don’t want sex. I cant stand him touching me and I know he wants more kids. Id rather die than have more. Actually I’d rather die than most things. But you know that about me. Will I ever see you again? You could come and see me here. Today I imagined you walking in, like I did when your leg. I imagined you telling them to let me go because you loved me and you’d look after me. I cried and

The third message continued:

the psychiatrist was pleased to see me crying because they like emotion. I don’t know what the whole address is but it’s called Symonds House. I love you don’t forget me whatever hpapens to me. I love you.

A fourth and final message read:

It’s Charlotte in case that isn’t obvious.

Strike read the entire thread through twice. Then he closed his eyes, and like millions of his fellow humans, wondered why troubles could never come singly, but in avalanches, so that you became increasingly destabilized with every blow that hit you.

43

To Robin’s relief, her three guests got up early the next morning, because they wanted to spend a full day in London. All were subdued after what Robin thought of as the Nightmare Dinner. She dreaded a tearful plea for forgiveness from Courtney, who seemed especially low, so Robin faked a cheery briskness she certainly didn’t feel, making recommendations for cheap places to eat and good things to see before waving the students off. As Robin was due to run surveillance on Elinor Dean overnight, she’d given Jonathan a spare key, and wasn’t sorry that she’d probably still be in Stoke Newington when the students returned to Manchester, because they intended to catch a mid-morning Sunday train.

Not wanting to be alone with Max, in case he wanted a post-mortem on the previous evening, Robin made herself a voluntary prisoner in her own bedroom all day, where she continued to work on her laptop, attempting to block out waves of anger toward Strike, and a tearfulness that kept threatening to overcome her. Hard as she tried to concentrate on finding out who’d been living in Jerusalem Passage when Margot had disappeared, however, her thoughts kept returning to her partner.

Robin wasn’t in the least surprised not to have heard from him, but was damned if she’d initiate contact. She couldn’t in good conscience retract a word of what she’d said after watching him vomit in the gutter, because she was tired of being taken for granted in ways Strike didn’t recognize.

But as the afternoon wore on, and the rain continued to fall outside her window, and while she hadn’t been nearly as drunk as Strike, she developed a dull headache. Equal parts of misery and rage dragged at her every time she remembered last night’s dinner, and all the things she’d shouted at Strike in the street. She wished she could cry, but the tightness in her chest prevented her doing so. Her anger boiled anew every time she remembered the drunk Strike attacking her guests, but then she found herself re-running Courtney and Kyle’s arguments in her head. She was sure none of the students had ever brushed up against the ugliness Robin had encountered, not merely under that dark stair in her hall of residence, but during her work with Strike: battered women, raped girls, death. They didn’t want to hear Strike’s stories, because it was so much more comforting to believe that language alone could remake the world. But none of that made her feel more kindly to her partner: on the contrary, she resented agreeing with him. He’d been looking for someone or something to attack, and it was she who’d paid the price.

Robin forced herself to keep working, because work was her one constant, her salvation. By eight in the evening, Robin was as sure as a thorough perusal of online records could make her that nobody living in Jerusalem Passage had been there for forty years. By this time, she was so hungry that she really did need to eat something, which she feared meant facing Max, and discussing Strike.

Sure enough, when she reached the living area, she found Max sitting watching TV with Wolfgang on his lap. He muted the news the moment he saw her, and Robin’s heart sank.

“Evening.”

“Hi,” said Robin. “I’m going to make myself something to eat. D’you want anything?”

“There’s still a bit of casserole, if you want it.”

“Strike didn’t finish it all, then?”

She mentioned him first in the spirit of getting it over with. She could tell that Max had things to say.

“No,” said Max. He lifted the sleepy Wolfgang onto the sofa beside him, stood up and moved to the kitchen. “I’ll heat it up for you.”

“There’s no need, I can—”

But Max did so, and when Robin was settled at the table with her food and a drink, he sat down at the table with her with a beer. This was highly unusual and Robin felt suddenly nervous. Was she being softened up for some kind of unwelcome announcement? Had Max decided, after all, to sell up?

“Never told you how I ended up in such a nice flat, did I?” he said.

“No,” said Robin cautiously.

“I had a big payout, five years ago. Medical negligence.”

“Oh,” said Robin.

There was a pause. Max smiled.

“People usually say, ‘Shit, what went wrong?’ But you never probe, do you? I’ve noticed that. You don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Well, I have to do a lot of that at work,” said Robin.

But that wasn’t why she hadn’t asked Max about his finances, and it wasn’t why she didn’t ask now what had gone wrong with his body or his treatment, either. Robin had too many things in her own past that she didn’t want endlessly probed to want to cause other people discomfort.

“I was having palpitations seven years ago,” Max said, examining the label on his beer. “Arrhythmia. I got referred to a heart specialist and he operated: opened me up and ablated my sinus node. You probably don’t know what that is,” he said, glancing up at Robin, and she shook her head. “I didn’t either, until they ballsed mine up. Basically, they knackered my heart’s ability to beat for itself. I ended up having to be fitted with a pacemaker.”

“Oh no,” said Robin, a bit of beef suspended in mid-air on her fork.

“And the best bit was,” said Max, “none of it was necessary. There wasn’t anything wrong with my sinus node in the first place. Turned out I hadn’t been suffering from atrial tachycardia at all. It was stage fright.”

“I—Max, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t good,” said Max, taking a sip of his beer. “Two unnecessary open-heart surgeries, endless complications. I lost jobs, I was unemployed for four years and I’m still on anti-depressants. Matthew said I had to pursue a claim against the doctors. I probably wouldn’t have done, if he hadn’t nagged me. Lawyers’ fees. Ton of stress. But I won in the end, got a big payout, and he persuaded me to sink it all into a decent property. He’s a barrister, he earns great money. Anyway, we bought this place.”

Max pushed his thick blond hair out of his face and glanced down at Wolfgang, who’d trotted to the table to savor the smell of casse­role once more.

“A week after we moved in, he sat me down and told me he was leaving. The ink was barely dry on the mortgage. He said he’d struggled against it, because he felt a loyalty to me, because of what I’d been through, but he couldn’t fight his feelings any longer. He told me,” said Max, with a hollow smile, “he’d realized pity wasn’t love. He wanted me to keep the flat, didn’t want me to buy him out—as if I could have done—so he signed over his half. That was to make him feel less guilty, obviously. And off he went with Tiago. He’s Brazilian, the new guy. Owns a restaurant.”

“That,” said Robin quietly, “sounds like hell.”

“Yeah, it was… I really need to stop looking at their bloody Instagram accounts.” Max heaved a deep sigh and absentmindedly rubbed the shirt over the scars on his chest. “Obviously I thought of just selling up, but we barely lived here together, so it’s not as though it’s got a ton of memories. I didn’t have the energy to go through more house-hunting and moving, so here I’ve stayed, struggling to make the mortgage every month.”

Robin thought she knew why Max was telling her all this, and her hunch was confirmed when he looked directly at her and said,

“Anyway, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about what happened to you. I had no idea. Ilsa only told me you were held at gunpoint—”

“Oh, I didn’t get raped then,” said Robin, and to Max’s evident surprise, she started to laugh. Doubtless it was her tiredness, but it was a relief to find dark comedy in this litany of terrible things humans did to each other, though none of it was really funny at all: his mutilated heart, the gorilla mask in her nightmares. “No, the rape happened ten years ago. That’s why I dropped out of university.”

“Shit,” said Max.

“Yeah,” said Robin, and echoing Max, she said, “it wasn’t good.”

“So when did the knife thing happen?” asked Max, eyes on Robin’s forearm, and she laughed again. Really, what else was there to do?

“That was a couple of years ago.”

“Working for Strike?”

“Yes,” said Robin, and she stopped laughing now. “Listen, about last night—”

“I enjoyed last night,” said Max.

“You can’t be serious,” said Robin.

“I’m completely serious. It was really useful for building my character. He’s got some proper big man, take-no-bullshit energy about him, hasn’t he?”

“You mean he acts like a dick?”

Max laughed and shrugged.

“Is he very different sober?”

“Yes,” said Robin, “well—I don’t know. Less of a dick.” And before Max could ask anything else about her partner, she said quickly, “He’s right about your cooking, anyway. That was fantastic. Thanks so much, I really needed that.”

Having cleared up, Robin returned downstairs, where she showered before changing for the night’s surveillance. With an hour to go before she needed to take over from Hutchins, she sat back down on her bed and idly typed variations on the name Paul Satchwell into Google. Paul L Satchwell. LP Satchwell. Paul Leonard Satchwell. Leo Paul Satchwell.

Her mobile rang. She glanced down. It was Strike. After a moment or two, she picked it up, but said nothing.

“Robin?”

“Yes.”

“Are you OK to talk?”

“Yes,” she said again, her heart beating faster than usual as she frowned up at the ceiling.

“Calling to apologize.”

Robin was so astonished, she said nothing for several seconds. Then she cleared her throat and said,

“Can you even remember what you’re apologizing for?”

“Er… yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “I… didn’t mean that to get dragged up. Should’ve realized it wasn’t a subject you’d want discussed over dinner. Didn’t think.”

Tears started in Robin’s eyes at last.

“OK,” she said, trying to sound casual.

“And I’m sorry for being rude to your brother and his friends.”

“Thank you,” said Robin.

There was a silence. The rain still fell outside. Then Strike said,

“Have you heard from Ilsa?”

“No,” said Robin. “Have you heard from Nick?”

“No,” said Strike.

There was another silence.

“So, we’re OK, yeah?” said Strike.

“Yes,” said Robin, wondering whether it was true.

“If I’ve taken you for granted,” said Strike, “I’m sorry. You’re the best I’ve got.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Strike,” said Robin, abandoning the pretense that she wasn’t crying as she snorted back tears.

“What?”

“You just… you’re bloody infuriating.”

“Why?”

“Saying that. Now.”

“That’s not the first time I’ve said it.”

“It is, actually.”

“I’ve told other people.”

“Yeah, well,” said Robin, now laughing and crying simultaneously as she reached for tissues, “you see how that isn’t the same thing as telling me?”

“Yeah, I s’pose,” said Strike. “Now you mention it.”

He was smoking at his small Formica kitchen table while the eternal rain fell outside his attic window. Somehow, the texts from Charlotte had made him realize he had to call Robin, had to make things right with her before he set off for Cornwall and Joan. Now the sound of her voice, and her laughter, acted on him as it usually did, by making everything seem fractionally less awful.

“When are you leaving?” Robin asked, drying her eyes.

“Tomorrow at eight. Lucy’s meeting me at the car hire. We’ve got a jeep.”

“Well, be careful,” said Robin. She’d heard on the news that day about the three people who’d died, trying to travel through the wind and the floods.

“Yeah. Can’t pretend I don’t wish you were driving. Lucy’s bloody terrible behind the wheel.”

“You can stop flattering me now. I’ve forgiven you.”

“I’m serious,” said Strike, his eyes on the relentless rain. “You and your advanced driving course. You’re the only person who doesn’t scare the shit out of me behind the wheel.”

“D’you think you’ll make it?”

“Possibly not all the way in the jeep. But Polworth’s standing by to rescue us. He’s got access to dinghies. We’ve got to do it. Joan might only have days.”

“Well, I’ll be thinking about you,” said Robin. “Keeping everything crossed.”

“Cheers, Robin. Keep in touch.”

After Strike had hung up, Robin sat for a while, savoring the sudden feeling of lightness that had filled her. Then she pulled her laptop toward her, ready to shut it down before she left for her night’s surveillance in the Land Rover. Casually, as she might have thrown the dice one last time before turning away from the craps table, she typed “Paul Satchwell artist” into Google.

“What?” said Robin aloud, as though the laptop had spoken to her. She clicked on the result, and the website of the Leamington Spa Museum and Art Gallery filled the screen. She hadn’t once seen it, in all her hours of searching for Satchwell. This page had either just been created or amended.

Robin scrolled down the page past sundry artists’ photos until she saw him.

It was, without a doubt, the same man. His face might be leathery and cracked, his teeth might have yellowed, his thick, curly hair turned whiter and thinner, but it still hung to his shoulders, while his open shirt showed thick white chest hair.

44

The storm water, rain and gales they faced were real enough, yet Strike and Lucy’s battle to reach St. Mawes had a strange, dreamlike quality. Both knew death lay at the end; both were resolved that if they managed to reach Joan alive, they would stay with her until she died.

Trees swayed and creaked as they sped along the motorway. They had to divert around great wide lakes where lately there had been fields, forcing them miles out of their way. Twice they were halted at roadblocks and told, by irate police, to turn back. They pressed on, at one point driving fifty miles to progress fifteen, listening to every weather update on the radio and becoming progressively more certain that there would come a point where they had to abandon the jeep. Rain lashed the car, high winds lifted the windscreen wipers from the glass, and brother and sister took it in turns to drive, bound by a single objective, and temporarily freed from all other concerns.

To Strike’s grateful surprise, the crisis had revealed a different Lucy, just as illness had uncovered a different Joan. His sister was focused entirely on what needed to be done. Even her driving was different, without three noisy sons in the back seat, squabbling and thumping each other if the journey lasted longer than twenty minutes. He’d forgotten how efficient and practical Lucy could be, how patient, how resolute. Her calm determination only broke when they reached an impasse thirty miles from St. Mawes, where flooding and fallen trees had rendered the road impassable.

While Lucy sat slumped at the steering wheel, sobbing with her face in her arms, Strike left the jeep to stand outside under a tree, where, sheltering from the perennial rain and taking the opportunity to smoke, he called Dave Polworth, who was holding himself ready to assist them.

“Yeah, we thought that’s where you’d have to stop,” said Polworth, when Strike had given him their position.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Well, I can’t fucking do this alone, can I, Diddy? Should be with you in an hour. Stay in the car.”

And an hour later, true to his word, Dave Polworth and five other men, two of them members of the local lifeguard, three old schoolfriends of Strike’s, emerged out of the gathering gloom. Dressed in waterproofs, and carrying waders ready for the worst passages, the men took charge of Strike and Lucy’s bags. Leaving the jeep parked up a side street, the party set off on foot.

The end of Strike’s stump began to chafe long before they had walked for two hours solid over boggy ground and slippery tarmac. Soon, he had to abandon pride and allow two of his old schoolfriends to support him on either side. Darkness fell before they reached a couple of dinghies that Polworth had arranged to carry them over flooded fields. Using oars to alternately row and punt themselves along, they navigated with the aid of torches and compasses.

Polworth had called on every friend and acquaintance he knew to arrange Strike and Lucy’s passage across the storm-ravaged peninsula. They covered several miles by tractor pulling a trailer, but at some passages were forced to wade through feet of icy flood water, the diminutive Lucy accepting a piggyback from the largest lifeboat man.

Four hours after they’d abandoned the jeep, they reached St. Mawes. At the gate of Ted and Joan’s house, brother and sister hugged each of their escorts goodbye.

“Don’t start,” said Polworth, as the weary and sore Strike tried to put into words what he felt to be incommunicable. “Get inside, or what the fuck was it all for?”

Ted, whom they’d updated regularly through their journey, greeted them in pajamas at the back door, tears running down the deep folds in his craggy face.

“I never thought you’d get here,” he kept saying, as he made them tea. “Never thought you’d make it.”

“How is she?” asked the shivering Lucy, as the three of them sat in the kitchen, their hands around mugs of tea, eating toast.

“She managed a bit of soup today,” said Ted. “She’s still… she sleeps a lot. But when she’s awake, she likes to talk. Oh, she’ll be over the moon to have you two here…”

And so began days that had the same strange, outside-time quality of their journey. Initially Strike, the end of whose stump was rubbed raw after the painful exigencies of their journey, abandoned his prosthesis and navigated the small house by hopping and holding onto chair backs and walls. He read and responded to Robin’s emails about the agency’s work, but her news seemed to come from a place far more remote than London.

Joan was now bird-like in her frailty, her bones visible through the translucent skin. She’d made it clear that she wished to die at home, not in the hospital in Truro, so she lay, tiny and shrunken, in the large double bed that dominated the bedroom, a bed that had been purchased to accommodate Ted’s bulk back when he’d been a tall, fit and muscular man, late of the Royal Military Police and subsequently a stalwart member of the local lifeguard.

By day, Strike, Ted and Lucy took it in turns to sit beside Joan’s bed, because awake or asleep, she liked to know that one of them was nearby. Kerenza came morning and afternoon, and these were the only times when her family left the room. Joan was no longer able to swallow medication, so Kerenza began injecting the morphine through a syringe driver. Strike knew that she washed his aunt, and helped her perform still more private functions: the long convalescence after his amputation had left him under no illusion about what nurses dealt with. Kind, efficient and humane, Kerenza was one of the few people Strike welcomed gladly into the drafty kitchen.

And still Joan clung on. Three days after their arrival, four: she slept almost constantly, but still she clung to life.

“It’s you two,” said Ted. “She doesn’t want to go while you two are here.”

Strike was coming to dread silences too large for human voices to fill. His nerves were stretched by the constant clinking of teaspoons in hot drinks made for something to do, by the tears shed by Uncle Ted when he thought nobody was looking, by the hushed inquiries of well-meaning neighbors.

On the fifth day, Lucy’s husband Greg arrived with their three boys. Husband and wife had debated how sensible it was to take the boys out of school, and risk a journey that remained tricky, though the storms had at last subsided, but Lucy could bear their absence no longer. When Greg arrived, the boys came running out of the car toward their mother and the whole family clung to each other, while Strike and Ted looked on, united in their aloneness, unmarried man and soon-to-be widower. The boys were led up to Joan’s bedroom to see her, and she managed smiles for all of them. Even Luke was subdued afterward, and Jack cried.

Both spare rooms were now needed to accommodate the new arrivals, so Strike returned, uncomplaining, to sleep on the sofa.

“You look like shit,” Polworth informed him bluntly on day six, and indeed Strike, who’d woken every hour on the horsehair sofa, felt it. “Let’s get a pint.”

“Can I come?” asked Jack hopefully. He was showing a tendency to hang around Strike rather than his father, while Lucy sat upstairs with Joan.

“You can if your dad says it’s OK,” said Strike.

Greg, who was currently walking around the garden with his phone clamped to his ear, trying to contribute to a conference call with his London office while Luke and Adam played football around him, agreed with a thumbs up.

So Strike, Polworth and Jack walked down into St. Mawes together. Though the sky was dark and the roads still wet, the winds had at last dropped. As they reached the seafront, Strike’s mobile rang. He answered it, still walking.

“Strike.”

“It’s Shanker. Got your message.”

“I left that ten days ago,” said Strike.

“I’ve been busy, you ungrateful piece of shit.”

“Sorry,” said Strike.

He waved the other two on and paused again at the harbor wall, looking out at the green-gray sea and the hazy horizon.

“I’ve nosed around a bit,” said Shanker, “and you’re not gonna find out ’oo that bint was, Bunsen. The one on the film. Nobody knows. She’ll ’ave done somethin’ fucking serious to get that, though.”

“Deserved it, you reckon,” said Strike, as he surveyed the flat sea. It didn’t look capable, now, of the violence it had inflicted upon the town.

“I’m not saying she deserved—I’m sayin’ even Mucky Ricci didn’t make ’an ’abit of that,” said Shanker impatiently. “Are you in solitary?”

“What?”

“Where the fuck are you? There’s no noise.”

“In Cornwall.”

For a moment, Strike expected Shanker to ask where that was. Shanker was almost impressively ignorant of the country that lay beyond London.

“The fuck are you doin’ in Cornwall?”

“My aunt’s dying.”

“Oh shit,” said Shanker. “Sorry.”

“Where is he now?”

“’Oo?”

“Ricci.”

“’E’s in an ’ome. I told you.”

“All right. Thanks for trying, Shanker. Appreciate it.”

For perhaps the first time ever, it was Shanker who shouted at Strike to stop him hanging up.

“Oi—oi!”

“What?” said Strike, raising the mobile to his ear again.

“Why d’you wanna know where ’e is? You ain’t gonna go talkin’ to Ricci. You’re done.”

“I’m not done,” said Strike, eyes screwed up against the sea breeze. “I haven’t found out what happened to the doctor, yet.”

“Fuck’s sake. D’you wanna get shot through the fuckin’ ’ead?”

“See you, Shanker,” said Strike, and before his old friend could say anything else, he cut the call and muted his phone.

Polworth was already at a table with Jack when Strike reached the Victory, two pints and a Coke on the table.

“Just been telling Jack,” Polworth told Strike, as the detective sat down. “Haven’t I, eh?” he asked Jack, who nodded, beaming. “For when he’s older. This is his local.”

“A pub three hundred miles from where he lives?”

“He was born in Cornwall. He was just telling me.”

“Oh yeah,” said Strike. “I forgot about that.”

The family had been staying with Ted and Joan when Lucy went into labor a month early. Jack had been born in the same Truro hospital as Strike himself.

“And you’re a Nancarrow on your mum’s side,” Polworth told Jack, who was greatly enjoying Polworth’s approval. “So that makes you a Cornishman, born and bred.”

Polworth turned to Strike.

“Who was the pearly king on the phone there? We could hear his cockney a mile off.”

“Guy called Shanker,” said Strike. “I’ve told you about him. My mum scraped him off the street one night when he’d been stabbed. He adopted us.”

Strike sipped his pint, wondering how Polworth and Shanker would get on, in the unlikely event of them ever meeting. He fancied they might end up punching each other. They seemed to Strike like pieces from entirely different jigsaw puzzles: no point of connection. At the mention of stabbing, Polworth had glanced at Jack, but lowering his pint Strike said,

“Don’t worry about him. He wants to be a Red Cap, like me and Ted.”

Jack beamed some more. He was having a great time.

“Can I try some of that beer?” he asked his uncle.

“Don’t push it,” said Strike.

“Look at this,” said Polworth, pointing at a page in the newspaper he’d picked up. “Westminster trying to bully the Scots, the bast—”

Strike cleared his throat. Jack giggled.

“Sorry,” said Polworth. “But come on. Telling them they can’t keep the pound if they vote for independence? ’Course they’ll keep the pound. It’s in everyone’s interests…”

He talked on for the next ten minutes about small nationalism, the obvious arguments for both Scottish and Cornish independence and the idiocy of those who opposed them, until Jack looked glazed and Strike, as a last resort, dragged the conversation back to football. Arsenal, as he’d foreseen, had lost to defending champions Bayern Munich, and he didn’t doubt the second leg would see them knocked out. He and Ted had watched the game together and done a good job of pretending they cared about the result. Strike permitted Polworth to pass censorious comment on the foul that had seen Szcz˛esny sent off, and politics was mercifully dropped.

Strike thought about Polworth later that night, as he lay in the dark on the horsehair sofa again, unable to sleep. His tiredness now had a feverishness about it, exacerbated by the aching of his body, the perpetual strain of being here, in this overcrowded house, waiting for the tiny body upstairs to give up.

In this near fever state, a jumble of ideas circulated in Strike’s mind. He thought of categories and boundaries, of those we want to create and enforce, and those we seek to escape or destroy. He remembered the fanatic glint in Polworth’s eye as he argued for a harder boundary between his county and the rest of England. He fell asleep thinking about the spurious groupings of astrology, and dreamed of Leda, laying out her tarot cards in the Norfolk commune of long ago.

Strike was woken at five by his own aching body. Knowing that Ted would be awake soon, he got up and dressed, ready to take over the bedside vigil while his uncle ate breakfast.

Sure enough, hearing Strike’s footstep on the upstairs landing, Ted emerged from the bedroom in his dressing gown.

“Just made you tea,” whispered Strike. “It’s in the pot in the kitchen. I’ll sit with her for a bit.”

“You’re a good lad,” whispered Ted, clapping Strike on the arm. “She’s asleep now, but I had a little chat with her at four. Most she’s said for days.”

The talk with his wife seemed to have cheered him. He set off downstairs for his tea and Strike let himself quietly into the familiar room, taking up his position on the hard-backed chair beside Joan.

The wallpaper hadn’t been changed, so far as Strike knew, since Ted and Joan had moved into the house, their only home since he’d left the army, in the town where both had grown up. Ted and Joan seemed not to notice that the house had grown shabby over the decades: for all that Joan was meticulous about cleanliness, she’d equipped and decorated the house once and seemed never to have seen any need to do so again. The paper was decorated with small bunches of purple flowers, and Strike could remember tracing geometric shapes between them with his forefinger as a small child, when he climbed into bed with Ted and Joan early in the morning, when both were still sleepy and he wanted breakfast and a trip to the beach.

Twenty minutes after he’d sat down, Joan opened her eyes and looked at Strike so blankly that he thought she didn’t know him.

“It’s me, Joan,” he said quietly, moving his chair a little closer to her bed and switching on the lamp, with its fringed shade. “Corm. Ted’s having breakfast.”

Joan smiled. Her hand was a tiny claw, now. The fingers twitched. Strike took it into his own. She said something he couldn’t hear, and he lowered his large head to her face.

“What did you say?”

“… you’re… good man.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” muttered Strike.

He held her hand in a light clasp, scared of putting pressure on it. The arcus senilis outlining the irises of her pale eyes made the blue seem more faded than ever. He thought of all the times he could have visited, and hadn’t. All those missed opportunities to call. All those times he’d forgotten her birthday.

“… helping people…”

She peered up at him and then, making a supreme effort, she whispered,

“I’m proud of you.”

He wanted to speak, but something was blocking his throat. After a few seconds, he saw her eyelids drooping.

“I love you, Joan.”

The words came out so hoarsely they were almost inaudible, but he thought she smiled as she sank back into a sleep from which she was never to wake.

45

Robin was still at the office when Strike called that evening with the news that Joan had died.

“I’m sorry about this, but I think I’m going to have to stay down here until we get this funeral sorted,” said Strike. “There’s a lot to do and Ted’s in pieces.”

He’d just shared Joan’s plan for her funeral with Ted and Lucy, thereby reducing both of them to sobs at the kitchen table. Ted’s tears were for the poignancy of his wife making arrangements for his own comfort and relief, as she’d done for the fifty years of their marriage, and for the news that she’d wanted, at the end, to enter the sea and wait for him there. In Lucy’s case, the sobs were for the lost possibility of a grave she’d hoped to visit and tend. Lucy filled her days with voluntary obligations: they gave purpose and form to a life she was determined would never be like her flighty biological mother’s.

“No problem,” Robin reassured him. “We’re coping fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Completely sure.”

“There’s a backlog at the crematorium, because of the floods,” said Strike. “Funeral’s penciled in for March the third.”

This was the day Robin was planning to spend in Leamington Spa, so she could attend the opening of Paul Satchwell’s exhibition. She didn’t tell Strike this: she could tell that he had limited mental capacity right now for anything other than Joan, and his life in Cornwall.

“Don’t worry,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry, Cormoran,” she added.

“Thanks,” said Strike. “I’d forgotten what it’s like. Planning a funeral. I’ve already had to referee one argument.”

After he’d shared Joan’s plans for her send-off, and Lucy and Ted had mopped up their tears, Ted had suggested they ask mourners for donations to the Macmillan Cancer Support in lieu of flowers.

“… but Lucy says Joan would’ve wanted flowers,” Strike told Robin. “I’ve suggested we say either. Ted says that’ll mean people do both and they can’t afford it, but fuck it. Lucy’s right. Joan would want flowers, and as many as possible. That’s how she always judged other people’s funerals.”

After they’d bidden each other goodbye, Robin sat for a while at the partners’ desk, wondering whether it would be appropriate for the agency to send flowers to Strike’s aunt’s funeral. She’d never met Joan: she worried that it would seem odd, or intrusive, to send condolences. She remembered how, when she’d offered to pick Strike up from Joan’s house in St. Mawes the previous summer, he’d quickly cut her off, erecting, as ever, a firm boundary between Robin and his personal life.

Yawning, Robin shut down the computer, closed the completed file on Postcard, which she’d been updating, got to her feet and went to get her coat. At the outer door she stopped, her reflection blank-faced in the dark glass. Then, as though responding to an unheard command, she returned to the inner office, switched the computer back on and, before she could second-guess herself, ordered a sheaf of dark pink roses to be delivered to St. Mawes church on March the third, with the message “With deepest sympathy from Robin, Sam, Andy, Saul and Pat.”

Robin spent the rest of the month working without respite. She conducted a final meeting with the persecuted weatherman and his wife, in which she revealed Postcard’s identity, gave them Postcard’s real name and address, and took their final payment. She then had Pat contact their waiting list client, the commodities broker who suspected her husband of sleeping with their nanny and, next day, welcomed the woman to the office to take down her details and receive a down payment.

The commodities broker didn’t bother to hide her disappointment that she was meeting Robin instead of Strike. She was a thin, colorless blonde of forty-two, whose over-highlighted hair had the texture, close up, of fine wire. Robin found her unlikable until the end of the interview, when she talked about her husband, whose business had gone bankrupt and who now worked from home, giving him many long hours alone with the nanny.

“Fourteen years,” said the broker. “Fourteen years, three kids and now…”

She hid her eyes behind her shaking hands and Robin, who’d been with Matthew since she was at school, felt, in spite of the woman’s brittle façade, an unexpected glow of sympathy.

After the new client had left, Robin called Morris into the office and gave him the job of the first day’s surveillance of the nanny.

“Okey-doke,” he said. “Hey, what d’you say we call the client ‘RB’?”

“What does that stand for?” Robin asked.

“Rich Bitch,” said Morris, grinning. “She’s loaded.”

“No,” said Robin, unsmiling.

“Whoops,” said Morris, eyebrows raised. “Feminist alert?”

“Something like that.”

“OK, how about—?”

“We’ll call her Mrs. Smith, after the street they live on,” said Robin coldly.

Over the next few days, Robin took her turn tailing the nanny, a glossy-haired brunette who somewhat reminded her of Strike’s ex-girlfriend Lorelei. The commodities broker’s children certainly seemed to adore their nanny, and so, Robin feared, did their father. While he didn’t once touch the nanny in any amorous way, he showed every sign of a man completely smitten: mirroring her body language, laughing excessively at her jokes, and hurrying to open doors and gates for her.

A couple of nights later, Robin dozed off at the wheel for a few seconds while driving toward Elinor Dean’s house in Stoke Newington. Jerking awake, she immediately turned on the radio and opened the window, so that her eyes streamed with the cold, sooty night air, but the incident scared her. Over the next few days, she increased her caffeine consumption in an effort to keep awake. This made her slightly jittery, and she found it hard to sleep even on the rare occasions the chance presented itself.

Robin had always been as careful with the firm’s money as Strike himself, treating every penny spent as though it were to be deducted from her own take-home pay. The habit of parsimony had stayed with her, even though the agency’s survival no longer depended on extracting money from clients before the final demands came in. Robin was well aware that Strike took very little money out of the business for his own needs, preferring to plow profits back into the agency. He continued to live a Spartan existence in the two and a half rooms over the office, and there were months when she, the salaried partner, took home more pay than the senior partner and founder of the firm.

All of this added to her feeling of guilt at booking herself into a Premier Inn in Leamington Spa on the Sunday night before Satchwell’s art exhibition. The town was only a two-hour drive away; Robin knew she could have got up early on Monday morning instead of sleeping over in the town. However, she was so exhausted, she feared dozing off at the wheel again.

She justified the hotel room to herself by leaving twenty-four hours ahead of the exhibition’s opening, thus giving herself time to take a look at the church where Margot had allegedly been sighted a week after her disappearance. She also packed photocopies of all the pages of Talbot’s horoscope notes that mentioned Paul Satchwell, with the intention of studying them in the quiet of her hotel room. To these, she added a second-hand copy of Evangeline Adams’s Your Place in the Sun, a pack of unopened tarot cards and a copy of The Book of Thoth. She hadn’t told Strike she’d bought any of these items and didn’t intend claiming expenses for them.

Much as she loved London, Yorkshire-born Robin sometimes pined for trees, moors and hills. Her drive up the nondescript M40, past hamlets and villages with archaic names like Middleton Cheney, Temple Herdewyke and Bishop’s Itchington, gave her glimpses of flat green fields. The cool, damp day bore a welcome whiff of spring on the air, and in the breaks between scudding white clouds, hard, bright sunshine filled the old Land Rover with a light that made a pale gray ghost of Robin’s reflection in the dusty window beside her. She really needed to clean the car: in fact, there were sundry small, personal chores piling up while she worked nonstop for the agency, such as ringing her mother, whose calls she’d been avoiding, and her lawyer, who’d left a message about the upcoming mediation, not to mention plucking her eyebrows, buying herself a new pair of flat shoes and sorting out a bank transfer to Max, covering her half of the council tax.

As the hedgerows flashed by, Robin consciously turned her thoughts away from these depressing mundanities to Paul Satchwell. She doubted she’d find him in Leamington Spa, being unable to imagine why the seventy-five-year-old would want to leave his home on Kos merely to visit the provincial art gallery. Satchwell had probably sent his paintings over from Greece, or else given permission for them to be exhibited. Why would he leave what Robin imagined as a dazzling white-walled villa, an artist’s studio set among olive groves? Her plan was to pretend an interest in buying or commissioning one of his paintings, so as to get his home address. For a moment or two, she indulged herself in a little fantasy of flying out to Greece with Strike, to interrogate the old artist. She imagined the oven-blast of heat that would hit them on leaving the plane in Athens, and saw herself in a dress and sandals, heading up a dusty track to Satchwell’s front door. But when her imagination showed her Strike in shorts, with the metal rod of his prosthetic leg on display, she felt suddenly embarrassed by her own imaginings, and closed the little fantasy down before it took her to the beach, or the hotel.

On the outskirts of Leamington Spa, Robin followed the sign to All Saints church, which she knew from her research was the only possible candidate for the place where Charlie Ramage had seen Margot. Janice had mentioned a “big church”; All Saints was a tourist attraction due to its size. None of the other churches in Leamington Spa had graveyards attached to them. Moreover, All Saints was situated directly on the route of anyone traveling north from London. Although Robin found it hard to understand why Margot would have been browsing headstones in Leamington Spa, while her husband begged for information of her whereabouts in the national press and her Leamington-born lover remained in London, she had a strange feeling that seeing the church for herself would give her a better idea as to whether Margot had ever been there. The missing doctor was becoming very real to Robin.

She managed to secure a parking space in Priory Terrace, right beside the church, and set off on foot around the perimeter, marveling at the sheer scale of the place. It was a staggering size for a relatively small town; in fact, it looked more like a cathedral, with its long, arched windows. Turning right into Church Street, she noted the further coincidence of the street name being so similar to Margot’s home address. On the right, a low wall topped with railings provided an ideal spot for a motorbike rider to park, and enjoy a cup of tea from his Thermos, looking at the graveyard.

Except that there was no graveyard. Robin came to an abrupt standstill. She could only see two tombs, raised stone caskets whose inscriptions had been eroded. Otherwise, there was simply a wide stretch of grass intersected with two footpaths.

“Bomb fell on it.”

A cheery-looking mother was walking toward Robin, pushing a double pushchair containing sleeping boy twins. She’d correctly interpreted Robin’s sudden halt.

“Really?” said Robin.

“Yeah, in 1940,” said the woman, slowing down. “Luftwaffe.”

“Wow. Awful,” said Robin, imagining the smashed earth, the broken tombstones and, perhaps, fragments of coffin and bone.

“Yeah—but they missed them two,” said the woman, pointing at the aged tombs standing in the shadow of a yew tree. One of the twin toddlers gave a little stretch in his sleep and his eyelids flickered. With a comical grimace at Robin, the mother took off again at a brisk walk.

Robin walked into the enclosed area that had once been a graveyard, looking around and wondering what to make of Ramage’s story, now. There hadn’t been a graveyard here in 1974, when he claimed to have seen Margot browsing among tombstones. Or had an intact cemetery been assumed by Janice Beattie, when she heard that Margot was looking at graves? Robin turned to look at the two surviving tombs. Certainly, if Margot had been examining these, she’d have been brought within feet of a motorcyclist parked beside the church.

Robin placed her hands on the cold black bars that kept the curious from actually touching the old tombs, and examined them. What could have drawn Margot to them? The inscriptions etched on the mossy stone were almost illegible. Robin tilted her head, trying to make them out.

Was she seeing things? Did one of the words say “Virgo,” or had she spent too much time dwelling on Talbot’s horoscope notes? Yet the more she studied it, the more like “Virgo” the name looked.

Robin associated that star sign with two people, these days: her estranged husband, Matthew, and Dorothy Oakden, the widowed practice secretary at Margot’s old place of work. Robin had become so adept at reading Talbot’s horoscope notes, that she routinely heard “Dorothy” in her head when looking at the glyph for Virgo. Now she took out her phone, looked up the tomb and felt mildly reassured to discover that she wasn’t seeing things: this was the last resting place of one James Virgo Dunn.

But why should it have been of interest to Margot? Robin scrolled down a genealogy page for the Virgos and the Dunns and learned that the man whose bones now lay in dust a few feet from her had been born in Jamaica, where he’d been the owner of forty-six slaves.

“No need to feel sorry for you, then,” Robin muttered, returning her phone to her pocket, and she walked on around the perimeter to the front of the church, until she reached the great oak and iron double front doors. As she headed up the stone steps toward them, she heard the low hum of a hymn. Of course: it was Sunday morning.

After a moment’s hesitation, Robin opened the door as quietly as possible and peered inside. An immense, somber space was revealed: chilly parabolas of gray stone, a hundred feet of cold air between congregation and ceiling. Doubtless a church of this gigantic size had been deemed necessary back in Regency times, when people had flocked to the spa town to drink its waters, but the modern congregation didn’t come close to filling it. A black-robed verger looked around at her; Robin smiled apologetically, quietly closed the door and returned to the pavement, where a large modern steel sculpture, part squiggle, part coil, was evidently supposed to represent the medicinal spring around which the town had been built.

A pub nearby was just opening its doors and Robin fancied a coffee, so she crossed the road and entered the Old Library.

The interior was large but hardly less gloomy than the church, the décor mostly shades of brown. Robin bought herself a coffee, settled herself in a tucked-away corner where she couldn’t be observed, and sank into abstraction. Her glimpse of the church’s interior had told her nothing. Margot had been an atheist, but churches were some of the few places a person could sit and think, undisturbed. Might Margot have been drawn to All Saints out of that unfocused, inchoate need that had once driven Robin herself into an unknown graveyard, there to sit on a wooden bench and contemplate the parlous state of her marriage?

Robin set down her coffee cup, opened the messenger bag she’d brought with her and took out the wad of photocopies, of those pages of Talbot’s notebook that mentioned Paul Satchwell. Smoothing them flat, she glanced up casually at the two men who’d just sat down at a nearby table. The one with his back to her was tall and broad, with dark, curly hair, and before she could remind herself that he couldn’t be Strike, because her partner was in St. Mawes, a thrill of excitement and happiness passed through her.

The stranger seemed to have felt Robin looking at him, because he turned before she could avert her eyes. She caught a glimpse of eyes as blue as Morris’s, a weak chin and a short neck before she bowed her head to examine the horoscope notes, feeling herself turning red and suddenly unable to take in the mass of drawings and symbols in front of her.

Waves of shame were crashing over her, entirely disproportionate to catching a stranger’s eye. In the pit of her stomach, the last sparks of the excitement she’d felt on thinking that she was looking at Strike glimmered and died.

It was a momentary error of perception, she told herself. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Calm down.

But instead of reading the notes, Robin put her face in her hands. In this strange bar, her resistance lowered by exhaustion, Robin knew she’d been avoiding the question of what she really felt about Strike for the past year. Busy trying to disentangle herself from Matthew, familiarizing herself with a new flat and a new flatmate, managing and deflecting her parents’ anxiety and judgment, fending off Morris’s constant badgering, dodging Ilsa’s infuriating determination to matchmake and working twice as hard as ever before, it had been easy not to think about anything else, even a question as fraught as what she really felt for Cormoran Strike.

Now, in the corner of this dingy brown pub, with nothing else to distract her, Robin found herself thinking back to those honeymoon nights spent pacing the fine white sand after Matthew had gone to bed, when Robin had interrogated herself about whether she was in love with the man who’d then been her boss, not her partner. She’d worn a deep channel on the beach as she walked up and down in the dark, finally deciding that the answer was “no,” that what she felt was a mixture of friendship, admiration and gratitude for the opportunity he’d given her to embark on a once-dreamed-of career, which she’d thought was closed to her forever. She liked her partner; she admired him; she was grateful to him. That was it. That was all.

Except… she remembered how much pleasure it had given her to see him sitting in Notes Café, after a week’s absence, and how happy she was, no matter the circumstances, to see Strike’s name light up her phone.

Almost scared now, she forced herself to think about how bloody aggravating Strike could be: grumpy, taciturn and ungrateful, and nowhere near as handsome, with his broken nose and hair he himself described as “pube-like,” as Matthew, or even Morris…

But he was her best friend. This admission, held at bay for so long, caused an almost painful twist in Robin’s heart, not least because she knew it would be impossible ever to tell Strike so. She could just imagine him lumbering away from her like a startled bison at such a naked statement of affection, redoubling the barriers he liked to erect if ever they got too close to each other. Nevertheless, there was a kind of relief in admitting the painful truth: she cared deeply for her partner. She trusted him on the big things: to do the right thing for the right reasons. She admired his brains and appreciated his doggedness, not to mention the self-discipline all the more admirable because many whole-bodied men had never mastered it. She was often astonished by his almost total lack of self-pity. She loved the drive for justice that she shared, that unbreakable determination to settle and to solve.

And there was something more, something highly unusual. Strike had never once made her feel physically uncomfortable. Two of them in the office, for a long time the only workers at the agency, and while Robin was a tall woman, he was far bigger, and he’d never made her feel it, as so many men did, not even in an attempt to intimidate, but because they enjoy the Parade, as a peacock spreads its tail. Matthew hadn’t been able to get past the idea of them together all the time, in a small office space, hadn’t been able to believe that Strike wasn’t capitalizing on the situation to make advances, however subtle.

But Robin, who’d forever be hypersensitive to the uninvited touch, the sidelong, lecherous glance, the invasion of personal space, the testing of conventional limits, had never once experienced, with Strike, that shrinking sensation within her own skin evoked by attempts to push a relationship into a different space. A deep reserve lay over Strike’s private life, and while that sometimes frustrated her (had he, or had he not, called Charlotte Campbell back?), his love of privacy extended to a respect for other people’s boundaries. Never had there been an ostensibly helpful but unnecessary touch, no hand on the small of the back, no grasping of the arm, no look that made her skin prickle, or made her want to cover herself: the legacy of those violent encounters with men that had left her scarred in more ways than the visible.

In truth (why not admit everything to herself now, when she was so tired, her defenses lowered?) she was aware of only two moments in four years where she’d been sure that Strike had seen her as a desirable woman, not as a friend, or an apprentice, or a younger sister.

The first had been when she’d modeled that green Cavalli dress for him, in the course of their first investigation together, when he’d looked away from her as a man would if shunning too-bright light. She’d been embarrassed by her own behavior, afterward: she hadn’t meant to make him think she was trying to be seductive or provocative; all she’d been trying to do was get information out of the sales assistant. But when he’d subsequently given her the green dress, thinking he’d never see her again, she’d wondered whether part of the message Strike had been trying to convey was that he didn’t disavow that look, that she had, indeed, looked wonderful in the dress, and this suspicion hadn’t made her feel uncomfortable, but happy and flattered.

The second moment, far more painful to remember, had been when she’d stood at the top of the stairs at her wedding venue, Strike below her, and he’d turned when she called his name, and looked up at her, the new bride. He’d been injured and exhausted, and again, she’d seen a flicker of something in his face that wasn’t mere friendship, and they’d hugged, and she’d felt…

Best not to think about it. Best not to dwell on that hug, on how like home it had felt, on how a kind of insanity had gripped her at that moment, and she’d imagined him saying “come with me” and known she’d have gone if he had.

Robin swept the horoscope papers off the pub table, stuffed them back into her messenger bag and went outside, leaving half her coffee undrunk.

Trying to walk off her memories, she crossed a small stone bridge spanning the slow-flowing River Leam, which was spotted with clumps of duckweed, and passed the colonnade of the Royal Pump Rooms, where Satchwell’s exhibition would open the following day. Striding briskly, her hands in her pockets, Robin tried to focus on the Parade, where shopfronts disfigured what had once been a sweeping white Regency terrace.

But Leamington Spa did nothing to raise her spirits. On the contrary, it reminded her too much of another spa town: Bath, where Matthew had gone to university. For Robin, long, symmetrical curves of Regency buildings, with their plain, classical façades, would forever conjure once-fond memories disfigured by later discoveries: visions of herself and Matthew strolling hand in hand, overlain by the knowledge that, even then, he’d been sleeping with Sarah.

“Oh, bugger everything,” Robin muttered, blinking tears out of her eyes. She turned abruptly and headed all the way back to the Land Rover.

Having parked the car closer to the hotel, she made a detour into the nearby Co-op to buy a small stash of food, then checked in at a self-service machine in her Premier Inn and headed upstairs to her single room. It was small, bare but perfectly clean and comfortable, and overlooked a spectacularly ugly town hall of red and white brick, which was over-embellished with scrolls, pediments and lions.

A couple of sandwiches, a chocolate éclair, a can of Diet Coke and an apple made Robin feel better. As the sun sank slowly behind the buildings on the Parade, she slipped off her shoes and reached into her bag for the photocopied pages of Talbot’s notebook and her pack of Thoth tarot cards, which Aleister Crowley had devised, and in which Bill Talbot had sought the solution to Margot’s disappearance. Sliding the pack out of the box into her hand, she shuffled through the cards, examining the images. Just as she’d suspected, Talbot had copied many motifs into his notebook, presumably from those cards which had come up during his frequent attempts to solve the case by consulting the tarot.

Robin now flattened a photocopy of what she thought of as the “horns page,” on which Talbot had dwelled on the three horned signs of the zodiac: Capricorn, Aries and Taurus. This page came in the last quarter of the notebook, in which quotations from Aleister Crowley, astrological symbols and strange drawings appeared far more often than concrete facts.

Here on the horns page was evidence of Talbot’s renewed interest in Satchwell, whom he’d first ruled out on the basis that he was an Aries rather than a Capricorn. Talbot had evidently calculated Satchwell’s whole birth horoscope and taken the trouble to note various aspects, which he noticed were same as AC. Same as AC. AND DON’T FORGET LS connection.

To add to the confusion, the mysterious Schmidt kept correcting signs, although he’d allowed Satchwell to keep his original sign of Aries.

And then an odd idea came to Robin: the notion of a fourteen-sign zodiac was clearly ludicrous (but why was it more ludicrous than a twelve-sign zodiac? asked a voice in her head, which sounded remarkably like Strike’s), but certainly if you were going to squeeze in an extra two signs, dates would have to shift, wouldn’t they?

She picked up her mobile and Googled “fourteen-sign zodiac Schmidt.”

“Oh my God,” said Robin aloud, into her still hotel room.

Before she could fully process what she’d read, the mobile in her hand rang. It was Strike.

“Hi,” said Robin, hastily turning him to speakerphone so she could continue reading what she’d just found. “How are you?”

“Knackered,” said Strike, who sounded it. “What’s happened?”

“What d’you mean?” asked Robin, her eyes rapidly scanning lines of text.

“You sound like you do when you’ve found something out.”

Robin laughed.

“OK, you won’t believe this, but I’ve just found Schmidt.”

“You’ve what?”

“Schmidt, first name, Steven. He’s a real person! He wrote a book in 1970 called Astrology 14, proposing the inclusion of two extra signs in the zodiac, Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer, and Cetus the Whale!”

There was a brief silence, then Strike muttered,

“How the hell did I miss that?”

“Remember that statue of the man holding the serpent, at Margot’s old house?” said Robin, falling back on her pillows among the scattered tarot cards.

“Asclepius,” said Strike. “Ophiuchus was the Roman form. God of healing.”

“Well, this explains all the changing dates, doesn’t it?” said Robin, “and why poor Talbot got so confused! He was trying to put everyone into Schmidt’s adjusted dates, but they didn’t seem to fit. And all the other astrologers he was consulting were still using the twelve-sign system, so—”

“Yeah,” said Strike, talking over her, “that’d make a crazy man crazier, all right.”

His tone said, “This is interesting, but not important.” Robin removed the Three of Disks from beneath her and examined it absentmindedly. Robin was now so well-versed in astrological symbols that she didn’t need to look up the glyphs to know that it also represented Mars in Capricorn.

“How are things with you?” she asked.

“Well, the church isn’t going to hold everyone who’s coming tomorrow, which Joan would’ve been thrilled about. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be heading back up the road again on Tuesday.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to stay longer?”

“The neighbors are all promising they’re going to look after Ted. Lucy’s trying to get him to come up to London for a bit afterward. Any other news your end?”

“Er… let’s see… I wrapped up Postcard,” said Robin. “I think our weatherman was quite disappointed when he saw who his stalker was. His wife cheered up no end, though.”

Strike gave a grunt of laughter.

“So, we’ve taken on the commodities broker,” Robin continued. “We haven’t got pictures of anything incriminating between the husband and nanny yet, but I don’t think it’s going to be long.”

“You’re owed a long stretch off for all this, Robin,” said Strike gruffly. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said.

They hung up shortly afterward.

Robin’s room seemed to have become suddenly much darker. The sun had gone down; in silhouette, the town hall resembled a monstrous Gothic palace. She turned on her bedside lamp and looked around at the bed strewn with astrological notes and tarot cards. Seen in the light of Strike’s lack of enthusiasm, Talbot’s doodles looked like the determinedly weird drawings in the back of a teenager’s jotter, leading nowhere, done purely for the love of strangeness.

Yawning, she refolded the photocopied notes and put them back in her bag, went for a shower, returned in her pajamas to the bed and gathered up the tarot cards, putting them in order as she did so, to make sure none of them were missing. She didn’t particularly want the cleaner to think of her as the kind of person who left tarot cards strewn in her wake.

On the point of replacing the deck in its box, Robin suddenly sat down on the bed and began to shuffle it instead. She was too tired to attempt the fifteen-card layout advocated in the little booklet that accompanied the tarot, but she knew from her exhaustive examination of his notes that Talbot had sometimes tried to see his way through the investigation by laying out just three cards: the first representing “the nature of the problem,” the second, “the cause,” and the third, “the solution.”

After a minute’s shuffling, Robin turned over the top card and laid it down in the pool of light cast by her bedside lamp: the Prince of Cups. A naked blueish-green man rode an eagle, which was diving toward water. He held a goblet containing a snake in one hand and a lotus flower in the other. Robin pulled The Book of Thoth out of her bag and looked up the meaning.

She thought immediately of Dennis Creed. A master of murder, in his way.

She turned over the next card: the Four of Cups, or Luxury. Another lotus was pouring water over four more goblets, golden this time. Robin turned to the book.

Was the tarot criticizing her for soft living? Robin glanced around her little box of a room, then turned over the last card.

More cups and yet more lotuses, and two entwined fish, pouring out water into two more golden chalices which stood on a green lake.

Robin inspected the card for a few more seconds, before laying it down beside the other two. They were all cups. As she knew from her study of the Thoth tarot, cups meant water. Well, here she was in a spa town…

Robin shook her head, though nobody was there to see her do it, returned the tarot cards to their box, climbed into bed, set her alarm and turned out the light.

46

Robin’s night was punctuated with sudden wakings from a succession of anxious dreams: that she’d fallen asleep at the wheel again, or had overslept and arrived at the gallery to find Satchwell’s exhibition gone. When the alarm on her mobile rang at 7 a.m., she forced herself immediately out of bed, showered, dressed and, glad to leave the impersonal bedroom, headed downstairs with her packed holdall to eat muesli and drink coffee in the dining room, which was painted an oppressive sludge green.

The day outside was fresh but overcast, a cold silver sun trying to penetrate the cloud. Having returned her holdall to the parked Land Rover, she headed on foot toward the Royal Pump Rooms, which housed the gallery where Satchwell’s exhibition was about to open. To her left lay the ornamental Jephson Gardens, and a fountain of pinkish stone that might have been the model for one of Crowley’s tarot cards. Four scallop-patterned basins sat at the top.

… a certain weakness, an abandonment to desire…

You’re getting like Talbot, Robin told herself crossly. Speeding up, she arrived at the Pump Rooms with time to spare.

The building had just been opened; a young woman in black was walking away from the glass doors, holding a bunch of keys. Robin entered, to find little trace of the Regency pump rooms left inside: the floor was covered in modern gray tiles, the ceiling supported by metal columns. A café took up one wing of the open-plan space, a shop another. The gallery, Robin saw, lay across opposite, through more glass doors.

It comprised one long room, brick-walled and wooden-floored, which had been temporarily given over to an exhibition of local artists. There were only three people inside: a stocky, gray-bobbed woman in an Alice band, a small man with a hang-dog air whom Robin suspected was her husband, and another young woman in black, who she assumed worked there. The gray-haired woman’s voice was echoing around the room as though it was a gymnasium.

“I told Shona that Long Itchington needs an accent light! You can barely see it, this corner’s so dark!”

Robin walked slowly around, looking at canvases and sketches. Five local artists had been given space for the temporary exhibition, but she identified Paul Satchwell’s work without difficulty: it had been given a prominent position and stood out boldly among the studies of local landmarks, portraits of pallid Britons standing at bus stops, and still lifes.

Naked figures twisted and cavorted in scenes from Greek mythology. Persephone struggled in the arms of Hades as he carried her down into the underworld; Andromeda strained against chains binding her to rock as a dragonish creature rose from the waves to devour her; Leda lay supine in bulrushes as Zeus, in the form of a swan, impregnated her.

Two lines of Joni Mitchell floated back to Robin as she looked at the paintings: “When I first saw your gallery, I liked the ones of ladies…”

Except that Robin wasn’t sure she liked the paintings. The female figures were all black-haired, olive-skinned, heavy-breasted and partially or entirely naked. The paintings were accomplished, but Robin found them slightly lascivious. Each of the women wore a similar expression of vacant abandon, and Satchwell seemed to have a definite preference for those myths that featured bondage, rape or abduction.

“Striking, aren’t they?” said the meek-faced husband of the angry painter of Long Itchington, appearing at Robin’s side to contemplate a picture of a totally naked Io, whose hair streamed behind her and whose breasts gleamed with sweat as she fled a bull with a gargantuan erection.

“Mm,” said Robin. “I was wondering whether he was going to come to the exhibition. Paul Satchwell, I mean.”

“I think he said he’s going to pop back in,” said the man.

“Back—? You mean he’s here? In England?”

“Well, yes,” said the man, looking somewhat surprised. “He was here yesterday, anyway. Came to see them hung.”

“Visiting family, I think he said,” said the young woman in black, who seemed glad of a reason to talk to somebody other than the fuming artist in the hairband.

“You haven’t got contact details for him, have you?” asked Robin. “Maybe the address of where he’s staying?”

“No,” said the young woman, now looking intrigued. Evidently local artists didn’t usually engender this much excitement. “You can leave your name and address, though, if you like, and I’ll tell him you want to speak to him if he drops by?”

So Robin accompanied the young woman back to the reception area, where she scribbled her name and phone number onto a piece of paper and then, her heart still beating fast in excitement, went to the café, bought herself a cappuccino and positioned herself beside a long window looking out onto the Pump Room Gardens, where she had a good view of people entering the building.

Should she book back into the Premier Inn and wait here in Leamington Spa until Satchwell showed himself? Would Strike think it worth neglecting their other cases to remain here in the hope of Satchwell turning up? It was Joan’s funeral today: she couldn’t burden him with the question.

She wondered what her partner was doing now. Perhaps already dressing for the service. Robin had only ever attended two funerals. Her maternal grandfather had died just before she dropped out of university: she’d gone home for the funeral and never gone back. She remembered very little of the occasion: it had taken everything she’d had to preserve a fragile façade of well-being, and she remembered the strange sense of disembodiment that underlay the eggshell brittleness with which she’d met the half-scared inquiries of family members who knew what had happened to her. She remembered, too, Matthew’s hand around hers. He hadn’t once dropped it, skipping lectures and an important rugby game to come and be with her.

The only other funeral she’d attended had been four years previously, when she and Strike had attended the cremation of a murdered girl in the course of their first murder investigation, standing together at the back of the sparsely populated, impersonal crematorium. That had been before Strike had agreed to take her on permanently, when she’d been nothing but a temp whom Strike had allowed to inveigle her way into his investigation. Thinking back to Rochelle Onifade’s funeral, Robin realized that even then, the ties binding her to Matthew had been loosening. Robin hadn’t yet realized it, but she’d found something she wanted more than she’d wanted to be Matthew’s wife.

Her coffee finished, Robin made a quick trip to the bathroom, then returned to the gallery in the hope that Satchwell might have entered it while she wasn’t watching, but there was no sign of him. A few people had drifted in to wander around the temporary exhibition. Satchwell’s paintings were attracting the most interest. Having walked the room once more, Robin pretended an interest in an old water fountain in the corner. Covered in swags and lion’s heads with gaping mouths, it had once dispensed the health-giving spa waters.

Beyond the font lay another a room, which presented a total contrast to the clean, modern space behind her. It was octagonal and made of brick, with a very high ceiling and windows of Bristol blue glass. Robin stepped inside: it was, or had once been, a Turkish hammam or steam room, and had the appearance of a small temple. At the highest point of the vaulted ceiling was a cupola decorated with an eight-pointed star in glass, with a lantern hanging from it.

“Nice to see a bit of pagan influence, innit?”

The voice was a combination of self-conscious cockney, overlain with the merest whiff of a Greek accent. Robin spun around and there, planted firmly in the middle of the hammam, in jeans and an old denim shirt, was an elderly man with his left eye covered in a surgical dressing, which stood out, stark white against skin as brown as old terra-cotta. His straggly white hair fell to his stooping shoulders; white chest hair grew in the space left by his undone buttons, a silver chain hung around his crêpe-skinned throat, and silver and turquoise rings decorated his fingers.

“You the young lady ’oo wanted to talk to me?” asked Paul Satchwell, revealing yellow-brown teeth as he smiled.

“Yes,” said Robin, “I am. Robin Ellacott,” she added, holding out her hand.

His uncovered eye swept Robin’s face and figure with unconcealed appreciation. He held her hand a little too long after shaking it but Robin continued to smile as she withdrew it, and delved in her handbag for a card, which she gave him.

“Private detective?” said Satchwell, his smile fading a little as he read the card, one-eyed. “The ’ell’s all this?”

Robin explained.

“Margot?” said Satchwell, looking shocked. “Christ almighty, that’s, what… forty years ago?”

“Nearly,” said Robin, moving aside to let some tourists claim her spot in the middle of the hammam, and read its history off the sign on the wall. “I’ve come up from London in hopes of talking to you about her. It’d mean a lot to the family if you could tell me whatever you remember.”

“Éla ré, what d’you expect me to remember after all this time?” said Satchwell.

But Robin was confident he was going to accept. She’d discovered that people generally wanted to know what you already knew, why you’d come to find them, whether they had any reason to worry. And sometimes they wanted to talk, because they were lonely or felt neglected, and it was flattering to have somebody hang on your words, and sometimes, as now (elderly as he was, the single eye, which was a cold, pale blue, swept her body and back to her face) they wanted to spend more time with a young woman they found attractive.

“All right, then,” said Satchwell slowly, “I don’t know what I can tell you, but I’m hungry. Let me take you to lunch.”

“That’d be great, but I’ll be taking you,” said Robin, smiling. “You’re doing me the favor.”

47

Satchwell bade the attendant in the art gallery farewell by clasping her hands in a double handshake and assuring her he’d look in later in the week. He even took fulsome leave of the disgruntled painter of Long Itchington, who scowled after him as he left.

“Provincial galleries,” he said, chuckling, as he and Robin headed out of the Pump Rooms. “Funny, seeing my stuff next to that old bat’s postcard pictures, though, wasn’t it? And a bit of a kick to be exhibited where you were born. I haven’t been back here in, Christ, must be fifty-odd years. You got a car? Good. We’ll get out of here, go froo to Warwick. It’s just up the road.”

Satchwell kept up a steady stream of talk as they walked toward the Land Rover.

“Never liked Leamington.” With only one eye at his service, he had to turn his head in exaggerated fashion to look around. “Too genteel for the likes of me…”

Robin learned that he’d lived in the spa town only until he was six, at which point he and his single mother had moved to Warwick. He had a younger half-sister, the result of his mother’s second marriage, with whom he was currently staying, and had decided to have his cataract removed while in England.

“Still a British citizen, I’m entitled. So when they asked me,” he said, with a grand wave backward at the Royal Pump Rooms, “if I’d contribute some paintings, I thought, why not? Brought them over with me.”

“They’re wonderful,” said Robin insincerely. “Have you got just the one sister?” She had no aim other than making polite conversation, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Satchwell’s head turn so that his unbandaged eye could look at her.

“No,” he said, after a moment or two. “It was… I ’ad an older sister, too, but she died when we were kids.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Robin.

“One of those things,” said Satchwell. “Severely disabled. Had fits and stuff. She was older than me. I can’t remember much about it. Hit my mum hard, obviously.”

“I can imagine,” said Robin.

They had reached the Land Rover. Robin, who’d already mentally calculated the risk to herself, should Satchwell prove to be dangerous, was confident that she’d be safe by daylight, and given that she had control of the car. She unlocked the doors and climbed into the driver’s seat, and Satchwell succeeded in hoisting himself into the passenger seat on his second attempt.

“Yeah, we moved froo to Warwick from ’ere after Blanche died,” he said, buckling up his seatbelt. “Just me and my mum. Not that Warwick’s much better, but it’s aufentic. Aufentic medieval buildings, you know?”

Given that he was Midlands born and raised, Robin thought his cockney accent must be a longstanding affectation. It came and went, mingled with an intonation that was slightly foreign after so many years in Greece.

“Whereas this place… the Victorians ’ad their wicked way with it,” he said, and as Robin reversed out her parking space he said, looking up at the moss-covered face of a stone Queen Victoria, “there she is, look, miserable old cow,” and laughed. “State of that building,” he added, as they passed the town hall. “That’s somefing me and Crowley had in common, for sure. Born ’ere, hated it ’ere.”

Robin thought she must have misheard.

“You and…”

“Aleister Crowley.”

“Crowley?” she repeated, as they drove up the Parade. “The occult writer?”

“Yeah. ’E was born here,” said Satchwell. “You don’t see that in many of the guidebooks, because they don’t like it. ’Ere, turn left. Go on, it’s on our way.”

Minutes later, he directed her into Clarendon Square, where tall white terraced houses, though now subdivided into flats, retained a vestige of their old grandeur.

“That’s it, where he was born,” said Satchwell with satisfaction, pointing up at number 30. “No plaque or nothing. They don’t like talking about him, the good people of Leamington Spa. I had a bit of a Crowley phase in my youth,” said Satchwell, as Robin looked up at the large, square windows. “You know he tortured a cat to death when he was a boy, just to see whether it had nine lives?”

“I didn’t,” said Robin, putting the car into reverse.

“Probably ’appened in there,” said Satchwell with morbid satisfaction.

Same as AC. Same as AC. Another moment of enlightenment had hit Robin. Talbot had gone looking for identical components between Satchwell’s horoscope and Crowley’s, the self-proclaimed Beast, Baphomet, the wickedest man in the West. LS connection. Of course: Leamington Spa.

Why had Talbot decided, months into the investigation, that Satchwell deserved a full horoscope, the only one of the suspects to be so honored? His alibi appeared watertight, after all. Had the return of suspicion been a symptom of Talbot’s illness, triggered by the coincidence of Satchwell and Crowley’s place of birth, or had he uncovered some unrecorded weakness in Satchwell’s alibi? Satchwell continued to talk about his life in Greece, his painting and about his disappointment in how old England was faring, and Robin made appropriate noises at regular intervals while mentally reviewing those features of Satchwell’s horoscope that Talbot had found so intriguing.

Mars in Capricorn: strong-willed, determined, but prone to accidents.

Moon in Pisces: neuroses/personality disorders/dishonesty

Leo rising: no sense of moderation. Resents demands on them.

They reached Warwick within half an hour and, as Satchwell had promised, found themselves in a town that could hardly have presented a greater contrast to the wide, sweeping white-faced crescents of Leamington. An ancient stone arch reminded Robin of Clerkenwell. They passed timber and beam houses, cobbles, steep sloping streets and narrow alleyways.

“We’ll go to the Roebuck,” said Satchwell, when Robin had parked in the market square. “It’s been there forever. Oldest pub in town.”

“Wherever you like,” said Robin, smiling as she checked that she had her notebook in her handbag.

They walked together through the heart of Warwick, Satchwell pointing out such landmarks as he deemed worth looking at. He was one of those men who felt a need to touch, tapping Robin unnecessarily upon the arm to draw her attention, grasping her elbow as they crossed a street, and generally assuming a proprietorial air over her as they wove their way toward Smith Street.

“D’you mind?” asked Satchwell, as they drew level with Picturesque Art Supplies, and without waiting for an answer he led her into the shop where, as he selected brushes and oils, he talked with airy self-importance of modern trends in art and the stupidity of critics. Oh, Margot, Robin thought, but then she imagined the Margot Bamborough she carried with her in her head judging her, in turn, by Matthew, with his endless store of anecdotes of his own sporting achievements, and his increasingly pompous talk of pay rises and bonuses, and felt humbled and apologetic.

At last, they made it into the Roebuck Inn, a low-beamed pub with a sign of a deer’s head hanging outside, and secured a table for two toward the rear of the pub. Robin couldn’t help but notice the coincidence: the wall behind Satchwell was dotted with horned animal heads, including a stuffed deer and bronze-colored models of an antelope and a ram. Even the menus had silhouettes of antlered stag heads upon them. Robin asked the waitress for a Diet Coke, all the while trying to repress thoughts of the horned signs of the zodiac.

“Would it be all right,” she asked, smiling, when the waitress had departed for the bar, “if I ask a few questions about Margot now?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Satchwell, with a smile that revealed his stained teeth again, but he immediately picked up the menu card and studied it.

“And d’you mind if I take notes?” Robin asked, pulling out her notebook.

“Go ahead,” he said, still smiling, watching her over the top of his menu with his uncovered eye, which followed her movements as she opened the book and clicked out the nib of her pen.

“So, I apologize if any of these questions—”

“Are you sure you don’t want a proper drink?” asked Satchwell, who had ordered a beer. “I ’ate drinking on me own.”

“Well, I’m driving, you see,” said Robin.

“You could stay over. Not with me, don’t worry,” he said quickly, with a grin that on a man so elderly, resembled a satyr’s leer, “I mean, go to an ’otel, file expenses. I s’pect you’re taking a good chunk of money from Margot’s family for this, are you?”

Robin merely smiled, and said,

“I need to get back to London. We’re quite busy. It would be really useful to get some background on Margot,” she continued. “How did you meet?”

He told her the story she already knew, about how he’d been taken to the Playboy Club by a client and seen there the leggy nineteen-year-old in her bunny ears and tail.

“And you struck up a friendship?”

“Well,” said Satchwell, “I don’t know that I’d call it that.”

With his cold eye upon Robin he said,

“We ’ad a very strong sexual connection. She was a virgin when we met, y’know.”

Robin kept smiling formally. He wasn’t going to embarrass her.

“She was nineteen. I was twen’y-five. Beau’iful girl,” he sighed. “Wish I’d kept the pictures I took of her, but after she disappeared I felt wrong about ’aving them.”

Robin heard Oonagh again. “He took pictures of her. You know. Pictures.” It must be those revealing or obscene photos Satchwell was talking about, because after all, he’d hardly have felt guilty about having a snapshot.

The waitress came back with Satchwell’s beer and Robin’s Diet Coke. They ordered food; after swiftly scanning the menu, Robin asked for a chicken and bacon salad; Satchwell ordered steak and chips. When the waitress had gone Robin asked, though she knew the answer,

“How long were you together?”

“Coupla years, all told. We broke up, then got back togevver. She didn’t like me using other models. Jealous. Not cut out for an artist’s muse, Margot. Didn’t like sitting still and not talking, haha… no, I fell hard for Margot Bamborough. Yeah, there was a damn sight more to her than being a Bunny Girl.”

Of course there was, thought Robin, though still smiling politely. She became a bloody doctor.

“Did you ever paint her?”

“Yeah,” said Satchwell. “Few times. Some sketches and one full-size picture. I sold them. Needed the cash. Wish I ’adn’t.”

He fell into a momentary abstraction, his uncovered eye surveying the pub, and Robin wondered whether old memories were genuinely resurfacing behind the heavily tanned face, which was so deeply lined and dark it might have been carved from teak, or whether he was playing the part that was expected of him when he said quietly,

“Hell of a girl, Margot Bamborough.”

He took a sip of his beer, then said,

“It’s her ’usband who’s hired you, is it?”

“No,” said Robin. “Her daughter.”

“Oh,” said Satchwell, nodding. “Yeah, of course: there was a kid. She didn’t look as though she’d ’ad a baby, when I met her after they got married. Slim as ever. Both my wives put on about a stone with each of our kids.”

“How many children have you got?” asked Robin, politely.

She wanted the food to hurry up. It was harder to walk out once food was in front of you, and some instinct told her that Paul Satchwell’s whimsical mood might not last.

“Five,” said Satchwell. “Two with me first wife, and three with me second. Didn’t mean to: we got twins on the last throw. All pretty much grown up now, thank Christ. Kids and art don’t mix. I love ’em,” he said roughly, “but Cyril Connolly had it right. The enemy of promise is the pram in the bloody ’all.”

He threw her a brief glance out of his one visible eye and said abruptly,

“So ’er ’usband still thinks I had something to do with Margot disappearing, does ’e?”

“What d’you mean by ‘still’?” inquired Robin.

“’E gave my name to the police,” said Satchwell. “The night she disappeared. Thought she might’ve run off with me. Did you know Margot and I bumped into each other a coupla weeks before she disappeared?”

“I did, yes,” said Robin.

“It put ideas into what’s-’is-name’s head,” he said. “I can’t blame him, I s’pose it did look fishy. I’d’ve probably thought the same, if my bird had met up with an old flame right before they buggered off—disappeared, I mean.”

The food arrived: Satchwell’s steak and chips looked appetizing, but Robin, who’d been too busy concentrating on her questions, hadn’t read the small print on the menu. Expecting a plate of salad, she received a wooden platter bearing various ramekins containing hot sausage slices, hummus and a sticky mess of mayonnaise-coated leaves, a challenging assortment to eat while taking notes.

“Want some chips?” offered Satchwell, pushing the small metal bucket that contained them toward her.

“No thanks,” said Robin, smiling. She took a bite of a breadstick and continued, her pen in her right hand,

“Did Margot talk about Roy, when you bumped into her?”

“A bit,” said Satchwell, his mouth full of steak. “She put up a good front. What you do, when you meet the ex, isn’t it? Pretend you think you did the right thing. No regrets.”

“Did you think she had regrets?” asked Robin.

“She wasn’t ’appy, I could tell. I thought, nobody’s paying you attention. She tried to put a brave face on it, but she struck me as miserable. Knackered.”

“Did you only see each other the once?”

Satchwell chewed his steak, looking at Robin thoughtfully. At last he swallowed, then said,

“Have you read my police statement?”

“Yes,” said Robin.

“Then you know perfectly well,” said Satchwell, waggling his fork at her, “that it was just the once. Don’t you?”

He was smiling, trying to pass off the implied admonition as waggish, but Robin felt the spindle-thin spike of aggression.

“So you went for a drink, and talked?” said Robin, smiling, as though she hadn’t noticed the undertone, daring him to become defensive, and he continued, in a milder tone,

“Yeah, we went to some bar in Camden, not far from my flat. She’d been on an ’ouse call to some patient.”

Robin made a note.

“And can you remember what you talked about?”

“She told me she’d met ’er husband at medical school, ’e was an ’igh-flier and all that. What was ’e?” said Satchwell, with what seemed to Robin a forced unconcern. “A cardiologist or something?”

“Hematologist,” said Robin.

“What’s that, blood? Yeah, she was always impressed by clever people, Margot. Didn’t occur to ’er that they can be shits like anyone else.”

“Did you get the impression Dr. Phipps was a shit?” asked Robin lightly.

“Not really,” said Satchwell. “But I was told ’e had a stick up his arse and was a bit of a mummy’s boy.”

“Who told you that?” asked Robin, pausing with her pen suspended over her notebook.

“Someone ’oo’d met him,” he replied with a slight shrug. “You not married?” he went on, his eyes on Robin’s bare left hand.

“Living with someone,” said Robin, with a brief smile. It was the answer she’d learned to give, to shut down flirtation from witnesses and clients, to erect barriers. Satchwell said, “Ah. I always know, if a bird’s living with a bloke without marriage, she must be really keen on him. Nothing but ’er feelings holding her, is there?”

“I suppose not,” said Robin, with a brief smile. She knew he was trying to disconcert her. “Did Margot mention anything that might be worrying her, or causing her problems? At home or at work?”

“Told you, it was all window dressing,” said Satchwell, munching on fries. “Great job, great ’usband, nice kid, nice ’ouse: she’d made it.” He swallowed. “I did the same thing back: told her I was having an exhibition, won an award for one of me paintings, in a band, serious girlfriend… which was a lie,” he added, with a slight snort. “I only remember that bird because we split up later that evening. Don’t ask me her name now. We ’adn’t been together long. She had long black hair and a massive tattoo of a spider’s web round her navel, that’s what I mainly remember—yeah, anyway, I ended it. Seeing Margot again—”

He hesitated. His uncovered eye unfocused, he said,

“I was thirty-five. It’s a funny age. It starts dawning on you forty’s really gonna happen to you, not just to other people. What are you, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Robin.

“Happens earlier for women, that worrying about getting old thing,” said Satchwell. “Got kids yet?”

“No,” said Robin, and then, “so Margot didn’t say anything to you that might suggest a reason for disappearing voluntarily?”

“Margot wouldn’t have gone away and left everyone in the lurch,” said Satchwell, as positive on the point as Oonagh. “Not Margot. Responsible was her middle name. She was a good girl, you know? School prefect sort.”

“So you didn’t make any plans to meet again?”

“No plans,” said Satchwell, munching on chips. “I mentioned to ’er my band was playing at the Dublin Castle the following week. Said, ‘drop in if you’re passing,’ but she said she wouldn’t be able to. Dublin Castle was a pub in Camden,” Satchwell added. “Might still be there.”

“Yes,” said Robin, “it is.”

“I told the investigating officer I’d mentioned the gig to her. Told ’im I’d’ve been up for seeing her again, if she’d wanted it. I ’ad nothing to hide.”

Robin remembered Strike’s opinion that Satchwell volunteering this information seemed almost too helpful, and, trying to dissemble her sudden suspicion, asked:

“Did anyone spot Margot at the pub, the night you were playing?”

Satchwell took his time before swallowing, then said,

“Not as far as I know.”

“The little wooden Viking you gave her,” said Robin, watching him carefully, “the one with ‘Brunhilda’ written on the foot—”

“The one she had on her desk at work?” he said, with what Robin thought might have been a whiff of gratified vanity. “Yeah, I gave her that in the old days, when we were dating.”

Could it be true, Robin wondered. After the acrimonious way Margot and Satchwell had broken up, after he’d locked her in his flat so she couldn’t get out to work, after he’d hit her, after she’d married another man, would Margot really have kept Satchwell’s silly little gift? Didn’t private jokes and nicknames become dead and rotten things after a painful breakup, when the thought of them became almost worse than memories of rows and insults? Robin had given most of Matthew’s gifts to charity after she’d found out about his infidelity, including the plush elephant that had been his first Valentine’s present and the jewelry box he’d given her for her twenty-first. However, Robin could tell Satchwell was going to stick to his story, so she moved to the next question in her notebook.

“There was a printers on Clerkenwell Road I think you had an association with.”

“Come again?” said Satchwell, frowning. “A printers?”

“A schoolgirl called Amanda White claims she saw Margot in an upper window belonging to this printers on the night—”

“Really?” said Satchwell. “I never ’ad no association with no printers. ’Oo says I did?”

“There was a book written in the eighties about Margot’s disappearance—”

“Yeah? I missed that.”

“—it said the printers produced flyers for a nightclub you’d painted a mural for.”

“For crying out loud,” said Satchwell, half-amused, half-exasperated. “That’s not an association. It’d be a stretch to call it a coincidence. I’ve never heard of the bloody place.”

Robin made a note and moved to her next question.

“What did you think of Bill Talbot?”

“Who?”

“The investigating officer. The first one,” said Robin.

“Oh yeah,” said Satchwell, nodding. “Very odd bloke. When I ’eard afterward he’d had a breakdown or whatever, I wasn’t surprised. Kept asking me what I was doing on random dates. Afterward, I worked out ’e was trying to decide wevver I was the Essex Butcher. He wanted to know my time of birth, as well, and what the hell that had to do with anything…”

“He was trying to draw up your horoscope,” said Robin, and she explained Talbot’s preoccupation with astrology.

“Dén tó pistévo!” said Satchwell, looking annoyed. “Astrology? That’s not funny. He was in charge of the case—how long?”

“Six months,” said Robin.

“Jesus,” said Satchwell, scowling so that the clear tape holding the dressing over his eye crinkled.

“I don’t think the people around him realized how ill he was until it got too obvious to ignore,” said Robin, now pulling a few tagged sheets of paper out of her bag: photocopies of Satchwell’s statements to both Talbot and Lawson.

“What’s all that?” he said sharply.

“Your statements to the police,” said Robin.

“Why are there—what are they, stars?—all over—”

“They’re pentagrams,” said Robin. “This is the statement Talbot took from you. It’s just routine,” she added, because Satchwell was now looking wary. “We’ve done it with everyone the police interviewed. I know your statements were double-checked at the time, but I wondered if I could run over them again, in case you remember anything useful?”

Taking his silence for consent, she continued:

“You were alone in your studio on the afternoon of the eleventh of October, but you took a call there at five from a Mr.… Hendricks?”

“Hendricks, yeah,” said Satchwell. “He was my agent at the time.”

“You went out to eat at a local café around half past six, where you had a conversation with the woman behind the till, which she remembered. Then you went back home to change, and out again to meet a few friends in a bar called Joe Bloggs around eight o’clock. All three friends you were drinking with confirmed your story… nothing to add to any of that?”

“No,” said Satchwell, and Robin thought she detected a slight sense of relief. “That all sounds right.”

“Was it one of those friends who’d met Roy Phipps?” Robin asked casually.

“No,” said Satchwell, unsmiling, and then, changing the subject, he said, “Margot’s daughter must be knocking on forty now, is she?”

“Forty last year,” said Robin.

“Éla,” said Satchwell, shaking his head. “Time just—”

One of the mahogany brown hands, wrinkled and embellished with heavy silver and turquoise rings, made a smooth motion, as of a paper airplane in flight.

“—and then one day you’re old and you never saw it sneaking up on you.”

“When did you move abroad?”

“I didn’t mean to move, not at first. Went traveling, late ’75,” said Satchwell. He’d nearly finished his steak, now.

“What made you—?”

“I’d been thinking of traveling for a bit,” said Satchwell. “But after Creed killed Margot—it was such a bloody ’orrible thing—such a shock—I dunno, I wanted a change of scene.”

“That’s what you think happened to her, do you? Creed killed her?”

He put the last bit of steak into his mouth, chewed it and swallowed before answering.

“Well, yeah. Obviously at first I ’oped she’d just walked out on ’er husband and was ’oled up somewhere. But then it went on and on and… yeah, everyone thought it was the Essex Butcher, including the police. Not just the nutty one, the second one, the one who took over.”

“Lawson,” said Robin.

Satchwell shrugged, as much to say as the officer’s name didn’t matter, and asked,

“Are you going to interview Creed?”

“Hopefully.”

“Why would he tell the truth, now?”

“He likes publicity,” said Robin. “He might like the idea of making a splash in the newspapers. So Margot disappearing was a shock to you?”

“Well, obviously it was,” said Satchwell, now probing his teeth with his tongue. “I’d just seen her again and… I’m not going to pretend I was still in love with her, or anything like that, but… have you ever been caught up in a police investigation?” he asked her, with a trace of aggression.

“Yes,” said Robin. “Several. It was stressful and intimidating, every time.”

“Well, there you are,” said Satchwell, mollified.

“What made you choose Greece?”

“I didn’t, really. I ’ad an inheritance off my grandmother and I thought, I’ll take some time off, do Europe, paint… went through France and Italy, and in ’76 I arrived in Kos. Worked in a bar. Painted in my free hours. Sold quite a few pictures to tourists. Met my first wife… never left,” said Satchwell, with a shrug.

“Something else I wanted to ask you,” said Robin, moving the police statements to the bottom of her small stack. “We’ve found out about a possible sighting of Margot, a week after she disappeared. A sighting that wasn’t ever reported to the police.”

“Yeah?” said Satchwell, looking interested. “Where?”

“In Leamington Spa,” said Robin, “in the graveyard of All Saints church.”

Satchwell’s thick white eyebrows rose, putting strain on the clear tape that was holding the dressing to his eye.

“In All Saints?” he repeated, apparently astonished.

“Looking at graves. Allegedly, she had her hair dyed black.”

“’Oo saw this?”

“A man visiting the area on a motorbike. Two years later, he told the St. John’s practice nurse about it.”

“He told the nurse?”

Satchwell’s jaw hardened.

“And what else has the nurse told you?” he said, searching Robin’s face. He seemed suddenly and unexpectedly angry.

“Do you know Janice?” asked Robin, wondering why he looked so angry.

“That’s her name, is it?” said Satchwell. “I couldn’t remember.”

“You do know her?”

Satchwell put more chips in his mouth. Robin could see that he was trying to decide what to tell her, and she felt that jolt of excitement that made all the long, tedious hours of the job, the sitting around, the sleeplessness, worthwhile.

“She’s shit-stirring,” said Satchwell abruptly. “She’s a shit-stirrer, that one, that nurse. She and Margot didn’t like each other. Margot told me she didn’t like her.”

“When was this?”

“When we ran into each other, like I told you, in the street—”

“I thought you said she didn’t talk about work?”

“Well, she told me that. They’d had a row or something. I don’t know. It was just something she said in passing. She told me she didn’t like the nurse,” repeated Satchwell.

It was as though a hard mask had surfaced under the leather dark skin: the slightly comical, crêpey-faced charmer had been replaced by a mean old one-eyed man. Robin remembered how Matthew’s lower face had tautened when angry, giving him the look of a muzzled dog, but she wasn’t intimidated. She sensed in Satchwell the same wily instinct for self-preservation as in her ex-husband. Whatever Satchwell might have meted out to Margot, or to the wives who’d left him, he’d think better of slapping Robin in a crowded pub, in the town where his sister still lived.

“You seem angry,” Robin said.

“Gia chári tou, of course I am—that nurse, what’s her name? Trying to implicate me, isn’t she? Making up a story to make it look like Margot ran away to be with me—”

“Janice didn’t invent the story. We checked with Mr. Ramage’s widow and she confirmed that her late husband told other people he’d met a missing woman—”

“What else has Janice told you?” he said again.

“She never mentioned you,” said Robin, now immensely curious. “We had no idea you knew each other.”

“But she claims Margot was seen in Leamington Spa after she disappeared? No, she knows exactly what she’s bloody doing.”

Satchwell took another chip, ate it, then suddenly got to his feet and walked past Robin, who looked over her shoulder to see him striding into the gents. His back view was older than his front: she could see the pink scalp through the thin white hair and there was no backside filling out his jeans.

Robin guessed he considered the interview finished. However, she had something else up her sleeve: a dangerous something, perhaps, but she’d use it rather than let the interview end here, with more questions raised than answered.

It was fully five minutes before he reappeared and she could tell that he’d worked himself up in his absence. Rather than sitting back down, he stood over her as he said,

“I don’t think you’re a fucking detective. I think you’re press.”

Seen from below, the tortoise’s neck was particularly striking. The chain, the turquoise and silver rings and the long hair now seemed like fancy dress.

“You can call Anna Phipps and check if you like,” said Robin. “I’ve got her number here. Why d’you think the press would be interested in you?”

“I had enough of them last time. I’m off. I don’t need this. I’m supposed to be recuperating.”

“One last thing,” said Robin, “and you’re going to want to hear it.”

She’d learned the trick from Strike. Stay calm, but assertive. Make them worry what else you’ve got.

Satchwell turned back, his one uncovered eye hard as flint. No trace of flirtation remained, no attempt to patronize her. She was an equal now; an adversary.

“Why don’t you sit down?” said Robin. “This won’t take long.”

After a slight hesitation, Satchwell eased himself back into his seat. His hoary head now blocked the stuffed deer head that hung on the brick wall behind him. From Robin’s point of view, the horns appeared to rise directly out of the white hair that fell in limp curls to his shoulders.

“Margot Bamborough knew something about you that you didn’t want to get out,” said Robin. “Didn’t she?”

He glared at her.

“The pillow dream?” said Robin.

Every line of his face hardened, turning him vulpine. The sunburned chest, wrinkled beneath its white hair, caved as he exhaled.

“Told someone, did she? Who?” Before Robin could answer, he said, “’Er husband, I suppose? Or that fucking Irish girl, was it?”

His jaws worked, chewing nothing.

“I should never ’ave told her,” he said. “That’s what you do when you’re drunk and you’re in love, or whatever the fuck we were. Then I ’ad it playing on my mind for years that she was gonna…”

The sentence ended in silence.

“Did she mention it, when you met again?” asked Robin, feeling her way, pretending she knew more than she did.

“She asked after my poor mother,” said Satchwell. “I fort at the time, are you ’aving a go? But I don’t think she was. Maybe she’d learned better, being a doctor, maybe she’d changed her views. She’ll have seen people like Blanche. A life not worth living.

“Anyway,” he said, leaning forwards slightly, “I still think it was a dream. All right? I was six years old. I dreamed it. And even if it wasn’t a dream, they’re both dead and gone now and nobody can say no different. My old mum died in ’89. You can’t get ’er for anything now, poor cow. Single mother, trying to cope with us all on ’er own. It’s merciful,” said Satchwell, “putting someone out of their misery. A mercy.”

He got up, drained beneath his tan, his face sagging, turned and walked away, but at the moment he was about to disappear he suddenly turned and tottered back to her, his jaw working.

“I think,” he said, with as much malevolence as he could muster, “you’re a nasty little bitch.”

He left for good this time.

Robin’s heart rate was barely raised. Her dominant emotion was elation. Pushing her unappetizing ramekins aside, she pulled the little metal bucket he’d left behind toward her, and finished the artist’s chips.

48

Joan’s funeral service finished with the hymn most beloved of sailors, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” While the congregation sang the familiar words, Ted, Strike, Dave Polworth and three of Ted’s comrades in the lifeboat service shouldered the coffin back down the aisle of the simple cream-walled church, with its wooden beams and its stained-glass windows depicting purple-robed St. Maudez, for whom both village and church were named. Flanked by an island tower and a seal on a rock, the saint watched the coffin-bearers pass out of the church.

Polworth, by far the shortest of the six men, walked directly behind Strike, doing his best to bear a fair share of the load.

The mourners, many of whom had had to stand at the back of the packed church, or else listen as best they could from outside, formed a respectful circle around the hearse outside as the shining oak box was loaded onto it. Barely a murmur was heard as the rear doors slammed shut on Joan’s earthly remains. As the straight-backed undertaker in his thick black overcoat climbed back into the driver’s seat, Strike put an arm around Ted’s shoulders. Together, they watched the hearse drive out of sight. Strike could feel Ted trembling.

“Look at all these flowers, Ted,” said Lucy, whose eyes were swollen shut, and the three of them turned back to the church to examine the dense bank of sprays, wreaths and bunches that created a jubilant blaze against the exterior wall of the tiny church.

“Beautiful lilies, Ted, look… from Marion and Gary, all the way from Canada…”

The congregation was still spilling out of the church to join those outside. All kept a distance from the family while they moved crabwise along the wall of the church. Joan would surely have delighted in the mass of floral tributes and Strike drew unexpected consolation from messages that Lucy was reading aloud to Ted, whose eyes, like hers, were puffy and red.

“Ian and Judy,” she told her uncle. “Terry and Olive…”

“Loads, aren’t there?” said Ted, marveling.

The now-whispering, milling crowd of mourners were doubtless wondering whether it would be heartless to set out immediately for the Ship and Castle, where the wake was to be held, Strike thought. He couldn’t blame them; he too was craving a pint and perhaps a chaser too.

“‘With deepest sympathy, from Robin, Sam, Andy, Saul and Pat,’” Lucy read aloud. She turned to look at Strike, smiling. “How lovely. Did you tell Robin pink roses were Joan’s favorite?”

“Don’t think so,” said Strike, who hadn’t known himself.

The fact that his agency was represented here among the tributes to Joan meant a great deal to him. Unlike Lucy, he’d be traveling back to London alone, by train. Even though he’d been craving solitude for the past ten days, the prospect of his silent attic room was cheerless, after these long days of dread and loss. The roses, which were for Joan, were also for him: they said, you won’t be alone, you have something you’ve built, and all right, it might not be a family, but there are still people who care about you waiting in London. Strike told himself “people,” because there were five names on the card, but he turned away thinking only of Robin.

Lucy drove Ted and Strike to the Ship and Castle in Ted’s car, leaving Greg to follow with the boys. None of them talked in the car; a kind of emotional exhaustion had set in.

Joan had known what she was doing, Strike thought, as he watched the familiar streets slide past. He was grateful they weren’t following to the crematorium, that they would reclaim the body in a form that could be clutched to the chest and borne on a boat, in the quiet of a sunny afternoon to come, just the family, to say their last, private farewell.

The Ship and Castle’s dining-room windows looked out over St. Mawes Bay, which was overcast but tranquil. Strike bought Ted and himself pints, saw his uncle safely into a chair among a knot of solicitous friends, returned to the bar for a double Famous Grouse, which he downed in one, then carried his pint to the window.

The sea was Quaker gray, sparkling occasionally where the silvered fringes of the clouds caught it. Viewed from the hotel window, St. Mawes was a study in mouse and slate, but the little rowing boats perched on the mudflats below provided welcome dabs of cheer­ful color.

“Y’all right, Diddy?”

He turned: Ilsa was with Polworth, and she reached up and hugged Strike. All three of them had been at St. Mawes Primary School together. In those days, as Strike remembered it, Ilsa hadn’t liked Polworth much. He’d always been unpopular with female classmates. Over Dave’s shoulder, Strike could see Polworth’s wife, Penny, chatting with a group of female friends.

“Nick really wanted to be here, Corm, but he had to work,” said Ilsa.

“Of course,” said Strike. “It was really good of you to come, Ilsa.”

“I loved Joan,” she said simply. “Mum and Dad are going to have Ted over on Friday night. Dad’s taking him for a round of golf on Tuesday.”

The Polworths’ two daughters, who weren’t renowned for their good behavior, were playing tag among the mourners. The smaller of the two—Strike could never remember which was Roz and which Mel—dashed around them and clung, momentarily, to the back of Strike’s legs, as though he were a piece of furniture, looking out at her sister, before sprinting off again, giggling.

“And we’re having Ted over Saturday,” said Polworth, as though nothing had happened. Neither Polworth ever corrected their children unless they were directly inconveniencing their parents. “So don’t worry, Diddy, we’ll make sure the old fella’s all right.”

“Cheers, mate,” said Strike, with difficulty. He hadn’t cried in church, hadn’t cried all these last horrible days, because there’d been so much to organize, and he found relief in activity. However, the kindness shown by his old friends was seeping through his defenses: he wanted to express his gratitude properly, because Polworth hadn’t yet permitted him to say all he wanted about the way he’d enabled Strike and Lucy to reach the dying Joan. Before Strike could make a start, however, Penny Polworth joined their group, followed by two women Strike didn’t recognize, but who were both beaming at him.

“Hi, Corm,” said Penny, who was dark-eyed and blunt-nosed, and who’d worn her hair pulled back into a practical ponytail since she was five. “Abigail and Lindy really want to meet you.”

“Hello,” said Strike, unsmiling. He held out his hand and shook both of theirs, sure that they were about to talk about his detective triumphs and already annoyed. Today, of all days, he wanted to be nothing but Joan’s nephew. He assumed that Abigail was Lindy’s daughter, because if you removed the younger woman’s carefully penciled, geometrically precise eyebrows and fake tan, they had the same round, flat faces.

“She was ever so proud of you,” said Lindy.

“We follow everything about you in the papers,” said plump Abigail, who seemed to be on the verge of giggling.

“What are you working on now? I don’t suppose you can say, can you?” said Lindy, devouring him with her eyes.

“D’you ever get involved with the royals, at all?” asked Abigail.

Fuck’s sake.

“No,” said Strike. “Excuse me, need a smoke.”

He knew he’d offended them, but didn’t care, though he could imagine Joan’s disapproval as he walked away from the group by the window. What would it have hurt him, she’d have said, to entertain her friends by talking about his job? Joan had liked to show him off, the nephew who was the closest thing she’d ever have to a son, and it suddenly came back to him, after these long days of guilt, why he’d avoided coming back to the little town for so long: because he’d found himself slowly stifling under the weight of teacups and doilies and carefully curated conversations, and Joan’s suffocating pride, and the neighbors’ curiosity, and the sidelong glances at his false leg when nobody thought he could see them looking.

As he stumped down the hall, he pulled out his mobile and pressed Robin’s number without conscious thought.

“Hi,” she said, sounding mildly surprised to hear from him.

“Hi,” said Strike, pausing on the doorstep of the hotel to pull a cigarette out of the packet with his teeth. He crossed the road and lit it, looking out over the mudflats at the sea. “Just wanted to check in, and to thank you.”

“What for?”

“The flowers from the agency. They meant a lot to the family.”

“Oh,” said Robin, “I’m glad… How was the funeral?”

“It was, you know… a funeral,” said Strike, watching a seagull bobbing on the tranquil sea. “Anything new your end?”

“Well, yes, actually,” said Robin, after a fractional hesitation, “but now’s probably not the moment. I’ll tell you when you’re—”

“Now’s a great moment,” said Strike, who was yearning for normality, for something to think about that wasn’t connected to Joan, or loss, or St. Mawes.

So Robin related the story of her interview with Paul Satchwell, and Strike listened in silence.

“… and then he called me a nasty little bitch,” Robin concluded, “and left.”

“Christ almighty,” said Strike, genuinely amazed, not only that Robin had managed to draw so much information from Satchwell, but at what she’d found out.

“I’ve just been sitting here looking up records on my phone—I’m back in the Land Rover, going to head home in a bit. Blanche Doris Satchwell, died 1945, aged ten. She’s buried in a cemetery outside Leamington Spa. Satchwell called it a mercy killing. Well,” Robin corrected herself, “he called it a dream, which was his way of telling Margot, while retaining some plausible deniability, wasn’t it? It’s a traumatic memory to carry around with you from age six, though, isn’t it?”

“Certainly is,” said Strike, “and it gives him a motive of sorts, if he thought Margot might tell the authorities…”

“Exactly. And what d’you think about the Janice bit? Why didn’t she tell us she knew Satchwell?”

“Very good question,” said Strike. “Go over it again, what he said about Janice?”

“When I told him Janice was the one who said Margot was spotted in Leamington Spa, he said she was a shit-stirrer and that she was trying to implicate him somehow in Margot’s disappearance.”

“Very interesting indeed,” said Strike, frowning at the bobbing seagull, which was staring at the horizon with concentrated intent, its cruel, hooked beak pointing toward the horizon. “And what was that thing about Roy?”

“He said somebody had told him Roy was a ‘mummy’s boy’ who ‘had a stick up his arse,’” said Robin. “But he wouldn’t tell me who’d said it.”

“Doesn’t sound much like Janice, but you never know,” said Strike. “Well, you’ve done bloody well, Robin.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll have a proper catch-up on Bamborough when I get back,” said Strike. “Well, we’ll need a catch-up on everything.”

“Great. I hope the rest of your stay’s OK,” said Robin, with that note of finality that indicated the call was about to end. Strike wanted to keep her on the line, but she evidently thought she oughtn’t monopolize his time in his last afternoon with the grieving family, and he could think of no pretext to keep her talking. They bade each other goodbye, and Strike returned his mobile to his pocket.

“Here you go, Diddy.”

Polworth had emerged from the hotel carrying a couple of fresh pints. Strike accepted his with thanks, and both turned to face the bay as they drank.

“You back up to London tomorrow, are you?” said Polworth.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “But not for long. Joan wanted us to take her ashes out on Ted’s boat and scatter them at sea.”

“Nice idea,” said Polworth.

“Listen, mate—thanks for everything.”

“Shut up,” said Polworth. “You’d do it for me.”

“You’re right,” said Strike. “I would.”

“Easy to say, you cunt,” said Polworth, without skipping a beat, “seeing as my mum’s dead and I don’t know where the fuck my dad is.”

Strike laughed.

“Well, I’m a private detective. Want me to find him for you?”

“Fuck, no,” said Polworth. “Good riddance.”

They drank their pints. There was a brief break in the cloud and the sea was suddenly a carpet of diamonds and the bobbing seagull, a paper-white piece of origami. Strike was wondering idly whether Polworth’s passionate devotion to Cornwall was a reaction against his absent Birmingham-born father when Polworth spoke up again:

“Speaking of fathers… Joan told me yours was looking for a reunion.”

“She did, did she?”

“Don’t be narked,” said Polworth. “You know what she was like. Wanted me to know you were going through a tough time. Nothing doing, I take it?”

“No,” said Strike. “Nothing doing.”

The brief silence was broken by the shrieks and yells of Polworth’s two daughters sprinting out of the hotel. Ignoring their father and Strike, they wriggled under the chain separating road from damp shingle and ran out to the water’s edge, pursued a moment later by Strike’s nephew Luke, who was holding a couple of cream buns in his hand and clearly intent on throwing them at the girls.

“OI,” bellowed Strike. “NO!”

Luke’s face fell.

“They started it,” he said, turning to show Strike a white smear down the back of his black suit jacket, newly purchased for his great-aunt’s funeral.

“And I’m finishing it,” said Strike, while the Polworth girls giggled, peeking out over the rim of the rowing boat behind which they had taken refuge. “Put those back where you got them.”

Glaring at his uncle, Luke took a defiant bite out of one of the buns, then turned and headed back into the hotel.

“Little shit,” muttered Strike.

Polworth watched in a detached way as his girls began to kick cold seawater and sand at each other. Only when the younger girl overbalanced and fell backward into a foot of icy sea, eliciting a scream of shock, did he react.

“Fuck’s sake… get inside. Come on—don’t bloody whine, it’s your own fault—come on, inside, now!”

The three Polworths headed back into the Ship and Castle, leaving Strike alone again.

The bobbing seagull, which was doubtless used to a tide of tourists, to the chugging and grinding of the Falmouth ferry and the fishing boats passing in and out of the bay every day, had been unfazed by the shrieks and yells of the Polworth girls. Its sharp eyes were fixed upon something Strike couldn’t see, far out at sea. Only when the clouds closed again and the sea darkened to iron, did the bird take off at last. Strike’s eyes followed it as it soared on wide, curved wings into the distance, away from the shelter of the bay for open sea, ready to resume the hard but necessary business of survival.