Often, only an approximate location was available. She knew that Strike would not let her go looking for any of these basements and tenements where “mostly east european grils” or “all Chinese tail” were working.

Taking a break and subconsciously hoping to loosen the tight knot in her chest, she looked up at the television. Princes William and Harry were walking up the aisle together. As Robin watched, the door to the sitting room opened and Matthew walked in, carrying a mug of tea. He had not offered to make her one. He sat down in the armchair, saying nothing, and stared at the television screen.

Robin returned to her work, hyperconscious of Matthew beside her. Joining her without talking was a departure. Acceptance of her separateness—not interrupting her, even with the offer of tea—was also new. So was the fact that he did not pick up the remote control and change the channel.

The cameras returned to the outside of the Goring Hotel, where they were keeping vigil for the first glimpse of Kate Middleton in her wedding dress. Robin took covert glimpses over the top of her laptop while scrolling slowly down a series of barely literate comments about a brothel near Commercial Road.

An outburst of excitable comment and cheering made Robin look up in time to see Kate Middleton climbing into a limousine. Long lace sleeves, just like the ones she had removed from her own wedding dress…

The limousine moved slowly away. Kate Middleton was just visible beside her father in the car. So she had chosen to wear her hair down. Robin had planned to keep her hair down too. Matthew liked it that way. Not that that mattered anymore…

The crowds were cheering all the way down the Mall, Union Jacks as far as the eye could see.

As Matthew turned towards her, Robin pretended to be immersed in her laptop again.

“D’you want tea?”

“No,” she said. “Thanks,” she added grudgingly, aware how aggressive she had sounded.

Her mobile beeped beside her. Matthew often scowled or sulked when this happened on her days off: he expected it to be Strike, which it sometimes was. Today he merely turned back to watch the television.

Robin picked up her mobile and read the text that had just arrived:

How do I know you’re not press?

It was the lead she was pursuing without Strike’s knowledge and she had her answer ready. While the crowds cheered the limousine’s slow progress on screen, she typed in:

If the press knew about you, they’d already be outside your house. I told you to look me up online. There’s a picture of me going into court to give evidence in Owen Quine’s murder case.

Have you found it?

She put the mobile down again, her heart beating faster.

Kate Middleton was getting out of her limousine at the Abbey. Her waist looked tiny in the lace dress. She looked so happy… genuinely happy… Robin’s heart hammered as she watched the beautiful woman in a tiara proceed towards the Abbey entrance.

Her mobile beeped again.

Yes I’ve seen the picture. So?

Matthew made a peculiar noise into his mug of tea. Robin ignored him. He probably thought that she was texting Strike, usually the cause of his little grimaces and noises of exasperation. Switching her mobile to camera mode, Robin held it up in front of her face and took a photo.

The flash startled Matthew, who looked around. He was crying.

Robin’s fingers trembled as she sent the photograph of herself off in a text. After that, not wanting to look at Matthew, she watched the television again.

Kate Middleton and her father were now walking slowly up the scarlet-carpeted aisle that divided a sea of hatted guests. The culmination of a million fairy tales and fables was being played out in front of her: the commoner walking slowly towards her prince, beauty moving inexorably towards high rank…

Against her will, Robin remembered the night that Matthew had proposed under the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus. There had been tramps sitting on the steps, jeering as Matthew sank to his knees. She had been caught completely off guard by that unexpected scene on the grimy steps, Matthew risking his best suit on the damp, dirty stone, alcoholic fumes wafting towards them over the smell of exhaust fumes: the little blue velvet box and then the winking sapphire, smaller and paler than Kate Middleton’s. Matthew later told her he’d chosen it because it matched her eyes. One of the tramps had got to his feet and applauded drunkenly when she said yes. She remembered the flashing neon lights of Piccadilly reflected on Matthew’s beaming face.

Nine years of shared life, of growing up together, of arguing and reconciling, of loving. Nine years, holding fast to each other through trauma that ought to have broken them apart.

She remembered the day after the proposal, the day she had been sent by the temping agency to Strike. It seemed much, much longer ago than it was. She felt like a different person… at least, she had felt like a different person, until Strike told her to stay at home and copy down phone numbers, evading the question of when she would return to work as his partner.

“They split up.”

“What?” said Robin.

“They did,” said Matthew, and his voice broke. He nodded at the screen. Prince William had just turned to look at his bride. “They broke up for a bit.”

“I know they did,” said Robin.

She tried to speak coldly, but Matthew’s expression was bereft.

Maybe on some level I think you deserve better than me.

“Is it—are we really over?” he asked.

Kate Middleton had drawn level with Prince William at the altar. They looked delighted to be reunited.

Staring at the screen, Robin knew that today her answer to Matthew’s question would be taken as definitive. Her engagement ring was still lying where she had left it, on top of old accountancy textbooks on the bookcase. Neither of them had touched it since she had taken it off.

“Dearly beloved…” began the Dean of Westminster on screen.

She thought of the day that Matthew had asked her out for the very first time and remembered walking home from school, her insides on fire with excitement and pride. She remembered Sarah Shadlock giggling, leaning against him in a pub in Bath, and Matthew frowning slightly and pulling away. She thought of Strike and Elin… what have they got to do with anything?

She remembered Matthew, white-faced and shaking, in the hospital where they had kept her for twenty-four hours after the rape. He had missed an exam to be with her, simply taken off without leaving word. His mother had been annoyed about that. He had had to resit in the summer.

I was twenty-one and I didn’t know then what I know now: that there’s nobody like you and that I could never love anyone else as much as I love you…

Sarah Shadlock, arms around him when he was drunk, no doubt, while he poured out his confused feelings about Robin, agoraphobic, unable to be touched…

The mobile beeped. Automatically, Robin picked it up and looked at it.

All right, I believe it’s you.

Robin could not take in what she was reading and set the mobile down on the sofa without responding. Men looked so tragic when they cried. Matthew’s eyes were scarlet. His shoulders heaved.

“Matt,” she said in a low voice over his silent sobs. “Matt…”

She held out her hand.

38

Dance on Stilts

The sky was marbled pink, but the streets were still heaving with people. A million Londoners and out-of-towners swarmed the pavements: red, white and blue hats, Union Jacks and plastic crowns, beer-swilling buffoons clutching the hands of children with painted faces, all of them bobbing and eddying on a tide of mawkish sentiment. They filled the Tube, they packed the streets, and as he forced his way through them, looking for what he needed, he heard more than once the refrain of the national anthem, sung tunelessly by the tipsy, and once with virtuosity by a gaggle of rollicking Welsh women who blocked his way out of the station.

He had left It sobbing. The wedding had lifted It temporarily out

of It’s misery, led to cloying affection and self-pitying tears, to plaintive hints about commitment and companionship. He had kept his temper only because his every nerve, every atom of his being focused on what he was going to do tonight. Focused on the release that was coming, he had been patient and loving, but his reward had been It taking the biggest liberty yet and trying to prevent him leaving.

He had already put on the jacket that accommodated his knives, and he had cracked. Although he had not laid a finger on It, he knew how to terrify and intimidate with words alone, with body language, with a sudden revelation of the beast inside. He had slammed his way out of the house, leaving It cowed and appalled behind him.

He would have to work hard to make up for that, he reflected as he pushed his way through a crowd of drinkers on a pavement. A bunch of poxy flowers, some fake regret, some bullshit about being stressed… the thought turned his expression mean. Nobody dared challenge him, not with his size and demeanor, though he knocked into several of them plowing his way through them. They were like skittles, fleshy ninepins, and they had about as much life and meaning to him. People had significance in his life only in what they could do for him. That was how The Secretary had come to assume such importance. He had never tracked a woman for so long.

Yes, the last one had taken a while too, but that had been different: that dumb little bitch had toppled so gleefully into his clutches you’d have thought getting hacked to pieces was her life’s ambition. Which, of course, it had been…

The thought of it made him smile. The peach towels and the stink of her blood… He was starting to get the feeling again, that feeling of omnipotence. He was going to get one tonight, he could feel it…

Headin’ for a meeting, shining up my greeting…

He was on the lookout for a girl who had become separated from the massing throngs, addled with drink and sentimentality, but they moved in herds through the streets, so he was starting to think he’d be better with a whore after all.

Times had changed. It wasn’t how it had been in the old days. Hookers didn’t need to walk the streets anymore, not with mobile phones and the internet. Buying yourself a woman was as easy as dialing up a takeaway nowadays, but he didn’t want to leave a trail online or on some bitch’s mobile records. Only the dregs were left on the streets and he knew all the areas, but it had to be somewhere that he had no association with, somewhere a long way from It…

By ten to midnight he was in Shacklewell, walking the streets with his lower face concealed by the upturned collar of his jacket, his hat low on his forehead, the knives bouncing heavily against his chest as he walked, one a straightforward carving knife, the other a compact machete. Lit windows of curry houses and more pubs, Union Jack bunting everywhere… if it took all night, he would find her…

On a dark corner stood three women in tiny skirts, smoking, talking. He passed by on the other side of the street and one of them called out to him, but he ignored her, passing on into the darkness. Three was too many: two witnesses left.

Hunting was both easier and more difficult on foot. No worries about number plates caught on camera, but the difficulty was where he took her, not to mention the getaway being so much harder.

He prowled the streets for another hour until he found himself back on that stretch of road where the three whores had stood. Only two of them now. More manageable. A single witness. His face was almost entirely covered. He hesitated, and as he did so a car slowed and the driver had a brief conversation with the girls. One of them got in and the car drove away.

The glorious poison flooded his veins and his brain. It was exactly like the first time he’d killed: then, too, he had been left with the uglier one, to do with whatever he wanted.

No time for hesitation. Either of her mates could come back.

“Back again, babes?”

Her voice was guttural, although she looked young, with red hennaed hair in a shabby bob, piercings in both ears and her nose. Her nostrils were wet and pink, as though she had a cold. Along with her leather jacket and rubber miniskirt, she wore vertiginous heels on which she seemed to have trouble balancing.

“How much?” he asked, barely listening to her answer. What mattered was where.

“We can go to my place if you want.”

He agreed, but he was tense. It had better be a self-contained room or a bedsit: nobody on the stairs, no one to hear or see, just some dirty, dark little nook where a body begged to be. If it turned out to be a communal place, some actual brothel, with other girls and a fat old bitch in charge or, worse, a pimp…

She wobbled out onto the road before the pedestrian light turned green. He seized her arm and yanked her back as a white van went hurtling past.

“My savior!” she giggled. “Ta, babes.”

He could tell she was on something. He’d seen plenty like her. Her raw, weeping nose disgusted him. Their reflection in the dark shop windows they passed could have been father and daughter, she was so short and skinny and he so large, so burly.

“See the wedding?” she asked.

“What?”

“Royal wedding? She looked lovely.”

Even this dirty little whore was wedding-crazy. She babbled on about it as they walked, laughing far too often, teetering on her cheap stilettos, while he remained entirely silent.

“Shame ’is mum never saw ’im marry, though, innit? ’Ere we go,” said the girl, pointing to a tenement a block ahead. “That’s my gaff.”

He could see it in the distance: there were people standing around the lit door, a man sitting on the steps. He stopped dead.

“No.”

“’Smatter? Don’t worry about them, babes, they know me,” she said earnestly.

“No,” he said again, his hand tight around her thin arm, suddenly furious. What was she trying to pull? Did she think he was born yesterday?

“Down there,” he said, pointing to a shadowy space between two buildings.

“Babes, there’s a bed—”

“Down there,” he repeated angrily.

She blinked at him out of heavily made-up eyes, a little fazed, but her thought processes were fogged, the silly bitch, and he convinced her silently, by sheer force of personality.

“Yeah, all right, babes.”

Their footsteps crunched on a surface that seemed to be part gravel. He was afraid there might be security lights or sensors, but a thicker, deeper darkness awaited them twenty yards off the road.

His hands were gloved. He handed over the notes. She unzipped his trousers for him. He was still soft. While she was busy on her knees in the darkness, trying to persuade him into tumescence, he was pulling his knives silently from their hiding place inside his jacket. A slither of nylon lining, one in each hand, his palms sweaty on the plastic handles…

He kicked her so hard in the stomach that she flew backwards through the air. A choking, wheezing gasp then a crunch of gravel told him where she had landed. Lurching forward, his flies still open, his trousers sliding down his hips, he found her by tripping over her and was on her.

The carving knife plunged and plunged: he hit bone, probably rib, and stabbed again. A whistle from her lungs and then, shocking him, she screamed.

Though he was straddling her she was fighting and he could not find her throat to finish her. He gave a mighty left-handed swing with the machete, but incredibly she still had enough life in her to shriek again—

A stream of obscenities poured from his mouth—stab, stab and stab again with the carving knife—he punctured her palm as she tried to stop him and that gave him an idea—slamming her arm down, kneeling on it, he raised his knife—

“You fucking little cocksucking…”

“Who’s down there?”

Fucking hell and shit.

A man’s voice, coming out of the dark from the direction of the street, said again:

“Who’s there?”

He scrambled off her, pulling up his pants and his trousers, backing away as quietly

as he could, two knives in his left hand and what he thought were two of her fingers in his right, still warm, bony and bleeding… She was still moaning and whimpering… then, with a last long wheeze, she fell silent…

He hobbled away into the unknown, away from her motionless form, every sense as sharp as a cat’s to the distant approach of a hound.

“Everything all right down there?” said an echoing male voice.

He had reached a solid wall. He felt his way along it until it turned into wire mesh. By the distant light of a streetlamp he saw the outlines of what looked like a ramshackle car repair shop beyond the fence, the hulking forms of vehicles eerie in the gloom. Somewhere in the space he had just left he heard footsteps: the man had come to investigate the screams.

He must not panic. He must not run. Noise would be fatal. Slowly he edged along the wire enclosure containing the old cars, towards a patch of darkness that might be either an opening onto an adjoining street or a dead end. He slid the bloody knives back inside his jacket, dropped her fingers into his pocket and crept along, trying not to breathe.

An echoing shout from the alleyway:

“Fucking hell! Andy—ANDY!”

He began to run. They would not hear him now, not with their yells echoing off the walls, and as though the universe were once again his friend, it laid soft grassy ground beneath his feet as he lumbered into the new darkness of the opening…

A dead end, a six-foot wall. He could hear traffic on the other side. Nothing else for it: panting, scrambling, wishing he were what he had once been, fit and strong and young, he tried to hoist himself up, his feet trying to find some purchase, his muscles screaming in protest…