Postcard was, so far, an entirely unknown quantity. A middle-aged and, in Robin’s opinion, fairly unattractive television weather forecaster had come to the agency after the police had said there was nothing they could do about the postcards that had begun to arrive at his place of work and, most worryingly, hand delivered to his house in the small hours. The cards made no threats; indeed, they were often no more than banal comments on the weatherman’s choice of tie, yet they gave evidence of knowing far more about the man’s movements and private life than a stranger should have. The use of postcards was also a peculiar choice, when persecution was so much easier, these days, online. The agency’s subcontractor, Andy Hutchins, had now spent two solid weeks’ worth of nights parked outside the weatherman’s house, but Postcard hadn’t yet shown themselves.

Last, and most lucrative, was the interesting case of Shifty, a young investment banker whose rapid rise through his company had generated a predictable amount of resentment among overlooked colleagues, which had exploded into full-blown suspicion when he’d been promoted to the second-in-command job ahead of three undeniably better qualified candidates. Exactly what leverage Shifty had on the CEO (known to the agency as Shifty’s Boss or SB) was now a matter of interest not only to Shifty’s subordinates, but to a couple of suspicious board members, who’d met Strike in a dark bar in the City to lay out their concerns. Strike’s current strategy was to try to find out more about Shifty through his personal assistant, and to this end Morris had been given the job of chatting her up after hours, revealing neither his real name nor his occupation, but trying to gauge how deep her loyalty to Shifty ran.

“D’you need to be back in London by any particular time?” Strike asked, after a brief silence.

“No,” said Robin, “why?”

“Would you mind,” said Strike, “if we stop for food? I didn’t have breakfast.”

Despite remembering that he had, in fact, had a plate full of croissant crumbs in front of him when she arrived at the Palacio Lounge, Robin agreed. Strike seemed to read her mind.

“You can’t count a croissant. Mostly air.”

Robin laughed.

By the time they reached Subway at Cornwall Services, the atmosphere between the two of them had become almost light-hearted, notwithstanding their tiredness. Once Robin, mindful of her resolution to eat more healthily, had started on her salad and Strike had taken a few satisfying mouthfuls of his steak and cheese sandwich, he emailed Kim Sullivan their form letter about billing clients, then said,

“I had a row with Lucy this morning.”

Robin surmised that it must have been a bad one, for Strike to mention it.

“Five o’clock, in the garden, while I was having a quiet smoke.”

“Bit early for conflict,” said Robin, picking unenthusiastically through lettuce leaves.

“Well, it turns out we’re competing in the Who Loves Joan Best Handicap Stakes. Didn’t even know I’d been entered.”

He ate in silence for a minute, then went on,

“It ended with me telling her I thought Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

Robin, who’d been sipping her water, inhaled, and was seized by a paroxysm of coughs. Diners at nearby tables glanced round as Robin spluttered and gasped. Grabbing a paper napkin from the table to mop her chin and her streaming eyes, she wheezed,

“What—on earth—did you say that for?”

“Because Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

Still trying to cough water out of her windpipe, Robin laughed, eyes streaming, but shook her head.

“Bloody hell, Cormoran,” she said, when at last she could talk properly.

“You haven’t just had a solid week of them. Luke broke my new headphones, then ran off with my leg, the little shit. Then Lucy accuses me of favoring Jack. Of course I favor him—he’s the only decent one.”

“Yes, but telling their mother—”

“Yeah, I know,” said Strike heavily. “I’ll ring and apologize.” There was a brief pause. “But for fuck’s sake,” he growled, “why do I have to take all three of them out together? Neither of the others give a toss about the military. ‘Adam cried when you came back from the War Rooms,’ my arse. The little bastard didn’t like that I’d bought Jack stuff, that’s all. If Lucy had her way, I’d be taking them on group outings every weekend, and they’d take turns to choose; it’ll be the zoo and effing go-karting, and everything that was good about me seeing Jack’ll be ruined. I like Jack,” said Strike, with what appeared to be surprise. “We’re interested in the same stuff. What’s with this mania for treating them all the same? Useful life lesson, I’d have thought, realizing you aren’t owed. You don’t get stuff automatically because of who you’re related to.

“But fine, she wants me to buy the other two presents,” and he framed a square in mid-air with his hands. “‘Try Not Being a Little Shit.’ I’ll get that made up as a plaque for Luke’s bedroom wall.”

They bought a bag of snacks, then resumed their drive. As they turned out onto the road again, Strike expressed his guilt that he couldn’t share the driving, because the old Land Rover was too much of a challenge with his false leg.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Robin. “I don’t mind. What’s funny?” she added, seeing Strike smirking at something he had found in their bag of food.

“English strawberries,” he said.

“And that’s comical, why?”

He explained about Dave Polworth’s fury that goods of Cornish origin weren’t labeled as such, and his commensurate glee that more and more locals were putting their Cornish identity above English on forms.

“Social identity theory’s very interesting,” said Robin. “That and self-categorization theory. I studied them at uni. There are implications for businesses as well as society, you know…”

She talked happily for a couple of minutes before realizing, on glancing sideways, that Strike had fallen fast asleep. Choosing not to take offense, because he looked gray with tiredness, Robin fell silent, and other than the occasional grunting snore, there was no more communication to be had from Strike until, on the outskirts of Swindon, he suddenly jerked awake again.

“Shit,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “sorry. How long was I asleep?”

“About three hours,” said Robin.

“Shit,” he said again, “sorry,” and immediately reached for a ciga-rette. “I’ve been kipping on the world’s most uncomfortable sofa and the kids have woken me up at the crack of fucking dawn every day. Want anything from the food bag?”

“Yes,” said Robin, throwing the diet to the winds. She was in urgent need of a pick-me-up. “Chocolate. English or Cornish, I don’t mind.”

“Sorry,” Strike said for a third time. “You were telling me about a social theory or something.”

Robin grinned.

“You fell asleep around the time I was telling you my fascinating application of social identity theory to detective practice.”

“Which is?” he said, trying to make up in politeness now what he had lost earlier.

Robin, who knew perfectly well that this was why he had asked the question, said,

“In essence, we tend to sort each other and ourselves into groupings, and that usually leads to an overestimation of similarities between members of a group, and an underestimation of the similarities between insiders and outsiders.”

“So you’re saying all Cornishmen aren’t rugged salt-of-the-earthers and all Englishmen aren’t pompous arseholes?”

Strike unwrapped a Yorkie and put it into her hand.

“Sounds unlikely, but I’ll run it past Polworth next time we meet.”

Ignoring the strawberries, which had been Robin’s purchase, Strike opened a can of Coke and drank it while smoking and watching the sky turn bloody as they drew nearer to London.

“Dennis Creed’s still alive, you know,” said Strike, watching trees blur out of the window. “I was reading about him online this morning.”

“Where is he?” asked Robin.

“Broadmoor,” said Strike. “He went to Wakefield initially, then Belmarsh, and was transferred to Broadmoor in ’95.”

“What was the psychiatric diagnosis?”

“Controversial. Psychiatrists disagreed about whether or not he was sane at his trial. Very high IQ. In the end the jury decided he was capable of knowing what he was doing was wrong, hence prison, not hospital. But he must’ve developed symptoms since that to justify medical treatment.

“On a very small amount of reading,” Strike went on, “I can see why the lead investigator thought Margot Bamborough might have been one of Creed’s victims. Allegedly, there was a small van seen speeding dangerously in the area, around the time she should have been walking toward the Three Kings. Creed used a van,” Strike elucidated, in response to Robin’s questioning look, “in some of the other known abductions.”

The lamps along the motorway had been lit before Robin, having finished her Yorkie, quoted:

“‘She lies in a holy place.’”

Still smoking, Strike snorted.

“Typical medium bollocks.”

“You think?”

“Yes, I bloody think,” said Strike. “Very convenient, the way people can only speak in crossword clues from the afterlife. Come off it.”

“All right, calm down. I was only thinking out loud.”

“You could spin almost anywhere as ‘a holy place’ if you wanted. Clerkenwell, where she disappeared—that whole area’s got some kind of religious connection. Monks or something. Know where Dennis Creed was living in 1974?”

“Go on.”

“Paradise Park, Islington,” said Strike.