There was another minute’s silence, while Strike sat lost in thought and Robin re-read the statements laid out in front of her.

“The phone boxes,” said Strike, at last. “Those bloody phone boxes…”

“What about them?”

“Talbot wanted Ruby to have seen the two struggling women beside the two boxes in Clerkenwell Green, right? So he could tie them to the van that was speeding away up Aylesbury Street, which was supposed to contain Creed.”

“Right,” said Robin.

“But after the Fleurys came forward, Talbot tried to get Ruby to agree she’d seen the two struggling women beside the first phone box, the one at the end of Albemarle Way.”

“But she wouldn’t change her story,” said Robin, “because she’d seen Theo there.”

“Precisely,” said Strike, “but that doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t—”

“She’s driving round in an enormous circle in the rain, right, looking for this house she can’t find, right?”

“Yes…”

“Well, just because Ruby saw Theo get into a van by the phone box on one of her circuits doesn’t mean she can’t have seen two struggling women on her second or third circuit. We know she was hazy about landmarks, unfamiliar with the area and with no sense of direction, her daughter was very clear about that. But she had this very retentive visual memory, she’s somebody who notices clothes and hairstyles…”

Strike looked down at the desk again, and for the second time, picked up Irene Hickson’s receipt and examined it. Then, so suddenly that Robin jumped, Strike let the receipt fall and stood up, both hands clasped over the back of his head.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit! Never trust a phone call whose provenance you haven’t checked!”

“What phone call?” said Robin nervously, casting her mind back over any phone calls she’d taken over the course of the case.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Strike, walking out of the room into the outer office and then back again, still clasping the back of his head, apparently needing to pace, just as Robin had needed to walk when she’d found out Strike could interview Creed. “How did I not fucking see it?”

“Cormoran, what—?”

“Why did Margot keep an empty chocolate box?” said Strike.

“I don’t know,” said Robin, confused.

“You know what?” said Strike slowly. “I think I do.”

68

… an Hyena was,

That feeds on wemens flesh, as others feede on gras.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

The high-security mental hospital that is Broadmoor lies slightly over an hour outside London, in the county of Berkshire. The word “Broadmoor” had long since lost all bucolic associations in the collective mind of the British public, and Strike was no exception to this rule. Far from connoting a wide stretch of grassland or heath, the name spoke to Strike only of violence, heinous crimes and two hundred of the most dangerous men in Britain, whom the tabloids called monsters. Accordingly, and in spite of the fact that Strike knew he was visiting a hospital and not a prison, he took all the common sense measures he’d have taken for a high-security jail: he wore no tie, ensured that neither he or his car was carrying anything likely to trigger a burdensome search, brought two kinds of photographic ID and a copy of his letter from the Ministry of Justice, set out early, certain, though he’d never been there before, that getting inside the facility would be time-consuming.

It was a golden September morning. Sunshine pouring down upon the road ahead from between fluffy white clouds, and as Strike drove through Berkshire in his BMW, he listened to the news on the radio, the lead item of which was that Scotland had voted, by 55 percent to 45 percent, to remain in the United Kingdom. He was wondering how Dave Polworth and Sam Barclay were taking the news, when his mobile rang.

“It’s Brian, Brian Tucker,” said the hoarse voice. “Not interrupting, am I? Wanna wish you good luck.”

“Thanks, Brian,” said Strike.

They’d finally met three days previously, at Strike’s office. Tucker had shown Strike the old letter from Creed, described the butterfly pendant taken from the killer’s basement, which he believed was his daughter’s, shared his theories and trembled with emotion and nerves at the thought of Strike coming face to face with the man he believed had murdered his eldest daughter.

“I’ll let you go, I won’t keep you,” said Tucker. “You’ll ring me when it’s over, though?”

“I will, of course,” said Strike.

It was hard to concentrate on the news now that he’d heard Tucker’s anxiety and excitement. Strike turned off the radio, and turned his thoughts instead to what lay ahead.

Gratifying though it would be to believe that he, Cormoran Strike, might trick or persuade Creed into confessing where all others had failed, Strike wasn’t that egotistical. He’d interviewed plenty of suspects in his career; the skill lay in making it easier for a suspect to disclose the truth than to continue lying. Some were worn down by patient questioning, others resistant to all but intense pressure, still others yearned to unburden themselves, and the interrogator’s methods had to change accordingly.

However, in talking to Creed, half of Strike’s interrogatory arsenal would be out of commission. For one thing, he was there at Creed’s pleasure, because the patient had had to give his consent for the interview. For another, it was hard to see how Strike could paint a frightening picture of the consequences of silence, when his interviewee was already serving life in Broadmoor. Creed’s secrets were the only power he had left, and Strike was well aware that persuading him to relinquish any of them might prove a task beyond any human investigator. Standard appeals to conscience, or to the desire to figure as a better person to the self or to others, were likewise useless. As Creed’s entire life demonstrated, his primary sources of enjoyment were inflicting pain and establishing dominance, and it was doubtful that anything else would persuade him into disclosures.

Strike’s first glimpse of the infamous hospital was of a fortress on raised ground. It had been built by the Victorians in the middle of woodland and meadows, a red-brick edifice with a clocktower the highest point in the compound. The surrounding walls were twenty feet high, and as Strike drove up to the front gates, he could see the heads of hundreds of Cyclopean security cameras on poles. As the gates opened, Strike experienced an explosion of adrenaline, and for a moment the ghostly black and white images of seven dead women, and the anxious face of Brian Tucker, seemed to swim before him.

He’d sent his car registration number in advance. Once through the first set of double gates he encountered an inner wire fence, as tall as the wall he’d just passed through. A white-shirted, black-trousered man of military bearing unlocked a second set of gates once the first had closed behind the BMW, and directed Strike to a parking space. Before leaving his car, and wanting to save time going through the security he was about to face, the detective put his phone, keys, belt, cigarettes, lighter and loose change into the glove compartment and locked it.

“Mr. Strike, is it?” said the smiling, white-shirted man, whose accent was Welsh and whose profile suggested a boxer. “Got your ID there?”

Strike showed his driver’s license, and was led inside, where he encountered a scanner of the airport security type. Good-humored, inevitable amusement ensued when the scanner announced shrill disapproval of Strike’s metal lower leg, and his trousers had to be rolled up to prove he wasn’t carrying a weapon. Having been patted down, he was free to join Dr. Ranbir Bijral, who was waiting for him on the other side of the scanners, a slight, bearded psychiatrist whose open-necked yellow shirt struck a cheerful note against the dull green-gray tiled floors, the white walls and the unfresh air of all medical institutions, part disinfectant, part fried food, with a trace of incarcerated human.

“We’ve got twenty minutes until Dennis will be ready for you,” said Dr. Bijral, leading Strike off along an eerily empty corridor, through many sets of turquoise swing doors. “We coordinate patient movements carefully and it’s always a bit of a feat moving him around. We have to make sure he never comes into contact with patients who have a particular dislike for him, you see. He’s not popular. We’ll wait in my office.”

Strike was familiar with hospitals, but had never been inside one with so little bustle or shuffle of patients in the corridors. The emptiness was slightly unnerving. They passed many locked doors. A short female nurse in navy scrubs marched past. She smiled at Strike, who smiled back.

“You’ve got women working here,” he said, slightly surprised.

“Of course,” said Dr. Bijral.