“That’s right,” said Strike.

“Well, after Bill died I found this can in a box in the shed and it had the Creed mark on it—you’ve read the notes, you know Bill used a special symbol for Creed?”

“Yes,” said Strike.

“I couldn’t take everything with me into sheltered accommodation, they give you virtually no storage space, so I put it into the boxes to go in Greg and Alice’s attic. I quite forgot it was there until Greg started looking through his dad’s things yesterday. The police have made it quite clear they weren’t interested in Bill’s theories, but Greg says you are, so you should have it.”

Gregory came back on the line. They heard movement that seemed to indicate that Gregory was moving away from his mother. A door closed.

“It’s a can containing a reel of old 16mm film,” he told Strike, his mouth close to the receiver. “Mum doesn’t know what’s on there. I haven’t got a camera to run it, but I’ve held a bit up to the light and… it looks like a dirty movie. I was worried about putting it out for the binmen—”

Given that the Talbots were fostering children, Strike understood his qualms.

“If we give it to you—I wonder—”

“You’d rather we didn’t say where we got it?” Strike said, eyes on Robin’s. “I can’t see why we’d need to.”

Robin noticed that he hadn’t promised, but Gregory seemed happy.

“I’ll drop it off, then,” he said. “I’m coming up West this afternoon. Taking the twins to see Father Christmas.”

When Gregory had rung off, Strike said,

“You notice the Talbots are still convinced, forty years on—”

The phone rang in the outer office again.

“—that Margot was killed by Creed? I think I know what the symbol on this can of film is going to be, because—”

Pat knocked on the door of the inner office.

“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, whose throat was starting to burn. “What?”

“Charming,” said Pat, coldly. “There’s a Mister Shanker on the line for you. It diverted from your mobile. He says you wanted to—”

“Yeah, I do,” said Strike. “Transfer it back to my mobile—please,” he added, and turning to Robin, he said, “sorry, can you give me a moment?”

Robin left the room, closing the door behind her, and Strike pulled out his mobile.

“Shanker, hi, thanks for getting back to me.”

He and Shanker, whose real name he’d have been hard pressed to remember, had known each other since they were teenagers. Their lives had been moving in diametrically different directions even then, Strike heading for university, army and detective work, Shanker pursuing a career of ever-deepening criminality. Nevertheless, a strange sense of kinship had continued to unite them and they were, occasionally, useful to each other, Strike paying Shanker in cash for information or services that he could get no other way.

“What’s up, Bunsen?”

“I wanted to buy you a pint and show you a photo,” said Strike.

“Up your way later today, as it goes. Going to Hamleys. Got the wrong fackin’ Monster High doll for Zahara.”

Everything except “Hamleys” had been gibberish to Strike.

“OK, call me when you’re ready for a drink.”

“Fair dos.”

The line went dead. Shanker didn’t tend to bother with goodbyes.

Robin returned carrying two fresh mugs of tea and closed the door with her foot.

“Sorry about that,” said Strike, absentmindedly wiping sweat off his top lip. “What was I saying?”

“That you think you know what symbol’s on Talbot’s can of old film.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Strike. “Symbol for Capricorn. I’ve been having a go at deciphering these notes,” he added, tapping the leather-bound notebook sitting beside him, and he took Robin through the reasons Bill Talbot had come to believe that Margot had been abducted by a man born under the sign of the goat.

“Talbot was ruling out suspects on the basis that they weren’t Capricorns?” asked Robin in disbelief.

“Yeah,” said Strike, frowning, his throat burning worse than ever. He took a sip of tea. “Except that Roy Phipps is a Capricorn, and Talbot ruled him out, too.”

“Why?”

“I’m still trying to deciper it all, but he seems to have been using a weird symbol for Phipps that I haven’t been able to identify on any astrological site so far.

“But the notes explain why he kept interviewing Janice. Her star sign’s Cancer. Cancer is Capricorn’s ‘opposing’ sign and Cancerians are psychic and intuitive, according to Talbot’s notes. Talbot concluded that, as a Cancerian, Janice was his natural ally against Baphomet, and that she might have supernatural insights into Baphomet’s identity, hence the dream diary.

“Even more significant in his mind was that Saturn, Capricorn’s ruler—”

Robin hid a smile behind her mug of tea. Strike’s expression, as he outlined these astrological phenomena, would have been appropriate to a man asked to eat weeks’-old seafood.

“—was in Cancer on the day of Margot’s disappearance. From this, Talbot deduced that Janice knew or had had contact with Baphomet. Hence the request for a list of her sexual partners.”

“Wow,” said Robin quietly.

“I’m just giving you a hint of the nuttery, but there’s plenty more. I’ll email you the important points when I’ve finished deciphering it. But what’s interesting is that there are hints of an actual detective trying to fight through his illness.

“He had the same idea that occurred to me: that Margot might’ve been lured somewhere on the pretext of someone needing medical assistance, although he dresses it all up in mumbo-jumbo—there was a stellium in the sixth house, the House of Health, which he decided meant danger associated with illness.”

“What’s a stellium?”

“Group of more than three planets. The police did check out patients she’d seen a lot of in the run-up to the disappearance. There was Douthwaite, obviously, and a demented old woman on Gopsall Street, who kept ringing the surgery for something to do, and a family who lived on Herbal Hill, whose kid had had a reaction to his polio vaccination.”

“Doctors,” said Robin, “have contact with so many people.”

“Yeah,” said Strike, “and I think that’s part of what went wrong in this case. Talbot took in a huge amount of information and couldn’t see what to discard. On the other hand, the possibility of her being lured into a house on a medical pretext, or attacked by an angry patient isn’t crazy. Medics walk unaccompanied into all kinds of people’s houses… and look at Douthwaite. Lawson really fancied him as Margot’s abductor or killer, and Talbot was very interested in him, too. Even though Douthwaite was a Pisces, Talbot tries to make him a Capricorn. He says ‘Schmidt’ thinks Douthwaite’s really a Capricorn—”

“Who’s Schmidt?”

“No idea,” said Strike, “but he or she is all over the notes, correct-ing signs.”

“All the chances to get actual evidence lost,” said Robin quietly, “while Talbot was checking everyone’s horoscope.”

“Exactly. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious. But his interest in Douthwaite still smacks of sound copper instinct. Douthwaite seems pretty bloody fishy to me, as well.”

“Ha ha,” said Robin.

Strike looked blank.

“Pisces,” she reminded him.

“Oh. Yeah,” said Strike, unsmiling. The throbbing behind his eyes was worse than ever, his throat complaining every time he swallowed, but he couldn’t have flu. It was impossible. “I read that bit you marked in Oakden’s book,” he continued. “The stuff about Douthwaite changing his name when he went to Clacton to sing at a holiday camp, but I can’t find any trace of a Steve, Steven or Stevie Jacks after 1976, either. One name change might be understandable after a lot of police attention. Two starts to look suspicious.”

“You think?” said Robin. “We know he was the nervous type, judging from his medical records. Maybe he was spooked by Oakden turning up at Butlin’s?”

“But Oakden’s book was pulped. Nobody beyond a couple of Butlin’s Redcoats ever knew Stevie Jacks had been questioned about Margot Bamborough.”

“Maybe he went abroad,” said Robin. “Died abroad. I’m starting to think that’s what happened to Paul Satchwell, as well. Did you see, Satchwell’s ex-neighbor said he went off traveling?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Any luck on Gloria Conti yet?”

“Nothing,” sighed Robin. “But I have got a couple of things,” she went on, opening her notebook. “They don’t advance us much, but for what they’re worth…

“I’ve now spoken to Charlie Ramage’s widow in Spain. The hot-tub millionaire who thought he saw Margot in the Leamington Spa graveyard?”