The effort it had cost Chard to approach the son of a potentially lucrative subject seemed to have left him with nothing to spare for a three-way awkward silence.

‘Leg feeling better?’ Strike asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Chard. ‘Much. Well, I’ll… I’ll leave you to your dinner.’

He moved away, swinging deftly between tables, and resumed his seat where Strike could no longer watch him. Strike and Al sat back down, Strike reflecting on how very small London was once you reached a certain altitude; once you had left behind those who could not easily secure tables at the best restaurants and clubs.

‘Couldn’t remember who he was,’ said Al with a sheepish grin.

‘He’s thinking of writing his autobiography, is he?’ Strike asked.

He never referred to Rokeby as Dad, but tried to remember not to call him Rokeby in front of Al.

‘Yeah,’ said Al. ‘They’re offering him big money. I dunno whether he’s going to go with that bloke or one of the others. It’ll probably be ghosted.’

Strike wondered fleetingly how Rokeby might treat his eldest son’s accidental conception and disputed birth in such a book. Perhaps, he thought, Rokeby would skip any mention of it. That would certainly be Strike’s preference.

‘He’d still like to meet you, you know,’ said Al, with an air of having screwed himself up to say it. ‘He’s really proud… he read everything about the Landry case.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, looking around the restaurant for Loulou, the waitress who remembered Quine.

‘Yeah,’ said Al.

‘So what did he do, interview publishers?’ Strike asked. He thought of Kathryn Kent, of Quine himself, the one unable to find a publisher, the other dropped; and the ageing rock star able to take his pick.

‘Yeah, kind of,’ said Al. ‘I dunno if he’s going to do it or not. I think that Chard guy was recommended to him.’

‘Who by?’

‘Michael Fancourt,’ said Al, wiping his plate of risotto clean with a piece of bread.

‘Rokeby knows Fancourt?’ asked Strike, forgetting his resolution.

‘Yeah,’ said Al, with a slight frown; then: ‘Let’s face it, Dad knows everyone.’

It reminded Strike of the way Elizabeth Tassel had said ‘I thought everyone knew’ why she no longer represented Fancourt, but there was a difference. To Al, ‘everyone’ meant the ‘someones’: the rich, the famous, the influential. The poor saps who bought his father’s music were nobodies, just as Strike had been nobody until he had burst into prominence for catching a killer.

‘When did Fancourt recommend Roper Chard to – when did he recommend Chard?’ asked Strike.

‘Dunno – few months ago?’ said Al vaguely. ‘He told Dad he’d just moved there himself. Half a million advance.’

‘Nice,’ said Strike.

‘Told Dad to watch the news, that there’d be a buzz about the place once he moved.’

Loulou the waitress had moved back into view. Al hailed her again; she approached with a harried expression.

‘Give me ten,’ she said, ‘and I’ll be able to talk. Just give me ten.’

While Strike finished his pork, Al asked about his work. Strike was surprised by the genuineness of Al’s interest.

‘D’you miss the army?’ Al asked.

‘Sometimes,’ admitted Strike. ‘What are you up to these days?’

He felt a vague guilt at not having asked already. Now that he came to think about it, he was not clear how, or whether, Al had ever earned his living.

‘Might be going into business with a friend,’ said Al.

Not working, then, thought Strike.

‘Bespoke services… leisure opportunities,’ muttered Al.

‘Great,’ said Strike.

‘Will be if it comes to anything,’ said Al.

A pause. Strike looked around for Loulou, the whole point of being here, but she was out of sight, busy as Al had probably never been busy in his life.

‘You’ve got credibility, at least,’ said Al.

‘Hmn?’ said Strike.

‘Made it on your own, haven’t you?’ said Al.

‘What?’

Strike realised that there was a one-sided crisis happening at the table. Al was looking at him with a mixture of mingled defiance and envy.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Strike, shrugging his large shoulders.

He could not think of any more meaningful response that would not sound superior or aggrieved, nor did he wish to encourage Al in what seemed to be an attempt to have a more personal conversation than they had ever managed.

‘You’re the only one of us who doesn’t use it,’ said Al. ‘Don’t suppose it would’ve helped in the army, anyway, would it?’

Futile to pretend not to know what ‘it’ was.

‘S’pose not,’ said Strike (and indeed, on the rare occasions that his parentage had attracted the attention of fellow soldiers he had met nothing but incredulity, especially given how little he looked like Rokeby).

But he thought wryly of his flat on this ice-cold winter night: two and a half cluttered rooms, ill-fitting windowpanes. Al would be spending tonight in Mayfair, in their father’s staffed house. It might be salutary to show his brother the reality of independence before he romanticised it too much…

‘S’pose you think this is self-pitying bloody whinging?’ demanded Al.

Strike had seen Al’s graduation photograph online a bare hour after interviewing an inconsolable nineteen-year-old private who had accidentally shot his best friend in the chest and neck with a machine gun.

‘Everyone’s entitled to whinge,’ said Strike.

Al looked as though he might take offence, then, reluctantly, grinned.

Loulou was suddenly beside them, clutching a glass of water and deftly removing her apron with one hand before she sat down with them.

‘OK, I’ve got five minutes,’ she said to Strike without preamble. ‘Al says you want to know about that jerk of a writer?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, focusing at once. ‘What makes you say he was a jerk?’

‘He loved it,’ she said, sipping her water.

‘Loved—?’

‘Causing a scene. He was yelling and swearing, but it was for show, you could tell. He wanted everyone to hear him, he wanted an audience. He wasn’t a good actor.’

‘Can you remember what he said?’ asked Strike, pulling out a notebook. Al was watching excitedly.

‘There was loads of it. He called the woman a bitch, said she’d lied to him, that he’d put the book out himself and screw her. But he was enjoying himself,’ she said. ‘It was fake fury.’

‘And what about Eliz – the woman?’

‘Oh, she was bloody furious,’ said Loulou cheerfully. ‘She wasn’t pretending. The more he ponced about waving his arms and shouting at her, the redder she got – shaking with anger, she could hardly contain herself. She said something about “roping in that stupid bloody woman” and I think it was around then that he stormed out, parking her with the bill, everyone staring at her – she looked mortified. I felt awful for her.’

‘Did she try and follow him?’

‘No, she paid and then went into the loo for a bit. I wondered whether she was crying, actually. Then she left.’

‘That’s very helpful,’ said Strike. ‘You can’t remember anything else they said to each other?’

‘Yeah,’ said Loulou calmly, ‘he shouted, “All because of Fancourt and his limp fucking dick.”’

Strike and Al stared at her.

‘“All because of Fancourt and his limp fucking dick?”’ repeated Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Loulou. ‘That was the bit that made the restaurant go quiet—’

‘You can see why it would,’ commented Al, with a snigger.

‘She tried to shout him down, she was absolutely incensed, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was loving the attention. Lapping it up.

‘Look, I’ve got to get g

oing,’ said Loulou, ‘sorry.’ She stood up and re-tied her apron. ‘See you, Al.’

She did not know Strike’s name, but smiled at him as she bustled away again.

Daniel Chard was leaving; his bald head had reappeared over the crowd, accompanied by a group of similarly aged and elegant people, all of them walking out together, talking, nodding to each other. Strike watched them go with his mind elsewhere. He did not notice the removal of his empty plate.

All because of Fancourt and his limp fucking dick…

Odd.

I can’t shake this mad bloody idea that Owen did it to himself. That he staged it…

‘You all right, bruv?’ asked Al.

A note with a kiss: Payback time for both of us…

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

Load of gore and arcane symbolism… stoke that man’s vanity and you could get him to do anything you wanted… two hermaphrodites, two bloody bags… A beautiful lost soul, that’s what he said to me… the silkworm was a metaphor for the writer, who has to go through agonies to get at the good stuff…

Like the turning lid that finds its thread, a multitude of disconnected facts revolved in Strike’s mind and slid suddenly into place, incontrovertibly correct, unassailably right. He turned his theory around and around: it was perfect, snug and solid.

The problem was that he could not yet see how to prove it.

41

Think’st thou my thoughts are lunacies of love?

No, they are brands firèd in Pluto’s forge…

Robert Greene, Orlando Furioso

Strike rose early next morning after a night of broken sleep, tired, frustrated and edgy. He checked his phone for messages before showering and after dressing, then went downstairs into his empty office, irritated that Robin was not there on a Saturday and feeling the absence, unreasonably, as a mark of her lack of commitment. She would have been a useful sounding board this morning; he would have liked company after his revelation of the previous evening. He considered phoning her, but it would be infinitely more satisfying to tell her face to face rather than doing it over the telephone, particularly if Matthew were listening in.

Strike made himself tea but let it grow cold while he pored over the Quine file.

The sense of his impotence ballooned in the silence. He kept checking his mobile.

He wanted to do something, but he was completely stymied by lack of official status, having no authority to make searches of private property or to enforce the cooperation of witnesses. There was nothing he could do until his interview with Michael Fancourt on Monday, unless… Ought he to call Anstis and lay his theory before him? Strike frowned, running thick fingers through his dense hair, imagining Anstis’s patronising response. There was literally not a shred of evidence. All was conjecture – but I’m right, thought Strike with easy arrogance, and he’s screwed up. Anstis had neither the wit nor the imagination to appreciate a theory that explained every oddity in the killing, but which would seem to him incredible compared to the easy solution, riddled with inconsistencies and unanswered questions though the case against Leonora was.

Explain, Strike demanded of an imaginary Anstis, why a woman smart enough to spirit away his guts without trace would have been dumb enough to order ropes and a burqa on her own credit card. Explain why a mother with no relatives, whose sole preoccupation in life is the well-being of her daughter, would risk a life sentence. Explain why, after years of accommodating Quine’s infidelity and sexual quirks to keep their family together, she suddenly decided to kill him?

But to the last question Anstis might just have a reasonable answer: that Quine had been on the verge of leaving his wife for Kathryn Kent. The author’s life had been well insured: perhaps Leonora would have decided that financial security as a widow would be preferable to an uncertain hand-to-mouth existence while her feckless ex squandered money on his second wife. A jury would buy that version of events, especially if Kathryn Kent took the stand and confirmed that Quine had promised to marry her.

Strike was afraid that he had blown his chance with Kathryn Kent, turning up unexpectedly on her doorstep as he had – in retrospect a clumsy, inept move. He had scared her, looming out of the darkness on her balcony, making it only too easy for Pippa Midgley to paint him as Leonora’s sinister stooge. He ought to have proceeded with finesse, eased himself into her confidence the way he had done with Lord Parker’s PA, so that he could extract confessions like teeth under the influence of concerned sympathy, instead of jack-booting to her door like a bailiff.

He checked his mobile again. No messages. He glanced at his watch. It was barely half past nine. Against his will, he felt his attention tugging to be free of the place where he wanted and needed it – on Quine’s killer, and the things that must be done to secure an arrest – to the seventeenth-century chapel in the Castle of Croy…

She would be getting dressed, no doubt in a bridal gown costing thousands. He could imagine her naked in front of the mirror, painting her face. He had watched her do it a hundred times; wielding the make-up brushes in front of dressing-table mirrors, hotel mirrors, so acutely aware of her own desirability that she almost attained unselfconsciousness.

Was Charlotte checking her phone as the minutes slipped by, now that the short walk up the aisle was so close, now that it felt like the walk along a gangplank? Was she still waiting, hoping, for a response from Strike to her three-word message of yesterday?

And if he sent an answer now… what would it take to make her turn her back on the wedding dress (he could imagine it hanging like a ghost in the corner of her room) and pull on her jeans, throw a few things in a holdall and slip out of a back door? Into a car, her foot flat to the floor, heading back south to the man who had always meant escape…

‘Fuck this,’ Strike muttered.

He stood up, shoved the mobile in his pocket, threw back the last of his cold tea and pulled on his overcoat. Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice.

Sure though he was that Kathryn Kent would have decamped to a friend’s now that the press had found her, and notwithstanding the fact that he regretted turning up unannounced on her doorstep, he returned to Clem Attlee Court only to have his suspicions confirmed. Nobody answered the door, the lights were off and all seemed silent within.

An icy wind blew along the brick balcony. As Strike moved away, the angry-looking woman from next door appeared, this time eager to talk.

‘She’s gawn away. You press, are you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, because he could tell the neighbour was excited at the idea and because he did not want Kent to know that he had been back.

‘The things your lot’ve written,’ she said with poorly disguised glee. ‘The things you’ve said about her! No, she’s gawn.’

‘Any idea when she’ll be back?’

‘Nah,’ said the neighbour with regret. Her pink scalp was visible through the sparse, tightly permed grey hair. ‘I could call ya,’ she suggested. ‘If she shows up again.’

‘That’d be very helpful,’ said Strike.

His name had been in the papers a little too recently to hand over one of his cards. He tore out a page of his notebook, wrote his number out for her and handed it over with a twenty-pound note.

‘Cheers,’ she said, businesslike. ‘See ya.’

He passed a cat on his way back downstairs, the same one, he was sure, at which Kathryn Kent had taken a kick. It watched him with wary but superior eyes as he passed. The gang of youths he had met previously had gone; too cold today if your warmest item of clothing was a sweatshirt.

Limping through the slippery grey snow required physical effort, which helped distract his busy mind, making moot the question of whether he was moving from suspect to suspect on Leonora’s behalf, or Charlotte’s. Let the latter continue towards the prison of her own choosing: he would not call, he would not text.

When he reached the Tube, he pulled out his phone and telephoned Jerry Waldegr

ave. He was sure that the editor had information that Strike needed, that he had not known he needed before his moment of revelation in the River Café, but Waldegrave did not pick up. Strike was not surprised. Waldegrave had a failing marriage, a moribund career and a daughter to worry about; why take a detective’s calls too? Why complicate your life when it did not need complicating, when you had a choice?

The cold, the ringing of unanswered phones, silent flats with locked doors: he could do nothing else today. Strike bought a newspaper and went to the Tottenham, sitting himself beneath one of the voluptuous women painted by a Victorian set-designer, cavorting with flora in their flimsy draperies. Today Strike felt strangely as though he was in a waiting room, whiling away the hours. Memories like shrapnel, for ever embedded, infected by what had come later… words of love and undying devotion, times of sublime happiness, lies upon lies upon lies… his attention kept sliding away from the stories he was reading.

His sister Lucy had once said to him in exasperation, ‘Why do you put up with it? Why? Just because she’s beautiful?’

And he had answered: ‘It helps.’

She had expected him to say ‘no’, of course. Though they spent so much time trying to make themselves beautiful, you were not supposed to admit to women that beauty mattered. Charlotte was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had never rid himself of a sense of wonder at her looks, nor of the gratitude they inspired, nor of pride by association.

Love, Michael Fancourt had said, is a delusion.

Strike turned the page on a picture of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s sulky face without seeing it. Had he imagined things in Charlotte that had never been there? Had he invented virtues for her, to add lustre to her staggering looks? He had been nineteen when they met. It seemed incredibly young to Strike now, as he sat in this pub carrying a good two stone of excess weight, missing half a leg.

Perhaps he had created a Charlotte in her own image who had never existed outside his own besotted mind, but what of it? He had loved the real Charlotte too, the woman who had stripped herself bare in front of him, demanding whether he could still love her if she did this, if she confessed to this, if she treated him like this… until finally she had found his limit and beauty, rage and tears had been insufficient to hold him, and she had fled into the arms of another man.