“I know,” said Robin. “But he wasn’t a great team player, Pat.”

Pat took a deep drag of nicotine vapor, frowning.

“He,” she nodded toward the empty chair where Strike usually sat, “could take a few lessons from Morris!”

Robin knew perfectly well that it wasn’t Pat’s decision who the partners hired and fired, but unlike Strike, she also thought that in such a small team, Pat deserved the truth.

“It wasn’t Cormoran who wanted him gone,” she said, turning to face the secretary, “it was me.”

“You!” said Pat, astounded. “I thought the pair of you were keen on each other!”

“No. I didn’t like him. Apart from anything else, he sent me a picture of his erect penis at Christmas.”

Pat’s deeply lined face registered an almost comical dismay.

“In… in the post?”

Robin laughed.

“What, tucked inside a Christmas card? No. By text.”

“You didn’t—?”

“Ask for it? No,” said Robin, no longer smiling. “He’s a creep, Pat.”

She turned back to the kettle. The untouched bottle of vodka was still standing beside the sink. As Robin’s eyes fell on it, she remembered the idea that had occurred to her on Saturday night, shortly before Morris’s hands closed around her waist. After giving the secretary her coffee, she carried her own into the inner office, along with the book she’d taken from her bag. Pat called after her,

“Shall I update the rota, or will you?”

“I’ll do it,” said Robin, closing the door, but instead, she called Strike.

“Morning,” he said, answering on the second ring.

“Hi. I forgot to tell you an idea I had on Saturday night.”

“Go on.”

“It’s about Gloria Conti. Why did she vomit in the bathroom at Margot’s barbecue, if Oakden didn’t spike the punch?”

“Because he’s a liar, and he did spike the punch?” suggested Strike. He was currently in the same Islington square that Robin had patrolled on Friday, but he paused now and reached for his cigarettes, eyes on the central garden, which today was deserted. Beds densely planted with purple pansies looked like velvet cloaks spread upon the glistening grass.

“Or did she throw up because she was pregnant?” said Robin.

“I thought,” said Strike, after a pause while lighting a cigarette, “that only happens in the mornings? Isn’t that why it’s called—”

On the point of saying “morning sickness,” Strike remembered the expectant wife of an old army friend, who’d been hospitalized for persistent, round-the-clock vomiting.

“My cousin threw up any time of the day when she was pregnant,” said Robin. “She couldn’t stand certain food smells. And Gloria was at a barbecue.”

“Right,” said Strike, who was suddenly remembering the odd notion that had occurred to him after talking to the Bayliss sisters. Robin’s theory struck him as stronger than his. In fact, his idea was weakened if Robin’s was true.

“So,” he said, “you’re thinking it might’ve been Gloria who—”

“—had the abortion at the Bride Street clinic? Yes,” said Robin. “And that Margot helped her arrange it. Irene mentioned Gloria being closeted in Margot’s consulting room, remember? While Irene was left on reception?”

The lilac bush in the central garden was casting out such a heavy scent that Strike could smell it even over the smoke of his cigarette.

“I think you could be on to something here,” said Strike slowly.

“I also thought this might explain—”

“Why Gloria doesn’t want to talk to us?”

“Well, yes. Apart from it being a traumatic memory, her husband might not know what happened,” said Robin. “Where are you just now?”

“Islington,” said Strike. “I’m about to have a crack at Mucky Ricci.”

“What?” said Robin, startled.

“Been thinking about it over the weekend,” said Strike, who, unlike Robin, had had no time off, but had run surveillance on Shifty and Miss Jones’s boyfriend. “We’re nearly ten months into our year, and we’ve got virtually nothing. If he’s demented, obviously it’ll be no-go, but you never know, I could be able to get something out of him. He might even,” said Strike, “get a kick out of reliving the good old days…”

“And what if his sons find out?”

“He can’t talk, or not properly. I’m banking on him being unable to tell them I’ve been in. Look,” said Strike, in no particular hurry to hang up, because he wanted to finish his cigarette, and would rather do it talking to Robin, “Betty Fuller thinks Ricci killed her, I could tell. So did Tudor Athorn; he told his nephew so, and they were the kind of people who were plugged into local gossip and knew about local low life.

“I keep going back to the thing Shanker said, when I told him about Margot vanishing without a trace. ‘Professional job.’ When you take a step back and look at it,” said Strike, now down to the last centimeter of his cigarette, “it seems borderline impossible for every trace of her to have disappeared, unless someone with plenty of practice handled it.”

“Creed had practice,” said Robin quietly.

“D’you know what I did last night?” said Strike, ignoring this interjection. “Looked up Kara Wolfson’s birth certificate online.”

“Why? Oh,” said Robin, and Strike could hear her smiling, “star sign?”

“Yeah. I know it breaks the means before motive rule,” he added, before Robin could point it out, “but it struck me that someone might’ve told Margot about Kara’s murder. Doctors know things, don’t they? In and out of people’s houses, having confidential consultations. They’re like priests. They hear secrets.”

“You were checking whether Kara was a Scorpio,” said Robin. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Exactly. And wondering whether Ricci looked into that party to show his goons which woman they were going to pick off.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Was Kara a Scorpio?”

“Oh. No. Taurus—seventeenth of May.”

Strike now heard pages turning at Robin’s end of the call.

“Which means, according to Schmidt…” said Robin, and there was a brief pause, “… she was Cetus.”

“Huh,” said Strike, who’d now finished his cigarette. “Well, wish me luck. I’m going in.”

“Good l—”

“Cormoran Strike!” said somebody gleefully, behind him.

As Strike hung up on Robin, a slender black woman in a cream coat came alongside him, beaming.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “Selly Oak. I’m—”

“Marjorie!” said Strike, the memory coming back to him. “Marjorie the physiotherapist. How are you? What’re you—?”

“I do a few hours in the old folks’ home up the road!” said Marjorie. “And look at you, all famous…”

Fuck.

It took Strike twenty-five minutes to extricate himself from her.

“… so that’s bloody that,” he told Robin later at the office. “I pretended I was in the area to visit my accountant, but if she’s working at St. Peter’s, there’s no chance of us getting in to see Ricci.”

“No chance of you getting in there—”

“I’ve already told you,” said Strike sharply. The state of Robin’s face was a visible warning against recklessness, of the perils of failing to think through consequences. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

“I’ve got Miss Jones on the line,” Pat called from the outer office.

“Put her through to me,” said Robin, as Strike mouthed “thanks.”

Robin talked to Miss Jones while continuing to readjust the rota on her computer, which, given Robin’s own temporary unavailability for surveillance, and Morris’s permanent absence, was like trying to balance a particularly tricky linear equation. She spent the next forty minutes making vague sounds of agreement whenever Miss Jones paused to draw breath. Their client’s objective, Robin could tell, was staying on the line long enough for Strike to come back to the office. Finally, Robin got rid of her by pretending to get a message from Pat saying Strike would be out all day.

It was her only lie of the day, Robin thought, while Strike and Pat discussed Barclay’s expenses in the outer office. Given that Strike was adept himself at avoiding pledging his own word when he didn’t want to, he really ought to have noticed that Robin had made no promises whatsoever about staying away from Mucky Ricci.

61

Then when the second watch was almost past,

That brasen dore flew open, and in went Bold Britomart…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

In the first week of June, a blind item appeared in the Metro, concerning Strike’s presence in the American Bar on the night of his father’s party.

Which famous son of a famous father preferred to spend the night of his old man’s celebrations brawling in a bar five hundred yards from the party, rather than hobnobbing with his family? Our spies tell us a punch was thrown, and his faithful assistant was unable to Hold It Back. A father-son competition for publicity? Dad definitely won this round.