“Why? Would you’ve baked me a cake?”

“No,” said Pat indifferently. “Might’ve got you a card, though.”

“Lucky I didn’t say, then. One fewer tree’s died.”

“It wouldn’t have been a big card,” said Pat, unsmiling, her fingers still flying over the keyboard.

Grinning slightly, Strike removed himself, his cards and packages into the inner office, and later that evening took them upstairs with him, still unopened.

He woke on the twenty-third with his mind full of his trip to Greenwich with Robin later, and only remembered the significance of the day when he saw the presents and cards on the table. The packages contained a sweater from Ted and Joan, and a sweatshirt from Lucy. Ilsa, Dave Polworth and his half-brother Al had all sent joke cards which, while not actually making him laugh, were vaguely cheering.

He slipped the fourth card out of its envelope. It had a photograph of a bloodhound on the front, and Strike considered this for a second or two, wondering why it had been chosen. He’d never owned a dog, and while he had a mild preference for dogs over cats, having worked alongside a few in the military, he wouldn’t have said dog-loving was one of his salient characteristics. Flicking the card open, he saw the words:

Happy birthday Cormoran,

Best,

Jonny (Dad)

For a few moments, Strike merely looked at the words, his mind as blank as the rest of the card. The last time he’d seen his father’s writing, he’d been full of morphine after his leg had been blown off. As a child, he’d occasionally caught a glimpse of his father’s signature on legal documents sent to his mother. Then, he’d stared awestruck at the name, as though he were glimpsing an actual part of his father, as though the ink were blood, and solid proof that his father was a real human being, not a myth.

Quite suddenly, and with a force that shocked Strike, he found himself full of rage, rage on behalf of the small boy who would once have sold his soul to receive a birthday card from his father. He’d grown well beyond any desire to have contact with Jonny Rokeby, but he could still recall the acute pain his father’s continual and implacable absence had so often caused him as a child: while the primary class was making Father’s Day cards, for instance, or when strange adults questioned him about why he never saw Rokeby, or other children jeered at him, singing Deadbeats songs or telling him his mother had got pregnant with him purely to get Rokeby’s money. He remembered the longing that was almost an ache, always most acute around birthdays and Christmas, for his father to send something, or phone: anything, to show that he knew Strike was alive. Strike hated the memory of these fantasies more than he hated remembering the pain caused by their eternal unfulfillment, but most of all he hated remembering the hopeful lies he’d told himself when, as a very young boy, he’d made excuses for his father, who probably didn’t know that the family had moved yet again, who’d sent things to the wrong address, who wanted to know him but simply couldn’t find him.

Where had Rokeby been when his son was a nobody? Where had Rokeby been every time Leda’s life came off the rails, and Ted and Joan rode, again, to the rescue? Where had he been on any of the thousands of occasions when his presence might have meant something real, and genuine, rather than an attempt to look good to the papers?

Rokeby knew literally nothing about his son except that he was a detective, and that explained the fucking bloodhound. Fuck you and fuck your fucking card. Strike tore the card in half, then into quarters, and threw the pieces into the bin. But for a disinclination to trigger the fire alarm, he might have put a match to them.

Anger pulsed like a current through Strike all morning. He hated his own rage, as it showed that Rokeby still had some emotional hold on him, and by the time he set out for Earl’s Court, where Robin was picking him up, he was not far off wishing that birthdays had never been invented.

Sitting in the Land Rover just outside the station entrance some forty-five minutes later, Robin watched Strike emerge onto the pavement, carrying a leather-bound notebook, and noted that he looked as grumpy as she’d ever seen him.

“Happy birthday,” she said, when he opened the passenger door. Strike immediately noticed the card and the small wrapped package lying on the dashboard.

Fuck.

“Cheers,” and climbed in beside her, looking even grumpier.

As Robin pulled out onto the road, she said,

“Is it turning thirty-nine that’s upset you, or has something else happened?”

Having no desire to talk about Rokeby, Strike decided an effort was required.

“No, I’m just knackered. I was up late last night, going through the last box of the Bamborough file.”

“I wanted to do that on Tuesday, but you wouldn’t let me!”

“You were owed time off,” said Strike shortly, tearing open the envelope of her card. “You’re still owed time off.”

“I know, but it would’ve been a lot more interesting than doing my ironing.”

Strike looked down at the front of Robin’s card, which featured a watercolor picture of St. Mawes. She must, he thought, have gone to some trouble to find it in London. “Nice,” he said, “thanks.”

Flipping it open, he read,

Many happy returns, love Robin x

She’d never put a kiss on any message to him before, and he liked it being there. Feeling slightly more cheerful, he unwrapped the small package that accompanied the card, and found inside a pair of replacement headphones of the kind Luke had broken while he’d been in St. Mawes over the summer.

“Ah, Robin, that’s—thanks. That’s great. I hadn’t replaced them, either.”

“I know,” said Robin, “I noticed.”

As Strike put her card back in its envelope, he reminded himself that he really did need to get her a decent Christmas present.

“Is that Bill Talbot’s secret notebook?” Robin asked, glancing sideways at the leather-bound book in Strike’s lap.

“The very same. I’ll show you after we’ve talked to Irene and Janice. Batshit crazy. Full of bizarre drawings and symbols.”

“What about the last box of police records? Anything interesting?” Robin asked.

“Yes, as it goes. A chunk of police notes from 1975 had got mixed in with a bunch of later stuff. There were a few interesting bits.

“For instance, the practice cleaner, Wilma, was sacked a couple of months after Margot disappeared, but for petty theft, not drinking, which is what Gupta told me. Small amounts of money disappearing out of people’s purses and pockets. I also found out a call was made to Margot’s marital home on Anna’s second birthday, from a woman claiming to be Margot.”

“Oh my God, that’s horrible,” said Robin. “A prank call?”

“Police thought so. They traced it to a phone box in Marylebone. Cynthia, the childminder-turned-second-wife, answered. The woman identified herself as Margot and told Cynthia to look after her daughter.”

“Did Cynthia think it was Margot?”

“She told police she was too shocked to really take in what the caller said. She thought it sounded a bit like her, but on balance it sounded more like someone imitating her.”

“What makes people do things like that?” Robin asked, in genuine perplexity.

“They’re shits,” said Strike. “There were also a bunch of alleged sightings of Margot after the day she disappeared, in the last box. They were all disproven, but I’ve made a list and I’ll email them to you. Mind if I smoke?”

“Carry on,” said Robin, and Strike wound down the window. “I actually emailed you a tiny bit of information last night, too. Very tiny. Remember Albert Shimmings, the local florist—”

“—whose van people thought they saw speeding away from Clerkenwell Green? Yeah. Did he leave a note confessing to murder?”

“Unfortunately not, but I’ve spoken to his eldest son, who says that his dad’s van definitely wasn’t in Clerkenwell at half past six that evening. It was waiting outside his clarinet teacher’s house in Camden, where his dad drove him every Friday. He says they told the police that at the time. His dad used to wait outside for him in the van and read spy novels.”

“Well, the clarinet lessons aren’t in the records, but both Talbot and Lawson believed Shimmings when they spoke to him. Good to have it confirmed, though,” he added, lest Robin think he was being dismissive of her routine work. “Well, that means there’s still a possibility the van was Dennis Creed’s, doesn’t it?”

Strike lit up a Benson & Hedges, exhaled out of the window, and said,

“There was some interesting material on these two women we’re about to meet, in that last box of notes. More stuff that came out when Lawson took over.”

“Really? I thought Irene had a dental appointment and Janice had house visits on the afternoon Margot disappeared?”

“Yeah, that’s what their original statements said,” said Strike, “and Talbot didn’t check either woman’s story. Took both at their word.”

“Presumably because he didn’t think a woman could be the Essex Butcher?”