Strike nodded, glad of a chance to rest his throat.

“I think Mrs. Ramage has either had a stroke or likes a lunchtime drink. She sounded slurred, but she confirmed that Charlie thought he’d seen Margot in a graveyard, and that he discussed it afterward with a policeman friend, whose name she couldn’t remember. Then suddenly she said, ‘No, wait—Mary Flanagan. It was Mary Flanagan he thought he saw.’ I took her back over the story and she said, yes, that was all correct, except that it was Mary Flanagan, not Margot Bamborough, he thought he’d seen. I’ve looked up Mary Flanagan,” said Robin, “and she’s been missing since 1959. It’s Britain’s longest ever missing person case.”

“Which of them would you say seemed more confused?” asked Strike. “Mrs. Ramage, or Janice?”

“Mrs. Ramage, definitely,” said Robin. “Janice definitely wouldn’t have confused the two women, would she? Whereas Mrs. Ramage might have done. She had no personal interest: to her, they were just two missing people whose names began with ‘M.’”

Strike sat frowning, thinking it over. Finally he said, his tonsils burning,

“If Ramage was a teller of tall tales generally, his policeman mate can’t be blamed for not taking him seriously. This is at least confir-mation that Ramage believed he’d once met a missing woman.”

He frowned so intensely that Robin said,

“Are you in pain?”

“No. I’m wondering whether it’d be worth trying to see Irene and Janice separately. I’d hoped never to have to talk to Irene Hickson again. At the very least, we should keep looking for a connection between Margot and Leamington Spa. Did you say you had another lead?”

“Not much of one. Amanda Laws—or Amanda White, as she was when she supposedly saw Margot at that window on Clerkenwell Road—answered my email. I’ll forward her reply if you want to read it, but basically she’s angling for money.”

“Is she, now?”

“She dresses it up a bit. Says she told the police and nobody believed her, told Oakden and he didn’t give her a penny, and she’s tired of not being taken seriously and if we want her story she’d like to be paid for it this time. She claims she’s endured a lot of negative attention, being called a liar and a fantasist, and she’s not prepared to go through all of that again unless she gets compensated.”

Strike made a second note.

“Tell her it isn’t the agency’s practice to pay witnesses for their cooperation,” said Strike. “Appeal to her better nature. If that doesn’t work, she can have a hundred quid.”

“I think she’s hoping for thousands.”

“And I’m hoping for Christmas in the Bahamas,” said Strike, as rain dotted the window behind him. “That all you’ve got?”

“Yes,” said Robin, closing her notebook.

“Well, I’ve drawn a blank on the Bennie-abusing patient who claimed to have killed Margot, Applethorpe. I think Irene must’ve got the name wrong. I’ve tried all the variants that’ve occurred to me, but nothing’s coming up. I might have to call her back. I’ll try Janice first, though.”

“You haven’t told me what you thought of the Oakden book.”

“Bog-standard opportunist,” said Strike, “who did well to squeeze ten chapters out of virtually nothing. But I’d like to track him down if we can.”

“I’m trying,” sighed Robin, “but he’s another one who seems to have vanished off the face of the planet. His mother seemed to be his primary source, didn’t she? I don’t think he persuaded anyone who really knew Margot to talk to him.”

“No,” said Strike. “You’d highlighted nearly all the interesting bits.”

“Nearly?” said Robin sharply.

“All,” Strike corrected himself.

“You spotted something else?”

“No,” said Strike, but seeing that she was unconvinced, he added, “I’ve just been wondering whether someone might’ve put a hit on her.”

“Her husband?” said Robin, startled.

“Maybe,” said Strike.

“Or are you thinking about the cleaner’s husband? Jules Bayliss, and his alleged criminal connections?”

“Not really.”

“Then why—”

“I just keep coming back to the fact that if she was killed, it was done very efficiently. Which might suggest—”

“—a contract killer,” said Robin. “You know, I read a biography of Lord Lucan recently. They think he hired someone to kill his wife—”

“—and the killer got the nanny by mistake,” said Strike, who was familiar with the theory. “Yeah. Well, if that’s what happened to Margot, we’re looking at an assassin a damn sight more efficient than Lucan’s. Not a trace of her left behind, not so much as a drop of blood.”

There was a momentary silence, while Strike glanced behind him to see the rain and wind still buffeting the Christmas lights outside, and Robin’s thoughts flew to Roy Phipps, the man whom Oonagh had called bloodless, conveniently bedridden on the day of Margot’s disappearance.

“Well, I need to get going,” said Strike, pushing himself up out of his chair.

“I should, too,” sighed Robin, collecting her things.

“You’re coming back into the office later, though?” Strike asked.

He needed to give her the as-yet-unbought Christmas present before she left for Yorkshire.

“I wasn’t planning to,” said Robin. “Why?”

“Come back in,” Strike said, trying to think of a reason. He opened the door into the outer office. “Pat?”

“Yes?” said Pat, without looking round. She was once more typing fast and accurately, her electronic cigarette waggling between her teeth.

“Robin and I both need to head out now, but a man called Gregory Talbot’s about to drop off a can of 16mm film. D’you think you can track down a projector that’ll play it? Ideally before five o’clock?”

Pat swung slowly around on her desk chair to look at Strike, her monkey-ish face set, her eyes narrowed.

“You want me to find a vintage film projector by five o’clock?”

“That’s what I said.” Strike turned to Robin. “Then we can have a quick look at whatever Talbot had hiding in the attic before you leave for Masham.”

“OK,” said Robin, “I’ll come back at four.”

27

His name was Talus, made of yron mold,

Immoueable, resistlesse, without end.

Who in his hand an yron flale did hould,

With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth vnfould.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Some two and a half hours later, Strike stood beneath the awning of Hamleys on Regent Street, shopping bags by his feet, telling himself firmly that he was fine in spite of ample empirical evidence that he was, in fact, shivering. Cold rain was spattering all around him onto the dirty pavements, where it was kicked out of puddles by the marching feet of hundreds of passing pedestrians. It splashed over curbs in the wake of passing vehicles and dripped down the back of Strike’s collar, though he stood, theoretically, beneath shelter.

While checking his phone yet again for some sign that Shanker hadn’t forgotten they were supposed to be meeting for a drink, he lit a cigarette, but his raw throat didn’t appreciate the sudden ingestion of smoke. With a foul taste in his mouth, he ground out the cigarette after one drag. There was no message from Shanker, so Strike picked up his bulky shopping bags and set off again, his throat burning every time he swallowed.

He’d imagined optimistically that he might have finished all his shopping within two hours, but midday had come and gone and he still wasn’t done. How did people decide what to buy, when the speakers were all shrieking Christmas tunes at you, and the shops were full of too much choice, and all of it looked like junk? Endless processions of women kept ranging across his path, choosing items with apparently effortless ease. Were they genetically programmed to seek and find the right gift? Was there nobody he could pay to do this for him?

His eyes felt heavy, his throat ached and his nose had started running. Unsure where he was going, or what he was looking for, he walked blindly onwards. He, who usually had an excellent sense of direction, kept turning the wrong way, becoming disorientated. Several times he knocked into carefully stacked piles of Christmas merchandise, or buffeted smaller people, who scowled and muttered and scurried away.

The bulky bags he was carrying contained three identical Nerf blasters for his nephews; large plastic guns which shot foam bullets, which Strike had decided to buy on the dual grounds that he would have loved one when he was eleven, and the assistant had assured him they were one of the must-have gifts of the year. He’d bought his Uncle Ted a sweater because he couldn’t think of anything else, his brother-in-law a box of golf balls and a bottle of gin on the same principle, but he still had the trickiest gifts to buy—the ones for the women: Lucy, Joan and Robin.

His mobile rang.

“Fuck.”

He hobbled sideways out of the crowd and, standing beside a mannequin wearing a reindeer sweater, shook himself free from a few of his bags so that he could pull out his mobile.

“Strike.”