“What?” said Gregory, horrified. “Why?”

“It isn’t porn,” said Strike, muttering now, in deference to the elderly couple who had just entered the Victory and stood, disorientated by the storm outside, dripping and blinking mere feet from his table. “It’s a snuff movie. Someone filmed a woman being gang-raped and stabbed.”

There was another silence on the end of the phone. Strike watched the elderly couple shuffle to the bar, the woman taking off her plastic rain hat as she went.

“Actually killed?” said Gregory, his voice rising an octave. “I mean… it’s definitely real?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

He wasn’t about to give details. He’d seen people dying and dead: the kind of gore you saw on horror movies wasn’t the same, and even without a soundtrack, he wouldn’t quickly forget the hooded, naked woman twitching on the floor of the warehouse, while her killers watched her die.

“And I suppose you’ve told them where you got it?” said Gregory, more panicked than angry.

“I’m afraid I had to,” said Strike. “I’m sorry, but some of the men involved could still be alive, could still be charged. I can’t sit on something like that.”

“I wasn’t concealing anything, I didn’t even know it was—”

“I wasn’t meaning to suggest you knew, or you meant to hide it,” said Strike.

“If they think—we foster kids, Strike—”

“I’ve told the police you handed it over to me willingly, without knowing what was on there. I’ll stand up in court and testify that I believe you were in total ignorance of what was in your attic. Your family’s had forty-odd years to destroy it and you didn’t. Nobody’s going to blame you,” said Strike, even though he knew perfectly well that the tabloids might not take that view.

“I was afraid something like this was going to happen,” said Gregory, now sounding immensely stressed. “I’ve been worried, ever since you came round for coffee. Dragging all this stuff up again…”

“You told me your father would want to see the case solved.”

There was another silence, and then Gregory said,

“He would. But not at the cost of my mother’s peace of mind, or me and my wife having our foster kids taken off us.”

A number of rejoinders occurred to Strike, some of them unkind. It was far from the first time he’d encountered the tendency to believe the dead would have wanted whatever was most convenient to the living.

“I had a responsibility to hand that film over to the police once I’d seen what was on it. As I say, I’ll make it clear to anyone who asks that you weren’t trying to hide anything, that you handed it over willingly.”

There was little more to say. Gregory, clearly still unhappy, rang off, and Strike called Robin back.

She was still in Tesco, now buying a packet of nuts and raisins, chewing gum and some shampoo for herself while, two tills away, the object of her surveillance bought baby powder, baby food and dummies along with a range of groceries.

“Hi,” Robin said into her mobile, turning to look out of the shopfront window while the blonde walked past her.

“Hi,” said Strike. “That was Gregory Talbot.”

“What did he—? Oh yes,” said Robin with sudden interest, turning to follow the blonde out of the store, “what was on that can of film? I never asked. Did you get the projector working?”

“I did,” said Strike. “I’ll tell you about the film when I see you. Listen, there’s something else I wanted to say. Leave Mucky Ricci to me, all right? I’ve got Shanker putting out a few feelers. I don’t want you looking for him, or making inquiries.”

“Couldn’t I—?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“All right, calm down!” said Robin, surprised. “Surely Ricci must be ninety-odd by—?”

“He’s got sons,” said Strike. “Sons Shanker’s scared of.”

“Oh,” said Robin, who fully appreciated the implication.

“Exactly. So we’re agreed?”

“We are,” Robin assured him.

After Strike had hung up, Robin followed Elinor back out into the rain, and back to her terraced house. When the front door had closed again, Robin got back into her Land Rover and ate her packet of dried fruit and nuts, watching the front door.

It had occurred to her in Tesco that Elinor might be a childminder, given the nature of her purchases, but as the afternoon shaded into evening, no parents came to drop off their charges, and no baby’s wail was heard on the silent street.

33

For he the tyrant, which her hath in ward

By strong enchauntments and blacke Magicke leare,

Hath in a dungeon deepe her close embard…

There he tormenteth her most terribly,

And day and night afflicts with mortall paine…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Now that the blonde in Stoke Newington had also become a person of interest, the Shifty case became a two-to-three-person job. The agency was watching Elinor Dean’s house in addition to tracking the movements of Shifty’s Boss and Shifty himself, who continued to go about his business, enjoying the fat salary to which nobody felt he was entitled, but remaining tight-lipped about the hold he had over his boss. Meanwhile, Two-Times was continuing to pay for surveillance on his girlfriend more, it seemed, out of desperation than hope, and Postcard had gone suspiciously quiet. Their only suspect, the owlish guide at the National Portrait Gallery, had vanished from her place of work.

“I hope to God it’s flu, and she hasn’t killed herself,” Robin said to Barclay on Friday afternoon, when their paths crossed at the office. Strike was still stuck in Cornwall and she’d just seen the Twinkletoes client out of the office. He’d paid his sizable final bill grudgingly, having found out only that the West End dancer with whom his feckless daughter was besotted was a clean-living, monogamous and apparently heterosexual young man.

Barclay, who was submitting his week’s receipts to Pat before heading out to take over surveillance of Shifty overnight, looked surprised.

“The fuck would she’ve killed herself?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin. “That last message she wrote sounded a bit panicky. Maybe she thought I’d come to confront her, holding the postcards she’d sent.”

“You need tae get some sleep,” Barclay advised her.

Robin moved toward the kettle.

“No fer me,” Barclay told her, “I’ve gottae take over from Andy in thirty. We’re back in Pimlico, watchin’ Two-Times’ bird never cop off wi’ any fucker.”

Pat counted out tenners for Barclay, toward whom her attitude was tolerant rather than warm. Pat’s favorite member of the agency, apart from Robin, remained Morris, whom Robin had met only three times since New Year: twice when swapping over at the end of a surveillance shift and once when he’d come into the office to leave his week’s report. He’d found it difficult to meet her eye and talked about nothing but work, a change she hoped would be permanent.

“Who’s next on the client waiting list, Pat?” she asked, while making coffee.

“We havenae got the manpower for another case the noo,” said Barclay flatly, pocketing his cash. “Not wi’ Strike off.”

“He’ll be back on Sunday, as long as the trains are running,” said Robin, putting Pat’s coffee down beside her. They’d arranged to meet Cynthia Phipps the following Monday, at Hampton Court Palace.

“I need a weekend back home, end o’ the month,” Barclay told Pat, who in Strike’s absence was in charge of the rota. As she opened it up on her computer, Barclay added, “Migh’ as well make the most of it, while I dinnae need a passport.”

“What d’you mean?” asked the exhausted Robin, sitting down on the sofa in the outer office with her coffee. She was, technically, off duty at the moment, but couldn’t muster the energy to go home.

“Scottish independence, Robin,” said Barclay, looking at her from beneath his heavy eyebrows. “I ken you English’ve barely noticed, but the union’s about tae break up.”

“It won’t really, will it?” said Robin.

“Every fucker I know’s gonna vote Yes in September. One o’ me mates from school called me an Uncle Tam last time I wus home. Arsehole won’t be doin’ that again,” growled Barclay.

When Barclay had left, Pat asked Robin,

“How’s his aunt?”

Robin knew Pat was referring to Strike, because she never referred to her boss by name if she could help it.

“Very ill,” said Robin. “Not fit for more chemotherapy.”

Pat jammed her electronic cigarette between her teeth and kept typing. After a while, she said,

“He was on his own at Christmas, upstairs.”

“I know,” said Robin. “He told me how good you were to him. Buying him soup. He was really grateful.”

Pat sniffed. Robin drank her coffee, hoping for just enough of an energy boost to get her off this sofa and onto the Tube. Then Pat said,

“I’d’ve thought he’d’ve had somewhere to go, other than the attic.”