—Rokeby and I’ve got no interest in faking one for a few hours just because he’s putting out a new album. I hold no ill will toward you and, as I say, I’d be happy to meet when my life is less—

Strike paused again. Standing in the steam billowing from his saucepan, his mind roved over the dying Joan, over the open cases on the agency’s books, and, inexplicably, over Robin.

—complicated. Best wishes, Cormoran.

He ate his spaghetti with a jar of shop-bought sauce, and fell asleep that night to the sound of rain hammering on the roof slates, to dream that he and Rokeby were having a fist fight on the deck of a sailing ship, which pitched and rolled until both of them fell into the sea.

Rain was still falling at ten to eleven the following morning, when Strike emerged from Earl’s Court Tube station to wait for Robin, who was going to pick him up before driving to meet Cynthia Phipps at Hampton Court Palace. Standing beneath the brick overhang outside the station exit, yet another cigarette in his mouth, Strike read two recently arrived emails off his phone: an update from Barclay on Two-Times, and one from Morris on Shifty. He’d nearly finished them when the mobile rang. It was Al, and rather than let the call go to voicemail, Strike decided to put an end to this badgering once and for all.

“Hey, bruv,” said Al. “How’re you?”

“Been better,” said Strike.

He deliberately didn’t reciprocate the polite inquiry.

“Look,” said Al, “um… Pru’s just rung me. She told me what you sent her. Thing is, we’ve got a photographer booked for next Saturday, but if you’re not going to be in the picture—the whole point is that it’s from all of us. First time ever.”

“Al, I’m not interested,” said Strike, tired of being polite.

There was a brief silence. Then Al said,

“You know, Dad keeps trying to reach out—”

“Is that right?” said Strike, anger suddenly piercing the fog of fatigue, of his worry about Joan, and the mass of probable irrelevancies he’d found out on the Bamborough case, which he was trying to hold in his head, so he could impart them to Robin. “When would this be? When he set his lawyers on me, chasing me for money that was legally mine in the first—?”

“If you’re talking about Peter Gillespie, Dad didn’t know how heavy he was getting with you, I swear he didn’t. Pete’s retired now—”

“I’m not interested in celebrating his new fucking album,” said Strike. “Go ahead and have fun without me.”

“Look,” said Al, “I can’t explain right now—if you can meet me for a drink, I’ll tell you—there’s a reason we want to do this for him now, the photo and the party—”

“The answer’s no, Al.”

“You’re just going to keep sticking two fingers up at him forever, are you?”

“Who’s sticking two fingers up? I haven’t said a word about him publicly, unlike him, who can’t give a fucking interview without mentioning me these days—”

“He’s trying to put things right, and you can’t give an inch!”

“He’s trying to tidy up a messy bit of his public image,” said Strike harshly. “Tell him to pay his fucking taxes if he wants his knighthood. I’m not his pet fucking black sheep.”

He hung up, angrier than he’d expected, his heart thumping uncomfortably hard beneath his coat. Flicking his cigarette butt into the road, his thoughts traveled inescapably back to Joan, with her headscarf hiding her baldness, and Ted weeping into his tea. Why, he thought, furiously, couldn’t it have been Rokeby who lay dying, and his aunt who was well and happy, confident she’d reach her next birthday, striding through St. Mawes, chatting to lifelong friends, planning dinners for Ted, nagging Strike over the phone about coming to visit?

When Robin turned the corner in the Land Rover a few minutes later, she was taken aback by Strike’s appearance. Even though he’d told her by phone about the flu and the out-of-date chicken, he looked noticeably thinner in the face, and so enraged she automatically checked her watch, wondering whether she was late.

“Everything all right?” she asked, when he opened the passenger seat door.

“Fine,” he said shortly, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door.

“Happy New Year.”

“Haven’t we already said that?”

“No, actually,” said Robin, somewhat aggravated by his surliness. “But please don’t feel pressured into saying it back. I’d hate you to feel railroaded—”

“Happy New Year, Robin,” muttered Strike.

She pulled out into the road, her windscreen wipers working hard to keep the windscreen clear, with a definite sense of déjà vu. He’d been grumpy when she’d picked him up on his birthday, too, and in spite of everything he was going through, she too was tired, she too had personal worries, and would have appreciated just a little effort.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

They drove for a few minutes in silence, until Robin said,

“Did you see Barclay’s email?”

“About Two-Times and his girlfriend? Yeah, just read it,” said Strike. “Ditched, and she’ll never realize it was because she was too faithful.”

“He’s such a freak,” said Robin, “but as long as he pays his bill…”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Strike, making a conscious effort to throw off his bad temper. After all, none of it—Joan, Pru, Al, Rokeby—was Robin’s fault. She’d been holding the agency together while he dealt with matters in Cornwall. She was owed better.

“We’ve got room for another waiting list client now,” he said, trying for a more enthusiastic tone. “I’ll call that commodities broker who thinks her husband’s shagging the nanny, shall I?”

“Well,” said Robin, “the Shifty job’s taking a lot of manpower at the moment. We’re covering him, his boss and the woman in Stoke Newington. The boss went back to Elinor Dean yesterday evening, you know. Same thing all over again, including the pat on the head.”

“Really?” said Strike, frowning.

“Yeah. The clients are getting quite impatient for proper evidence, though. Plus, we haven’t got any resolution on Postcard yet and Bamborough’s taking up quite a bit of time.”

Robin didn’t want to say explicitly that with Strike moving constantly between London and Cornwall, she and the subcontractors were covering the agency’s existing cases by forfeiting their days off.

“So you think we should concentrate on Shifty and Postcard, do you?”

“I think we should accept that Shifty’s currently a three-person-job and not be in a hurry to take anything else on just now.”

“All right, fair enough,” grunted Strike. “Any news on the guide at the National Portrait Gallery? Barclay told me you were worried she might’ve topped herself.”

“What did he tell you that for?” Robin said. She regretted blurting out her anxiety now: it felt soft, unprofessional.

“He didn’t mean anything by it. Has she reappeared?”

“No,” said Robin.

“Any more postcards to the weatherman?”

“No.”

“Maybe you’ve scared her off.”

Strike pulled his notebook out of his pocket and opened it, while the rain continued to drum against the windscreen.

“I’ve got a few bits and pieces on Bamborough, before we meet Cynthia Phipps. That was great work of yours, eliminating the wholefoods van, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said Robin.

“But there’s a whole new van on the scene,” said Strike.

“What?” said Robin sharply.

“I spoke to the daughter of Ruby Elliot yesterday. You -remember Ruby—”

“The woman who saw the two women struggling from her car.”

“That’s the one. I also spoke to a nephew of Mrs. Fleury, who was crossing Clerkenwell Green, trying to get her senile mother home out of the rain.”

Strike cleared his throat, and said, reading from his notes:

“According to Mark Fleury, his aunt was quite upset by the description in the papers of her ‘struggling’ and even ‘grappling’ with her mother, because it suggested she’d been rough with the old dear. She said she was chivvying her mother along, not forcing her, but admitted that otherwise the description fitted them to a tee: right place, right time, rain hat, raincoat, etc.

“But Talbot leapt on the ‘we weren’t grappling’ discrepancy and tried to pressure Mrs. Fleury into retracting her story and admitting that she and the old lady couldn’t have been the people Ruby Elliot saw. Mrs. Fleury wasn’t having that, though. The description of them was too good: she was sure they were the right people.