“Yes, you said—”

“—but men didn’t want to take on a kid and Jan was a bit you know, when a woman’s been alone, I don’t mean desperate, but clingy—Larry didn’t mind, but Larry wasn’t exactly—”

“I had one other thing I wanted to ask—”

“—only he wouldn’t marry her, either. He’d been through a bad divorce—”

“It’s about Leamington Spa—”

“You’ll have checked Bognor Regis?”

“Excuse me?” said Strike.

“For Douthwaite? Because he went to Bognor Regis, didn’t he? To a holiday camp?”

“Clacton-on-Sea,” said Strike. “Unless he went to Bognor Regis as well?”

“As well as what?”

Jesus fucking Christ.

“What makes you think Douthwaite was ever in Bognor Regis?” Strike asked, slowly and clearly, rubbing his forehead.

“I thought—wasn’t he there, at some point?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, but we know he worked in Clacton-on-Sea in the mid-eighties.”

“Oh, it must’ve been that—yes, someone must’ve told me that, they’re all—old-fashioned seaside —you know.”

Strike seemed to remember he’d asked both Irene and Janice whether they had any idea where Douthwaite had gone after he left Clerkenwell, and that both had said they didn’t know.

“How did you know he went to work in Clacton-on-Sea?” he asked.

“Jan told me,” said Irene, after a tiny pause. “Yes, Jan would’ve told me. She was his neighbor, you know, she was the one who knew him. Yes, I think she tried to find out where he’d gone after he left Percival Road, because she was worried about him.”

“But this was eleven years later,” said Strike.

“What was?”

“He didn’t go to Clacton-on-Sea until eleven years after he left Percival Road,” said Strike. “When I asked you both if you knew where he’d gone—”

“Well, you meant now, didn’t you?” said Irene, “where he is now? I’ve no idea. Have you looked into that Leamington Spa business, by the way?” Then she laughed, and said, “All these seaside places! No, wait—it isn’t seaside, is it, not Leamington Spa? But you know what I mean —water—I do love water, it’s—Greenwich, Eddie knew I’d love this house when he spotted it for sale —was there anything in that Leamington Spa thing, or was Jan making it up?”

“Mrs. Beattie wasn’t making it up,” said Strike. “Mr. Ramage definitely saw a missing—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean Jan would make it up, no, I don’t mean that,” said Irene, instantly contradicting herself. “I just mean, you know, odd place for Margot to turn up, Leamington—have you found any connection,” she asked airily, “or—?”

“Not yet,” said Strike. “You haven’t remembered anything about Margot and Leamington Spa, have you?”

“Me? Goodness, no, how should I know why she’d go there?”

“Well, sometimes people do remember things after we’ve talked to—”

“Have you spoken to Jan since?”

“No,” said Strike. “D’you know when she’s back from Dubai?”

“No,” said Irene. “All right for some, isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind some sunshine, the winter we’re—but it’s wasted on Jan, she doesn’t sunbathe, and I wouldn’t fancy the flight all that way in Economy, which is how she has to—I wonder how she’s getting on, six weeks with her daughter-in-law! Doesn’t matter how well you get on, that’s a long—”

“Well, I’d better let you get on, Mrs. Hickson.”

“Oh, all right,” she said. “Yes, well. Best of luck with everything.”

“Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

The rain pattered on the window. With a sigh, Strike retired to the café bathroom for a long overdue pee.

He was just paying his bill when he spotted the man in the Sonic the Hedgehog sweatshirt walking past the window, now on the same side of the street as the café. He was heading back the way he’d come, two bulging bags of Tesco shopping hanging from his hands, moving with that same odd, rocking, side-to-side gait, his soaking hair flat to his skull, his mouth slightly open. Strike’s eyes followed him as he passed, watching the rain drip off the bottom of his shopping bags and from the lobes of his particularly large ears.

38

So long in secret cabin there he held

Her captive to his sensual desire;

Till that with timely fruit her belly swell’d,

And bore a boy unto that salvage sire…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Asking himself whether he could possibly have got as lucky as he hoped, Strike threw a tip on the table and hurried outside into the driving rain, pulling on his coat as he went.

If the mentally impaired adult in the sopping Sonic sweatshirt was indeed the big-eared child once marched around these streets by his eccentric parent, he’d have been living in this corner of Clerkenwell for forty years. Well, people did that, of course, Strike reflected, particularly if they had support there and if their whole world was a few familiar streets. The man was still within sight, heading stolidly toward Clerkenwell Road in the pelting rain, neither speeding up, nor making any attempt to prevent himself becoming progressively more sodden. Strike turned up his coat collar and followed.

A short distance down St. John Street, Strike’s target turned right past a small ironmonger’s on the corner, and headed into Albemarle Way, the short street with an old red telephone box at the other end, and tall, unbroken buildings on either side. Strike’s interest quickened.

Just past the ironmonger’s, the man set down both of his shopping bags on the wet pavement and took out a door key. Strike kept walking, because there was nowhere to hide, but made a note of the door number as he passed. Was it possible that the late Applethorpe had lived in this very flat? Hadn’t Strike thought that Albemarle Way presented a promising place to lie in wait for a victim? Not, perhaps, as good as Passing Alley, nor as convenient as the flats along Jerusalem Passage, but better by far than busy Clerkenwell Green, where Talbot had been convinced that Margot had struggled with a disguised Dennis Creed.

Strike heard the front door close behind the large-eared man and doubled back. The dark blue door needed painting. A small push-button bell was beside it, beneath which was stuck the printed name “Athorn.” Could this be the name Irene had misremembered as Applethorpe, Appleton or Apton? Then Strike noticed that the man had left the key in the lock.

With a feeling that he might have been far too dismissive of the mysterious ways of the universe, Strike pulled out the key and pressed the doorbell, which rang loudly inside. For a moment or two, nothing happened, then the door opened again and there stood the man in the wet Sonic sweatshirt.

“You left this in the lock,” said Strike, holding out the key.

The man addressed the third button of Strike’s overcoat rather than look him in eye.

“I did that before and Clare said not to again,” he mumbled, holding out his hand for the key, which Strike gave him. The man began to close the door.

“My name’s Cormoran Strike. I wonder whether I could come in and talk to you about your father?” Strike said, not quite putting his foot in the door, but preparing to do so should it be required.

The other’s big-eared face stood out, pale, against the dark hall.

“My-Dad-Gwilherm’s dead.”

“Yes,” said Strike, “I know.”

“He carried me on his shoulders.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. Mum told me.”

“D’you live alone?”

“I live with Mum.”

“Is her name Clare?”

“No. Deborah.”

“I’m a detective,” said Strike, pulling a card out of his pocket. “My name’s Cormoran Strike and I’d really like to talk to your mum, if that’s OK.”

The man didn’t take the card, but looked at it out of the corner of his eye. Strike suspected that he couldn’t read.

“Would that be all right?” Strike asked, as the cold rain continued to fall.

“Yer, OK. You can come in,” said the other, still addressing Strike’s coat button, and he opened the door fully to admit the detective. Without waiting to see whether Strike was following, he headed up the dark staircase inside.