Samhain seemed pleased with this statement. He ate his biscuit and, for the first time, glanced at Strike’s face. The detective had the impression that Samhain was enjoying another man’s presence in the flat.

“I did that,” he said suddenly and, walking to the sink, he picked up a small clay pot, which was holding a washing-up brush and a sponge. “I go to class on Tuesdays and we make stuff. Ranjit teaches us.”

“That’s excellent,” said Strike, taking it from him and examining it. “Where were you, when your uncle told you what happened to Dr. Bamborough?”

“At the football,” said Samhain. “And I made this,” he told Strike, prising a wooden photo frame off the fridge, where it had been attached with a magnet. The framed picture was a recent one of Deborah and Samhain, both of whom had a budgerigar perched on their finger.

“That’s very good,” said Strike, admiring it.

“Yer,” said Samhain, taking it back from him and slapping it on the fridge. “Ranjit said it was the best one. We were at the football and I heard Uncle Tudor telling his friend.”

“Ah,” said Strike.

“And then he said to me, ‘Don’t you tell no one.’”

“Right,” said Strike. “But if you tell me, I can maybe help the doctor’s family. They’re really sad. They miss her.”

Samhain cast another fleeting look at Strike’s face.

“She can’t come back now. People can’t be alive again when they’re dead.”

“No,” said Strike. “But it’s nice when their families know what happened and where they went.”

“My-Dad-Gwilherm died under the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“My Uncle Tudor died in the hospital.”

“You see?” said Strike. “It’s good you know, isn’t it?”

“Yer,” said Samhain. “I know what happened.”

“Exactly.”

“Uncle Tudor told me it was Nico and his boys done it.”

It came out almost indifferently.

“You can tell her family,” said Samhain, “but nobody else.”

“Right,” said Strike, whose mind was working very fast. “Did Tudor know how Nico and the boys did it?”

“No. He just knew they did.”

Samhain picked up another biscuit. He appeared to have no more to say.

“Er—can I use your bathroom?”

“The bog?” said Samhain, with his mouth full of chocolate.

“Yes. The bog,” said Strike.

Like the rest of the flat, the bathroom was old but perfectly clean. It was papered in green, with a pattern of pink flamingos on it, which doubtless dated from the seventies and now, forty years later, was fashionably kitsch. Strike opened the bathroom cabinet, found a pack of razor blades, extracted one and cut the bloodstained page of The Magus out with one smooth stroke, then folded it and slipped it in his pocket.

Out on the landing, he handed Samhain the book back.

“You left it on the floor.”

“Oh,” said Samhain. “Ta.”

“You won’t do anything to the budgies if I leave, will you?”

Samhain looked up at the ceiling, grinning slightly.

“Will you?” asked Strike.

“No,” sighed Samhain at last.

Strike returned to the doorway of the sitting room.

“I’ll be off now, Mrs. Athorn,” he said. “Thanks very much for talking to me.”

“Goodbye,” said Deborah, without looking at him.

Strike headed downstairs, and let himself back onto the street. Once outside, he stood for a moment in the rain, thinking hard. So unusually still was he, that a passing woman turned to stare back at him.

Reaching a decision, Strike turned left, and entered the iron-monger’s which lay directly below the Athorns’ flat.

A sullen, grizzled and aproned man behind the counter looked up at Strike’s entrance. One of his eyes was larger than the other, which gave him an oddly malevolent appearance.

“Morning,” said Strike briskly. “I’ve just come from the Athorns, upstairs. I gather you want to talk to Clare Spencer?”

“Who’re you?” asked the ironmonger, with a mixture of surprise and aggression.

“Friend of the family,” said Strike. “Can I ask why you’re putting letters to their social worker through their front door?”

“Because they don’t pick up their phones at the bloody social work department,” snarled the ironmonger. “And there’s no point talking to them, is there?” he added, pointing his finger at the ceiling.

“Is there a problem I can help with?”

“I doubt it,” said the ironmonger shortly. “You’re probably feeling pretty bloody pleased with the situation, are you, if you’re a friend of the family? Nobody has to put their hand in their pocket except me, eh? Quick bit of a cover-up and let someone else foot the bill, eh?”

“What cover-up would this be?” asked Strike.

The ironmonger was only too willing to explain. The flat upstairs, he told Strike, had long been a health risk, crammed with the hoarded belongings of many years and a magnet for vermin, and in a just world, it ought not to be he who was bearing the costs of living beneath a pair of actual morons— “You’re talking about friends of mine,” said Strike.

“You do it, then,” snarled the ironmonger. “You pay a bleeding fortune to keep the rats down. My ceiling’s sagging under the weight of their filth—”

“I’ve just been upstairs and it’s perfectly—”

“Because they mucked it out last month, when I said I was going to bloody court!” snarled the ironmonger. “Cousins come down from Leeds when I threaten legal action—nobody give a shit until then—and I come back Monday morning and they’ve cleaned it all up. Sneaky bastards!”

“Didn’t you want the flat cleaned?”

“I want compensation for the money I’ve had to spend! Structural damage, bills to Rentokil—that pair shouldn’t be living together without supervision, they’re not fit, they should be in a home! If I have to take it to court, I will!”

“Bit of friendly advice,” said Strike, smiling. “If you behave in any way that could be considered threatening toward the Athorns, their friends will make sure it’s you who ends up in court. Have a nice day,” he added, heading for the door.

The fact that the Athorns’ flat had recently been mucked out by helpful relatives tended to suggest that Margot Bamborough’s remains weren’t hidden on the premises. On the other hand, Strike had gained a bloodstain and a rumor, which was considerably more than he’d had an hour ago. While still disinclined to credit supernatural intervention, he had to admit that deciding to eat breakfast on St. John Street that morning had been, at the very least, a most fortuitous choice.

39

… they thus beguile the way,

Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne…

They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,

But wander too and fro in waies vnknowne…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Robin’s alarm went off at half past six on Friday morning, in the middle of a dream about Matthew: he’d come to her in the Earl’s Court flat, and begged her to return to him, saying that he’d been a fool, promising he’d never again complain about her job, imploring her to admit that she missed what they’d once had. He’d asked her whether she honestly liked living in a rented flat, without the security and companionship of marriage, and in the dream Robin felt a pull back toward her old relationship, before it had become complicated by her job with Strike. He was a younger Matthew in the dream, a far kinder Matthew, and Sarah Shadlock was dismissed as a mistake, a blip, a meaningless error. In the background hovered Robin’s flatmate, no longer the disengaged and courteous Max, but a pale, simpering girl who echoed Matthew’s persuasions, who giggled when he looked at her and urged Robin to give him what he wanted. Only when she’d managed to silence her alarm, and dispel the fog of sleep, did Robin, who was lying face down on her pillow, realize how closely the dream-flatmate had resembled Cynthia Phipps.

Struggling to understand why she’d set her alarm so early, she sat up in bed, the cream walls of her bedroom a blueish mauve in the dawn light, then remembered that Strike had planned a full team meeting, the first in two months, and that he’d asked her to come in an hour earlier than the others again, so that they could discuss the Bamborough case before everyone else got there.

Extremely tired, as she always seemed to be these days, Robin showered and dressed, fumbling over buttons, forgetting where she’d put her phone, realizing there was a stain on her sweater only when halfway upstairs to the kitchen and generally feeling disgruntled at life and early starts. When she reached the upper floor, she found Max sitting at the dining table in his dressing gown, poring over a cookbook. The TV was on: the breakfast television presenter was asking whether Valentine’s Day was an exercise in commercial cynicism or an opportunity to inject some much-needed romance into a couple’s life.

“Has Cormoran got any special dietary requirements?” Max asked her, and when Robin looked blank, he said, “For tonight. Dinner.”