Screw you, she thought, ramming the mobile back into her pocket as she returned to the café, where Strike sat eating a double Croissan’Wich with sausage and bacon.

Strike noted her flushed face, her tense jaw, and guessed that Matthew had been in touch.

“Everything all right?”

“Fine,” said Robin and then, before he could ask anything else, “So are you going to tell me about Brockbank?”

The question came out a little more aggressively than she had intended. The tone of Matthew’s text had riled her, as had the fact that it had raised in her mind the question of where she and Strike were actually going to sleep that night.

“If you want,” said Strike mildly.

He drew his phone out of his pocket, brought up the picture of Brockbank that he had taken from Hardacre’s computer and passed it across the table to Robin.

Robin contemplated the long, swarthy face beneath its dense dark hair, which was unusual, but not unattractive. As though he had read her mind, Strike said:

“He’s uglier now. That was taken when he’d just joined up. One of his eye sockets is caved in and he’s got a cauliflower ear.”

“How tall is he?” asked Robin, remembering the courier standing over her in his leathers, his mirrored visor.

“My height or bigger.”

“You said you met him in the army?”

“Yep,” said Strike.

She thought for a few seconds that he was not going to tell her anything more, until she realized that he was merely waiting for an elderly couple, who were dithering about where to sit, to pass out of earshot. When they had gone Strike said:

“He was a major, Seventh Armoured Brigade. He married a dead colleague’s widow. She had two small daughters. Then they had one of their own, a boy.”

The facts flowed, having just reread Brockbank’s file, but in truth Strike had never forgotten them. It had been one of those cases that stayed with you.

“The eldest stepdaughter was called Brittany. When she was twelve, Brittany disclosed sexual abuse to a school friend in Germany. The friend told her mother, who reported it. We were called in—I didn’t interview her personally, that was a female officer. I just saw the tape.”

What had crucified him was how grown-up she had tried to be, how together. She was terrified of what would happen to the family now she had blabbed, and was trying to take it back.

No, of course she hadn’t told Sophie that he had threatened to kill her little sister if she told on him! No, Sophie wasn’t lying, exactly—it had been a joke, that was all. She’d asked Sophie how to stop yourself having a baby because—because she’d been curious, everyone wanted to know stuff like that. Of course he hadn’t said he’d carve up her mum in little pieces if she told—the thing about her leg? Oh, that—well, that was a joke, too—it was all joking—he told her she had scars on her leg because he’d nearly cut her leg off when she was little, but her mum had walked in and seen him. He’d said he did it because she’d trodden on his flowerbeds when she was a toddler, but of course it was a joke—ask her mum. She’d got stuck in some barbed wire, that was all, and badly cut trying to pull herself free. They could ask her mum. He hadn’t cut her. He’d never cut her, not Daddy.