“Two hundred and thirty quid for an old mobile number,” he said as she pulled away from the curb and accelerated towards the town center. “I hope it’s bloody worth it. We’re looking for Adam and Eve Street—she says it’s just up here on the right—the café’s called Appleby’s. She’s going to meet me there in a bit.”

Robin found a parking space and they waited, discussing what Ingrid had said about Brockbank while eating the Danish pastries that Strike had stolen from the breakfast buffet. Robin was starting to appreciate why Strike was carrying extra weight. She had never before undertaken an investigation that lasted more than twenty-four hours. When every meal had to be sourced in passing shops and eaten on the move, you descended quickly to fast food and chocolate.

“That’s her,” said Strike forty minutes later, clambering out of the Land Rover and heading for the interior of Appleby’s. Robin watched the blonde approach, now in jeans and a fake-fur jacket. She had the body of a glamour model and Robin was reminded of Platinum. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen; neither Strike nor the girl reappeared.

“How long does it take to hand over a telephone number?” Robin asked the interior of the Land Rover crossly. She felt chilly in the car. “I thought you wanted to get on to Corby?”

He had told her nothing had happened, but you never knew. Perhaps it had. Perhaps the girl had covered Strike in oil and…

Robin drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She thought about Elin, and how she would feel if she knew what Strike had done that day. Then, with a slight jolt, she remembered that she had not checked her phone to see whether Matthew had been in contact again. She took it out of her coat pocket and saw no new messages. Since telling him she was definitely not going to his father’s birthday party, he had gone quiet.

The blonde and Strike emerged from the café. Ingrid did not seem to want to let Strike go. When he waved farewell she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then sashayed away. Strike caught Robin watching and got back into the car with a kind of bashful grimace.

“That looked interesting,” said Robin.

“Not really,” said Strike, showing her the number now keyed into his phone: NOEL BROCKBANK MOBILE. “She was just chatty.”

If Robin had been a male colleague he would have found it impossible not to add: “I was in there.” Ingrid had flirted shamelessly across the table, scrolling slowly through the contacts on her phone, wondering aloud whether she still had the number so that he started to feel anxious that she had nothing, asking him whether he had ever had a proper Thai massage, probing about what he wanted Noel for, about the cases he had solved, especially that of the beautiful dead model, which had first brought him to public notice, and finally insisting, with a warm smile, that he take her number too, “just in case.”