Strike was not fool enough to encourage Robin in any disloyalty to Matthew that she might regret when she was less shaken.

“Addressing the leg to you instead of me was an afterthought,” he said. “They put my name on there first. I reckon they were either trying to worry me by showing they knew your name, or trying to frighten you off working for me.”

“Well, I’m not going to be frightened off,” said Robin.

“Robin, this is no time for heroics. Whoever he is, he’s telling us he knows a lot about me, that he knows your name and, as of this morning, exactly what you look like. He saw you up close. I don’t like that.”

“You obviously don’t think my countersurveillance abilities are up to much.”

“Seeing as you’re talking to the man who sent you on the best bloody course I could find,” said Strike, “and who read that fulsome letter of commendation you shoved under my nose—”

“Then you don’t think my self-defense is any good.”

“I’ve never seen any of it and I’ve got only your word that you ever learned any.”

“Have you ever known me lie about what I can and can’t do?” demanded Robin, affronted, and Strike was forced to acknowledge that he had not. “Well then! I won’t take stupid risks. You’ve trained me to notice anyone dodgy. Anyway, you can’t afford to send me home. We’re struggling to cover our cases as it is.”

Strike sighed and rubbed his face with two large hairy-backed hands.

“Nothing after dark,” he said. “And you need to carry an alarm, a decent one.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Anyway, you’re doing Radford from next Monday,” he said, taking comfort from the thought.

Radford was a wealthy entrepreneur who wanted to put an investigator, posing as a part-time worker, into his office to expose what he suspected were criminal dealings by a senior manager. Robin was the obvious choice, because Strike had become more recognizable since their second high-profile murder case. As Strike drained his third pint, he wondered whether he might be able to convince Radford to increase Robin’s hours. He would be glad to know she was safe in a palatial office block, nine to five every day, until the maniac who had sent the leg was caught.

Robin, meanwhile, was fighting waves of exhaustion and a vague nausea. A row, a broken night, the dreadful shock of the severed leg—and now she would have to head home and justify all over again her wish to continue doing a dangerous job for a bad salary. Matthew, who had once been one of her primary sources of comfort and support, had become merely another obstacle to be navigated.

Unbidden, unwanted, the image of the cold, severed leg in its cardboard box came back to her. She wondered when she would stop thinking about it. The fingertips that had grazed it tingled unpleasantly. Unconsciously, she tightened her hand into a fist in her lap.