An hour and a half later, Robin and her mother were sitting in silence as their taxi moved towards King’s Cross, Linda’s suitcase swaying a little on the floor.

Linda had been insistent that she wanted to meet Strike before she left for Yorkshire.

“You’ve been working for him for over a year. Surely he won’t mind if I look in to say hello? I’d like to see where you work, at least, so I can picture it when you’re talking about the office…”

Robin had resisted as hard as she could, embarrassed by the very idea of introducing her mother to Strike. It felt childish, incongruous and silly. She was particularly concerned that appearing with her mother in tow would reinforce Strike’s evident belief that she was too shaken up to deal with the Kelsey case.

Bitterly did Robin now regret betraying her distress when the Vettriano card had arrived. She ought to have known better than to let any hint of fear show, especially after telling him about the rape. He said it had made no difference, but she knew better: she’d had plenty of experience of people telling her what was, and wasn’t, good for her.

The taxi bowled along the Inner Circle and Robin had to remind herself that it was not her mother’s fault that they had blundered in on Two-Times. She ought to have called Strike first. The truth was that she had hoped that Strike would be out, or upstairs; that she would be able to show Linda around the office and take her away without having to introduce them. She had been afraid that, if she phoned him, Strike would make a point of being there to meet her mother, out of a characteristic blend of mischief and curiosity.

Linda and Strike had chatted away while Robin made tea, keeping deliberately quiet. She strongly suspected that one of the reasons Linda wanted to meet Strike was to assess the precise degree of warmth that existed between him and her daughter. Helpfully, Strike looked appalling, a good ten years older than his real age, with that blue-jawed, sunken-eyed look that he got when he forfeited sleep for work. Linda would surely be hard pressed to imagine that Robin was nursing a secret infatuation now she had seen her boss.

“I liked him,” said Linda as the red-brick palace of St. Pancras came into view, “and I have to say, he might not be pretty, but he’s got something about him.”

“Yes,” said Robin coldly. “Sarah Shadlock feels the same way.”

Shortly before they had left for the station, Strike had asked for five minutes with her alone in the inner office. There, he had handed her the beginnings of a list of massage parlors, strip joints and lap-dancing clubs in Shoreditch and asked her to begin the laborious process of ringing them all in search of Noel Brockbank.

“The more I think about it,” Strike had said, “the more I think he’ll still be working as a heavy or a bouncer. What else is there for him, big bloke with brain damage and his history?”