“Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course—”

“Where are you?”

“Waitrose.”

A short, balding man was perusing the shelf of sherry just behind Robin, his eyes level with her breasts. When she moved aside, he moved with her. Robin glared; he blushed and moved away.

“Well, you should be OK in Waitrose.”

“Mm,” said Robin, her eyes on the bald man’s retreating back. “Listen, this might be nothing, but I’ve just remembered: we’ve had a couple of weird letters in the last few months.”

“Nutter letters?”

“Don’t start.”

Robin always protested at this blanket term. They had attracted a significant increase in oddball correspondence since Strike had solved his second high-profile murder case. The most coherent of the writers simply asked for money, on the assumption that Strike was now immensely rich. Then came those who had strange personal grudges that they wished Strike to avenge, those whose waking hours seemed devoted to proving outlandish theories, those whose needs and wishes were so inchoate and rambling that the only message they conveyed was mental illness, and finally (“Now these seem nutty,” Robin had said) a sprinkling of people, both male and female, who seemed to find Strike attractive.

“Addressed to you?” Strike asked, suddenly serious.

“No, you.”

She could hear him moving around his flat as they talked. Perhaps he was going out with Elin tonight. He never talked about the relationship. If Elin had not dropped by the office one day, Robin doubted that she would have known that she existed—perhaps not until he turned up for work one day wearing a wedding ring.

“What did they say?” asked Strike.

“Well, one of them was from a girl who wanted to cut off her own leg. She was asking for advice.”

“Say that again?”

“She wanted to cut off her own leg,” Robin enunciated clearly, and a woman choosing a bottle of rosé nearby threw her a startled look.

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Strike. “And I’m not allowed to call them nutters. You think she managed it and thought I’d like to know?”

“I thought a letter like that might be relevant,” said Robin repressively. “Some people do want to cut bits of themselves off, it’s a recognized phenomenon, it’s called… not ‘being a nutter,’” she added, correctly anticipating him, and he laughed. “And there was another one, from a person who signed with their initials: a long letter, they went on and on about your leg and how they wanted to make it up to you.”

“If they were trying to make it up to me you’d think they would’ve sent a man’s leg. I’d look pretty bloody stupid—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t joke. I don’t know how you can.”

“I don’t know how you can’t,” he said, but kindly.

She heard a very familiar scraping noise followed by a sonorous clang.

“You’re looking in the nutter drawer!”

“I don’t think you should call it the ‘nutter drawer,’ Robin. Bit disrespectful to our mentally ill—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, smiling against her will, and hung up on his laughter.