“OK,” said Robin, taking Strike’s arm. “We’re off. Thanks very much for meeting us, Jason—”

“Get some help,” said Strike loudly, pointing at Jason as he allowed Robin to pull him away, diners and waiters staring. “Get some fucking help. With your head.”

They were out in the leafy road, nearly a block away from the gallery, before Strike’s breathing began to return to normal.

“OK,” he said, though Robin had not spoken. “You warned me. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” she said mildly. “We got everything we wanted.”

They walked on in silence for a few yards.

“Did you pay? I didn’t notice.”

“Yes. I’ll take it out of petty cash.”

They walked on. Well-dressed men and women passed them, busy, bustling. A bohemian-looking girl with dreadlocks floated past in a long paisley dress, but a five-hundred-pound handbag revealed that her hippy credentials were as fake as Tempest’s disability.

“At least you didn’t punch her,” said Robin. “In her wheelchair. In front of all the art lovers.”

Strike began to laugh. Robin shook her head.

“I knew you’d lose it,” she sighed, but she was smiling.

44

Then Came the Last Days of May

He had thought she was dead. It had not troubled him that he hadn’t seen a news report, because she’d been a hooker. He’d never seen anything in the papers about the first one he’d done either. Prostitutes didn’t fucking count, they were nothing, no one cared. The Secretary was the one who was going to make the big splash, because she was working for that bastard—a clean-living girl with her pretty fiancé, the kind the press went wild for…

He didn’t understand how the whore could still be alive, though. He remembered the feeling of her torso beneath the knife, the popping, puncturing sound of the metal slitting her skin, the grating of steel on bone, the blood gushing. Students had found her, according to the newspaper. Fucking students.

He still he had her fingers, though.

She’d produced a photofit. What a fucking joke! The police were shaven monkeys in uniforms, the lot of them. Did they think this picture would help? It looked nothing like him, nothing at all; it could have been anyone, white or black. He would have laughed out loud if It hadn’t been there, but It wouldn’t like him laughing over a dead hooker and a photofit…

It was pretty bolshy at the moment. He had had to work hard to make up for the fact that he had treated It roughly, had to apologize, play the nice guy. “I was upset,” he had said. “Really upset.” He’d had to cuddle It and buy It fucking flowers and stay home, to make up for being angry, and now It was taking advantage, the way women always did, trying to take more, as much as It could get.

“I don’t like it when you go away.”

I’ll make YOU fucking go away if you keep this up.

He had told her a cock-and-bull story about the chance of a job, but for the first time ever she actually fucking dared question him: Who told you about it? How long will you be gone?