“Gentlemen, I think you’re going to enjoy this… Big welcome, please, for the lovely Mia!”

She began to jiggle to Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” There was not the remotest synchronicity between her movements and the track.

The barmaid resumed her lounging position near Strike. The view of the TV was clearest from where he sat.

“Yeah, like I was saying,” Strike began again, “a friend of mine told me he’s working here.”

“Mm-hm,” she said.

“Name of Noel Brockbank.”

“Yeah? I don’t know him.”

“No,” said Strike, making a show of scanning the place, although he had already established that Brockbank was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong place.”

The first stripper pushed her way out from behind the curtain, having changed into a bubblegum-pink spaghetti-strapped minidress that barely skimmed her crotch, and was somehow more indecent than her previous nakedness. She approached the man in the fluorescent jacket and asked him something, but he shook his head. Looking around, she caught Strike’s eye, smiled and approached him.

“Hiya,” she said. Her accent was Irish. Her hair, which he had thought blonde in the red light of the stage, turned out to be vivid copper. Beneath the thick orange lipstick and the thick false eyelashes hid a girl who looked as though she should still have been at school. “I’m Orla. Who’re you?”

“Cameron,” said Strike, which was what people usually called him after failing to grasp his first name.

“D’ya fancy a private dance then, Cameron?”

“Where does that happen?”

“Troo there,” she said, pointing towards the curtain where she had changed. “I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“No. I’m looking for a friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“It’s a him.”

“Yeh’ve come to the wrong place fer hims, darlin’,” she said.

She was so young he felt mildly dirty just hearing her call him darling.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Strike asked.

She hesitated. There was more money in a private dance, but perhaps he was the kind of guy who needed warming up first.

“Go on, then.”

Strike paid an exorbitant amount for a vodka and lime, which she sipped primly on a seat beside him, most of her breasts hanging out of the dress. The texture of her skin reminded him of the murdered Kelsey: smooth and firm, with plenty of youthful fat. There were three small blue stars inked on her shoulder.

“Maybe you know my friend?” Strike said. “Noel Brockbank.”

She was no fool, little Orla. Suspicion and calculation mingled in the sharp sideways look she gave him. She was wondering, like the masseuse back in Market Harborough, whether he was police.

“He owes me money,” said Strike.

She continued to scrutinize him for a moment, her smooth forehead furrowed, then apparently swallowed the lie.

“Noel,” she repeated. “I tink he’s gone. Hang on—Edie?”

The bored barmaid did not take her eyes from the TV.

“Hmm?”

“What was the name of yer man that Des sacked the other week? Guy who only lasted a few days?”