The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus. There were discussions of the deplorable drunken tendencies of the young British woman, with reciprocal accusations of victim-blaming. There were horror-struck articles about sexual violence, tempered with reminders that these attacks were far less common than in other countries. There were interviews with the distraught, guilt-stricken friends who had accidentally abandoned Heather, which in turn spawned attacks and vilifications on social media, leading back to a defense of the grieving young women.

Overlaying every story was the shadow of the unknown killer, the madman who was hacking women’s bodies apart. The press again descended upon Denmark Street in search of the man who had received Kelsey’s leg. Strike decided that the time had come for Robin to take that much-discussed but daily postponed trip to Masham for a final fitting of her wedding dress, then decamped yet again to Nick and Ilsa’s with a backpack and a crushing sense of his own impotence. A plainclothes officer remained stationed in Denmark Street in case anything suspicious turned up in the post. Wardle was concerned lest another body part addressed to Robin arrived.

Weighed down by the demands of an investigation that was being conducted under the full glare of the national media, Wardle was unable to meet Strike face to face for six days after the discovery of Heather’s body. Strike journeyed again to the Feathers in the early evening, where he found Wardle looking haggard, but looking forward to talking things over with a man who was both inside and outside the case.

“Been a fucker of a week,” sighed Wardle, accepting the pint Strike had bought him. “I’ve started bloody smoking again. April’s really pissed off.”

He took a long draft of lager, then shared with Strike the truth about the discovery of Heather’s body. The press stories, as Strike had already noted, conflicted in many possibly important essentials, though all blamed the police for not finding her for twenty-four hours.

“She and her friends were all shitfaced,” said the policeman, setting the scene with bluntness. “Four of them got into a cab, so ratted they forgot about Heather. They were a street away when they realized she wasn’t with them.

“The cabbie’s hacked off because they’re loud and obnoxious. One of them starts swearing at him when he says he can’t do a U-turn in the middle of the road. There’s a big argument, so it’s a good five minutes before he agrees to go back for Heather.

“When they finally reach the street where they think they left her—they’re from Nottingham, remember, they don’t know London at all—Heather’s nowhere to be seen. They crawl up the road in the cab, shouting for her out of the open window. Then one of them thinks she sees Heather in the distance, getting onto a bus. So two of them get out—there’s no bloody logic to it, they were out of their skulls—and go running down the road screaming after the bus to stop while the other two lean out of the cab screaming at them to get back in, they should follow the bus in the cab. Then the one who got into an argument with the cabbie earlier calls him a stupid Paki, he tells them to get the fuck out of his cab and drives away.