Heather Smart, 22, financial services worker, stabbed to death, nose and ears removed.

She was round-faced and innocent-looking, with wavy mouse-brown hair, freckles and a timid smile.

Robin looked up from the Daily Express with a deep sigh. Matthew had been sent to audit a client in High Wycombe, so he had been unable to give Robin a lift today. It had taken her a full hour and twenty minutes to get to Catford from Ealing on trains crammed with tourists and commuters sweating in the London heat. Now she left her seat and headed for the door, swaying with the rest of the commuters as the train slowed and stopped, yet again, at Catford Bridge station.

Her week back at work with Strike had been strange. Strike, who clearly had no intention to comply with the instruction to keep out of Carver’s investigation, was nevertheless taking the investigating officer seriously enough to be cautious.

“If he can make a case that we’ve buggered up the police investigation, we’re finished as a business,” he said. “And we know he’ll try and say I’ve screwed things up, whether I have or not.”

“So why are we carrying on?”

Robin had been playing devil’s advocate, because she would have been deeply unhappy and frustrated had Strike announced that they were abandoning their leads.

“Because Carver thinks my suspects are bullshit, and I think he’s an incompetent tit.”

Robin’s laugh had ended prematurely when Strike had told her he wanted her to return to Catford and stake out Whittaker’s girlfriend.

“Still?” she asked. “Why?”

“You know why. I want to see whether Stephanie can give him alibis for any of the key dates.”

“You know what?” said Robin, plucking up her courage. “I’ve been in Catford a lot. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do Brockbank. Why don’t I try and get something out of Alyssa?”

“There’s Laing as well, if you want a change,” said Strike.

“He saw me up close when I fell over,” Robin countered at once. “Don’t you think it would be better if you did Laing?”

“I’ve been watching his flat while you’ve been away,” Strike said.

“And?”

“And he mostly stays in, but sometimes he goes to the shops and back.”

“You don’t think it’s him anymore, do you?”

“I haven’t ruled him out,” said Strike. “Why are you so keen to do Brockbank?”

“Well,” said Robin bravely, “I feel like I’ve done a lot of the running on him. I got the Market Harborough address out of Holly and I got Blondin Street out of the nursery—”

“And you’re worried about the kids who’re living with him,” said Strike.

Robin remembered the little black girl with the stiff pigtails who had tripped over, staring at her, in Catford Broadway.

“So what if I am?”

“I’d rather you stuck to Stephanie,” said Strike.

She had been annoyed; so annoyed that she had promptly asked for two weeks off rather more bluntly than she might otherwise have done.