He began to run. The phone connection to Robin was still open, but he could hear nothing. Panic sharpened his mental processes and obliterated all perception of pain as he sprinted down a darkening street in the direction of the nearest station. He needed a second phone.

“Need to borrow that, mate!” he bellowed at a pair of skinny black youths walking towards him, one of whom was chuckling into a mobile. “Crime’s being committed, need to borrow that phone!”

Strike’s size and his aura of authority as he pelted towards them made the teenager surrender the phone with a look of fear and bewilderment.

“Come with me!” Strike bellowed at the two boys, running on past them towards busier streets where he might be able to find a cab, his own mobile still pressed to his other ear. “Police!” Strike yelled into the boy’s phone as the stunned teenagers ran alongside him like bodyguards. “There’s a woman being attacked near Catford Bridge station, I was on the line to her when it happened! It’s happening right—no, I don’t know the street but it’s one or two away from the station—right now, I was on the line to her when he grabbed her, I heard it happen—yeah—and fucking hurry!

“Cheers, mate,” Strike panted, throwing the mobile back into the hands of its owner, who continued to run alongside him for several yards without realizing that he no longer needed to.

Strike hurtled around a corner; Bow was a totally unfamiliar area of London to him. On he ran past the Bow Bells pub, ignoring the red-hot jabs of the ligaments in his knee, moving awkwardly with only one free arm to balance himself, his silent phone still clamped to his ear. Then he heard a rape alarm going off at the other end of the line.

“TAXI!” he bellowed at a distant glowing light. “ROBIN!” he yelled into the phone, sure she could not hear him over the screeching alarm. “ROBIN, I’VE CALLED THE POLICE! THE POLICE ARE ON THEIR WAY. ARE YOU LISTENING, YOU FUCKER?”

The taxi had driven off without him. Drinkers outside the Bow Bells stared at the lunatic hobbling past at high speed, yelling and swearing into his phone. A second taxi appeared.

“TAXI! TAXI!” Strike bellowed and it turned, heading towards him, just as Robin’s voice spoke in his ear, gasping.

“Are… you there?”

“JESUS CHRIST! WHAT’S HAPPENED?”

“Stop… shouting…”

With enormous difficulty he modulated his volume.

“What’s happened?”

“I can’t see,” she said. “I can’t… see anything…”

Strike wrenched open the back door of the cab and threw himself inside.

“Catford Bridge station, hurry! What d’you mean, you can’t—? What’s he done to you? NOT YOU!” he bellowed at the confused cabbie. “Go! Go!”

“No… it’s your bloody… rape alarm… stuff… in my face… oh… shit…”

The taxi was speeding along, but Strike had to physically restrain himself from urging the driver to floor it.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

“A—a bit… there are people here…”