He was walking slowly back through A&E when tall, handsome Matthew came running through the double doors in his suit, wild-eyed, his hair all over the place. For the first time in their acquaintanceship, Strike felt something other than dislike for him.

“Matthew,” he said.

Matthew looked at Strike as though he did not recognize him.

“She went for an X-ray,” said Strike. “She might be back by now. That way,” he pointed.

“Why’s she need—?”

“Ribs,” said Strike.

Matthew elbowed him aside. Strike did not protest. He felt he deserved it. He watched as Robin’s fiancé tore off in her direction, then, after hesitating, turned to the double doors and walked out into the night.

The clear sky was now dusted with stars. Once he reached the street he paused to light a cigarette, dragging on it as Wardle had done, as though the nicotine were the stuff of life. He began to walk, feeling the pain in his knee now. With every step, he liked himself less.

“RICKY!” bawled a woman down the street, imploring an escaping toddler to return to her as she struggled with the weight of a large bag. “RICKY, COME BACK!”

The little boy was giggling manically. Without really thinking what he was doing, Strike bent down automatically and caught him as he sped towards the road.

“Thank you!” said the mother, almost sobbing her relief as she jogged towards Strike. Flowers toppled off the bag in her arms. “We’re visiting his dad—oh God—”

The boy in Strike’s arms struggled frantically. Strike put him down beside his mother, who was picking up a bunch of daffodils off the pavement.

“Hold them,” she told the boy sternly, who obeyed. “You can give them to Daddy. Don’t drop them! Thanks,” she said again to Strike and marched away, keeping a tight grip on the toddler’s free hand. The little boy walked meekly beside his mother now, proud to have a job to do, the stiff yellow flowers upright in his hand like a scepter.

Strike walked on a few paces and then, quite suddenly, stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, staring as though transfixed by something invisible hanging in the cold air in front of him. A chilly breeze tickled his face as he stood there, completely indifferent to his surroundings, his focus entirely inward.

Daffodils… lily of the valley… flowers out of season.

Then the sound of the mother’s voice echoed through the night again—“Ricky, no!”—and caused a sudden explosive chain reaction in Strike’s brain, lighting a landing strip for a theory that he knew, with the certainty of a prophet, would lead to the killer. As the steel joists of a building are revealed as it burns, so Strike saw in this flash of inspiration the skeleton of the killer’s plan, recognizing those crucial flaws that he had missed—that everyone had missed—but which might, at last, be the means by which the murderer and his macabre schemes could be brought down.