Robin was looking down at the gaunt face of the only other woman who had survived the killing spree. “Lila Monkton, prostitute.” Lila, too, knew what the killer’s pig-like breathing sounded like. He had cut off Lila’s fingers. Robin would only have a long scar on her arm. Her brain buzzed angrily in her skull. She felt guilty that she had got off so lightly.

“I wish there was something—”

“Drop it,” said Strike. He sounded angry, just like Matthew. “We’re done, Robin. I should never have sent you to Stephanie. I’ve let my grudge against Whittaker color my judgment ever since that leg arrived and it nearly got you—”

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Robin impatiently. “You didn’t try and kill me, he did. Let’s keep the blame where it belongs. You had good reason for thinking it was Whittaker—the lyrics. Anyway, that still leaves—”

“Carver’s looked into Laing and Brockbank and he doesn’t think there’s anything there. We’re staying out of it, Robin.”

Ten miles away in his office, Strike hoped that he was convincing her. He had not told Robin about the epiphany that had occurred to him after his encounter with the toddler outside the hospital. He had tried to contact Carver the following morning, but a subordinate had told him that Carver was too busy to take his call and advised him not to try again. Strike had insisted on telling the irritable and faintly aggressive subordinate what he had hoped to tell Carver. He would have bet his remaining leg that not a word of his message had been passed on.

The windows in Strike’s office were open. Hot June sunshine warmed the two rooms now devoid of clients and soon, perhaps, to be vacated due to an inability to afford the rent. Two-Times’s interest in the new lap-dancer had petered out. Strike had nothing to do. Like Robin, he yearned for action, but he did not tell her that. All he wanted was for her to heal and be safe.

“Police still in your street?”

“Yes,” she sighed.

Carver had placed a plainclothes officer in Hastings Road around the clock. Matthew and Linda took immense comfort in the fact that he was out there.

“Cormoran, listen. I know we can’t—”

“Robin, there’s no ‘we’ just now. There’s me, sitting on my arse with no work, and there’s you, staying at bloody home until that killer’s caught.”

“I wasn’t talking about the case,” she said. Her heart was banging hard and fast against her ribs again. She had to say it aloud, or she would burst. “There’s one thing we—you can do, then. Brockbank might not be the killer, but we know he’s a rapist. You could go to Alyssa and warn her she’s living with—”

“Forget it,” said Strike’s voice harshly in her ear. “For the last fucking time, Robin, you can’t save everyone! He’s never been convicted! If we go blundering in there, Carver will string us up.”

There was a long silence.