“Oh, fuck.”

“Whassamatter?”

“I forgot to ditch someone.”

Shanker began to laugh. Strike smiled ruefully, which was painful. His whole face ached.

“Are we tryina stop this wedding, Bunsen?”

“’Course not,” said Strike, pulling out another cigarette. “I was invited. I’m a friend. A guest.”

“You sacked ’er,” said Shanker. “Which ain’t a mark of friendship where I come from.”

Strike refrained from pointing out that Shanker knew hardly anyone who had ever had a job.

“She’s like your mum,” said Shanker, after a long silence.

“Who is?”

“Your Robin. Kind. Wanted to save that kid.”

Strike found it difficult to defend a refusal to save a child to a man who had been rescued, bleeding, from the gutter at the age of sixteen.

“Well, I’m going to try and get her back, aren’t I? But the next time she calls you—if she calls you—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell ya, Bunsen.”

The wing mirror showed Strike a face that might have belonged to the victim of a car crash. His nose was enormous and purple and his left ear looked black. By daylight he saw that his hasty attempt to shave using his left hand had not been entirely successful. As he imagined himself sliding into the back of the church he realized how conspicuous he was going to be, what a scene it would make if Robin decided she did not want him there. He didn’t want to spoil her day. At the first request to leave, he vowed inwardly, he would do so.

“BUNSEN!” shouted Shanker excitedly, making Strike jump. Shanker turned up the radio.

“… arrest has been made in the case of the Shacklewell Ripper. After a thorough search of a flat in Wollaston Close, London, police have charged thirty-four-year-old Donald Laing with the murders of Kelsey Platt, Heather Smart, Martina Rossi and Sadie Roach, the attempted murder of Lila Monkton and a serious assault on a sixth, unnamed woman…”

“They didn’t mention you!” said Shanker when the report ended. He sounded disappointed.

“They wouldn’t,” said Strike, fighting an uncharacteristic nervousness. He had just seen the first sign to Masham. “But they will. Good thing too: I need the publicity if I’m gonna get my business back off the ground.”

He automatically checked his wrist, forgetting that there was no watch there, and instead consulted the dashboard clock.

“Put your foot down, Shanker. We’re going to miss the start as it is.”

Strike became increasingly anxious as they approached their destination. The service had been scheduled to start twenty minutes before they finally tore up the hill to Masham, Strike checking his phone for the location of the church.

“It’s over there,” he said, pointing frantically to the opposite side of the broadest market square he had ever seen, which was packed with people at food stalls. As Shanker drove none too slowly around the periphery of the market several bystanders scowled and one man in a flat cloth cap shook his fist at the scarred man driving so dangerously in the sedate heart of Masham.