“He’s the turd that won’t flush,” as Strike put it to Lucy, who did not laugh. She was less inclined even than Robin to embrace rough humor as a means of dealing with unpalatable facts.

Tired and increasingly hungry, swaying with the train, his knee aching, Strike felt low and aggrieved, mainly at himself. For years he had turned his face resolutely towards the future. The past was unalterable: he did not deny what had happened, but there was no need to wallow in it, no need to go seeking out the squat of nearly two decades ago, to recall the rattling of that letter box, to relive the screams of the terrified cat, the sight of his mother in the undertaker’s, pale and waxen in her bell-sleeved dress…

You’re a fucking idiot, Strike told himself angrily as he scanned the Tube map, trying to work out how many changes he would have to make to get to Nick and Ilsa’s. Whittaker never sent the leg. You’re just looking for an excuse to get at him.

The sender of that leg was organized, calculating and efficient; the Whittaker he had known nearly two decades previously had been chaotic, hot-headed and volatile.

And yet…

You’ll get yours…

She was the quicklime girl…

“Fuck!” said Strike loudly, causing consternation all around him.

He had just realized that he had missed his connection.

11

Feeling easy on the outside,

But not so funny on the inside.

Blue Öyster Cult, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love”

Strike and Robin took turns tailing Platinum over the next couple of days. Strike made excuses to meet during the working day and insisted that Robin leave for home during daylight hours, when the Tube was still busy. On Thursday evening, Strike followed Platinum until the Russian was safely back under the ever-suspicious gaze of Two-Times, then returned to Octavia Street in Wandsworth, where he was still living to avoid the press.

This was the second time in his detective career that Strike had been forced to take refuge with his friends Nick and Ilsa. Theirs was probably the only place he could have borne to stay, but Strike still felt strangely undomesticated within the orbit of a dual-career married couple. Whatever the drawbacks of the cramped attic space above his office, he had total freedom to come and go as he pleased, to eat at 2 a.m. when he had come in from a surveillance job, to move up and down the clanging metal stairs without fear of waking housemates. Now he felt unspoken pressure to be present for the occasional shared meal, feeling antisocial when he helped himself from the fridge in the small hours, even though he had been invited to do so.

On the other hand, Strike had not needed the army to teach him to be tidy and organized. The years of his youth that had been spent in chaos and filth had caused an opposite reaction. Ilsa had already remarked on the fact that Strike moved around the house without leaving any real mark on it, whereas her husband, a gastroenterologist, might be found by the trail of discarded belongings and imperfectly closed drawers.