“The wife likes Islington Boys’ Club. She’s meeting me here after work.”

Strike had never met Wardle’s wife, and while he had never given the matter much thought, he would have guessed her to be a hybrid of Platinum (because Wardle’s eyes invariably followed fake tans and scanty clothing) and the only wife of a Met policeman that Strike knew, whose name was Helly and who was primarily interested in her children, her house and salacious gossip. The fact that Wardle’s wife liked an indie band of whom Strike had never heard, notwithstanding the fact that he was already predisposed to despise that very band, made him think that she must be a more interesting person than the one he had expected.

“What’ve you got?” Strike asked Wardle, having secured himself a pint from an increasingly busy barman. By unspoken consent they left the bar and took the last free table for two in the place.

“Forensics are in on the leg,” said Wardle as they sat down. “They reckon it came off a woman aged between midteens and midtwenties and that she was dead when it was cut off—but not long dead, looking at the clotting—and it was kept in a freezer in between cutting it off and handing it to your friend Robin.”

Midteens to midtwenties: by Strike’s calculations, Brittany Brockbank would be twenty-one now.

“Can’t they be any more precise on the age?”

Wardle shook his head.

“That’s as far as they’re prepared to go. Why?”

“I told you why: Brockbank had a stepdaughter.”

“Brockbank,” repeated Wardle in the noncommittal tone that denotes lack of recall.

“One of the guys I thought might’ve sent the leg,” said Strike, failing to conceal his impatience. “Ex–Desert Rat. Big dark guy, cauliflower ear—”

“Yeah, all right,” said Wardle, immediately nettled. “I get passed names all the time, pal. Brockbank—he had the tattoo on his forearm—”

“That’s Laing,” said Strike. “He’s the Scot I landed in jail for ten years. Brockbank was the one who reckoned I’d given him brain damage.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“His stepdaughter, Brittany, had old scarring on her leg. I told you that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

Strike stifled a caustic retort by sipping his pint. He would have felt far more confident that his suspicions were being taken seriously had it been his old SIB colleague Graham Hardacre who sat opposite him, rather than Wardle. Strike’s relationship with Wardle had been tinged from the first with wariness and, latterly, with a faint competitiveness. He rated Wardle’s detective abilities higher than those of several other Met officers whom Strike had run across, but Wardle still regarded his own theories with paternal fondness that he never extended to Strike’s.

“So have they said anything about the scarring on the calf?”

“Old. Long predated the death.”

“Jesus fuck,” said Strike.

The old scarring might be of no particular interest to forensics, but it was of vital importance to him. This was what he had dreaded. Even Wardle, whose habit it was to take the mickey out of Strike on every possible occasion, appeared to be experiencing something like empathy at the sign of the detective’s concern.