“Sorry, babes, talking shop,” said Wardle, unperturbed. “April, Cormoran Strike. My wife,” he added.

“Hi,” said Strike, extending a large hand. He would never have guessed Wardle’s wife looked like this. For reasons he was too tired to analyze, it made him like Wardle better.

“Oh, it’s you!” said April, beaming at Strike while Wardle slid the photocopied letters off the table, folded and pocketed them. “Cormoran Strike! I’ve heard loads about you. Are you staying for the band?”

“I doubt it,” said Strike, though not unpleasantly. She was very pretty.

April seemed reluctant to let him go. They had friends joining them, she told him, and sure enough, within a few minutes of her arrival another six people turned up. There were two unattached women in the group. Strike allowed himself to be talked into moving upstairs with them, where there was a small stage and an already packed room. In response to his questions, April revealed that she was a stylist who had been working on a magazine shoot that very day, and—she said it casually—a part-time burlesque dancer.

“Burlesque?” repeated Strike at the top of his voice, as microphone feedback again screeched through the upper room, to shouts and groans of protest from the assembled drinkers. Isn’t that arty stripping? he wondered, as April shared the information that her friend Coco—a girl with tomato-red hair who smiled at him and wiggled her fingers—was a burlesque dancer too.

They seemed a friendly group and none of the men were treating him with that tiresome chippiness that Matthew exhibited every time he came within Strike’s orbit. He had not watched any live music in a long time. Petite Coco had already expressed a desire to be lifted up so she could see…

However, when the Islington Boys’ Club took to the stage Strike found himself forcibly transported back to times and people he strove not to think about. Stale sweat in the air, the familiar sound of guitars being tweaked and tuned, the humming of the open mic: he could have borne them all, had the lead singer’s posture and his lithe androgyny not recalled Whittaker.

Four bars in and Strike knew he was leaving. There was nothing wrong with their brand of guitar-heavy indie rock: they played well and, in spite of his unfortunate resemblance to Whittaker, the lead singer had a decent voice. However, Strike had been in this environment too often and unable to leave: tonight, he was free to seek peace and clean air, and he intended to exercise that prerogative.

With a shouted farewell to Wardle and a wave and a smile to April, who winked and waved back, he left, large enough to carve an easy path through people already sweaty and breathless. He gained the door as the Islington Boys’ Club finished their first song. The applause overhead sounded like muffled hail on a tin roof. A minute later, he was striding away, with relief, into the swishing sound of traffic.