Her mobile had been vibrating inside the pocket of her coat all day. Matthew had sent more than thirty texts.

We’ve got to talk.

Ring me, please.

Robin, we can’t sort anything out if you don’t talk to me.

As the day had worn on and her silence had not broken, he had started trying to call. Then the tone of his texts had changed.

Robin, you know I love you.

I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish I could change it, but I can’t.

It’s you I love, Robin. I always have and I always will.

She had not texted back, or picked up his calls, or rung him. All she knew was that she could not bear to go back to the flat, not tonight. What would happen tomorrow, or the next day, she had no idea. She was hungry, exhausted and numb.

Strike had become almost as importuning towards late afternoon.

Where are you? Ring me pls.

She had texted him back, because she could not face talking to him either.

Can’t speak. Platinum’s not at work.

She and Strike maintained a certain emotional distance, always, and she was afraid that if he were kind to her she would cry, revealing the sort of weakness that he would deplore in an assistant. With virtually no cases left, with the threat of the man who had sent the leg hanging over her, she must not give Strike another reason to tell her to stay at home.

He had not been satisfied with her response.

Call me asap.

She had ignored that one on the basis that she might easily have failed to receive it, being close to the Tube when he sent it and shortly afterwards having no reception as she and Platinum rode the Tube back to Tottenham Court Road. On emerging from the station Robin found another missed call from Strike on her phone, as well as a new text from Matthew.

I need to know whether you’re coming home tonight. I’m worried sick about you. Just text to tell me you’re alive, that’s all I’m asking.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” muttered Robin. “Like I’d kill myself over you.”

A strangely familiar paunchy man in a suit walked past Robin, illuminated by the glow of Spearmint Rhino’s canopy. It was Two-Times. Robin wondered whether she imagined the self-satisfied smirk he gave her.

Was he going inside to watch his girlfriend gyrate for other men? Did he get a thrill out of having his sex life documented? Precisely what kind of weirdo was he?

Robin turned away. She needed to make a decision as to what to do tonight. A large man in a beanie hat appeared to be arguing into his mobile phone in a dark doorway a hundred yards away.

The disappearance of Platinum had robbed Robin of purpose. Where was she going to sleep? As she stood there, irresolute, a group of young men walked past her, deliberately close, one of them brushing against her holdall. She could smell Lynx and lager.