And then had come the unprecedented horror of the first day back at school after Easter break, when their form teacher had told them that Charlie would never return, that he was dead, that he had ridden his bike over the edge of a quarry, while holidaying in Wales. She had been a mean old bitch, that teacher, and she had not been able to resist telling the class that Charlie, who as they would remember often disobeyed grown-ups, had been expressly forbidden to ride anywhere near the quarry, but that he had done so anyway, perhaps showing off – but she had been forced to stop there, because two little girls in the front row were sobbing.

From that day onwards, Strike had seen the face of a laughing blond boy fragmenting every time he looked at, or imagined, a quarry. He would not have been surprised if every member of Charlie Bristow’s old class had been left with the same lingering fear of the great dark pit, the sheer drop and the unforgiving stone.

‘Yeah, I remember Charlie,’ he said.

Bristow’s Adam’s apple bobbed a little.

‘Yes. Well it’s your name, you see. I remember so clearly Charlie talking about you, on holiday, in the days before he died; “my friend Strike”, “Cormoran Strike”. It’s unusual, isn’t it? Where does “Strike” come from, do you know? I’ve never met it anywhere else.’

Bristow was not the first person Strike had known who would snatch at any procrastinatory subject – the weather, the congestion charge, their preferences in hot drinks – to postpone discussion of what had brought them to his office.

‘I’ve been told it’s something to do with corn,’ he said, ‘measuring corn.’

‘Really, is it? Nothing to do with hitting, or walkouts, ha ha… no… Well you see, when I was looking for someone to help me with this business, and I saw your name in the book,’ Bristow’s knee began jiggling up and down, ‘you can perhaps imagine how it – well, it felt like – like a sign. A sign from Charlie. Saying I was right.’

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

‘OK,’ said Strike cautiously, hoping that he had not been mistaken for a medium.

‘It’s my sister, you see,’ said Bristow.

‘Right. Is she in some kind of trouble?’

‘She’s dead.’

Strike just stopped himself saying, ‘What, her too?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said carefully.

Bristow acknowledged the condolence with a jerky inclination of the head.

‘I – this isn’t easy. Firstly, you should know that my sister is – was – Lula Landry.’

Hope, so briefly re-erected at the news that he might have a client, fell slowly forwards like a granite tombstone and landed with an agonising blow in Strike’s gut. The man sitting opposite him was delusional, if not actually unhinged. It was an impossibility akin to two identical snowflakes that this whey-faced, leporine man could have sprung from the same genetic pool as the bronze-skinned, colt-limbed, diamond-cut beauty that had been Lula Landry.