Ursula stopped abruptly, lowered her glass and picked up her coffee instead. Strike, who despite its undoubted irrelevance to the matter in hand was quite interested to know what Bryony had told everyone, began to speak, but Tansy talked loudly over him.

‘Oh, and there was that ghastly girl Lula used to bring around to the flat, too, John, remember?’

She appealed to Bristow again, but he looked blank.

‘You know, that ghastly – that rarely awful-coloured girl she sometimes dragged back. A kind of hobo person. I mean… she literally smelled. When she’d been in the lift… you could smell it. And she took her into the pool, too. I didn’t think blacks could swim?’

Bristow was blinking rapidly, pink in the face.

‘God knows what Lula was doing with her,’ said Tansy. ‘Oh, you must remember, John. She was fat. Scruffy. Looked a bit subnormal.’

‘I don’t…’ mumbled Bristow.

‘Are you talking about Rochelle?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, yah, I think that was her name. She was at the funeral, anyway,’ said Tansy. ‘I noticed her. She was sitting right at the back.

‘Now, you will remember, won’t you,’ she turned the full force of her dark eyes upon Strike, ‘that this is all entirely off the record. I mean, I cannot afford for Freddie to find out I’m talking to you. I’m not going to go through all that shit with the press again. Bill, please,’ she barked at the waiter.

When it arrived, she passed it without comment to Bristow.

As the sisters were preparing to leave, shaking their glossy brown hair back over their shoulders and pulling on expensive jackets, the door of the restaurant opened and a tall, thin, besuited man of around sixty entered, looked around and headed straight for their table. Silver-haired and distinguished-looking, impeccably dressed, there was a certain chilliness about his pale blue eyes. His walk was brisk and purposeful.

‘This is a surprise,’ he said smoothly, stopping in the space between the two women’s chairs. None of the other three had seen the man coming, and all bar Strike displayed equal parts of shock and something more than displeasure at the sight of him. For a fraction of a second, Tansy and Ursula froze, Ursula in the act of pulling sunglasses out of her bag.

Tansy recovered first.

‘Cyprian,’ she said, offering her face for his kiss. ‘Yes, what a lovely surprise!’

‘I thought you were going shopping, Ursula dear?’ he said, his eyes on his wife as he gave Tansy a conventional peck on each cheek.

‘We stopped for lunch, Cyps,’ she replied, but her colour was heightened, and Strike sensed an ill-defined nastiness in the air.

The older man’s pale eyes moved deliberately over Strike and came to rest on Bristow.

‘I thought Tony was handling your divorce, Tansy?’ he asked.

‘He is,’ said Tansy. ‘This isn’t a business lunch, Cyps. Purely social.’

He gave a wintry smile.