Strike turned back to Tony Landry’s statement, which cast no light on the reason his niece had been so anxious to contact him. He had turned off the sound on his mobile while at the conference, he said, and had not realised until much later that his niece had called him repeatedly that afternoon. He had no idea why she had done so and had not called her back, giving as his reason that by the time he realised that she had been trying to reach him, she had stopped calling, and he had guessed, correctly as it turned out, that she would be in a nightclub somewhere.

Strike was now yawning every few minutes; he considered making himself coffee, but could not muster the energy. Wanting his bed, but driven on by habit to complete the job in hand, he turned to the copies of security logbook pages showing the entrances and exits of visitors to number 18 on the day preceding Lula Landry’s death. A careful perusal of signatures and initials revealed that Wilson had not been as meticulous in his record-keeping as his employers might have hoped. As Wilson had already told Strike, the movements of the building’s residents were not recorded in the book; so the comings and goings of Landry and the Bestiguis were missing. The first entry Wilson had made was for the postman, at 9.10; next, at 9.22, came Florist delivery Flat 2; finally, at 9.50, Securibell. No time of departure was marked for the alarm checker.

Otherwise it had been (as Wilson had said) a quiet day. Ciara Porter had arrived at 12.50; Bryony Radford at 1.20. While Radford’s departure was recorded with her own signature at 4.40, Wilson had added the entrance of caterers to the Bestiguis’ flat at 7, Ciara’s exit with Lula at 7.15 and the departure of the caterers at 9.15.

It frustrated Strike that the only page that the police had photocopied was the day before Landry’s death, because he had hoped that he might find the surname of the elusive Rochelle somewhere in the entrance log’s pages.

It was nearly midnight when Strike turned his attention to the police report on the contents of Landry’s laptop. They appeared to have been searching, principally, for emails indicating suicidal mood or intent, and in this respect they had been unsuccessful. Strike scanned the emails Landry had sent and received in the last two weeks of her life.

It was strange, but nevertheless true, that the countless photographs of her otherworldly beauty had made it harder rather than easier for Strike to believe that Landry had ever really existed. The ubiquity of her features had made them seem abstract, generic, even if the face itself had been uniquely beautiful.