While Strike ate Singapore noodles one-handed, he examined Lula Landry’s laptop, which lay open on the table, beside his beer. The dark pink computer casing was patterned with cherry blossom. It did not occur to Strike that he presented an incongruous appearance to the world as he hunched, large and hairy, over the prettified, pink and palpably feminine device, but the sight had drawn smirks from two of the black-T-shirted waiters.

‘How’s tricks, Federico?’ asked a pallid, straggly-haired young man at half past eight. The newcomer, who dropped into the seat opposite Strike, wore jeans, a psychedelic T-shirt, Converse sneakers, and a leather bag slung diagonally across his chest.

‘Been worse,’ grunted Strike. ‘How’re you? Want a drink?’

‘Yeah, I’ll have a lager.’

Strike ordered the drink for his guest, whom he was accustomed, for long-forgotten reasons, to call Spanner. Spanner had a first-class degree in computer science, and was much better paid than his clothing suggested.

‘I’m not that hungry, I had a burger after work,’ Spanner said, looking down the menu. ‘I could do a soup. Wonton soup, please,’ he added to the waiter. ‘Interesting choice of laptop, Fed.’

‘It’s not mine,’ said Strike.

‘It’s the job, is it?’

‘Yeah.’

Strike slid the computer around to face Spanner, who surveyed the device with the mixture of interest and disparagement characteristic of those to whom technology is no necessary evil, but the stuff of life.

‘Junk,’ said Spanner cheerfully. ‘Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Fed? People’ve been worried.’

‘Nice of them,’ said Strike, through a mouthful of noodles. ‘No need, though.’

‘I was round Nick and Ilsa’s coupla nights ago and you were the only topic of conversation. They were saying you’ve gone underground. Oh, cheers,’ he said, as his soup arrived. ‘Yeah, they’ve been ringing your flat and they keep getting the answering machine. Ilsa reckons it’s woman trouble.’

It now occurred to Strike that the best way to inform his friends of his ruptured engagement might be through the medium of the unconcerned Spanner. The younger brother of one of Strike’s old friends, Spanner was largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the long and tortured history of Strike and Charlotte. Given that it was face-to-face sympathy and post-mortems that Strike wanted to avoid, and that he had no intention of pretending for ever that he and Charlotte had not split up, he agreed that Ilsa had correctly divined his main trouble, and that it would be better if his friends avoided calling Charlotte’s flat henceforth.

‘Bummer,’ said Spanner, and then, with the incuriosity towards human pain versus technological challenges that was characteristic of him, he pointed a spatulate fingertip at the Dell and asked: ‘What d’you want doing with this, then?’