As the warehouse door swung closed behind Strike, he heard Somé call to the tomato-haired girl at the desk: ‘I know what you’re thinking, Trudie. You’re imagining him taking you roughly from behind, aren’t you? Aren’t you, darling? Big rough soldier boy,’ and Trudie’s squeal of shocked laughter.

2

Charlotte’s acceptance of Strike’s silence was unprecedented. There had been no further calls or texts; she was maintaining the pretence that their last, filthy, volcanic row had changed her irrevocably, stripped away her love and purged her of fury. Strike, however, knew Charlotte as intimately as a germ that had lingered in his blood for fifteen years; knew that her only response to pain was to wound the offender as deeply as possible, no matter what the cost to herself. What would happen if he refused her an audience, and kept refusing? It was the only strategy he had never tried, and all he had left.

Every now and then, when Strike’s resistance was low (late at night, alone on his camp bed) the infection would erupt again: regret and longing would spike, and he saw her at close quarters, beautiful, naked, breathing words of love; or weeping quietly, telling him that she knew she was rotten, ruined, impossible, but that he was the best and truest thing she had ever known. Then, the fact that he was a few pressed buttons away from speaking to her seemed too fragile a barricade against temptation, and he sometimes pulled himself back out of his sleeping bag and hopped in the darkness to Robin’s abandoned desk, switching on the lamp and poring, even for hours, over the case report. Once or twice he placed early-morning calls to Rochelle Onifade’s mobile, but she never answered.

On Thursday morning, Strike returned to the wall outside St Thomas’s, and waited for three hours in the hope of seeing Rochelle again, but she did not turn up. He had Robin call the hospital, but this time they refused to comment on Rochelle’s non-attendance, and resisted all attempts at getting an address for her.

On Friday morning, Strike returned from an outing to Starbucks to find Spanner sitting not on the sofa beside Robin’s desk, but on the desk itself. He had an unlit roll-up in his mouth, and was leaning over her, apparently being more amusing than Strike had ever found him, because Robin was laughing in the slightly grudging manner of a woman who is entertained, but who wishes, nevertheless, to make it clear that the goal is well defended.

‘Morning, Spanner,’ said Strike, but the faintly repressive quality of his greeting did nothing to moderate either the computer specialist’s ardent body language or his broad smile.

‘All right, Fed? Brought your Dell back for you.’

‘Great. Double decaff latte,’ Strike told Robin, setting the drink down beside her. ‘No charge,’ he added, as she reached for her purse.