‘I’m so sorry he hasn’t got back to you,’ Robin told the caller, seven miles away in the office. ‘Mr Strike’s incredibly busy at the moment. Let me take your name and number, and I’ll make sure he phones you this afternoon.’

‘Oh, there’s no need for that,’ said the woman. She had a pleasant, cultivated voice with a faint suspicion of hoarseness, as though her laugh would be sexy and bold. ‘I don’t really need to speak to him. Could you just give him a message for me? I wanted to warn him, that’s all. God, this is… it’s a bit embarrassing; it isn’t the way I’d have chosen… Well, anyway. Could you please just tell him that Charlotte Campbell called, and that I’m engaged to Jago Ross? I didn’t want him to hear about it from anyone else, or read about it. Jago’s parents have gone and put it in the bloody Times. Mortifying.’

‘Oh. All right,’ said Robin, her mind suddenly paralysed like her pen.

‘Thanks very much – Robin, did you say? Thanks. ’Bye.’

Charlotte rang off first. Robin replaced the receiver in slow motion, feeling acutely anxious. She did not want to deliver this news. She might be only the messenger, but she would feel as though she were delivering an assault on Strike’s determination to keep his private life under wraps, on his firm avoidance of the subject of the boxes of possessions, the camp bed, the detritus of his evening meals in the bins every morning.

Robin pondered her options. She could forget to relay the message, and simply tell him to call Charlotte and get her to do her own dirty work (as Robin put it to herself). What, though, if Strike refused to call, and somebody else told him about the engagement? Robin had no means of knowing whether Strike and his ex (girlfriend? fiancée? wife?) had legions of mutual friends. If she and Matthew ever split up, if he became engaged to another woman (it gave her a twisting feeling in her chest to even think of it), all her closest friends and family would feel involved, and would undoubtedly stampede to tell her; she would, she supposed, prefer to be forewarned in as low-key and private a way as possible.

When she heard Strike ascending the stair nearly an hour later, apparently talking on his mobile and in good spirits, Robin experienced a sharp stab of panic to the stomach as though she were about to sit an exam. When he pushed open the glass door, and she saw that he was not holding a mobile at all, but rapping under his breath, she felt even worse.

‘Fuck yo’ meds and fuck Johari,’ muttered Strike, who was holding a boxed electric fan in his arms. ‘Afternoon.’

‘Hello.’

‘Thought we could use this. It’s stuffy in here.’

‘Yes, that would be good.’