‘Just heard Deeby Macc playing in the shop,’ Strike informed her, setting down the fan in a corner and peeling off his jacket. “Something something and Ferrari, Fuck yo’ meds and fuck Johari.” Wonder who Johari was. Some rapper he was having a feud with, d’you think?’

‘No,’ said Robin, wishing that he was not so cheerful. ‘It’s a psychological term. The Johari window. It’s all to do with how well we know ourselves, and how well other people know us.’

Strike paused in the act of hanging up his jacket and stared at her.

‘You didn’t get that out of Heat magazine.’

‘No. I was doing psychology at university. I dropped out.’

She felt, obscurely, that it might somehow even the playing field to tell him about one of her own personal failures, before delivering the bad news.

‘You dropped out of university?’ He seemed uncharacteristically interested. ‘That’s a coincidence. I did, too. So why “fuck Johari”?’

‘Deeby Macc had therapy in prison. He became interested and did a lot of reading on psychology. I got that bit out of the papers,’ she added.

‘You’re a mine of useful information.’

She experienced another elevator-drop in the pit of her stomach.

‘There was a call, when you were out. From a Charlotte Campbell.’

He looked up quickly, frowning.

‘She asked me to give you a message, which was,’ Robin’s gaze slid sideways, to hover momentarily on Strike’s ear, ‘that she’s engaged to Jago Ross.’

Her eyes were drawn, irresistibly, back to his face, and she felt a horrible chill.

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin’s childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother.

Strike did not speak immediately. Then he said, with palpable difficulty:

‘Right. Thanks.’

He walked into the inner office, and closed the door.

Robin sat back down at her desk, feeling like an executioner. She could not settle to anything. She considered knocking on the door again, and offering a cup of tea, but decided against. For five minutes she restlessly reorganised the items on her desk, glancing regularly at the closed inner door, until it opened again, and she jumped, and pretended to be busy at the keyboard.