Strike, forewarned, was nowhere near as surprised to see Kieran Kolovas-Jones as the driver was to see him. Kolovas-Jones was holding open the left-hand passenger door, faintly lit by the car’s interior light, but Strike spotted his momentary change of expression when he laid eyes on Ciara’s companion.

‘Evening,’ said Strike, moving around the car to open his own door and get in beside Ciara.

‘Kieran, you’ve met Cormoran, haven’t you?’ said Ciara, buckling herself in. Her dress had ridden up to the very top of her long legs. Strike could not be absolutely certain that she was wearing anything beneath it. She had certainly been braless in the white jumpsuit.

‘Hi, Kieran,’ said Strike.

The driver nodded at Strike in the rear-view mirror, but did not speak. He had assumed a strictly professional demeanour that Strike doubted was habitual in the absence of detectives.

The car pulled away from the kerb. Ciara started rummaging again in her bag; she removed a perfume spray and squirted herself liberally in a wide circle around her face and shoulders; then dabbed lip gloss over her lips, talking all the while.

‘What am I going to need? Money. Cormoran, could you be a total darling and keep this in your pocket? I’m not going to take this massive thing in.’ She handed him a crumpled wad of twenties. ‘You’re a sweetheart. Oh, and I’ll need my phone. Have you got a pocket for my phone? God, this bag’s a mess.’

She dropped it on the car floor.

‘When you said that it would have been the dream of Lula’s life to find her real father…’

‘Oh God, it would have been. She used to talk about that all the time. She got really excited when that bitch – her birth mother – told her he was African. Guy always said that was bullshit, but he hated the woman.’

‘He met Marlene Higson, did he?’

‘Oh no, he just hated the whole, like, idea of her. He could see how excited Looly got, and he just wanted to protect her from being disappointed.’

So much protection, Strike thought, as the car turned a corner in the dark. Had Lula been that fragile? The back of Kolovas-Jones’s head was rigid, correct; his eyes flickering more often than was necessary to rest upon Strike’s face.

‘And then Looly thought she had a lead on him – her real father – but that went completely cold on her. Dead end. Yeah, it was so sad. She really thought she’d found him and then it all just fell through her fingers.’

‘What lead was this?’

‘It was something about where the college was. Something her mother said. Looly thought she’d found the place it must have been, and she went to look at the records, or something, with this funny friend of hers called…’

‘Rochelle?’ suggested Strike. The Mercedes was now purring up Oxford Street.