‘I grant you, that doesn’t necessarily rule out her uncle, or Duffield, because calling them on the alternative number might have been a signal they’d organised between them. Alternatively, she was using Rochelle’s number to speak to somebody else; someone she didn’t want the press to know about. I’ve got Rochelle’s mobile number. Find out what network she was with and you’ll be able to check all this. The unit itself is a crystal-covered pink Nokia, but you won’t find that.’

‘Yeah, because it’s at the bottom of the Thames,’ said Wardle.

‘Course it isn’t,’ said Strike. ‘The killer’s got it. He’ll have got it off her before he threw her into the river.’

‘Fuck off!’ jeered Carver, and Wardle, who had seemed interested against his better judgement, shook his head.

‘Why did Landry want Rochelle there when she made the call?’ Strike repeated. ‘Why not make it from the car? Why, when Rochelle was homeless, and virtually destitute, did she never sell her story on Landry? They’d have given her a great wad for it. Why didn’t she cash in, once Landry was dead, and couldn’t be hurt?’

‘Decency?’ suggested Wardle.

‘Yeah, that’s one possibility,’ said Strike. ‘The other’s that she was making enough by blackmailing the killer.’

‘Boll-ocks,’ moaned Carver.

‘Yeah? That Muppet coat she was pulled up wearing cost one and a half grand.’

A tiny pause.

‘Landry probably gave it to her,’ said Wardle.

‘If she did, she managed to buy her something that wasn’t in the shops back in January.’

‘Landry was a model, she had inside contacts – fuck this shit,’ snapped Carver, as though he had irritated himself.

‘Why,’ said Strike, leaning forwards on his arms into the miasma of body odour that surrounded Carver, ‘did Lula Landry make a detour to that shop for fifteen minutes?’

‘She was in a hurry.’

‘Why go at all?’

‘She didn’t want to let the girl down.’

‘She got Rochelle to come right across town – this penniless, homeless girl, the girl she usually gave a lift home afterwards, in her chauffeur-driven car – dragged her into a cubicle, and then walked out fifteen minutes later, leaving her to make her own way home.’

‘She was a spoiled bitch.’

‘If she was, why turn up at all? Because it was worth it, for some purpose of her own. And if she wasn’t a spoiled bitch, she must have been in some kind of emotional state that made her act out of character. There’s a living witness to the fact that Lula begged somebody, over the phone, to come and see her, at her flat, sometime after one in the morning. There’s also that piece of blue paper she had before she went into Vashti, and which nobody’s admitting to having seen since. What did she do with it? Why was she writing in the back of the car, before she saw Rochelle?’

‘It could’ve been—’ said Wardle.