‘Anstis can’t do this for me. I need you to call Deeby Macc.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘You heard me. He’s not going to take my calls, is he? But he’ll speak to you; you’ve got the authority, and it sounds as though he liked you.’

‘You’re telling me Deeby Macc knows where Tansy Bestigui was when Lula Landry died?’

‘No, of course he bloody doesn’t, he was in Barrack. I want to know what clothes he got sent on from Kentigern Gardens to Claridges. Specifically, what stuff he got from Guy Somé.’

Strike did not pronounce the name Ghee for Wardle.

‘You want… why?’

‘Because one of the runners on that CCTV footage was wearing one of Deeby’s sweatshirts.’

Wardle’s expression, arrested for a moment, relapsed into exasperation.

‘You see that stuff everywhere,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘That GS stuff. Shell suits. Trackies.’

‘This was a customised hoodie, there was only one of them in the world. Call Deeby, and ask him what he got from Somé. That’s all I need. Whose side d’you want to be on if it turns out I’m right, Wardle?’

‘Don’t threaten me, Strike…’

‘I’m not threatening you. I’m thinking about a multiple murderer who’s walking around out there planning the next one – but if it’s the papers you’re worried about, I don’t think they’re going to go too easy on anyone who clung to the suicide theory once another body surfaced. Call Deeby Macc, Wardle, before someone else gets killed.’

11

‘No,’ said Strike forcefully, on the telephone that evening. ‘This is getting dangerous. Surveillance doesn’t fall within the scope of secretarial duties.’

‘Nor did visiting the Malmaison Hotel in Oxford, or SOAS,’ Robin pointed out, ‘but you were happy enough that I did both of them.’

‘You’re not following anyone, Robin. I doubt Matthew would be very happy about it, either.’

It was funny, Robin thought, sitting in her dressing gown on her bed, with the phone pressed to her ear, how Strike had retained the name of her fiancé, without ever having met him. In her experience, men did not usually bother to log that kind of information. Matthew frequently forgot people’s names, even that of his newborn niece; but she supposed that Strike must have been trained to recall such details.

‘I don’t need Matthew’s permission,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t be dangerous; you don’t think Ursula May’s killed anyone…’

(There was an inaudible ‘do you?’ at the end of the sentence.)

‘No, but I don’t want anyone to hear I’m taking an interest in her movements. It might make the killer nervous, and I don’t want anyone else thrown from a height.’

Robin could hear her own heart thumping through the thin material of her dressing gown. She knew that he would not tell her who he thought the killer was; she was even a little frightened of knowing, notwithstanding the fact that she could think of nothing else.