‘Bristow’s never mentioned asking his uncle to drop in. I’d say they were on bad terms at the time. They’re both shifty about that visit of Landry’s. Neither of them likes talking about it.’

Strike stood up and began to walk up and down, limping slightly, barely noticing the pain in his leg.

‘No,’ he said, ‘Bristow asking his sister, who by all accounts was the apple of his mother’s eye, to drop by – that makes sense. Asking his mother’s brother, who was out of town and by no means her biggest fan, to make a massive detour to see her… that doesn’t smell right. And now we find out that Alison went looking for Landry at his hotel in Oxford. It was a work day. Was she checking up on him on her own account, or did someone send her?’

The telephone rang. Robin picked up the receiver. To Strike’s surprise, she immediately affected a very stilted Australian accent.

‘Oy’m sorry, shiz not here… Naoh… Naoh… I dunnaoh where she iz… Naoh… My nem’s Annabel…’

Strike laughed quietly. Robin threw him a look of mock anguish. After nearly a minute of strangled Australian, she hung up.

‘Temporary Solutions,’ she said.

‘I’m getting through a lot of Annabels. That one sounded more South African than Australian.’

‘Now I want to hear what happened to you yesterday,’ said Robin, unable to conceal her impatience any longer. ‘Did you meet Bryony Radford and Ciara Porter?’

Strike told her everything that had happened, omitting only the aftermath of his excursion to Evan Duffield’s flat. He placed particular emphasis on Bryony Radford’s insistence that it was dyslexia that had caused her to listen to Ursula May’s voicemail messages; on Ciara Porter’s continuing assertion that Lula had told her she would leave everything to her brother; on Evan Duffield’s annoyance that Lula had kept checking the time while she was in Uzi; and on the threatening email that Tansy Bestigui had sent her estranged husband.

‘So where was Tansy?’ asked Robin, who had listened to every word of Strike’s story with gratifying attention. ‘If we can just find out…’

‘Oh, I’m pretty sure I know where she was,’ said Strike. ‘It’s getting her to admit it, when it might blow her chances of a multimillion-pound settlement from Freddie, that’s going to be the difficult bit. You’ll be able to work it out too, if you just look through the police photographs again.’

‘But…’

‘Have a look at the pictures of the front of the building on the morning Lula died, and then think about how it was when we saw it. It’ll be good for your detective training.’

Robin experienced a great surge of excitement and happiness, immediately tempered by a cold pang of regret, because she would soon be leaving for human resources.