‘I need to change,’ said Strike, standing up. ‘Please will you try Freddie Bestigui again for me?’

He disappeared into the inner room, closed the door behind him and swapped his lucky suit (as he thought he might henceforth call it) for an old and comfortable shirt, and a roomier pair of trousers. When he passed Robin’s desk on the way to the bathroom, she was on the telephone, wearing that expression of disinterested attentiveness that betokens a person on hold. Strike cleaned his teeth in the cracked basin, reflecting on how much easier life with Robin would be, now that he had tacitly admitted that he lived in the office, and returned to find her off the telephone and looking exasperated.

‘I don’t think they’re even bothering to take my messages now,’ she told Strike. ‘They say he’s out at Pinewood Studios and can’t be disturbed.’

‘Ah well, at least we know he’s back in the country,’ said Strike.

He took the interim report out of the filing cabinet, sank back down on the sofa and began to add his notes of yesterday’s conversations, in silence. Robin watched out of the corner of her eye, fascinated by the meticulousness with which Strike tabulated his findings, making a precise record of how, where and from whom he had gained each piece of information.

‘I suppose,’ she asked, after a long stretch of silence, during which she had divided her time between covert observation of Strike at work, and examination of a photograph of the front of number 18, Kentigern Gardens on Google Earth, ‘you have to be very careful, in case you forget anything?’

‘It’s not only that,’ said Strike, still writing, and not looking up. ‘You don’t want to give defending counsel any footholds.’

He spoke so calmly, so reasonably that Robin considered the implication of his words for several moments, in case she could have misunderstood.

‘You mean… in general?’ she said at last. ‘On principle?’

‘No,’ said Strike, continuing his report. ‘I mean that I specifically do not want to allow the defending counsel in the trial of the person who killed Lula Landry to get off because he was able to show that I can’t keep records properly, thereby calling into question my reliability as a witness.’

Strike was showing off again, and he knew it; but he could not help himself. He was, as he put it to himself, on a roll. Some might have questioned the taste of finding amusement in the midst of a murder inquiry, but he had found humour in darker places.

‘Couldn’t nip out for some sandwiches, Robin, could you?’ he added, just so that he could glance up at her satisfyingly astonished expression.

He finished his notes during her absence, and was just about to call an old colleague in Germany when Robin burst back in, holding two packs of sandwiches and a newspaper.