‘Big pink fake-fur coat. Like a skinned Muppet. Jeans and trainers.’

‘That’s what she was wearing when I bought her the burger.’

‘In that case, the contents of the stomach should give an accurate—’ began the mortician.

‘D’you know if she’s got any next of kin?’ Carver demanded of Strike.

‘There’s an aunt in Kilburn. I don’t know her name.’

Slivers of glistening eyeball showed through Rochelle’s almost closed lids; they had the characteristic brightness of the drowned. There were traces of bloody foam in the creases around her nostrils.

‘How are her hands?’ Strike asked the mortician, because Rochelle was uncovered only to the chest.

‘Never mind her hands,’ snapped Carver. ‘We’re done here, thanks,’ he told the mortician loudly, his voice reverberating around the room; and then, to Strike: ‘We want a word with you. Car’s outside.’

He was helping police with their inquiries. Strike remembered hearing the phrase on the news when he had been a small boy, obsessed by every aspect of police work. His mother had always blamed this strange early preoccupation on her brother, Ted, ex-Red Cap and fount of (to Strike) thrilling stories of travel, mystery and adventure. Helping police with their inquiries: as a five-year-old, Strike had imagined a noble and disinterested citizen volunteering to give up his time and energy to assist the police, who issued him with magnifying glass and truncheon and allowed him to operate under a cloak of glamorous anonymity.

This was the reality: a small interrogation room, with a cup of machine-made coffee given to him by Wardle, whose attitude towards Strike was devoid of the animosity that crackled from Carver’s every open pore, but free of every trace of former friendliness. Strike suspected that Wardle’s superior did not know the full extent of their previous interactions.

A small black tray on the scratched desk held seventeen pence in change, a single Yale key and a plastic-covered bus pass; Strike’s card was discoloured and crinkled but still legible.

‘What about her bag?’ Strike asked Carver, who was sitting across the desk, while Wardle leaned up against the filing cabinet in the corner. ‘Grey. Cheap and plastic-looking. That hasn’t turned up, has it?’

‘She probably left it in her squat, or wherever the fuck she lived,’ said Carver. ‘Suicides don’t usually pack a bag to jump.’

‘I don’t think she jumped,’ said Strike.

‘Oh don’t you, now?’

‘I wanted to see her hands. She hated water over her face, she told me so. When people have struggled in the water, the position of their hands—’

‘Well, it’s nice to get your expert opinion,’ said Carver, with sledgehammer irony. ‘I know who you are, Mr Strike.’

He leaned back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head, revealing dried patches of sweat on the underarms of his shirt. The sharp, sour, oniony smell of BO wafted across the desk.