It was assumed by considerable numbers of the news-reading public that Lieutenant Agyeman would be delighted, firstly to be home from combat, and secondly to have returned in the expectation of wealth beyond his wildest imaginings. However, the young soldier that Cormoran Strike met in the Tottenham pub one lunchtime, ten days after the arrest of his sister’s murderer, was almost truculent, and seemed still to be in a state of shock.

The two men had, for different periods of time, lived the same life, and risked the same death. It was a bond that no civilian could understand, and for half an hour they talked about nothing but the army.

‘You were a Suit, yeah?’ Agyeman said. ‘Trust a Suit to fuck up my whole life.’

Strike smiled. He saw no ingratitude in Agyeman, even though the stitches in his arm pulled painfully every time he raised his pint.

‘My mother wants me to come out,’ said the soldier. ‘She keeps saying, that’ll be one good thing to come out of this mess.’

It was the first, oblique reference to the reason they were here, and that Jonah was not where he belonged, with his regiment, in the life he had chosen.

Then, quite suddenly, he began to talk, as though he had been waiting for Strike for months.

‘She never knew my dad had another kid. He never told her. He was never even sure that Marlene woman was telling the truth about being pregnant. Right before he died, when he knew he had days left, he told me. “Don’t upset your mother,” he said. “I’m telling you this because I’m dying, and I don’t know whether you’ve got a half-brother or sister out there.” He said the mother had been white, and that she’d disappeared. She might have aborted it. Fuck me. If you’d known my dad. Never missed a Sunday at church. Took communion on his deathbed. I’d never expected anything like that, never.

‘I was never even going to say anything to her about Dad and this woman. But then, out of the blue, I get this phone call. Thank Christ I was there, on leave. Only, Lula,’ he said her name tentatively, as though he was not sure whether he had the right to it, ‘said she’d’ve hung up if it’d been my mum. She said she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She sounded all right.’

‘I think she was,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah… but fuck me, it was weird. Would you believe it if some supermodel called you up and told you she was your sister?’

Strike thought of his own bizarre family history.

‘Probably,’ he said.