‘Oh, hullo, Mr Gillespie! How are you? Mr Strike’s just sent you a cheque, I put it in the post myself this morning… All the arrears, yes, and a little bit more… Oh no, Mr Strike’s adamant he wants to pay off the loan… Well, that’s very kind of Mr Rokeby, but Mr Strike would rather pay. He’s hopeful he’ll be able to clear the full amount within the next few months…’

An hour later, as Strike sat on a hard plastic chair at the Amputee Centre, his injured leg stretched in front of him, he reflected that if he had known that Robin was going to stay, he would not have bought her the green dress. The gift would not, he was sure, find favour with Matthew, especially once he had seen her in it, and heard that she had previously modelled it for Strike.

With a sigh, he reached for a copy of Private Eye lying on the table beside him. When the consultant first called him, Strike did not respond; he was immersed in the page headed ‘LandryBalls’, crammed with examples of journalistic excess relating to the case that he and Robin had solved. So many columnists had mentioned Cain and Abel that the magazine had run a special feature.

‘Mr Strick?’ shouted the consultant, for the second time. ‘Mr Cameron Strick?’

He looked up, grinning.

‘Strike,’ he said clearly. ‘My name’s Cormoran Strike.’

‘Oh, I do apologise… this way…’

As Strike limped after the doctor, a phrase floated up out of his subconscious, a phrase he had read long before he had seen his first dead body, or marvelled at a waterfall in an African mountainside, or watched the face of a killer collapsing as he realised he was caught.

I am become a name.

‘On to the table, please, and take off the prosthesis.’

Where had it come from, that phrase? Strike lay back on the table and frowned up at the ceiling, ignoring the consultant now bending over the remainder of his leg, muttering as he stared and gently prodded.

It took minutes to dredge up the lines Strike had learned so long ago.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees; all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name…