And yet he was close to feeling about her as he had felt towards a grass snake that he had succeeded in trapping in Trevaylor Woods when he was eleven, and about which he had had a long, pleading argument with his Auntie Joan: ‘Please let me keep it… please…⁠’

‘I’d better get going,’ he said, after he had signed her time sheet, and thrown his sandwich wrappers and his empty water bottle into the bin underneath her desk. ‘Thanks for everything, Robin. Good luck with the job hunt.’

He took down his overcoat, and left through the glass door.

At the top of the stairs, on the precise spot where he had both nearly killed and then saved her, he came to a halt. Instinct was clawing at him like an importuning dog.

The glass door banged open behind him and he turned. Robin was pink in the face.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘We could come to a private arrangement. We could cut out Temporary Solutions, and you could pay me directly.’

He hesitated.

‘They don’t like that, temping agencies. You’ll be drummed out of the service.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve got three interviews for permanent jobs next week. If you’d be OK about me taking time off to go to them—’

‘Yeah, no problem,’ he said, before he could stop himself.

‘Well then, I could stay for another week or two.’

A pause. Sense entered into a short, violent skirmish with instinct and inclination, and was overwhelmed.

‘Yeah… all right. Well, in that case, will you try Freddie Bestigui again?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Robin, masking her glee under a show of calm efficiency.

‘I’ll see you Monday afternoon, then.’

It was the first grin he had ever dared give her. He supposed he ought to be annoyed with himself, and yet Strike stepped out into the cool early afternoon with no feeling of regret, but rather a curious sense of renewed optimism.

6

Strike had once tried to count the number of schools he had attended in his youth, and had reached the figure of seventeen with the suspicion that he had forgotten a couple. He did not include the brief period of supposed home schooling which had taken place during the two months he had lived with his mother and half-sister in a squat in Atlantic Road in Brixton. His mother’s then boyfriend, a white Rastafarian musician who had rechristened himself Shumba, felt that the school system reinforced patriarchal and materialistic values with which his common-law stepchildren ought not to be tainted. The principal lesson that Strike had learned during his two months of home-based education was that cannabis, even if administered spiritually, could render the taker both dull and paranoid.

He took an unnecessary detour through Brixton Market on the way to the café where he was meeting Derrick Wilson. The fishy smell of the covered arcades; the colourful open faces of the supermarkets, teeming with unfamiliar fruit and vegetables from Africa and the West Indies; the halal butchers and the hairdressers, with large pictures of ornate braids and curls, and rows and rows of white polystyrene heads bearing wigs in the windows: all of it took Strike back twenty-six years, to the months he had spent wandering the Brixton streets with Lucy, his young half-sister, while his mother and Shumba lay dozily on dirty cushions back at the squat, vaguely discussing the important spiritual concepts in which the children ought to be instructed.