This had been his world and he had been happy there. For all the inconveniences and hardships of military life, for all that he had emerged from the army minus half his leg, he did not regret a day of the time he had spent serving. And yet, he had not been of these people, even while among them. He had been a monkey, and then a suit, feared and disliked about equally by the average squaddie.

If ever the SIB talk to you, you should say ‘No comment, I want a lawyer.’ Alternatively, a simple ‘Thank you for noticing me’ will suffice.

Strike gave a final grunt of laughter, and then, abruptly, shut down the site and turned off the computer. He was so tired that the removal of his prosthesis took twice the time it usually did.

9

On Sunday morning, which was fine, Strike headed back to the ULU to shower. Once again, by consciously filling out his own bulk and allowing his features to slide, as they did naturally, into a scowl, he made himself sufficiently intimidating to repel challenges as he marched, eyes down, past the desk. He hung around the changing rooms, waiting for a quiet moment so that he would not have to shower in full view of any of the changing students, for the sight of his false leg was a distinguishing feature he did not want to impress on anybody’s memory.

Clean and shaven, he caught the Tube to Hammersmith Broadway, enjoying the tentative sunshine gleaming through the glass-covered shopping precinct through which he emerged on to the street. The distant shops on King Street were heaving with people; it might have been a Saturday. This was a bustling and essentially soulless commercial centre, and yet Strike knew it to be a bare ten minutes’ walk to a sleepy, countrified stretch of the Thames embankment.

While he walked, traffic rumbling past him, he remembered Sundays in Cornwall in his childhood, when everything closed down except the church and the beach. Sunday had had a particular flavour in those days; an echoing, whispering quiet, the gentle chink of china and the smell of gravy, the TV as dull as the empty high street, and the relentless rush of the waves on the beach when he and Lucy had run down on to the shingle, forced back on to primitive resources.

His mother had once said to him: ‘If Joan’s right, and I end up in hell, it’ll be eternal Sunday in bloody St Mawes.’

Strike, who was heading away from the commercial centre towards the Thames, phoned his client as he walked.

‘John Bristow?’

‘Yeah, sorry to disturb you at the weekend, John…’

‘Cormoran?’ said Bristow, immediately friendly. ‘Not a problem, not a problem at all! How did it go with Wilson?’

‘Very good, very useful, thanks. I wanted to know whether you can help me find a friend of Lula’s. It’s a girl she met in therapy. Her Christian name begins with an R – something like Rachel or Raquelle – and she was living at the St Elmo hostel in Hammersmith when Lula died. Does that ring any bells?’