‘They’re fine. Look, Stick, I just think it’s outrageous that Rokeby’s getting his lawyer to hassle you, when he’s never given you a penny in his life. He ought to have made it a gift, seeing what you’ve been through and how much he’s—’

‘Business is good. I’m going to pay off the loan,’ said Strike. A teenaged couple on the corner of the street were having an argument.

‘Are you sure everything’s all right between you and Charlotte? Why’s she visiting her mother? I thought they hated each other?’

‘They’re getting on better these days,’ he said, as the teenage girl gesticulated wildly, stamped her foot and walked away.

‘Have you bought her a ring yet?’ asked Lucy.

‘I thought you wanted me to get Gillespie off my back?’

‘Is she all right about not having a ring?’

‘She’s been great about it,’ said Strike. ‘She says she doesn’t want one; she wants me to put all my money into the business.’

‘Really?’ said Lucy. She always seemed to think that she made a good job of dissimulating her deep dislike of Charlotte. ‘Are you going to come to Jack’s birthday party?’

‘When is it?’

‘I sent you an invitation over a week ago, Stick!’

He wondered whether Charlotte had slipped it into one of the boxes he had left unpacked on the landing, not having room for all his possessions in the office.

‘Yeah, I’ll be there,’ he said; there was little he wanted to do less.

The call terminated, he returned to his computer and continued work. His notes from the Wilson and Kolovas-Jones interviews were soon completed, but a sense of frustration persisted. This was the first case that he had taken since leaving the army that required more than surveillance work, and it might have been designed to remind him daily that he had been stripped of all power and authority. Film producer Freddie Bestigui, the man who had been in closest proximity to Lula Landry at the time of her death, remained unreachable behind his faceless minions, and, in spite of John Bristow’s confident assertion that he would be able to persuade her to talk to Strike, there was not yet a secured interview with Tansy Bestigui.