‘Fuckin’ everything. I reckon she stole half the stuff she pretended Landry bought ’er.’

‘Come on, Carrianne,’ said the bald man gently. ‘They were friends,’ he told Strike. ‘Landry used to come and pick her up in her car. It caused,’ he said, with a glance at Carrianne, ‘a bit of tension.’

‘Not from me it fuckin’ didn’t,’ snapped Carrianne. ‘I thought Landry was a fuckin’ jumped-up bitch. She weren’t even that good-lookin’.’

‘Rochelle told me she’s got an aunt in Kilburn,’ said the bald man.

‘She dun gerron with ’er, though,’ said the girl.

‘Have you got a name or an address for the aunt?’ asked Strike, but both shook their heads. ‘What’s Rochelle’s surname?’

‘I don’t know; do you, Carrianne? We often know people just by their Christian names,’ he told Strike.

There was little more to be gleaned from them. Rochelle had last stayed at the hostel more than two months previously. The bald man knew that she had attended an outpatients’ clinic at St Thomas’s for a while, though he had no idea whether she still went.

‘She’s had psychotic episodes. She’s on a lot of medication.’

‘She didn’t give a shit when Lula died,’ said Carrianne, suddenly. ‘She didn’t give a flying fuck.’

Both men looked at her. She shrugged, as one who has simply expressed an unpalatable truth.

‘Listen, if Rochelle turns up again, will you give her my details and ask her to call me?’

Strike gave both of them cards, which they examined with interest. While their attention was thus engaged, he deftly twitched the gum-chewing woman’s News of the World out of the small opening at the bottom of the grille and stowed it under his arm. He then bade them both a cheerful goodbye, and left.

It was a warm spring afternoon. Strike strode on down towards Hammersmith Bridge, its pale sage-green paint and ornate gilding picturesque in the sun. A single swan bobbed along the Thames beside the far bank. The offices and shops seemed a hundred miles away. Turning right, he headed along the walkway beside the river wall and a line of low, riverside terraced buildings, some balconied or draped in wisteria.

Strike bought himself a pint in the Blue Anchor, and sat outside at a wooden bench with his face to the water and his back to the royal-blue and white frontage. Lighting a cigarette, he turned to page four of the paper, where a colour photograph of Evan Duffield (head bowed, large bunch of white flowers in his hand, black coat flapping behind him) was surmounted by the headline: DUFFIELD’S DEATHBED VISIT TO LULA MOTHER.