“Have you got Clare’s phone number?” Strike asked Deborah.

“In the kitchen,” she said, without asking why he wanted it.

“Can you show me where that is?” Strike asked Samhain, although he knew perfectly well. The whole flat was as big as Irene Hickson’s sitting room. Samhain frowned at Strike’s midriff for a few moments, then said,

“All right, then.”

He walked the length of the sofa, jumped off the end with a crash that made the bookcase shake, and then lunged for the biscuits.

“Hahaha,” he taunted his mother, both hands full of Penguins. “I got them. Silly woman. Stupid woman.”

He walked out of the room.

As Strike inched back out of the space between ottoman and sofa, he stooped to pick up The Magus, which Samhain had dropped, and slid it under his coat. Crocheting peacefully by the window, Deborah Athorn noticed nothing.

A short list of names and numbers was attached to the kitchen wall with a drawing pin. Strike was pleased to see that several people seemed interested in Deborah and Samhain’s welfare.

“Who’re these people?” he asked, but Samhain shrugged and Strike was confirmed in his suspicion that Samhain couldn’t read, no matter how proud he was of The Magus. He took a photo of the list with his phone, then turned to Samhain.

“It would really help me if you could remember what your Uncle Tudor said happened to the lady doctor.”

“Hahaha,” said Samhain, who was unwrapping another Penguin. “I’m not telling.”

“Your Uncle Tudor must have really trusted you, to tell you.”

Samhain chewed in silence for a while, then swallowed and said, with a proud little upward jerk of the chin, “Yer.”

“It’s good to have people you can trust with important information.”

Samhain seemed pleased with this statement. He ate his biscuit and, for the first time, glanced at Strike’s face. The detective had the impression that Samhain was enjoying another man’s presence in the flat.

“I did that,” he said suddenly and, walking to the sink, he picked up a small clay pot, which was holding a washing-up brush and a sponge. “I go to class on Tuesdays and we make stuff. Ranjit teaches us.”

“That’s excellent,” said Strike, taking it from him and examining it. “Where were you, when your uncle told you what happened to Dr. Bamborough?”

“At the football,” said Samhain. “And I made this,” he told Strike, prising a wooden photo frame off the fridge, where it had been attached with a magnet. The framed picture was a recent one of Deborah and Samhain, both of whom had a budgerigar perched on their finger.

“That’s very good,” said Strike, admiring it.

“Yer,” said Samhain, taking it back from him and slapping it on the fridge. “Ranjit said it was the best one. We were at the football and I heard Uncle Tudor telling his friend.”

“Ah,” said Strike.

“And then he said to me, ‘Don’t you tell no one.’”

“Right,” said Strike. “But if you tell me, I can maybe help the doctor’s family. They’re really sad. They miss her.”

Samhain cast another fleeting look at Strike’s face.

“She can’t come back now. People can’t be alive again when they’re dead.”

“No,” said Strike. “But it’s nice when their families know what happened and where they went.”

“My-Dad-Gwilherm died under the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“My Uncle Tudor died in the hospital.”

“You see?” said Strike. “It’s good you know, isn’t it?”

“Yer,” said Samhain. “I know what happened.”

“Exactly.”

“Uncle Tudor told me it was Nico and his boys done it.”

It came out almost indifferently.

“You can tell her family,” said Samhain, “but nobody else.”

“Right,” said Strike, whose mind was working very fast. “Did Tudor know how Nico and the boys did it?”

“No. He just knew they did.”

Samhain picked up another biscuit. He appeared to have no more to say.

“Er—can I use your bathroom?”

“The bog?” said Samhain, with his mouth full of chocolate.

“Yes. The bog,” said Strike.

Like the rest of the flat, the bathroom was old but perfectly clean. It was papered in green, with a pattern of pink flamingos on it, which doubtless dated from the seventies and now, forty years later, was fashionably kitsch. Strike opened the bathroom cabinet, found a pack of razor blades, extracted one and cut the blood-stained page of The Magus out with one smooth stroke, then folded it and slipped it in his pocket.

Out on the landing, he handed Samhain the book back.

“You left it on the floor.”

“Oh,” said Samhain. “Ta.”

“You won’t do anything to the budgies if I leave, will you?”

Samhain looked up at the ceiling, grinning slightly.

“Will you?” asked Strike.

“No,” sighed Samhain at last.

Strike returned to the doorway of the sitting room.

“I’ll be off now, Mrs. Athorn,” he said. “Thanks very much for talking to me.”

“Goodbye,” said Deborah, without looking at him.

Strike headed downstairs, and let himself back onto the street. Once outside, he stood for a moment in the rain, thinking hard. So unusually still was he, that a passing woman turned to stare back at him.

Reaching a decision, Strike turned left, and entered the iron­monger’s which lay directly below the Athorns’ flat.

A sullen, grizzled and aproned man behind the counter looked up at Strike’s entrance. One of his eyes was larger than the other, which gave him an oddly malevolent appearance.

“Morning,” said Strike briskly. “I’ve just come from the Athorns, upstairs. I gather you want to talk to Clare Spencer?”

“Who’re you?” asked the ironmonger, with a mixture of surprise and aggression.

“Friend of the family,” said Strike. “Can I ask why you’re putting letters to their social worker through their front door?”

“Because they don’t pick up their phones at the bloody social work department,” snarled the ironmonger. “And there’s no point talking to them, is there?” he added, pointing his finger at the ceiling.

“Is there a problem I can help with?”

“I doubt it,” said the ironmonger shortly. “You’re probably feeling pretty bloody pleased with the situation, are you, if you’re a friend of the family? Nobody has to put their hand in their pocket except me, eh? Quick bit of a cover-up and let someone else foot the bill, eh?”

“What cover-up would this be?” asked Strike.

The ironmonger was only too willing to explain. The flat upstairs, he told Strike, had long been a health risk, crammed with the hoarded belongings of many years and a magnet for vermin, and in a just world, it ought not to be he who was bearing the costs of living beneath a pair of actual morons—

“You’re talking about friends of mine,” said Strike.