On the other hand, the filing was up to date, the accounts were in order, all receipts were neatly docketed, the phone was answered promptly, messages were passed on accurately, they never ran out of teabags or milk, and Pat had never once arrived late, no matter the weather and irrespective of Tube delays.

It was true, too, that Pat liked Morris, who was the recipient of most of her rare smiles. Morris was always careful to pay Pat his full tribute of blue-eyed charm before turning his attention to Robin. Pat was already alert to the possibility of romance between her younger colleagues.

“He’s lovely-looking,” she’d told Robin just the previous week, after Morris had phoned in his location so that the temporarily unreachable Barclay could be told where to take over surveillance on their biggest case. “You’ve got to give him that.”

“I haven’t got to give him anything,” Robin had said, a little crossly.

It was bad enough having Ilsa badger her about Strike in her leisure time without Pat starting on Morris during her working hours.

“Quite right,” Pat had responded, unfazed. “Make him earn it.”

“Anyway,” said Strike, finishing his cigarette and crushing the stub out in the tin Robin kept for that purpose in the glove compartment, “you’ve wrapped up Tufty. Bloody good going.”

“Thanks,” Robin said. “But there’s going to be press. Bigamy’s always news.”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it’s going to be worse for him than us, but it’s worth trying to keep our name out of it if we can. I’ll have a word with Mrs.-Campion-in-Windsor. So that leaves us,” he counted the names on his thick fingers, “with Two-Times, Twinkletoes, Postcard and Shifty.”

It had become the agency’s habit to assign nicknames to their targets and clients, mainly to avoid letting real names slip in public or in emails. Two-Times was a previous client of the agency, who’d recently resurfaced after trying other private detectives and finding them unsatisfactory. Strike and Robin had previously investigated two of his girlfriends. At a superficial glance, he seemed most unlucky in love, a man whose partners, initially attracted by his fat bank balance, seemed incapable of fidelity. Over time, Strike and Robin had come to believe that he derived obscure emotional or sexual satisfaction from being cheated on, and that they were being paid to provide evidence that, far from upsetting him, gave him pleasure. Once confronted with photographic evidence of her perfidy, the girlfriend of the moment would be confronted, dismissed and another found, and the whole pattern repeated. This time round, he was dating a glamour model who thus far, to Two-Times’ poorly concealed disappointment, seemed to be faithful.

Twinkletoes, whose unimaginative nickname had been chosen by Morris, was a twenty-four-year-old dancer who was currently having an affair with a thirty-nine-year-old double-divorcée, notable mainly for her history of drug abuse and her enormous trust fund. The socialite’s father was employing the agency to discover anything they could about Twinkletoes’ background or behavior, which could be used to prize his daughter away from him.

Postcard was, so far, an entirely unknown quantity. A middle-aged and, in Robin’s opinion, fairly unattractive television weather forecaster had come to the agency after the police had said there was nothing they could do about the postcards that had begun to arrive at his place of work and, most worryingly, hand delivered to his house in the small hours. The cards made no threats; indeed, they were often no more than banal comments on the weatherman’s choice of tie, yet they gave evidence of knowing far more about the man’s movements and private life than a stranger should have. The use of postcards was also a peculiar choice, when persecution was so much easier, these days, online. The agency’s subcontractor, Andy Hutchins, had now spent two solid weeks’ worth of nights parked outside the weatherman’s house, but Postcard hadn’t yet shown themselves.

Last, and most lucrative, was the interesting case of Shifty, a young investment banker whose rapid rise through his company had generated a predictable amount of resentment among overlooked colleagues, which had exploded into full-blown suspicion when he’d been promoted to the second-in-command job ahead of three undeniably better qualified candidates. Exactly what leverage Shifty had on the CEO (known to the agency as Shifty’s Boss or SB) was now a matter of interest not only to Shifty’s subordinates, but to a couple of suspicious board members, who’d met Strike in a dark bar in the City to lay out their concerns. Strike’s current strategy was to try to find out more about Shifty through his personal assistant, and to this end Morris had been given the job of chatting her up after hours, revealing neither his real name nor his occupation, but trying to gauge how deep her loyalty to Shifty ran.

“D’you need to be back in London by any particular time?” Strike asked, after a brief silence.

“No,” said Robin, “why?”

“Would you mind,” said Strike, “if we stop for food? I didn’t have breakfast.”

Despite remembering that he had, in fact, had a plate full of croissant crumbs in front of him when she arrived at the Palacio Lounge, Robin agreed. Strike seemed to read her mind.

“You can’t count a croissant. Mostly air.”

Robin laughed.

By the time they reached Subway at Cornwall Services, the atmosphere between the two of them had become almost light-hearted, notwithstanding their tiredness. Once Robin, mindful of her resolution to eat more healthily, had started on her salad and Strike had taken a few satisfying mouthfuls of his steak and cheese sandwich, he emailed Kim Sullivan their form letter about billing clients, then said,

“I had a row with Lucy this morning.”

Robin surmised that it must have been a bad one, for Strike to mention it.

“Five o’clock, in the garden, while I was having a quiet smoke.”

“Bit early for conflict,” said Robin, picking unenthusiastically through lettuce leaves.

“Well, it turns out we’re competing in the Who Loves Joan Best Handicap Stakes. Didn’t even know I’d been entered.”

He ate in silence for a minute, then went on,

“It ended with me telling her I thought Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

Robin, who’d been sipping her water, inhaled, and was seized by a paroxysm of coughs. Diners at nearby tables glanced round as Robin spluttered and gasped. Grabbing a paper napkin from the table to mop her chin and her streaming eyes, she wheezed,

“What—on earth—did you say that for?”

“Because Adam’s a whiny prick and Luke’s an arsehole.”

Still trying to cough water out of her windpipe, Robin laughed, eyes streaming, but shook her head.

“Bloody hell, Cormoran,” she said, when at last she could talk properly.

“You haven’t just had a solid week of them. Luke broke my new headphones, then ran off with my leg, the little shit. Then Lucy accuses me of favoring Jack. Of course I favor him—he’s the only decent one.”

“Yes, but telling their mother—”

“Yeah, I know,” said Strike heavily. “I’ll ring and apologize.” There was a brief pause. “But for fuck’s sake,” he growled, “why do I have to take all three of them out together? Neither of the others give a toss about the military. ‘Adam cried when you came back from the War Rooms,’ my arse. The little bastard didn’t like that I’d bought Jack stuff, that’s all. If Lucy had her way, I’d be taking them on group outings every weekend, and they’d take turns to choose; it’ll be the zoo and effing go-karting, and everything that was good about me seeing Jack’ll be ruined. I like Jack,” said Strike, with what appeared to be surprise. “We’re interested in the same stuff. What’s with this mania for treating them all the same? Useful life lesson, I’d have thought, realizing you aren’t owed. You don’t get stuff automatically because of who you’re related to.