“It hurt my feelings. I hadn’t seen that nasty side of him. I knew he was clever, he used to do the Times crossword every day. Knew all the answers on Mastermind, when we watched it together, but he’d never put me down before.

“Then, one night, he starts going on about my will. He wants to know who I’m going to leave the house to. He as good as asked me to leave it to him.

“I didn’t like that. I wasn’t an old woman, I wasn’t planning to die any time soon. I changed the subject, but he started on it again a few nights later. I said, ‘Look, how d’you think that makes me feel, Dennis, you going on like this, like I’m on my last legs? You’re making me feel like you’re going to do away with me.’

“He got uppity and said it was all right for me, but he had nothing, no security or nothing, and what if he got turfed out on the street by whoever I left the house to? And he flounced out. We made it up, later, but it left a nasty taste.”

It would seem the height of foolhardiness for Creed to persuade Violet into changing her will and then kill her. Quite apart from having an obvious motive, he’d be risking the ingression of police into the basement where he was concealing the remains and belongings of at least five women. However, Creed’s arrogance and sense of inviolability seem to have known no bounds by this time. He was also stockpiling pills in larger quantities than ever, which brought him into contact with more than one street dealer. This made him more widely recognizable.

One of his new drugs contacts was Michael Cleat, who sold barbiturates stolen from a contact at a pharmaceutical company. Cleat would later cut a deal with police in exchange for his testimony at the killer’s trial. Creed, he testified, had asked Cleat whether he or his contact could procure a doctor’s prescription pad. Police suspected that Creed was hoping to fake a prescription for Violet, to explain her possession of the means to overdose…

In spite of the coffee, Strike’s eyelids began to droop again. After another couple of minutes, his head sank sideways and the book slipped out of his slack grasp.

When he woke up again, the sky outside had turned coral pink, the laughing teenagers were gone, and he found himself ten minutes from Truro station. Stiffer than ever and in no mood for the family reunion, he wished he was heading back to his attic flat for a shower and some peace. Nevertheless, his heart lifted slightly when he saw Dave Polworth waiting for him on the platform. The bag of chocolate hedgehogs rattled slightly as Strike clambered laboriously off the train. He’d have to remember to give the broken one to Luke.

“All right, Diddy?” said Polworth, as they shook hands and patted each other on the back, Strike’s Waitrose bag impeding a hug.

“Thanks for picking me up, Chum, really appreciate it.”

They drove to St. Mawes in Polworth’s Dacia Duster, discussing plans for the following day. Polworth and his family had been invited to the scattering of the ashes, along with Kerenza the Macmillan nurse.

“… except it’s not going to be a scattering,” said Polworth, driving through country lanes, as the sun turned into a burning coal on the horizon, “more like a floating.”

“How’s that?”

“Lucy’s got an urn,” said Polworth. “Water soluble, cotton and clay. She was showing me last night. It’s supposed to look like a flower. You put the ashes inside and the whole thing bobs away and dissolves.”

“Nice idea,” said Strike.

“Prevents stupid accidents,” said Polworth, pragmatically. “Remember Ian Restarick, from school? His grandad wanted his ashes thrown off Land’s End. The dozy fuckers chucked them off in a high wind and ended up with their mouths full of the old boy. Restarick told me he was blowing ash out of his nose for a week after.”

Laughing, Strike felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and pulled it out. He was hoping the text might be Robin, perhaps telling him she’d already located Betty Fuller. Instead, he saw an unknown number.

I hated you as much as I did because I loved you so much. My love never ended but yours did. It wore out. I wore it out

Polworth was still talking, but Strike was no longer listening. He read the text through several times, frowning slightly, then put the phone back in his pocket and tried to concentrate on his old friend’s anecdotes.

At Ted’s house there were cries of welcome, and hugs from his uncle, Lucy and Jack. Strike tried to look delighted to be there, in spite of his fatigue, and knowing he’d have to wait to sleep until everyone else had gone to bed. Lucy had made pasta for everyone, and when she wasn’t tending to everybody else’s needs, telling Luke off for kicking Adam or picking at her own plate, she teetered on the verge of tears.

“It’s so strange, isn’t it?” she whispered to her brother after dinner, while Greg and the boys, at Greg’s insistence, were clearing the table, “Being here without her?” And without a pause she hurried on, “We’ve decided we’re going to do the ashes in the morning, because the weather looks good, and then come back here for Easter lunch.”

“Sounds great,” said Strike.

He knew how much importance Lucy placed on arrangements and plans, on having everything done in the right way. She fetched the urn and admired the stylised white lily. Ted had already placed Joan’s ashes inside.

“That’s great. Joan would have loved it,” he said, with no idea whether that was true or not.

“And I’ve bought pink roses for all of us to throw into the water with it,” said Lucy, tears welling again.

“Nice touch,” said Strike, suppressing a yawn. He really did just want to shower, then lie down and sleep. “Thanks for sorting all this out, Luce. Oh, and I brought Easter eggs for the boys, where do you want them?”

“We can put them in the kitchen. Did you remember to get some for Roz and Mel, too?”

“Who?”

“Dave and Penny’s girls, they’ll be coming tomorrow, too.”

Fuck’s sake.

“I didn’t think—”

“Oh, Stick,” said Lucy, “aren’t you their godfather?”

“No, I’m not,” said Strike, doing his very best not to sound short tempered, “but fine, yeah, I’ll nip down the shops tomorrow morning and buy some more.”

Later, when he was at last alone in the dark sitting room, lying on the sofa with which he’d become so unwillingly familiar over the past year, his prosthetic leg propped against the coffee table, he checked his phone again. There were, he was pleased to see, no more messages from the unknown number, and, exhausted as he was, he managed to fall asleep quickly.

However, at shortly before four in the morning, the phone rang. Jerked out of a profound sleep, Strike groped for it, registered the time then raised it to his ear.

“Hello?”

There was a long silence, although he could hear breathing on the end of the line.

“Who is this?” he said, suspecting the answer.

“Bluey,” came a tiny whisper. “It’s me.”

“It’s four in the morning, Charlotte.”

“I know,” she whispered, and gave what might have been a giggle or a sob. She sounded strange; possibly manic. Strike stared up at the dark ceiling, his aunt’s ashes a mere twelve feet away.