Heading toward Oakden, Robin prayed that Strike was going to keep his temper. She’d only once seen him lose his cool with a witness, and had no desire to see it happen again.

“Mr. Oakden?” she said, smiling as she reached him and extending her hand. “I’m Robin Ellacott, we’ve emailed—”

“I know,” said Oakden, turning his head slowly to look her up and down with a smirk. He ignored her outstretched hand and Robin could tell he did so deliberately. Refusing to show that she realized that he was trying to be offensive, she shrugged off her raincoat.

“Nice bar,” she said pleasantly, sitting down opposite him. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Normally takes you cheaper places, does he?” asked Oakden.

“Cormoran was just telling me you remember your mother talking about Steve Douth—”

“Love,” said Oakden, legs still wide apart, arm along the back of the leather bench, “I told you all along, I’m not interested in being palmed off with assistants or secretaries. I’ll talk to him, or nobody.”

“I’m actually Cormoran’s—”

“I’ll bet you are,” said Oakden, with a snigger. “Don’t suppose he can get rid of you now, can he?”

“Sorry?”

“Not now you’ve been knifed, trying to do a man’s job,” said Oakden, with a glance toward her forearm as he raised his cocktail to his lips. “You’d probably sue the shit out of him, if he tried.”

Oakden, who’d evidently done his homework on the detectives, was clearly reveling in his rudeness. Robin could only suppose that the con man assumed she was too desperate for his information to take offense at his manner. He seemed determined to derive maximum pleasure from this encounter: to enjoy free alcohol and food, and bait a woman who was unlikely to walk away. Robin wondered which paper or picture agency he’d contacted, to propose luring Strike within a few hundred yards of his father’s party, and how much Oakden stood to gain, if they could get a picture of Strike apparently publicly snubbing his father, or catch the detective on record saying something angry and quotable.

“There you go,” said Strike, throwing a couple of leather-bound menus onto the table and sitting down. He hadn’t thought to bring Robin anything to drink. Oakden picked up a menu and perused it slowly, and he seemed to enjoy keeping them waiting.

“I’ll have the club sandwich,” he said at last, and Strike hailed a waiter. The order given, Strike turned back to Oakden and said,

“Yeah, so you were saying, your mother found Douthwaite—”

“Oh, she definitely thought he was a charmer,” said Oakden. His eyes, Robin noted, kept moving to the entrance of the bar, and she was sure Oakden was waiting for photographers to burst in. “Wide boy, you know the type. Chatting up the slags on reception. The old woman said he tried it on with everyone. The nurse got all giggly when he was around and all.”

Robin remembered the gamboling black skeleton of Talbot’s notebook, and the words written beside Crowley’s figure of death: Fortuna says Pallas Athena, Ceres, Vesta and Cetus are SCARLET WOMEN who RIDE UPON THE BEAST…

“And did your mother think he fancied Dr. Bamborough?”

Oakden took a sip of his cocktail and smacked his lips.

“Well, I mean, Margot,” he said, with a small snort of laughter, and Robin found herself irrationally resentful of Oakden using the missing doctor’s first name, “you know, she was the classic wanted-it-all-ways, wasn’t she?”

“What ways were those?” said Strike.

“Bunny Girl,” said Oakden, taking another sip of his drink, “legs out, tits out. Then, quick, get the white coat on—”

“Don’t think GPs wear white coats,” said Strike.

“I’m talking metaphorically,” said Oakden airily. “Child of her time, wasn’t she?”

“How’s that?”

“The rise of gynocentric society,” said Oakden, with a slight bow toward Robin, who suddenly thought his narrow head resembled a stoat’s. “Late sixties, early seventies, it’s when it all started changing, isn’t it? You’ve got the pill: consequence-free fucking. Looks like it benefits the male, but by enabling women to avoid or subvert the reproductive function, you’re repressing natural and healthy patterns of sex behavior. You’ve got a gynocentric court system, which favors the female even if she didn’t want the kids in the first place. You’ve got misandrist authoritarianism masquerading as a campaign for equal rights, policing men’s thoughts and speech and natural behavior. And you’ve got widespread sexual exploitation of men. Playboy Club, that’s all bullshit. Look, but don’t touch. It’s the old courtly love lie. The woman’s there to be worshipped, the man’s there to spew cash, but never get satisfaction. Suckers, the men who hang round those places.

“Bamborough didn’t look after her own kid,” said Oakden, his eyes again darting to the entrance and back to Strike, “didn’t fuck her own husband, from what I heard, he was nearly always too ill to perform. He had plenty of cash though, so she gets a nanny and goes lording it over men at work.”

“Who, specifically, did she lord it over?” asked Strike.

“Well, Douthwaite ran out of there practically crying last time he saw her, my old woman said. But that’s been our culture since the sixties, hasn’t it? Male suffering, nobody gives a shit. People whine when men break, when they can’t handle it any more, when they lash out. If Douthwaite did her in—I don’t personally think he did,” said Oakden with an expansive gesture, and Robin reminded herself that Carl Oakden had almost certainly never laid eyes on Steven Douthwaite, and that he’d been fourteen years old when Margot disappeared, “but if he did, I’d lay odds it’s because she kicked his pain back in his teeth. Only women bleed,” said Oakden, with a contemptuous little laugh, “isn’t that right?” he shot at Robin. “Ah, there’s my sandwich.”

While the waiter served him, Robin got up and headed to the bar, where the beautiful woman in the cheongsam, whose hair hung like black silk in the light of the banked bottles of spirits, was standing with her partner. Both were ordering cocktails and looked delighted to be in each other’s company. For a few seconds Robin suddenly wondered whether she’d ever again feel as they did. Her job reminded her almost daily of the many ways in which men and women could hurt each other.

As she ordered herself a tonic water, Robin’s phone rang. Hoping it was Barclay, she instead saw her mother’s name. Perhaps Linda had got wind of Sarah’s pregnancy. Matthew might have taken his wife-to-be back to Masham by now, to share the good news. Robin muted the phone, paid for her drink, wishing it was alcoholic, and carried it back to the table in time to hear Oakden say to Strike,

“No, that didn’t happen.”

“You didn’t add vodka to the punch at Dr. Bamborough’s barbecue?”

Oakden took a large bite of his free sandwich, and chewed it insolently. In spite of his thin hair and the many wrinkles around his eyes, Robin could clearly see the spoiled teenager inside the fifty-four-year-old.

“Nicked some,” said Oakden thickly, “then drank it in the shed. Surprised they missed it, but the rich are tight. How they stay minted, isn’t it?”