“Oh God, Cormoran,” said Robin quietly.

“Well,” said Strike, “you’ve got to give him points for honesty. He walked out. We went home.

“For a while afterward, I held out a bit of hope he’d regretted what he’d said. It was hard to let go of the idea he wanted to see me, deep down. But nothing.”

While the sun was far from setting, the room was becoming steadily darker. The high buildings of Denmark Street cast the outer office into shadow at this time of the evening, and neither detective had turned on the interior lights.

“Second time we met,” said Strike, “I made an appointment with his management. I was eighteen. Just got into Oxford. We hadn’t touched any of Rokeby’s money for years. They’d been back to court to put restrictions on what my mother could do with it, because she was a nightmare with cash, just threw it away. Anyway, unbeknownst to me, my aunt and uncle had informed Rokeby I’d got into Oxford. My mother got a letter saying he had no obligations to me now I’d turned eighteen, but reminding her I could use the money that had been accumulating in the bank account.

“I arranged to see him at his manager’s office. He was there with his long-time lawyer, Peter Gillespie. Got a smile off Rokeby this time. Well, I was off his hands financially now, but old enough to talk to the press. Oxford had clearly been a bit of a shock to him. He’d probably hoped, with a background like mine, I’d slide quietly out of sight forever.

“He congratulated me on getting into Oxford and said I had a nice little nest egg all built up now, because my mother hadn’t spent any of it for six, seven years.

“I told him,” said Strike, “to stick his fucking money up his arse and set fire to it. Then I walked out.

“Self-righteous little prick, I was. Didn’t occur to me that Ted and Joan were going to have to stump up if Rokeby didn’t, which is what they did… I only realized that later. But I didn’t take their money long. After my mother died, midway through my second year, I left Oxford and enlisted.”

“Didn’t he contact you after your mum died?” asked Robin quietly.

“No,” said Strike, “or if he did, I never got it. He sent me a note when my leg got blown off. I’ll bet that put the fear of God into him, hearing I’d been blown up. Probably worried sick about what the press might make of it all.

“Once I was out of Selly Oak, he tried to give me the money again. He’d found out I was trying to start the agency. Charlotte’s friends knew a couple of his kids, which is how he got wind of it.”

Robin felt something flip in her stomach at the sound of Charlotte’s name. Strike so rarely acknowledged her existence.

“I said no, at first. I didn’t want to take the money, but no other fucker wanted to lend a one-legged ex-soldier without a house or any savings enough money to set up a detective agency. I told his prick of a lawyer I’d take just enough money to start the agency and pay it back in installments. Which I did.”

“That money was yours all along?” said Robin, who could remember Gillespie pressing Strike for repayment every few weeks, when she’d first joined the agency.

“Yeah, but I didn’t want it. Resented even having to borrow a bit of it.”

“Gillespie acted as though—”

“You get people like Gillespie round the rich and famous,” said Strike. “His whole ego was invested in being my father’s enforcer. The bastard was half in love with my old man, or with his fame, I dunno. I was pretty blunt on the phone about what I thought about Rokeby, and Gillespie couldn’t forgive it. I’d insisted on a loan agreement between us, and Gillespie was going to hold me to it, to punish me for telling him exactly what I thought of the pair of them.”

Strike pushed himself off the sofa, which made its usual farting noises as he did so, and began helping himself to curry. When they both had full plates, he went to fetch two glasses of water. He’d already got through a third of the whisky.

“Cormoran,” said Robin, once he was settled back on the sofa and had started eating. “You do realize, I’m never going to gossip about your father to other people? I’m not going to talk to you about him if you don’t want to, but… we’re partners. You could have told me he was hassling you, and let off steam that way, instead of punching a witness.”

Strike chewed some of his chicken jalfrezi, swallowed, then said quietly,

“Yeah, I know.”

Robin ate a bit of naan. Her bruised face was aching less now: the ice pack and the whisky had both numbed her, in different ways. Nevertheless, it took a minute to marshal the courage to say,

“I saw Charlotte’s been hospitalized.”

Strike looked up at her. He knew, of course, that Robin was well aware who Charlotte was. Four years previously, he’d got almost too drunk to walk, and told her a lot more than he’d ever meant to, about the alleged pregnancy Charlotte had insisted was his, which had broken them apart forever.

“Yeah,” said Strike.

And he told Robin the story of the farewell text messages, and his dash to the public payphone, and how he’d listened until they’d found Charlotte lying in undergrowth in the grounds of her expensive clinic.

“Oh my Christ,” said Robin, setting down her fork. “When did you know she was alive?”

“Knew for sure two days later, when the press reported it,” said Strike. He heaved himself back out of his chair, topped up Robin’s whisky, then poured himself more before sitting back down again. “But I’d concluded she must be alive before that. Bad news travels faster than good.”

There was a long silence, in which Robin hoped to hear more about how being drawn into Charlotte’s suicide attempt, and by the sounds of it, saving her life, had made him feel, but Strike said nothing, merely eating his curry.

“Well,” said Robin at last, “again, in future, maybe we could try that talking thing, before you die of a stress-induced heart attack or, you know, end up killing someone we need to question?”

Strike grinned ruefully.

“Yeah. We could try that, I s’pose…”

Silence closed around them again, a silence that seemed to the slightly drunk Strike to thicken like honey, comforting and sweet, but slightly dangerous if you sank too far into it. Full of whisky, contrition and a powerful feeling he preferred at all times not to dwell upon, he wanted to make some kind of statement about Robin’s kindness and her tact, but all the words that occurred to him seemed clumsy and unserviceable: he wanted to express something of the truth, but the truth was dangerous.

How could he say, look, I’ve tried not to fancy you since you first took off your coat in this office. I try not to give names to what I feel for you, because I already know it’s too much, and I want peace from the shit that love brings in its wake. I want to be alone, and unburdened, and free.

But I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I don’t want some other bastard to persuade you into a second marriage. I like knowing the possibility’s there, for us to, maybe…

Except it’ll go wrong, of course, because it always goes wrong, because if I were the type for permanence, I’d already be married. And when it goes wrong, I’ll lose you for good, and this thing we’ve built together, which is literally the only good part of my life, my vocation, my pride, my greatest achievement, will be forever fucked, because I won’t find anyone I enjoy running things with, the way I enjoy running them with you, and everything afterward will be tainted by the memory of you.