“And what if his sons find out?”

“He can’t talk, or not properly. I’m banking on him being unable to tell them I’ve been in. Look,” said Strike, in no particular hurry to hang up, because he wanted to finish his cigarette, and would rather do it talking to Robin, “Betty Fuller thinks Ricci killed her, I could tell. So did Tudor Athorn; he told his nephew so, and they were the kind of people who were plugged into local gossip and knew about local low life.

“I keep going back to the thing Shanker said, when I told him about Margot vanishing without a trace. ‘Professional job.’ When you take a step back and look at it,” said Strike, now down to the last centimeter of his cigarette, “it seems borderline impossible for every trace of her to have disappeared, unless someone with plenty of practice handled it.”

“Creed had practice,” said Robin quietly.

“D’you know what I did last night?” said Strike, ignoring this interjection. “Looked up Kara Wolfson’s birth certificate online.”

“Why? Oh,” said Robin, and Strike could hear her smiling, “star sign?”

“Yeah. I know it breaks the means before motive rule,” he added, before Robin could point it out, “but it struck me that someone might’ve told Margot about Kara’s murder. Doctors know things, don’t they? In and out of people’s houses, having confidential consultations. They’re like priests. They hear secrets.”

“You were checking whether Kara was a Scorpio,” said Robin. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Exactly. And wondering whether Ricci looked into that party to show his goons which woman they were going to pick off.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Was Kara a Scorpio?”

“Oh. No. Taurus—seventeenth of May.”

Strike now heard pages turning at Robin’s end of the call.

“Which means, according to Schmidt…” said Robin, and there was a brief pause, “… she was Cetus.”

“Huh,” said Strike, who’d now finished his cigarette. “Well, wish me luck. I’m going in.”

“Good l—”

“Cormoran Strike!” said somebody gleefully, behind him.

As Strike hung up on Robin, a slender black woman in a cream coat came alongside him, beaming.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “Selly Oak. I’m—”

“Marjorie!” said Strike, the memory coming back to him. “Marjorie the physiotherapist. How are you? What’re you—?”

“I do a few hours in the old folks’ home up the road!” said Marjorie. “And look at you, all famous…”

Fuck.

It took Strike twenty-five minutes to extricate himself from her.

“… so that’s bloody that,” he told Robin later at the office. “I pretended I was in the area to visit my accountant, but if she’s working at St. Peter’s, there’s no chance of us getting in to see Ricci.”

“No chance of you getting in there—”

“I’ve already told you,” said Strike sharply. The state of Robin’s face was a visible warning against recklessness, of the perils of failing to think through consequences. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

“I’ve got Miss Jones on the line,” Pat called from the outer office.

“Put her through to me,” said Robin, as Strike mouthed “thanks.”

Robin talked to Miss Jones while continuing to readjust the rota on her computer, which, given Robin’s own temporary unavailability for surveillance, and Morris’s permanent absence, was like trying to balance a particularly tricky linear equation. She spent the next forty minutes making vague sounds of agreement whenever Miss Jones paused to draw breath. Their client’s objective, Robin could tell, was staying on the line long enough for Strike to come back to the office. Finally, Robin got rid of her by pretending to get a message from Pat saying Strike would be out all day.

It was her only lie of the day, Robin thought, while Strike and Pat discussed Barclay’s expenses in the outer office. Given that Strike was adept himself at avoiding pledging his own word when he didn’t want to, he really ought to have noticed that Robin had made no promises whatsoever about staying away from Mucky Ricci.

61

Then when the second watch was almost past,

That brasen dore flew open, and in went Bold Britomart…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

In the first week of June, a blind item appeared in the Metro, concerning Strike’s presence in the American Bar on the night of his father’s party.

Which famous son of a famous father preferred to spend the night of his old man’s celebrations brawling in a bar five hundred yards from the party, rather than hobnobbing with his family? Our spies tell us a punch was thrown, and his faithful assistant was unable to Hold It Back. A father-son competition for publicity? Dad definitely won this round.

As Hold It Back was the name of one of Jonny Rokeby’s albums, nobody could really be in much doubt which father and son were in question. A couple of journalists called Strike’s office, but as neither he nor Rokeby were disposed to comment, the story fizzled out for lack of details. “Could’ve been worse,” was Strike’s only comment. “No photos, no mention of Bamborough. Looks like Oakden’s been frightened out of the idea of selling stories about us.”

Feeling slightly guilty, Robin had already scrolled through the pictures of Jonny Rokeby’s party on her phone, while on surveillance outside Miss Jones’s boyfriend’s house. Rokeby’s guests, who included celebrities from both Hollywood and the world of rock ’n’ roll, had all attended in eighteenth-century costumes. Buried in the middle of all the famous people was a single picture of Rokeby surrounded by six of his seven adult children. Robin recognized Al, grinning from beneath a crooked powdered wig. She could no more imagine Strike there, trussed up in brocade, with patches on his face, than she could imagine him pole-vaulting.

Relieved as she was that Oakden appeared to have given up the idea of discussing the agency with the press, Robin’s anxiety mounted as June progressed. The Bamborough case, which mattered to her more than almost anything else, had come to a complete standstill. Gloria Conti had met Anna’s request for her cooperation with silence, Steve Douthwaite remained as elusive as ever, Robin had heard no news about the possibility of interviewing Dennis Creed, and Mucky Ricci remained cloistered inside his nursing home, which, owing to the agency’s reduced manpower, nobody was watching any more.

Even temporary replacements for Morris were proving impossible to find. Strike had contacted everyone he knew in the Special Investigation Branch, Hutchins had asked his Met contacts, and Robin had canvassed Vanessa, but nobody was showing any interest in joining the agency.

“Summer, isn’t it?” said Barclay, as he and Robin crossed paths in the office one Saturday afternoon. “People don’t want tae start a new job, they want a holiday. I ken how they feel.”

Both Barclay and Hutchins had booked weeks off with their wives and children months in advance, and neither partner could begrudge their subcontractors a break. The result was that by mid-July, Strike and Robin were the only two left working at the agency.