While Strike devoted himself to following Miss Jones’s boyfriend, still trying to find out anything that might prove that he was an unsuitable person to have custody of his daughter, Robin was trying to kindle an acquaintance with Shifty’s PA, which wasn’t proving easy. So far that month, wearing a different wig and colored contacts each time, Robin had tried to engage her in conversation in a bar, deliberately tripped over her in a nightclub, and followed her into the ladies in Harvey Nichols. While the PA didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that it was the same woman opportuning or inconve­niencing her, she showed no inclination to chat, let alone confess that her boss was a lech or a coke user.

Having tried and failed to sit next to the PA in a sandwich bar in Holborn one lunchtime, Robin, who today had dark hair and dark brown eyes courtesy of hair chalk and contact lenses, decided the moment had come to try and wheedle information out of a very old man, instead of a pretty young woman.

She hadn’t reached this decision lightly, nor did she approach it in any casual spirit. While Robin was vaguely fond of Strike’s old friend Shanker, she was under no illusions about how evil a person would have to be to scare a man who’d been steeped in criminal violence since the age of nine. Accordingly, she’d worked out a plan, of which the first step was to have a full and effective disguise. Today’s happened to be particularly good: she’d learned a lot about makeup since starting the job with Strike, and she’d sometimes had the satisfaction of seeing her partner double-take before he realized who she was. After checking her reflection carefully in the mirror of a McDonald’s bathroom, and reassuring herself that she not only looked utterly unlike Robin Ellacott, but that nobody would guess she’d recently had two black eyes, she set off for the Tube, and just under twenty minutes later, arrived at Angel station.

The garden where the old residents of St. Peter’s sometimes sat was empty as she passed it, in spite of the warm weather. The pansies were gone, replaced by pink asters and the broad, sunny street where the nursing home lay was almost deserted.

The quotation from St. Peter gleamed gold in the sunshine as Robin approached the front door.

… it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed… but with the precious blood of Christ…

Robin rang the bell. After a few moments, a chubby black-haired woman in the familiar blue uniform opened it.

“Afternoon,” she said, sounding Spanish.

“Hi,” said Robin, her North London accent copied from her friend Vanessa. “I’m here to visit Enid? I’m her great-granddaughter.”

She’d stored up the only first name she’d heard for any of the old ladies in the home. Her great fear had been that Enid might have died before she got to use it, or that Enid had no family.

“Oh, that’s nice,” said the nurse, smiling and gesturing toward a visitors’ book just inside the door. “Sign in, please, and don’t forget to sign out when you leave. She’s in her room. Might be asleep!”

Robin stepped into a dark, wood-paneled hall. She deliberately hadn’t asked which number Enid’s room was, because she intended to get lost finding it.

A number of walking frames and a couple of collapsible wheelchairs were lined up against the wall. The hall was dominated by an enormous crucifix facing the door, on which a pallid plaster Jesus hung, his six-pack rendered with startling precision, scarlet blood dripping from hands, feet and the punctures left by his crown of thorns. The home smelled better than Betty Fuller’s sheltered accommodation: though there was a definite undertone of old cooking smells, it mingled with that of furniture wax.

Sunlight poured through the fan window behind Robin as she bent over the visitors’ book and wrote in the date, the time she’d entered the building and the fake name she’d decided on: Vanessa Jones. Over the table where the visitors’ book lay hung a board showing the name of each resident. Beside each was a little sliding door, which could be adjusted to show whether the occupant was “in” or “out.” Niccolo Ricci was currently—and, Robin suspected, almost permanently—“in.”

There was a lift, but she chose to take the red-carpeted and wooden-banistered stairs, passing the Trinidadian nurse she’d often seen while on surveillance, who was descending. He smiled and wished her a good afternoon, his arms laden with packs of incontinence pads.

A doorway led off the first landing, a small sign beside it announc­ing that this way lay bedrooms 1 to 10. Robin set off along the corridor, reading names off doors. Unfortunately, “Mrs. Enid Billings” lived behind door number 2 and, as Robin swiftly discovered, Ricci wasn’t on her floor. Aware that this was going to make any claim of having got lost on the way to Enid’s room implausible in the extreme, Robin doubled back, and climbed up to the second floor.

A few steps along an identical corridor to the one below, she heard a woman with a strong Polish accent in the distance, and backed hastily into an alcove where a sink and cupboard had been placed.

“D’you need the bathroom? Do—you—need—the—bathroom, Mister—Ricci?”

A low moan answered.

“Yes?” said the voice. “Or no?”

There was a second, answering moan.

“No? All right then…”

Footsteps grew louder: the nurse was about to pass the alcove, so Robin stepped boldly out from it, smiling.

“Just washing my hands,” she told the approaching nurse, who was blonde and flat-footed and merely nodded as she passed, apparently preoccupied with other matters.

Once the nurse had disappeared, Robin proceeded down the corridor, until she reached the door of number 15, which bore the name “Mr. Nico Ricci.”

Unconsciously holding her breath, Robin knocked gently, and pushed. There was no lock on the inside of the door; it swung open at once.

The room inside, while small, faced south, getting plenty of sun. A great effort had been made to make the room homely: watercolor pictures hung on the walls, including one of the Bay of Naples. The mantelpiece was covered in family photographs, and a number of children’s paintings had been taped up on the wardrobe door, including one captioned “Grandpa and Me and a Kite.”

The elderly occupant was bent almost double in an armchair beside the window. In the minute that had elapsed since the nurse left him, he’d fallen fast asleep. Robin let the door close quietly behind her, crept across to Ricci and sat down on the end of his single bed, facing the one-time pimp, pornographer and orchestrator of gang-rape and murder.

There was no doubt that the staff looked after their charges well. Ricci’s dark gray hair and his fingernails were as clean as his bright white shirt collar. In spite of the warmth of the room, they’d dressed him in a pale blue sweater. On one of the veiny hands lying limp on the chair beside him glistened the gold lion’s head ring. The fingers were curled up in a way that made Robin wonder whether he could still use them. Perhaps he’d had a stroke, which would account for his inability to talk.

“Mr. Ricci?” said Robin quietly.

He made a little snorting snuffle, and slowly raised his head, his mouth hanging open. His enormous, drooping eyes, though not as filmy as Betty Fuller’s, nevertheless looked dull, and like his ears and nose seemed to have grown while the rest of him shrank, leaving loose folds of dark skin.