“Because I’m less experienced?” said Robin. “Because you think I’ll mess it up, or panic? Or that I can’t think on my feet?”

“None of those,” said Strike, though it cost him some pain to admit it.

“Well then—”

“Because my chances of surviving if Luca Ricci comes at me with a baseball bat are superior to yours, OK?”

“But Luca doesn’t come at people with baseball bats,” said Robin reasonably. “He comes at them with knives, electrodes and acid, and I don’t see how you’d withstand any of them better than I would. The truth is, you’re happy to take risks you don’t want me to take. I don’t know whether it’s lack of confidence in me, or chivalry, or one dressed up as the other—”

“Look—”

“No, you look,” said Robin. “If you’d been recognized in there, the whole agency would have paid the price. I’ve read up on Ricci, I’m not stupid. He goes for people’s families and associates and even their pets as often as he goes for them personally. Like it or not, there are places I can go more easily than you. I’m less distinctive-looking, I’m easier to disguise, and people trust women more than men, especially around kids and old people. We wouldn’t know any of this if I hadn’t gone to St. Peter’s—”

“We’d be better off not knowing it,” Strike snapped back. “Shanker said to me months back, ‘If Mucky’s the answer, you need to stop asking the question.’ Same goes for Luca, in spades.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Robin. “I know you don’t. You’d never choose not to know.”

She was right, but Strike didn’t want to admit it. Indeed, one of the things that had kept his anger simmering for the past two weeks was that he knew there was a fundamental lack of logic in his own position. If trying to get information on the Ricci family had been worth doing at all, it should have been done, and as Robin had proven, she’d been the best person for the job. While he resented the fact that she hadn’t warned him what she was about to do, he knew perfectly well that if she’d done so, he’d have vetoed it, out of a fundamentally indefensible desire to keep her out of harm’s way, when the logical conclusion of that line of thinking was that she oughtn’t to be doing this job at all. He wanted her to be open and direct with him, but knew that his own incoherent position on her taking physical risks was the reason she hadn’t been honest about her intentions. The long scar on her forearm reproached him every time he looked at it, even though the mistake that had led to the attack had been entirely her own. He knew too much about her past; the relationship had become too personal: he didn’t want to visit her in hospital again. He felt precisely that irksome sense of responsibility that kept him determinedly single, but without any of the compensatory pleasures. None of this was her fault, but it had taken a fortnight for him to look these facts clearly in the face.

“OK,” he muttered at last. “I wouldn’t choose not to know.” He made a supreme effort. “You did bloody well.”

“Thank you,” said Robin, as startled as she was gratified.

“Can we agree, though—please? That in future, we talk these things through?”

“If I’d asked you—”

“Yeah, I might’ve said no, and I’d’ve been wrong, and I’ll bear that in mind next time, OK? But as you keep reminding me, we’re partners, so I’d be grateful—”

“All right,” said Robin. “Yes. We’ll discuss it. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

At that moment, Pat knocked on the door and opened it a few inches.

“I’ve got a Ms. Phipps and a Ms. Sullivan on the line for you.”

“Put them through, please,” said Strike.

Feeling as though she was sitting in on the announcement of bad medical news, Robin let Strike do the talking to Anna and Kim. He took the couple systematically through every interview the agency had conducted over the past eleven and a half months, telling them the secrets he and Robin had unearthed, and the tentative conclusions they’d drawn.

He revealed that Irene Hickson had been briefly involved with Margot’s ex-boyfriend, and that both had lied about it, and explained that Satchwell might have been worried that Margot would tell the authorities about the way his sister died; that Wilma the cleaner had never set foot in Broom House, and that the story of Roy walking was almost certainly false; that the threatening notes had been real, but (with a glance at Robin) that they hadn’t managed to identify the writer; that Joseph Brenner had been a more unsavory character than anyone had realized, but that there was nothing to tie him to Margot’s disappearance; that Gloria Conti, the last person to see Margot alive, was living in France, and didn’t want to talk to them; and that Steve Douthwaite, Margot’s suspicious patient, had vanished without trace. Lastly, he told them that they believed they’d identified the van seen speeding away from Clerkenwell Green on the night that Margot disappeared, and were confident that it hadn’t been Dennis Creed’s.

The only sound to break the silence when Strike first stopped talking was the soft buzzing emitted by the speaker on his desk, which proved the line was still open. Waiting for Anna to speak, Robin suddenly realized that her eyes were full of tears. She’d so very much wanted to find out what had happened to Margot Bamborough.

“Well… we knew it would be difficult,” said Anna at last. “If not impossible.”

Robin could tell that Anna was crying, too. She felt wretched.

“I’m sorry,” said Strike formally. “Very sorry, not to have better news for you. However, Douthwaite remains of real interest, and—”

“No.”

Robin recognized Kim’s firm negative.

“No, I’m sorry,” said the psychologist. “We agreed a year.”

“We’re actually two weeks short,” said Strike, “and if—”

“Have you got any reason to believe you can find Steve Douthwaite in the next two weeks?”

Strike’s slightly bloodshot eyes met Robin’s wet ones.

“No,” he admitted.

“As I said in my email, we’re about to go on holiday,” said Kim. “In the absence of actually finding Margot’s body, there was always bound to be another angle you could try, one more person who might know something, and as I said at the start of this, we haven’t got the money, or, frankly, the emotional stamina, to keep this going forever. I think it’s better—cleaner—if we accept that you’ve done your best, and thank you for the trouble you’ve clearly taken. This has been a worthwhile exercise, even if—I mean, Anna and Roy’s relationship’s better than it’s been in years, thanks to your visit. He’ll be glad to hear that the cleaner accepted he wasn’t able to walk that day.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Strike. “I’m only sorry—”

“I knew,” said Anna, her voice wavering, “that it was going to be… almost impossible. At least I know I tried.”

After Anna had hung up, there was a silence in the room. Finally Strike said “Need a pee,” pulled himself up and left the room.