They paused on the corner, beside an enormous mock Tudor hotel which boasted the Jubilee Carvery and Café. Early-morning drinkers of both beer and coffee were sitting at outside tables, enjoying the sunshine.

“Perfect place to keep an eye out,” said Strike, pointing at one of these pavement tables. “I could use a cup of tea.”

“OK, I’ll order,” said Robin. “I need the loo, anyway. Are you going to call him or d’you want me to do it?”

“I will,” said Strike, already sinking onto one of the chairs, and taking out his mobile.

As Robin disappeared into the bar, Strike lit a cigarette, then keyed in the Allardice’s number, his eyes on the front of the B&B. It stood in a row of eight tall red buildings, several of which had been converted into small boarding houses and had similar scalloped PVC awnings over the entrances. Spotless white net curtains hung at almost every window.

“Morning, the Allardice,” said a Scottish woman, who sounded on the irritable side of brisk.

“Steve there?” said Strike, faking casualness and confidence.

“That you, Barry love?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

“He’s on his way now,” she said. “We only had a small, sorry. But do me a favor, Barry, and don’t hold him up, because there are four beds to change here and he’s supposed to be getting me more milk.”

“Righto,” said Strike, and not wanting to speak another syllable that might reveal him to be anyone other than Barry, he hung up.

“Is he there?” asked Robin anxiously, dropping into the seat opposite Strike. She’d washed her hands in the bathroom, but they were still damp, because she’d been in such a hurry to get back to Strike.

“No,” said Strike, knocking his cigarette ash into the small pink metal bucket placed on the table for that purpose. “He’s delivering something to a bloke up the road and will be back shortly, bringing milk.”

“Oh,” said Robin quietly, turning to look over her shoulder at the Allardice’s royal blue awning, on which the name was inscribed in curly white lettering.

The barman brought out two metal pots and china teacups, and the detectives drank their tea in silence, Strike keeping a watchful eye on the Allardice, Robin on Grand Parade. The sea was blocked from her view by the wide, multicolored frontage of the entrance to Skegness Pier, which advertised, among other attractions, the optimistically named Hollywood Bar and Diner. Elderly people rode mobility scooters up and down Grand Parade. Families strolled past, eating ice cream. Plume-tailed Maltese, fat pugs and panting chihuahuas trotted over the hot pavements alongside their owners.

“Cormoran,” muttered Robin suddenly.

A man had just turned the corner into Scarbrough Avenue, a heavy carrier bag dangling from his hand. His gray hair was close cropped around the ears, but a few strands had been combed over a wide expanse of sweaty forehead. His round shoulders and hangdog look gave him the air of a man whom life had ground down to a sullen obedience. The same turquoise T-shirt he’d worn in the karaoke picture was stretched tightly over his beer belly. Douthwaite crossed the road, climbed the three steps leading to the Allardice’s front door and, with a flash of sun on glass, disappeared from view.

“Have you paid for this?” Strike asked, downing the rest of his tea and putting his empty cup back onto the saucer.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go,” said Strike, dropping his cigarette into the metal bucket and pulling himself to his feet, “before he can disappear upstairs and start changing beds.”

They crossed the road as fast as Strike could walk and headed up the front steps, which had been painted pale blue. Baskets of purple petunias hung beneath the ground-floor windows and an assortment of stickers adorned the glass portion of the front door, one of which announced that this was a three-star residence, another asking guests to wipe their feet.

A tinkling bell announced their arrival. The deserted hall was narrow, its stairs carpeted in dark blue and green tartan. They waited beside a table laden with leaflets about local attractions, breathing in a combination of fried food and a powerful rose-scented air-freshener.

“… and Paula’s got new tubes in her sunbeds,” said a Scottish voice, and a woman with short hair dyed canary yellow emerged through a door to the right. A deep vertical line was graven down the middle of her forehead. Barelegged, she wore an apron decorated with a Highland cow over her T-shirt and denim skirt, and a pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

“We’ve no vacancies, sorry,” she said.

“Are you Donna?” asked Strike. “We were hoping for a word with Steve.”

“What about?”

“We’re private detectives,” said Strike, pulling out his wallet to hand her a card, “and we’re investigating—”

A hugely obese old lady came into view on the landing above them. She was clad in shocking-pink leggings and a T-shirt bearing the slogan “The More People I Meet, The More I Like My Dog.” Panting audibly, she began a sideways descent, both hands clutching the banister.

“—a missing person case,” Strike finished quietly, as he handed Donna his card.

At that moment, Steve Douthwaite emerged from behind his wife, a pile of towels in his arms. Close up, his dark eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Every feature had coarsened with age and, possibly, drink. His wife’s demeanor, the card in her hand and the presence of the two strangers now looking at him brought him to a halt, the dark eyes frightened above his pile of towels.

“Cormoran Strike?” murmured Donna, reading the card. “Aren’t you the one…”

The old lady, who was barely halfway down the stairs, was now audibly wheezing.

“Get in here,” muttered Donna, pointing Strike and Robin toward the room from which she’d just emerged. “And you,” she snapped at her husband.

They entered a small public sitting room, with a wall-mounted TV, a sparsely stocked bookcase and a miserable-looking spider plant sitting in a pedestalled urn. Through an arch was a breakfast room, where five tightly packed dining tables were being wiped down by a discontented-looking young woman in glasses, who sped up appreciably when she realized Donna had returned. Robin guessed that they were mother and daughter. Though the younger woman was dark rather than blonde, life had carved an identical groove of dissatisfaction in her forehead.

“Leave that, Kirsty,” said Donna abruptly. “Take these towels upstairs, will you? And close the door.”

Kirsty relieved Douthwaite silently of his pile of towels and left the room, her slides slapping the bottoms of her sockless feet. The door clicked shut behind her.

“Sit down,” Donna instructed Strike and Robin, who did so, on a small sofa.

Douthwaite took up a standing position, arms folded, with his back to the TV. Frowning slightly, his eyes flickered over Strike and Robin and back to his wife. The sunlight filtering through the net curtains cast an unforgiving light over his hair, which looked like wispy strands of steel wool.

“He’s the one who caught that Shacklewell Ripper,” Donna said to her husband, jerking her head at Strike. “Why’s he after you?” Her voice rose in both pitch and volume. “Been dicking around with the wrong woman again, have you? Have you?”