“What hurdle?” said Robin, looking up.

“Doubt she’s ever sent a dick pic.”

He patted his pockets, pulled out his packet of Benson & Hedges but found it empty.

“I need more fags, let’s—”

“Wait,” said Robin, who was still staring down at her mobile. “Oh my God. Cormoran—Gloria Conti’s emailed me.”

“You’re kidding,” said Strike. Having partly risen, he now let himself fall back onto the bench.

“‘Dear Miss Ellacott,’” Robin read aloud, “‘I’m sorry I haven’t answered your emails. I wasn’t aware you were trying to contact me and have only just found out. If convenient, I’d be available to talk to you tomorrow evening at 7pm. Yours sincerely…’ and she’s given her phone number,” said Robin, looking up at Strike, astonished. “How can she only just have found out? It’s been months of me emailing her without any response… unless Anna’s prompted her?”

“Could be,” said Strike. “Which doesn’t suggest someone who wants the investigation over.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” said Robin. “But for sanity’s sake, you’d have to draw the line somewhere.”

“So what does that make us?”

Robin smiled and shook her head.

“Dedicated?”

“Conti: last person to see Margot alive. Closest person to Margot at the practice…”

“I’m thanking her,” said Robin, who was typing fast onto her mobile, “and agreeing to the call tomorrow.”

“We could do it from the office, together,” said Strike. “Maybe FaceTime her, if she’s agreeable?”

“I’ll ask,” said Robin, still typing.

They set off a few minutes later in search of cigarettes, Robin reflecting on how casually she’d just agreed to go into work on a Saturday evening, so she could conduct Gloria’s interview with Strike. There was no angry Matthew at home any more, furious about her committing herself to long hours, suspicious about what she and Strike were up to, alone in the office in the evening. And she thought back to Matthew’s refusal to look her in the eye across the table at the mediation. He’d changed his partner, and his firm; he’d soon be a father. His life had changed, but had he?

They turned the corner to find themselves facing what Strike mentally categorized as “acres of tat.” As far as the eye could see were racks of merchandise laid out on the pavement: beach balls, keyrings, cheap jewelry, sunglasses, buckets of candyfloss, fudge and plush toys.

“Look at that,” said Robin suddenly, pointing to her right. A bright yellow sign read: Your Life Within Your Hands. On the dark glass of the door below was written: Palm Reader. Clairvoyant, along with a circular chart, all twelve signs of the zodiac represented by the glyphs around a central sun.

“What?” said Strike.

“Well, you’ve had your chart done. Maybe I’d like mine.”

“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, and they walked on, Robin smiling to herself.

She waited outside, examining postcards, while Strike entered the newsagent’s to buy cigarettes.

Waiting to be served, Strike was seized by a sudden, quixotic impulse (stimulated no doubt by the gaudy color all around him, by the sunshine and sticks of rock, the rattle and clang of amusement arcades and a stomach full of some of the best fish and chips he’d ever eaten) to buy Robin a toy donkey. He came to his senses almost before the idea had formed: what was he, a kid on a daytime date with his first girlfriend? Emerging again into the sunlight as he left the shop, he noted that he couldn’t have bought a donkey if he’d wanted to. There wasn’t a single one in sight: the bins full of plushes held only unicorns.

“Back to the car, then?” said Robin.

“Yeah,” said Strike, ripping the cellophane off his cigarettes, but then he said, “we’ll go down to the sea before we head off, shall we?”

“OK,” said Robin, surprised. “Er—why?”

“Just fancy it. It’s wrong, being by the sea without actually laying eyes on it.”

“Is this a Cornish thing?” asked Robin, as they headed back to Grand Parade.

“Maybe,” said Strike, lighting the cigarette between his teeth. He took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled then sang,

And when we come to London Wall,

A pleasant sight to view,

Come forth! come forth! ye cowards all:

Here’s men as good as you.

“‘The Song of the Western Men?’”

“That’s the one.”

“Why d’you think they feel the need to tell Londoners they’re just as good? Isn’t that a given?”

“Just London, isn’t it?” said Strike, as they crossed the road. “Pisses everyone off.”

“I love London.”

“Me too. But I can see why it pisses everyone off.”

They passed a fountain with a statue in the middle of the Jolly Fisherman, that rotund, bearded sailor skipping along in high wind, who’d been used on posters advertising Skegness for nearly a century, and progressed across a smooth paved area toward the beach.

At last they saw what Strike had felt the need to see: a wide expanse of flat ocean, the color of chalcedony, beneath a periwinkle sky. Far out at sea, spoiling the horizon, were an army of tall white wind turbines, and while Strike personally enjoyed the chill breeze coming off the wide ocean, he understood at last why Robin had brought a scarf.

Strike smoked in silence, the cool wind making no difference whatsoever to his curly hair. He was thinking about Joan. It hadn’t occurred to him until this moment that her plan for her final resting place had given them a grave to visit any time they were at the British coast. Cornish-born, Cornish-bred, Joan had known that this need to reconnect with the sea lived in all of them. Now, every time they made their way to the coast they paid her tribute, along with the obeisance due to the waves.

“They were Joan’s favorites, pink roses,” he said, after a while. “What you sent, to the funeral.”

“Oh, really?” said Robin. “I… well, I had a kind of picture in my head of Joan, from things you’d told me, and… pink roses seemed to suit her.”

“If the agency ever fails,” said Strike, as they both turned away from the sea, “you could come back to Skegness and set yourself up as a clairvoyant.”

“Bit niche,” said Robin, as they walked back toward the car park. “Guessing dead people’s favorite flowers.”

“No donkeys,” said Strike, glancing back over his shoulder at the beach.

“Never mind,” said Robin kindly. “I think you’d have been a bit heavy.”

66

Speak, thou frail woman, speak with confidence.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

The following evening, Strike and Robin sat down together on the same side of the partners’ desk. They were alone in the office for the first time since the night Strike had given her two black eyes. The lights were on this time, there were no glasses of whisky in their hands, but each of them was very conscious of what had happened on the previous occasion, and both felt a slight self-consciousness, which manifested itself, on Strike’s side, in a slightly brisker tone as they set up the computer monitor so that both could see it well, and on Robin’s, in focusing herself on all the questions she wanted to ask Gloria.