“This local… what’s the word?” said Gloria, clicking her fingers, for the first time lost in her native language. “We’d say un dingue… oh, you know, a crazy man, a loon… harmless, but strange. Big long beard, dirty, you used to see him wandering up and down Clerkenwell Road with his son. Anyway, he’d sort of accosted Dorothy in the middle of the street, and told her he killed Margot Bamborough.

“It had shaken Dorothy up, but in an odd way… please don’t think this is awful… I hoped it was true. Because although I’d have given anything to know Margot was alive, I was sure she was dead. She wasn’t the type to run away. And my worst nightmare was that Luca was responsible, because that meant it was all my fault.”

Robin shook her head, but Gloria ignored her.

“I only told my grandparents the truth the night before I was due to leave for France. I hadn’t let them spend any money on the wedding that wasn’t going to happen, but even so, it was a huge shock to them. I sat them down, and told them everything, except for the termination.

“Of course, they were appalled. At first, they didn’t want me to leave, they wanted me to go to the police. I had to explain why that was a terrible idea, tell them about the threats Luca had made, and all of that. But they were so glad I wasn’t marrying him, they accepted it in the end. I told them it would all die down, and I’d be back soon… even though I wasn’t sure that was true, or if it would be possible.

“My grandfather took me to the airport, early next day. We’d worked out a story, for when Luca came asking where I was. They were to say I’d been having doubts, because he’d been violent, and that I’d gone over to Italy to stay with some of Dad’s relatives, to think things over. We even concocted a fake address to give him. I don’t know whether he ever wrote to it.

“And that’s everything,” said Gloria, sitting back in the desk chair. “I stayed with my first employer for seven years, and ended up with a junior position in her firm. I didn’t visit London again until I heard Luca was safely married.” She took another sip of wine from the glass her husband had refilled. “His first wife drank herself to death at the age of thirty-nine. He used to beat her badly. I found all that out later.

“And I’ve never told another lie about myself,” said Gloria, raising her chin. “Never exaggerated, never pretended, only ever told the absolute truth, except on one point. Until tonight, the only person who knew about the abortion was Hugo, but now you two know, too.

“Even if you find out Luca was behind what happened to Margot, and I have to have that on my conscience forever, I owe her the truth. That woman saved me, and I’ve never, ever forgotten her. She was one of the bravest, kindest people I’ve ever known.”

67

There by th’vncertaine glims of starry night,

And by the twinkling of their sacred fire,

He mote perceiue a litle dawning sight…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

They thanked Gloria for her time and her honesty. Having bidden her goodbye, Strike and Robin sat at the partners’ desk, each of them sunk in thought, until Strike offered Robin one of the pots of dehydrated noodles he kept for snacks in the office. She declined, instead taking a bag of mixed nuts unenthusiastically out of her bag, and opening it. Once Strike had added boiling water to the plastic pot, he returned to the desk, stirring the noodles with a fork.

“It’s the efficiency,” he said, sitting down again. “That’s what’s bugging me. Literally no trace of her anywhere. Somebody was either extraordinarily clever, or unprecedentedly lucky. And Creed still fits that picture best, with Luca Ricci a close second.”

“Except it can’t have been Luca. He’s got an alibi: Gloria.”

“But as she says, he knew people who could take care of making someone disappear—because what are the odds, if Margot was abducted off the street, that this was a truly one-person job? Even Creed had his unwitting accomplices. The dozy landlady, giving him that safe basement, and the dry cleaner letting him have the van that day and n—”

“Don’t,” said Robin sharply.

“Don’t what?”

“Blame them.”

“I’m not blaming them, I’m—”

“Max and I were talking about this,” said Robin. “About the way people—women, usually—get blamed for not knowing, or seeing—but everyone’s guilty of that kind of bias. Everyone does it.”

“You think?” said Strike thickly, through his first mouthful of noodles.

“Yes,” said Robin. “We’ve all got a tendency to generalize from our own past experiences. Look at Violet Cooper. She thought she knew who Creed really was, because she’d met a couple of men who behaved like him, in her theater days.”

“Men who wouldn’t let anyone in their basement flats because they were boiling down skulls?”

“You know what I mean, Strike,” said Robin, refusing to be amused. “Soft-spoken, apparently gentle, slightly feminine. Creed liked putting on her feather boa, and he pretended to like show tunes, so she thought he was a gay man. But if the only gay man she’d met had been Max, my flatmate…”

“He’s gay, is he?” said Strike, whose memories of Max were indistinct.

“Yes, and he isn’t remotely camp, and hates musicals. Come to that, if she’d met a couple of Matt’s straight mates down the rugby club, who couldn’t wait to shove oranges up their T-shirts and prance around, she might’ve drawn a different conclusion, mightn’t she?”

“S’pose so,” said Strike, chewing noodles and considering this point. “And in fairness, most people don’t know any serial killers.”

“Exactly. So even if somebody’s got some unusual habits, our direct experience tends to suggest they’re just eccentric. Vi had never met a man who fetishised women’s clothing or… sorry, I’m boring you,” Robin added, because Strike’s eyes seemed to have glazed over.

“No, you aren’t,” he muttered. “You’re actually making me think… I had an idea, you know. I thought I’d spotted some coinci­dences, and it got me wondering…”

He set down the pot of noodles, reached under the desk and pulled one of the boxes of police evidence toward him, on top of which lay the pages he’d last been re-examining. He now took these bits of paper out, spread them in front of himself again, and resumed his noodle-eating.

“Are you going to tell me about the coincidences?” said Robin with a trace of impatience.

“Hang on a minute,” said Strike, looking up at her. “Why was Theo standing outside the phone box?”

“What?” said Robin, confused.

“I don’t think we can doubt, now, can we, that Ruby Elliot saw Theo by that phone box near Albemarle Way? Her description and Gloria’s tally exactly… so why was Theo standing outside the phone box?”

“She was waiting for the van to pick her up.”

“Right. But, not to state the bleeding obvious, the sides of the old red telephone boxes have windows. It was pissing down with rain. Theo didn’t have an umbrella, and Ruby said Theo’s hair was plastered down—so why didn’t she shelter in the telephone box, and keep watch for her lift? Clerkenwell Road’s long and straight. She’d’ve had a perfectly good view from that telephone box, and plenty of time to come out and show herself to the van driver. Why,” said Strike for the third time, “was she standing outside the phone box?”