“Sit down, Dad,” said Anna gently, and Roy did as he was told.

“I’ll just go and see whether Oonagh’s found everything; she’s making tea,” said Kim cheerfully, and left.

“Please, have a seat,” said Anna to Strike and Robin, who sat down side by side on the sofa. The moment Strike was settled, the ragdoll cat leapt up lightly beside him and stepped into his lap. Robin, meanwhile, had noticed the ottoman that stood in place of a coffee table. It was upholstered in gray and white striped canvas, and far smaller than the one in the Athorns’ flat, too small for a woman to curl up in, but even so, it was a piece of furniture Robin doubted she’d ever own, no matter how useful they might be. She’d never forget the dusty mass of hardened concrete, and the skull of Margot Bamborough curving up out of it.

“Where’s Cyn?” Anna asked her father.

“Bathroom,” said Roy, a little hoarsely. He threw a nervous glance at the empty landing beyond the door, before addressing the detective:

“I—I have to tell you how ashamed I am that I never hired anybody myself. Believe me, the thought that we could have known all this ten, twenty years ago…”

“Well, that’s not very good for our egos, Roy,” said Strike, stroking the purring cat. “Implying that anyone could have done what we did.”

Roy and Anna both laughed harder than the comment deserved, but Strike understood the need for the release of jokes, after a profound shock. Mere days after he’d been airlifted out of the bloody crater where he’d lain after his leg had been blown off, fading in and out of consciousness with Gary Topley’s torso beside him, he seemed to remember Richard Anstis, the other survivor, whose face had been mangled in the explosion, making a stupid joke about the savings Gary could have made on trousers, had he lived. Strike could still remember laughing at the idiotic, tasteless joke, and enjoying a few seconds’ relief from shock, grief and agony.

Women’s voices now came across the landing: Kim had returned with a tea tray, followed by Oonagh Kennedy, who was bearing a large chocolate cake. She was beaming from beneath her purple-streaked fringe, her amethyst cross bouncing on her chest as before, and when she’d put down the cake, she said,

“Here dey are, then, the heroes of the hour! I’m going to hug the pair of you!”

Robin stood to receive her tribute, but Strike, not wanting to disarrange the cat, received his hug awkwardly while sitting.

“And here I go again!” said Oonagh, laughing as she straightened up, and wiping her eyes. “I swear to God, it’s loike being on a roller­coaster. Up one minute, down the next—”

“I did the same, when I saw them,” said Anna, laughing at Oonagh. Roy’s smile, Robin noticed, was nervous and a little fixed. What did it feel like, she wondered, to be face to face with his dead wife’s best friend, after all these years? Did the physical changes in Oonagh make him wonder what Margot would have looked like, had she lived to the age of seventy? Or was he wondering anew, as he must have done over all the intervening years, whether his marriage would have survived the long stretch of icy silence that had followed her drink with Paul Satchwell, whether the strains and tensions in the relationship could have been overcome, or whether Margot would have taken Oonagh up on her offer of refuge in her flat?

They’d have divorced, Robin thought, with absolute certainty, but then she wondered whether she wasn’t tangling up Margot with herself, as she’d tended to do all through the case.

“Oh, hello,” said a breathless voice, from the doorway, and everyone looked around to see Cynthia, on whose thin, sallow face was a smile that didn’t quite reach her anxious, mottled eyes. She was wearing a black dress, and Robin wondered whether she’d consciously put it on to suggest mourning. “Sorry, I was—how are you both?”

“Fine,” said Robin.

“Great,” said Strike.

Cynthia let out one of her nervous, breathless laughs, and said,

“Yes, no—so wonderful—”

Was it wonderful for Cynthia, Robin wondered, as Anna’s stepmother pulled up a chair, and she declined a piece of the cake which, it transpired, Oonagh had gone out in the rain to purchase. How did it feel to have Margot Bamborough back, even in the form of a skeleton in a box? Did it hurt to see her husband so shaken and emotional, and to have to receive Oonagh, Margot’s best friend, into the heart of the family, like a newly discovered aunt? Robin, who seemed to be on something of a clairvoyant streak, felt sure that if Margot had never been killed, but had simply divorced Roy, Cynthia would never have been the hematologist’s choice of second wife. Margot would probably have begged the young Cynthia to accompany her into her new life, and continue looking after Anna. Would Cynthia have agreed, or would her loyalties have lain with Roy? Where would she have gone, and who would she have married, once there was no place for her at Broom House?

The second cat now entered the room, staring at the unusually large group it found inside. She picked her way past the armchairs, the ottoman and the sofa, jumped up onto the windowsill and sat with her back to them, watching the raindrops sliding down the window.

“Now, listen,” said Kim, from the upright chair she’d brought out of a corner of the room, “we really do want to pay you for the extra month you put in. I know you said no—”

“It was our choice to keep working on the case,” said Strike. “We’re glad to have helped and we definitely don’t want more money.”

He and Robin had agreed that, as the Margot Bamborough case looked likely to pay for itself three times over in terms of publicity and extra work, and as Strike felt he really should have solved it sooner, taking more cash from Anna and Kim felt unnecessarily greedy.

“Then we’d like to make a donation to charity,” said Kim. “Is there one you’d like us to support?”

“Well,” said Strike, clearing his throat, “if you’re serious, Macmillan nurses…”

He saw a slight look of surprise on the family’s faces.

“My aunt died this year,” he explained, “and the Macmillan nurse gave her a lot of support.”

“Oh, I see,” said Kim, with a slight laugh, and there was a little pause, in which the specter of Janice Beattie seemed to rise up in the middle of them, like the wisp of steam issuing from the teapot spout.

“A nurse,” said Anna quietly. “Who’d suspect a nurse?”

“Margot,” said Roy and Oonagh together.

They caught each other’s eye, and smiled: a rueful smile, doubtless surprised at finding themselves in agreement at long last, and Robin saw Cynthia look away.

“She didn’t like that nurse. She told me so,” said Oonagh, “but I got the woman confused with that blonde at the Christmas party who made a scene.”

“No, she never took to the nurse,” said Roy. “She told me, too, when she joined the practice. I didn’t take much notice…”

He seemed determined to be honest, now, however much it hurt.

“… I thought it was a case of two women being too similar: both working class, both strong characters. When I met the woman at the barbecue, I actually thought she seemed quite… well… decent. Of course, Margot never told me her suspicions…”