“Not for the first time,” said Strike, “you’re bang on the money.”

He searched the small number of photocopied papers remaining in his pile and extracted another handwritten document, far neater than Talbot’s and devoid of doodles and random dates. Somehow Robin knew, before Strike had said a word, that this fluid, rounded handwriting belonged to Margot Bamborough.

“Copies of Douthwaite’s medical records,” said Strike. “The police got hold of them. ‘Headaches, upset stomach, weight loss, pal­pitations, nausea, nightmares, trouble sleeping,’” Strike read out. “Margot’s conclusion, on visit four—see there?—is ‘personal and employment-related difficulties, under severe strain, exhibiting signs of anxiety.’”

“Well, his married girlfriend had killed herself,” said Robin. “That’d knock anyone except a psychopath for six, wouldn’t it?”

Charlotte slid like a shadow across Strike’s mind.

“Yeah, you’d think. Also, look there. He’d been the victim of an assault shortly before his first visit to Margot. ‘Contusions, cracked rib.’ I smell angry, bereaved and betrayed husband.”

“But the paper makes it sound as though he was stalking Margot.”

“Well,” said Strike, tapping the photocopy of Douthwaite’s medical notes, “there are a hell of a lot of visits here. He saw her three times in one week. He’s anxious, guilty, feeling unpopular, probably didn’t expect his bit of fun to end in the woman’s death. And there’s a good-looking doctor offering no judgment, but kindness and support. I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility to think he might have developed feelings for her.

“And look at this,” Strike went on, turning over the medical records to show Robin more typed statements. “These are from Dorothy and Gloria, who both said Douthwaite came out of her room the last time he saw Margot, looking—well, this is Dorothy,” he said, and he read aloud, “‘I observed Mr. Douthwaite leaving Dr. Bamborough’s surgery and noticed that he looked as though he had had a shock. I thought he also looked angry and distressed. As he walked out, he tripped over the toy truck of a boy in the waiting room and swore loudly. He seemed distracted and unaware of his surroundings.’ And Gloria,” said Strike, turning over the page, “says: ‘I remember Mr. Douthwaite leaving because he swore at a little boy. He looked as though he had just been given bad news. I thought he seemed scared and angry.’

“Now, Margot’s notes of her last consultation with Douthwaite don’t mention anything but the same old stress-related symptoms,” Strike went on, turning back to the medical records, “so she definitely hadn’t just diagnosed him with anything life-threatening. Lawson speculated that she might’ve felt he was getting over-attached, and told him he had to stop taking up valuable time that could be given to other patients, which Douthwaite didn’t like hearing. Maybe he’d convinced himself his feelings were reciprocated. All the evidence suggests he was in a fragile mental state at the time.

“Anyway, four days after Douthwaite’s last appointment, Margot vanishes. Tipped off by the surgery that there was a patient who seemed a bit over-fond of her, Talbot called him in for questioning. Here we go.”

Once again, Strike extracted a star-strewn scrawl from amid the typewritten pages.

“As usual, Talbot starts the interrogation by running through the list of Creed dates. Trouble is, Douthwaite doesn’t seem to remember what he was doing on any of them.”

“If he was already ill with stress—” began Robin.

“Well, exactly,” said Strike. “Being interrogated by a police officer who thinks you might be the Essex Butcher wouldn’t help your anxiety, would it?

“And look at this, Talbot adds a random date again: twenty-first February. But he also does something else. Can you make anything of that?”

Robin took the page from Strike and examined the last three lines of writing.

“Pitman shorthand,” said Robin.

“Can you read it?”

“No. I know a bit of Teeline; I never learned Pitman. Pat can do it, though.”

“You’re saying she might be useful for once?”

“Oh sod off, Strike,” said Robin, crossly. “You want to go back to temps, fine, but I like getting accurate messages and knowing the filing’s up to date.”

She took a photograph on her phone and texted it to Pat, along with a request to translate it. Strike, meanwhile, was reflecting that Robin had never before called him “Strike” when annoyed. Perversely, it had sounded more intimate than the use of his first name. He’d quite enjoyed it.

“Sorry for impugning Pat,” he said.

“I just told you to sod off,” said Robin, failing to suppress a smile. “What did Lawson make of Douthwaite?”

“Well, unsurprisingly, when he tried to interview him and found out he’d left his flat and job, leaving no forwarding address, he got quite interested in him. Hence the tip-off to the papers. They were trying to flush him out.”

“And did it work?” asked Robin, now eating crisps.

“It did. Douthwaite turned up at a police station in Waltham Forest the day after the ‘Ladykiller’ article appeared, probably terrified he’d soon have Fleet Street and Scotland Yard on his doorstep. He told them he was unemployed and living in a bedsit. Local police called Lawson, who went straight over there to interview him.

“There’s a full account here,” said Strike, pushing some of the last pages of the roll he had brought with him toward Robin. “All written by Lawson: ‘appears scared’—‘evasive’—‘nervous’—‘sweating’—and the alibi’s not good. Douthwaite says that on the afternoon of Margot’s disappearance he was out looking for a new flat.”

“He claims he was already looking for a new place when she disappeared?”

“Coincidence, eh? Except that upon closer questioning he couldn’t say which flats he’d seen and couldn’t come up with the name of anyone who’d remember seeing him. In the end he said his flat-hunting had involved sitting in a local café and circling ads in the paper. Trouble was, nobody in the café remembered him being there.

“He said he’d moved to Waltham Forest because he had bad associations with Clerkenwell after being interviewed by Talbot and made to feel as though he was under suspicion, and that, in any case, things hadn’t been good for him at work since his affair with the co-worker’s suicidal wife.”

“Well, that’s credible enough,” said Robin.

“Lawson interviewed him twice more, but got nothing else out of him. Douthwaite came lawyered up to interview three. At that point, Lawson backed off. After all, they had nothing on Douthwaite, even if he was the fishiest person they interviewed. And it was—just—credible that the reason nobody had noticed him in the café was because it was a busy place.”

A group of drinkers in Hallowe’en costumes now entered the pub, giggling and clearly already full of alcohol. Robin noticed Strike casting an automatic eye over a young blonde in a rubber nurse’s uniform.