As mentioned above, the signs Talbot uses for Roy Phipps and Irene Hickson (who was then Irene Bull) haven’t ever been used in astrology and seem to be inventions of Talbot’s.

Roy’s symbol looks like a headless stickman. Exactly what it’s supposed to represent I can’t find out—presumably a constellation? Quotations about snakes recur around Roy’s name.

Irene’s invented sign looks like a big fish and—

The kitchen door opened again. Robin looked around. It was Linda again.

“You still here?” she said, still with a slight sense of disapproval.

“No,” said Robin, “I’m upstairs.”

Linda’s smile was reluctant. As she took more mugs from the cupboard, she asked,

“D’you want another tea?”

“No thanks,” said Robin, closing her laptop. She’d decided to finish reading Strike’s document in her room. Maybe she was imagining it, but Linda seemed to be making more noise than usual.

“He’s got you working over Christmas as well, then?” said Linda.

For the past four days, Robin had suspected that her mother wanted to talk to her about Strike. The looks she’d seen on her surprised family’s faces yesterday had told her why. However, she felt under no obligation to make it easy for Linda to interrogate her.

“As well as what?” asked Robin.

“You know what I mean,” said Linda. “Christmas. I’d have thought you were owed time off.”

“I get time off,” said Robin.

She took her empty mug over to the sink. Rowntree now struggled to his feet and Robin let him out of the back door, feeling the icy air on every bit of exposed skin. Over the garden hedge she could see the sun turning the horizon green as it made its way steadily up through the icy heavens.

“Is he seeing anyone?” Linda asked. “Strike?”

“He sees lots of people,” said Robin, willfully obtuse. “It’s part of the job.”

“You know what I mean,” said Linda.

“Why the interest?”

She expected her mother to back off, but was surprised.

“I think you know why,” she said, turning to face her daughter.

Robin was furious to find herself blushing. She was a twenty-nine-year-old woman. At that very moment, her mobile emitted a beep on the kitchen table. She was convinced that it would be Strike texting her, and so, apparently, was Linda, who, being nearer, picked up the phone to hand it to Robin, glancing at the sender’s name as she did so.

It wasn’t Strike. It was Saul Morris. He’d written:

Hope you’re not having as shit a Christmas as I am.

Robin wouldn’t normally have answered. Resentment at her family, and something else, something she didn’t particularly want to admit to, made her text back, while Linda watched:

Depends how shit yours is. Mine’s fairly shit.

She sent the message, then looked up at Linda.

“Who’s Saul Morris?” her mother asked.

“Subcontractor at the agency. Ex-police,” said Robin.

“Oh,” said Linda.

Robin could tell that had given Linda fresh food for thought. If she was honest with herself, she’d meant to do exactly that. Picking her laptop off the table, she left the kitchen.

The bathroom was, of course, occupied. Robin returned to her room. By the time she lay back down on her bed, laptop open again, Morris had texted her again.

Tell me your troubles and I’ll tell you mine. Problem shared and all that.

Slightly regretting that she’d answered him, Robin turned the mobile face down on her bed and continued reading Strike’s document.

Irene’s invented sign looks like a big fish and Talbot’s blunt about what he thinks it represents: “the monster Cetus, Leviathan, the biblical whale, superficial charm, evil in depths. Headstrong, enjoys spotlight, a performer, a liar.” Talbot seems to have suspected Irene was a liar even before she was proven to have lied about her trip to the dentist, which Talbot never found out about, although there’s no indication as to what he thinks she was lying about.

Margot as Babalon

This is only of relevance in as much as it shows just how ill Talbot was.

On the night he was finally sectioned, he attempted some kind of magic ritual. Judging by his notes, he was trying to conjure Baphomet, presumably because he thought Baphomet would take the form of Margot’s killer.

According to Talbot, what manifested in the room wasn’t Baphomet, but the spirit of Margot “who blames me, who attacks me.” Talbot believed she’d become Babalon in death, Babalon being Baphomet’s second-in-command/consort. The demon he “saw” was carrying a cup of blood and a sword. There are repeated mentions of lions scribbled round the picture of the demon. Babalon rides a seven-headed lion on the card representing Lust in the Thoth tarot.

At some point after Talbot drew the demon, he went back and drew Latin crosses over some of the notes and on the demon itself, and wrote a biblical quotation warning against witchcraft across the picture. The appearance of the demon seems to have pushed him back toward religion, and that’s where his notes end.

Robin heard the bathroom door open and close. Now desperate for a pee, she jumped up and headed out of her room.

Stephen was crossing the landing, holding his washbag, puffy-eyed and yawning.

“Sorry about last night, Rob,” he said. “Jenny thinks it was the sprouts.”

“Yeah, Mum said,” Robin replied, edging around him. “No problem. Hope she feels better.”

“We’re going to take her out for a walk. I’ll see if I can buy you some ear plugs.”

Once she’d showered, Robin returned to her room. Her phone beeped twice while she was dressing.

Brushing her hair in the mirror, her eyes fell on the new perfume she’d received as a Christmas present from her mother. Robin had told her she was looking for a new fragrance, because the old one reminded her too much of Matthew. She’d been touched that Linda remembered the conversation when she opened the gift.

The bottle was round; not an orb, but a flattish circle: Chanel Chance Eau Fraîche. The liquid was pale green. An unfortunate association of ideas now made Robin think of sprouts. Nevertheless, she sprayed some on her wrists and behind her ears, filling the air with the scent of sharp lemon and nondescript flowers. What, she wondered, had made her mother choose it? What was it about the perfume that made her think “Robin”? To Robin’s nostrils it smelled like a deodorant, generic, clean and totally without romance. She remembered her unsuccessful purchase of Fracas, and the desire to be sexy and sophisticated that had ended only in headaches. Musing about the disparity between the way people would like to be seen, and the way others prefer to see them, Robin sat back down on her bed beside her laptop and flipped over her phone.

Morris had texted twice more.

Lonely and hungover this end. Not being with the kids at Christmas is shit.

When Robin hadn’t answered this, he’d texted again.

Sorry, being a maudlin dickhead. Feel free to ignore.

Calling himself a dickhead was the most likable thing she’d ever known Morris do. Feeling sorry for him, Robin replied,