“I need a weekend back home, end o’ the month,” Barclay told Pat, who in Strike’s absence was in charge of the rota. As she opened it up on her computer, Barclay added, “Migh’ as well make the most of it, while I dinnae need a passport.”

“What d’you mean?” asked the exhausted Robin, sitting down on the sofa in the outer office with her coffee. She was, technically, off duty at the moment, but couldn’t muster the energy to go home.

“Scottish independence, Robin,” said Barclay, looking at her from beneath his heavy eyebrows. “I ken you English’ve barely noticed, but the union’s about tae break up.”

“It won’t really, will it?” said Robin.

“Every fucker I know’s gonna vote Yes in September. One o’ me mates from school called me an Uncle Tam last time I wus home. Arsehole won’t be doin’ that again,” growled Barclay.

When Barclay had left, Pat asked Robin,

“How’s his aunt?”

Robin knew Pat was referring to Strike, because she never referred to her boss by name if she could help it.

“Very ill,” said Robin. “Not fit for more chemotherapy.”

Pat jammed her electronic cigarette between her teeth and kept typing. After a while, she said,

“He was on his own at Christmas, upstairs.”

“I know,” said Robin. “He told me how good you were to him. Buying him soup. He was really grateful.”

Pat sniffed. Robin drank her coffee, hoping for just enough of an energy boost to get her off this sofa and onto the Tube. Then Pat said,

“I’d’ve thought he’d’ve had somewhere to go, other than the attic.”

“Well, he had flu really badly,” said Robin. “He didn’t want to give it to anyone else.”

But as she washed up her mug, put on her coat, bade Pat farewell and set off downstairs, Robin found herself musing on this brief exchange. She’d often pondered the, to her, inexplicable animosity that Pat seemed to feel toward Strike. It had been clear from her tone that Pat had imagined Strike somehow immune to loneliness or vulnerability, and Robin was puzzled as to why, because Strike had never made any secret of where he was living or the fact that he slept there alone.

Robin’s mobile rang. Seeing an unknown number, and remembering that Tom Turvey had been on the other end of the line the last time she’d answered one, she paused outside Tottenham Court Road station to answer it, with slight trepidation.

“Is this Robin Ellacott?” said a Mancunian voice.

“It is,” said Robin.

“Hiya,” said the woman, a little nervously. “You wanted to talk to Dave Underwood. I’m his daughter.”

“Oh, yes,” said Robin. “Thank you so much for getting back to me.”

Dave Underwood was the man who’d been employed to drive a wholefoods shop van at the time that Margot Bamborough went missing. Robin, who’d found his address online and written him a letter three days previously, hadn’t expected such a quick response. She’d become inured to people ignoring her messages about Margot Bamborough.

“It was a bit of a shock, getting your letter,” said the woman on the phone. “The thing is, Dad can’t talk to you himself. He had a tracheotomy three weeks ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Robin, one finger in the ear not pressed to the phone, to block out the rumbling traffic.

“Yeah,” said the woman. “He’s here with me now, though, and he wants me to say… look… he’s not going to be in trouble, is he?”

“No, of course not,” said Robin. “As I said in my letter, it really is just about eliminating the van from inquiries.”

“All right then,” said Dave’s daughter. “Well, it was him. Amazing, you working it out, because they all swore it was a flower on the side of the van, didn’t they? He was glad at the time, because he thought he’d get in trouble, but he’s felt bad about it for years. He went the wrong way on a delivery and he was speeding through Clerkenwell Green to try and put himself right. He didn’t want to say, because the boss had had a go at him that morning for not getting deliveries out on time. He saw in the paper they were thinking maybe he’d been Dennis Creed and he just… well, you know. Nobody likes getting mixed up with stuff like that, do they? And the longer he kept quiet, the worse he thought it would look, him not coming forward straight away.”

“I see,” said Robin. “Yes, I can understand how he felt. Well, this is very helpful. And after he’d made his delivery, did he—?”

“Yeah, he went back to the shop and he got a right telling-off anyway, because they opened the van and saw he’d delivered the wrong order. He had to go back out again.”

So Margot Bamborough clearly hadn’t been in the back of the wholefoods van.

“Well, thanks very much for getting back to me,” said Robin, “and please thank your father for being honest. That’s going to be a great help.”

“You’re welcome,” said the woman, and then, quickly, before Robin could hang up. “Are you the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed?”

For a moment, Robin considered denying it, but she’d signed the letter to Dave Underwood with her real name.

“Yes,” she said, but with less warmth than she’d put into her thank you for the information about the van. She didn’t like being called “the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed.”

“Wow,” said the woman, “I told Dad I thought it was you. Well, at least Creed can’t get you, eh?”

She said it almost jauntily. Robin agreed, thanked her again for her cooperation, hung up the phone and proceeded down the stairs into the Tube.

At least Creed can’t get you, eh?

The cheery sign-off stayed with Robin as she descended to the Tube. That flippancy belonged only to those who had never felt blind terror, or come up against brute strength and steel, who’d never heard pig-like breathing close to their ear, or seen defocused eyes through balaclava holes, or felt their own flesh split, yet barely registered pain, because death was so close you could smell its breath.

Robin glanced over her shoulder on the escalator, because the careless commuter behind her kept touching the backs of her upper thighs with his briefcase. Sometimes she found casual physical contact with men almost unbearable. Reaching the bottom of the escalator she moved off fast to remove herself from the commuter’s vicinity. At least Creed can’t get you, eh? As though being “got” was nothing more than a game of tag.

Or was it being in the newspaper had somehow made Robin seem less human to the woman on the end of the phone? As Robin settled herself into a seat between two women on the Tube, her thoughts returned to Pat, and to the secretary’s surprise that Strike had nowhere to go when he was ill, and nobody to look after him. Was that at the root of her antipathy? An assumption that newsworthiness meant invulnerability?

When Robin let herself into the flat forty minutes later, carrying a bag of groceries and looking forward to an early night, she found the place empty except for Wolfgang, who greeted her exuberantly, then whined in a way that indicated a full bladder. With a sigh, Robin found his lead and took him downstairs for a quick walk around the block. After that, too tired to cook a proper meal, she scrambled herself some eggs and ate them with toast while watching the news on TV.