1. Call Wardle

Text note found in Flick’s flat,

Update on police case if possible.

2. Call Izzy

Show her stolen note.

Ask: was Freddie’s money clip ever found?

Tegan’s details?

Need phone number for Raphael.

Also phone number, if poss, for Della Winn

3. Call Barclay

Give update.

Cover Jimmy & Flick again

When does Jimmy visit Billy?

4. Call hospital

Try and arrange interview with Billy when Jimmy not there.

5. Call Robin

Arrange interview with Raphael

6. Call Della

Try and arrange interview

After a little further thought, he finished the list with

7. Buy teabags/beer/bread

After tidying up the Chiswell file, tipping the overflowing ashtray into the bin, opening the window wider to admit more cold, fresh air, Strike went for a last pee, cleaned his teeth, switched off the lights and returned to his bedroom, where a single reading lamp still burned.

Now, with his defenses weakened by beer and tiredness, the memories he had sought to bury in work forced their way to the forefront of his mind. As he undressed and removed his prosthetic leg, he found himself going back over every word Charlotte had said to him across the table for two in Franco’s, remembering the expression of her green eyes, the scent of Shalimar reaching him through the garlic fumes of the restaurant, her thin white fingers playing with the bread.

He got into bed between the chilly sheets and lay, hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness. He wished he could feel indifferent, but in fact his ego had stretched luxuriously at the idea that she had read all about the cases that had made his name and that she thought about him while in bed with her husband. Now, though, reason and experience rolled up their sleeves, ready to conduct a professional post-mortem on the remembered conversation, methodically disinterring the unmistakable signs of Charlotte’s perennial will to shock and her apparently insatiable need for conflict.

The abandonment of her titled husband and newborn children for a famous, one-legged detective would certainly constitute the crowning achievement of a career of disruption. Having an almost pathological hatred of routine, responsibility or obligation, she had sabotaged every possibility of permanence before she had to deal with the threats of boredom or compromise. Strike knew all this, because he knew her better than any other human being, and he knew that their final parting had happened at the exact moment where real sacrifice and hard choices had to be made.

But he also knew—and the knowledge was like ineradicable bacteria in a wound that stopped it ever healing—that she loved him as she had never loved anyone else. Of course, the skeptical girlfriends and wives of his friends, none of whom had liked Charlotte, had told him over and over again, “That’s not love, what she does to you,” or, “Not being funny, Corm, but how do you know she hasn’t said exactly the same to all the others she’s had?” Such women saw his confidence that Charlotte loved him as delusion or egotism. They had not been present for those times of total bliss and mutual understanding that remained some of the best of Strike’s life. They had not shared jokes inexplicable to any other human being but himself and Charlotte, or felt the mutual need that had drawn them back together for sixteen years.

She had walked from him straight into the arms of the man she thought would hurt Strike worst, and indeed, it had hurt, because Ross was the absolute antithesis of him and had dated Charlotte before Strike had even met him. Yet Strike remained certain her flight to Ross had been self-immolation, done purely for spectacular effect, a Charlottian form of sati.

Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem,

Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias.

It is hard to abruptly shrug off a long-established love

Hard, but this, somehow, you must do.

Strike turned off the light, closed his eyes and sank, once more, into uneasy dreams of the empty house where squares of unfaded wallpaper bore witness to the removal of everything of value, but this time he walked alone, with the strange sensation that hidden eyes were watching.

53

And then, in the end, the poignant misery of her victory…

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Robin arrived home just before 2 a.m. As she crept around the kitchen, making herself a sandwich, she noticed on the kitchen calendar that Matthew was planning to play five-a-side football later that morning. Accordingly, when she slipped into bed with him twenty minutes later, she set the alarm on her phone for eight o’clock before plugging it in to charge. As part of her effort to try and keep the atmosphere amicable, she wanted to get up to see him before he left.

He seemed happy that she’d made the effort to join him for breakfast, but when she asked whether he wanted her to come and cheer from the sidelines, or meet him for lunch afterwards, he declined both offers.

“I’ve got paperwork to do this afternoon. I don’t want to drink at lunchtime. I’ll come straight back,” he said, so Robin, secretly delighted, because she was so tired, told him to have a good time and kissed him goodbye.

Trying not to focus on how much lighter of heart she felt once Matthew had left the house, Robin occupied herself with laundry and other essentials until, shortly after midday, while she was changing the sheets on their bed, Strike called.

“Hi,” said Robin, gladly abandoning her task, “any news?”

“Plenty. Ready to write some stuff down?”

“Yes,” said Robin, hurriedly grabbing notebook and pen off the top of her dressing table and sitting down on the stripped mattress.

“I’ve been making some calls. First off, Wardle. Very impressed with your work in getting hold of that note—”

Robin smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

“—though he’s warned me the police won’t take kindly to us, as he put it, ‘clodhopping all over an open case.’ I’ve asked him not to say where he got the tip-off about the note, but I expect they’ll put two and two together, given that Wardle and I are mates. Still, that’s unavoidable. The interesting bit is that the police are still worried about the same features of the death scene as we are and they’ve been going deeper into Chiswell’s finances.”

“Looking for evidence of blackmail?”

“Yeah, but they haven’t got anything, because Chiswell never paid out. Here’s the interesting bit. Chiswell got an unexplained payment in cash of forty thousand pounds last year. He opened a separate bank account for it, then seems to have spent it all on house repairs and other sundries.”

“He received forty thousand pounds?”

“Yep. And Kinvara and the rest of the family are claiming total ignorance. They say they don’t know where the money came from or why Chiswell would’ve opened a separate account to take receipt of it.”

“The same amount Jimmy asked for before he scaled down his request,” said Robin. “That’s odd.”

“Certainly is. So then I called Izzy.”

“You’ve been busy,” said Robin.

“You haven’t heard the half of it. Izzy denies knowledge of where the forty grand came from, but I’m not sure I believe her. Then I asked her about the note Flick stole. She’s appalled that Flick might’ve been posing as her father’s cleaner. Very shaken up. I think for the first time she’s considering the possibility that Kinvara isn’t guilty.”