“Not in too much of a hurry to get help, then?” said the portlier of the two sarcastically. He had the swagger of a man who thinks himself a joker.

Strike removed his arm from around Robin’s shoulders and both stood up, in Strike’s case, clumsily.

“Car sickness,” Strike told the officer blandly. “Careful, or she might puke on you.”

They returned to the car. The first officer’s colleague was peering at the tax disk on the ancient Land Rover.

“You don’t see many of this age still on the roads,” he commented.

“It’s never let me down yet,” said Robin.

“Sure you’re all right to drive?” Strike muttered, as she turned the ignition key. “We could pretend you’re still feeling ill.”

“I’m fine.”

And this time, it was true. He had called her the best driver he knew, and it might not be much, but he had given her back some of her self-respect, and she steered seamlessly back onto the motorway.

There was a long silence. Strike decided that further discussion of Robin’s mental health ought to wait until she wasn’t driving.

“Winn said a name at the end of the call there,” he mused, taking out his notebook. “Did you hear?”

“No,” muttered Robin, shamefaced.

“It was Samuel something,” Strike said, making a note. “Murdoch? Matlock?”

“I didn’t hear.”

“Cheer up,” said Strike bracingly, “he probably wouldn’t have blurted it out if you hadn’t been yelling at him. Not that I recommend calling interviewees thieving perverts in future…”

He stretched around in his seat, reaching for the carrier bag in the back. “Fancy a biscuit?”

62

… I do not want to see your defeat, Rebecca.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The car park at Newbury Racecourse was already jam-packed when they arrived. Many of the people heading for the ticket marquee were dressed for comfort, like Strike and Robin, in jeans and jackets, but others had donned fluttering silk dresses, suits, padded waistcoats, tweed hats and corduroy trousers in shades of mustard and puce that reminded Robin of Torquil.

They queued for tickets, each lost in their thoughts. Robin was afraid of what was coming once they reached the Crafty Filly, where Tegan Butcher worked. Certain that Strike had not yet had his full say on her mental health, she was afraid that he had merely postponed the announcement that he wanted her to return to a desk job in the office.

In fact, Strike’s mind was temporarily elsewhere. The white railings glimpsed beyond the small marquee where the crowd queued for tickets, and the abundance of tweed and corduroy, were reminding him of the last time he had been at a racecourse. He had no particular interest in the sport. The one constant paternal figure in his life, his uncle Ted, had been a footballing and sailing man, and while a couple of Strike’s friends in the army had enjoyed a bet on the horses, he had never seen the attraction.

Three years previously, though, he had attended the Epsom Derby with Charlotte and two of her favorite siblings. Like Strike, Charlotte came from a disjointed and dysfunctional family. In one of her unpredictable effusions of enthusiasm, Charlotte had insisted on accepting Valentine and Sacha’s invitation, notwithstanding Strike’s lack of interest in the sport and his barely cordial feelings towards both men, who considered him an inexplicable oddity in their sister’s life.

He had been broke at the time, setting up the agency on a shoestring, already being chased by lawyers for repayment of the small loan he had taken from his biological father, when every bank had turned him down as a bad risk. Nevertheless, Charlotte had been incensed when, after losing a fiver on the nose on the favorite, Fame and Glory, who had come in second, he had refused to place another bet. She had refrained from calling him puritanical or sanctimonious, plebeian or penny-pinching, as she had done previously when he had refused to emulate the reckless and ostentatious spending of her family and friends. Egged on by her brothers, she had chosen to lay larger and larger bets herself, finally winning £2500 and insisting that they visit the champagne tent, where her beauty and high spirits had turned many heads.

As he walked with Robin up a wide tarmacked thoroughfare that ran parallel from the racetrack itself behind the towering stands, past coffee bars, cider stalls and ice cream vans, the jockeys’ changing rooms and owners’ and trainers’ bar, Strike thought about Charlotte, and gambles that came off, and gambles that didn’t, until Robin’s voice pulled him back to the present.

“I think that’s the place.”

A painted sign showed the head of a dark, winking filly in a snaffle bit hung on the side of a one-story brick bar. The outdoor seating area was crowded. Champagne flutes clinked amid a buzz of talk and laughter. The Crafty Filly overlooked the paddock where horses would shortly be paraded, around which a further crowd had begun to congregate.

“Grab that high table,” Strike told Robin, “and I’ll get drinks and tell Tegan we’re here.”

He disappeared into the building without asking her what she wanted.

Robin sat down at one of the tall tables with its metal bar-chairs, which she knew Strike preferred because getting on and off them would be easier on his amputated leg than the low wickerwork sofas. The whole outside area sat beneath a canopy of polyurethane to protect drinkers from non-existent rain. The sky was cloudless today, the day warm with a light breeze that barely moved the leaves of the topiary plants at the entrance to the bar. It would be a clear night for digging in the dell outside Steda Cottage, Robin thought, always assuming that Strike wasn’t about to cancel the expedition, because he thought her too unstable and emotional to take along.

That thought turned her insides even colder and she fell to reading the printed lists of runners they had been given, along with their cardboard entry tags, until a half-bottle of Moët & Chandon landed unexpectedly in front of her and Strike sat down, holding a pint of bitter.

“Doom Bar on draft,” he said cheerfully, tipping his glass to her before taking a sip. Robin looked blankly at the little bottle of champagne, which she thought resembled bubble bath.

“What’s this for?”

“Celebration,” said Strike, having taken a sizable gulp of his beer. “I know you’re not supposed to say it,” he went on, rummaging through his pockets for cigarettes, “but you’re well shot of him. Sleeping with his mate’s fiancée in the marital bed? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

“I can’t drink. I’m driving.”

“That’s just cost me twenty-five quid, so you can take a token swig.”

“Twenty-five quid, for this?” said Robin, and taking advantage of Strike lighting his cigarette, she surreptitiously wiped her leaking eyes again.

“Tell me something,” said Strike, as he waved his match, extinguishing it. “D’you ever think about where you see the agency going?”

“What d’you mean?” said Robin, looking alarmed.

“My brother-in-law was giving me the third degree about it, night the Olympics started,” said Strike. “Banging on about reaching a point where I didn’t have to go out on the street any more.”