“I haven’t got anything on Jimmy Knight, I’m afraid,” said Strike. “Nobody was paying me to be at the meeting.”

Chiswell looked stunned.

“But then, why were you there?” he demanded. “You’re not telling me you intend to protest against the Olympics?”

So plosive was the “p” of “protest” that a small piece of potato flew out of his mouth across the table.

“No,” said Strike. “I was trying to find somebody I thought might be at the meeting. They weren’t.”

Chiswell attacked his beef again as though it had personally wronged him. For a while, the only sounds were those of their knives and forks scraping the china. Chiswell speared the last of his boiled potatoes, put it whole into his mouth, let his knife and fork fall with a clatter onto his plate and said:

“I’d been thinking of hiring a detective before I heard you were watching Knight.”

Strike said nothing. Chiswell eyed him suspiciously.

“You have the reputation of being very good.”

“Kind of you to say so,” said Strike.

Chiswell continued to glare at Strike with a kind of furious desperation, as though wondering whether he dared hope that the detective would not prove yet another disappointment in a life beset with them.

“I’m being blackmailed, Mr. Strike,” he said abruptly. “Blackmailed by a pair of men who have come together in a temporary, though probably unstable, alliance. One of them is Jimmy Knight.”

“I see,” said Strike.

He, too, put his knife and fork together. Georgina appeared to know by some psychic process that Strike and Chiswell had eaten their fill of the main course. She arrived to clear away, reappearing with a treacle tart. Only once she had retired to the kitchen, and both men had helped themselves to large slices of pudding, did Chiswell resume his story.

“There’s no need for sordid details,” he said, with an air of finality. “All you need to know is that Jimmy Knight is aware that I did something that I would not wish to see shared with the gentlemen of the fourth estate.”

Strike said nothing, but Chiswell seemed to think his silence had an accusatory flavor, because he added sharply:

“No crime was committed. Some might not like it, but it wasn’t illegal at the—but that’s by the by,” said Chiswell, and took a large gulp of water. “Knight came to me a couple of months ago and asked for forty thousand pounds in hush money. I refused to pay. He threatened me with exposure, but as he didn’t appear to have any proof of his claim, I dared hope he would be unable to follow through on the threat.

“No press story resulted, so I concluded that I was right in thinking he had no proof. He returned a few weeks later and asked for half the former sum. Again, I refused.

“It was then, thinking to increase the pressure on me, I assume, that he approached Geraint Winn.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who—?”

“Della Winn’s husband.”

“Della Winn, the Minister for Sport?” said Strike, startled.

“Yes, of course Della-Winn-the-Minister-for-Sport,” snapped Chiswell.

The Right Honorable Della Winn, as Strike knew well, was a Welshwoman in her early sixties who had been blind since birth. No matter their party affiliation, people tended to admire the Liberal Democrat, who had been a human rights lawyer before standing for Parliament. Usually photographed with her guide dog, a pale yellow Labrador, she had been much in evidence in the press of late, her current bailiwick being the Paralympics. She had visited Selly Oak while Strike had been in the hospital, readjusting to the loss of his leg in Afghanistan. He had been left with a favorable impression of her intelligence and her empathy. Of her husband, Strike knew nothing.

“I don’t know whether Della knows what Geraint’s up to,” said Chiswell, spearing a piece of treacle tart and continuing to speak while he chewed it. “Probably, but keeping her nose clean. Plausible deniability. Can’t have the sainted Della involved in blackmail, can we?”

“Her husband’s asked you for money?” asked Strike, incredulous.

“Oh no, no. Geraint wants to force me from office.”

“Any particular reason why?” said Strike.

“There’s an enmity between us dating back many years, rooted in a wholly baseless—but that’s irrelevant,” said Chiswell, with an angry shake of the head. “Geraint approached me, ‘hoping it isn’t true,’ and ‘offering me a chance to explain.’ He’s a nasty, twisted little man who’s spent his life holding his wife’s handbag and answering her telephone calls. Naturally he’s relishing the idea of wielding some actual power.”

Chiswell took a swig of sherry.

“So, as you can see, I’m in something of a cleft stick, Mr. Strike. Even if I were minded to pay off Jimmy Knight, I still have to contend with a man who wants my disgrace, and who may well be able to lay hands on proof.”

“How could Winn get proof?”

Chiswell took another large mouthful of treacle tart and glanced over his shoulder to check that Georgina remained safely in the kitchen.

“I’ve heard,” he muttered, and a fine mist of pastry flew from the slack lips, “that there may be photographs.”

“Photographs?” repeated Strike.

“Winn can’t have them, of course. If he had, it would all be over. But he might be able to find a way of getting hold of them. Yerse.”

He shoved the last piece of tart into his mouth, then said:

“Of course, there’s a chance the photographs don’t incriminate me. There are no distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.”

Strike’s imagination frankly boggled. He yearned to ask, “Distinguishing marks on what, Minister?” but refrained.

“It all happened six years ago,” continued Chiswell. “I’ve been over and over the damn thing in my head. There were others involved who might have talked, but I doubt it, I doubt it very much. Too much to lose. No, it’s all going to come down to what Knight and Winn can dig up. I strongly suspect that if he gets hold of the photographs, Winn will go straight to the press. I don’t think that would be Knight’s first choice. He simply wants money.

“So here I am, Mr. Strike, a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi. I’ve lived with this hanging over me for weeks now. It hasn’t been enjoyable.”

He peered at Strike through his tiny eyes, and the detective was irresistibly put in mind of a mole, blinking up at a hovering spade that waited to crush it.

“When I heard you were at that meeting I assumed you were investigating Knight and had some dirt on him. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way out of this diabolical situation is to find something that I can use against each of them, before they get their hands on those photographs. Fight fire with fire.”

“Blackmail with blackmail?” said Strike.

“I don’t want anything from them except to leave me the hell alone,” snapped Chiswell. “Bargaining chips, that’s all I want. I acted within the law,” he said firmly, “and in accordance with my conscience.”

Chiswell was not a particularly likable man, but Strike could well imagine that the ongoing suspense of waiting for public exposure would be torture, especially to a man who had already endured his fair share of scandals. Strike’s scant research on his prospective client the previous evening had unearthed gleeful accounts of the affair that had ended his first marriage, of the fact that his second wife had spent a week in a clinic for “nervous exhaustion” and of the grisly drug-induced car crash in which his younger son had killed a young mother.