“—she’s got the best alibi in the family,” said Robin.

“Exactly,” said Strike.

They had now left behind the clearly man-made border shrubs and bushes that had lined the motorway as it passed Windsor and Maidenhead. There were real old trees left and right now, trees that had predated the road, and which would have seen their fellows felled to make way for it.

“Barclay’s call was interesting,” Strike went on, turning a couple of pages in his notebook. “Knight’s been in a nasty mood ever since Chiswell died, though he hasn’t told Barclay why. On Wednesday night he was goading Flick, apparently, said he agreed with her ex-flatmate that Flick had bourgeois instincts—d’you mind if I smoke? I’ll wind down the window.”

The breeze was bracing, though it made his tired eyes water. Holding his burning cigarette out of the car between drags, he went on:

“So Flick got really angry, said she’d been doing ‘that shitty job for you’ and then said it wasn’t her fault they hadn’t got forty grand, at which Jimmy went, to quote Barclay, ‘apeshit.’ Flick stormed out and on Thursday morning, Jimmy texted Barclay and told him he was going back to where he grew up, to visit his brother.”

“Billy’s in Woolstone?” said Robin, startled. She realized that she had come to think of the younger Knight brother as an almost mythical person.

“Jimmy might’ve been using him as a cover story. Who knows where he’s really got to… Anyway, Jimmy and Flick reappeared last night in the pub, all smiles. Barclay says they’d obviously made up over the phone and in the two days he was away, she’s managed to find herself a nice non-bourgeois job.”

“That was good going,” said Robin.

“How d’you feel about shop work?”

“I did a bit in my teens,” said Robin. “Why?”

“Flick’s got herself a few hours part time in a jewelry shop in Camden. She told Barclay it’s run by some mad Wiccan woman. It’s minimum wage and the boss sounds barking mad, so they’re having trouble finding anyone else.”

“Don’t you think they might recognize me?”

“The Knight lot have never seen you in person,” said Strike. “If you did something drastic with your hair, broke out the colored contact lenses again… I’ve got a feeling,” he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, “that Flick’s hiding a lot. How did she know what Chiswell’s blackmailable offense was? She was the one who told Jimmy, don’t forget, which is strange.”

“Wait,” said Robin. “What?”

“Yeah, she said, when I was following them on the march,” said Strike. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” said Robin.

As she said it, Strike remembered that he had spent the week after the march at Lorelei’s with his leg up, when he had still been so angry at Robin for refusing to work that he had barely spoken to her. Then they had met at the hospital, and he had been far too distracted and worried to pass on information in his usual methodical fashion.

“Sorry,” he said. “It was that week after…”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. She, too, preferred not to think about the weekend of the march. “So what exactly did she say?”

“That he wouldn’t know what Chiswell had done, but for her.”

“That’s weird,” said Robin, “seeing as he’s the one who grew up right beside them.”

“But the thing they were blackmailing him about only happened six years ago, after Jimmy had left home,” Strike reminded her. “If you ask me, Jimmy’s been keeping Flick around because she knows too much. He might be scared of ending it, in case she starts talking.

“If you can’t get anything useful out of her, you can pretend selling earrings isn’t for you and leave, but the state their relationship’s in, I think Flick might be in the mood to confide in a friendly stranger. Don’t forget,” he said, throwing the end of his cigarette out of the window and winding it back up, “she’s also Jimmy’s alibi for the time of death.”

Excited about the prospect of going back undercover, Robin said:

“I hadn’t forgotten.”

She wondered how Matthew would react if she shaved the sides of her head, or dyed her hair blue. He had not put up much of a show of resentment at her spending Saturday with Strike. Her long days of effective house arrest, and her sympathy about the argument with Tom, seemed to have bought her credit.

Shortly after half past ten, they turned off the motorway onto a country road that wound down into the valley where the tiny village of Woolstone lay nestled. Robin parked beside a hedgerow full of Traveler’s Joy, so that Strike could reattach his prosthesis. Replacing her sunglasses in her handbag, Robin noticed two texts from Matthew. They had arrived two hours earlier, but the alert of her mobile must have been drowned out by the racket of the Land Rover.

The first read:

All day. What about Tom?

The second, which had been sent ten minutes later, said:

Ignore last, was meant for work.

Robin was rereading these when Strike said:

“Shit.”

He had already reattached his prosthesis, and was staring through his window at something she could not see.

“What?”

“Look at that.”

Strike pointed back up the hill down which they had just driven. Robin ducked her head so that she could see what had caught his attention.

A gigantic prehistoric white chalk figure had been cut into the hillside. To Robin, it resembled a stylised leopard, but the realization of what it was supposed to be had already hit her when Strike said:

“‘Up by the horse. He strangled the kid, up by the horse.’”

42

In a family there is always something or other going awry…

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

A flaking wooden sign marked the turning to Chiswell House. The drive, which was overgrown and full of potholes, was bordered on the left by a dense patch of woodland and on the right, by a long field that had been separated into paddocks by electric fences, and contained a number of horses. As the Land Rover lurched and rumbled towards the out-of-sight house, two of the largest horses, spooked by the noisy and unfamiliar car, took off. A chain reaction then occurred, as most of their companions began to canter around, too, the original pair kicking out at each other as they went.

“Wow,” said Robin, watching the horses as the Land Rover swayed over the uneven ground. “She’s got stallions in together.”

“That’s bad, is it?” asked Strike, as a hairy creature the color of jet lashed out with teeth and back legs at an equally large animal he would have categorized as brown, though doubtless the coat color had some rarefied equine name.

“It’s not usually done,” said Robin, wincing as the black stallion’s rear legs made contact with its companion’s flank.

They turned a corner and saw a plain-faced neo-classical house of dirty yellow stone. The graveled forecourt, like the drive, had several potholes and was strewn with weeds, the windows were grubby and a large tub of horse feed sat incongruously beside the front door. Three cars were already sitting there: a red Audi Q3, a racing green Range Rover and an old and muddy Grand Vitara. To the right of the house lay a stable block and to the left, a wide croquet lawn that had long since been given over to the daisies. More dense woodland lay beyond.