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QUESTION

What dost thou feed on?

ANSWER

Broken sleep

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

‘Someone bloody famous,’ said the hoarse voice on the end of the line, ‘better’ve died, Strike’

The large unshaven h the darkness of pre-daith his telephone clarinned

‘It’s in that ballpark’

‘It’s six o’clock in the fucking !’

‘It’s half past, but if you hat I’ve got, you’ll need to coet it,’ said Cormoran Strike ‘I’m not far away from your place There’s a—’

‘How d’you knohere I live?’ demanded the voice

‘You toldyour flat’

‘Oh,’ said the other, mollified ‘Good memory’

‘There’s a twenty-four-hour caff—’

‘Fuck that Come into the office later—’

‘Culpepper, I’ve got another client this ht You need this now if you’re going to use it’

A groan Strike could hear the rustling of sheets

‘It had better be shit-hot’

‘S off

The slight unevenness in his gait became more pronounced as he walked down the slope towards Smithfield Market, ular Victorian te animal flesh was unloaded, as it had been for centuries past, cut, parcelled and sold to butchers and restaurants across London Strike could hear voices through the gloo lorries unloading the carcasses As he entered Long Lane, he beca purposefully about their Monday- business

A huddle of couriers in fluorescent jackets cupped riffin standing sentinel on the corner of thelike an open fireplace against the surrounding darkness, was the Smithfield Café, open twenty-four hours a day, a cupboard-sized cache of warreasy food

The café had no bathroo Ladbrokes would not open for another three hours, so Strike made a detour down a side alley and in a dark doorway relieved hi eak coffee drunk in the course of a night’s work Exhausted and hungry, he turned at last, with the pleasure that only a man who has pushed himself past his physical limits can ever experience, into the fat-laden ats and bacon

Two men in fleeces and waterproofs had just vacated a table Strike runt of satisfaction, onto the hard wood and steel chair Almost before he asked, the Italian owner placed tea in front of hiles of white buttered bread Within five e oval plate

Strike blended ith the strong e and dark, with dense, short, curly hair that had receded a little froh, domed forehead that topped a boxer’s broad nose and thick, surly brows His jaas gried his dark eyes He ate gazing drea opposite The nearest arched entrance, nu substance as the darkness thinned: a stern stone face, ancient and bearded, stared back at hiod of carcasses?

He had just started on his sausages when Dominic Culpepper arrived The journalist was almost as tall as Strike but thin, with a choirboy’s coiven his face a counterclockwise twist, stopped hiirlishly handsome

‘This better be good,’ Culpepper said as he sat down, pulled off his gloves and glanced almost suspiciously around the café

‘Want soe

‘No,’ said Culpepper

‘Rather wait till you can

get a croissant?’ asked Strike, grinning

‘Fuck off, Strike’

It was almost pathetically easy to wind up the ex-public schoolboy, who ordered tea with an air of defiance, calling the indifferent waiter (as Strike noted with amusement) ‘mate’

‘Well?’ de pale hands

Strike fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out an envelope and slid it across the table Culpepper pulled out the contents and began to read

‘Fucking hell,’ he said quietly, after a while He shuffled feverishly through the bits of paper, so ‘Where the hell did you get this?’

Strike, whose er at one of the bits of paper, on which an office address was scribbled

‘His very fucked-off PA,’ he said, when he had finally sed ‘He’s been shagging her, as well as the two you know about She’s only just realised she’s not going to be the next Lady Parker’

‘How the hell did you find that out?’ asked Culpepper, staring up at Strike over the papers tre in his excited hands

‘Detective work,’ said Strike thickly, through another bit of sausage ‘Didn’t your lot used to do this, before you started outsourcing to the likes of ot to think about her future employment prospects, Culpepper, so she doesn’t want to appear in the story, all right?’

Culpepper snorted

‘She should’ve thought about that before she nicked—’

With a deft moveers

‘She didn’t nick theot her to print this lot off for hi is show it toto splash her private life all over the papers, Culpepper, I’ll take ’em back’

‘Piss off,’ said Culpepper, rab for the evidence of wholesale tax evasion clutched in Strike’s hairy hand ‘All right, we’ll leave her out of it But he’ll knohere we got it He’s not a complete tit’

‘What’s he going to do, drag her into court where she can spill the beans about every other dodgy thing she’s witnessed over the last five years?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ sighed Culpepper after a moment’s reflection ‘Give ’em back I’ll leave her out of the story, but I’ll need to speak to her, won’t I? Check she’s kosher’

‘Those are kosher You don’t need to speak to her,’ said Strike firmly

The shaking, besotted, bitterly betrayed woman whom he had just left would not be safe left alone with Culpepper In her savage desire for retribution against a e herself and her prospects beyond repair It had not taken Strike long to gain her trust She was nearly forty-two; she had thought that she was going to have Lord Parker’s children; now a kind of bloodlust had her in its grip Strike had sat with her for several hours, listening to the story of her infatuation, watching her pace her sitting room in tears, rock backwards and forwards on her sofa, knuckles to her forehead Finally she had agreed to this: a betrayal that represented the funeral of all her hopes