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He could still feel thetwo and a half years before It was there, under the sleeping bag; he could flex the vanished toes if he wanted to Exhausted as Strike was, it took a while for him to fall asleep, and when he did, Charlotte wove in and out of every dreaeous, vituperative and haunted

Part Two

Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco

No stranger to troubleto care for the unhappy

Virgil, Aeneid, Book 1

1

“ ‘WITH ALL THE GALLONS OF NEWSPRINT and hours of televised talk that have been poured forth on the subject of Lula Landry’s death, rarely has the question been asked: why do we care?

“ ‘She was beautiful, of course, and beautiful girls have been helping to shift newspapers ever since Dana Gibson cross-hatched lazy-lidded sirens for the New Yorker

“ ‘She was black, too, or rather, a delicious shade of café au lait, and this, ere constantly told, represented progression within an industry concerned merely with surfaces (I am dubious: could it not be that, this season, café au lait was the “in” shade? Have we seen a sudden influx of black women into the industry in Landry’s wake? Have our notions of female beauty been revolutionized by her success? Are black Barbies now outselling white?)

“ ‘The family and friends of the flesh-and-blood Landry will be distraught, of course, and havepublic, have no personal grief to justify our excesses Young woic” (which is to say, unnatural) circumstances: in car crashes, from overdoses, and, occasionally, because they attempted to starve themselves into conformity with the body shape sported by Landry and her ilk Do we spare any of these dead girls e, and obscure their ordinary faces?’ ”

Robin paused to take a sip of coffee and clear her throat

“So far, so sanctimonious,” muttered Strike

He was sitting at the end of Robin’s desk, pasting photographs into an open folder, nu a description of the subject of each in an index at the back Robin continued where she had left off, reading from her computer monitor

“ ‘Our disproportionate interest, even grief, bears exaht up until the moment that Landry took her fatal dive, it is a fair bet that tens of thousands of woirls laid flowers beneath the balcony of Landry’s £45 million penthouse flat after her crushed body was cleared away Has even one aspiring model been deterred in her pursuit of tabloid fame by the rise and brutal fall of Lula Landry?’ ”

“Get on with it,” said Strike “Her, not you,” he added hastily “It’s a woht?”

“Yes, a Melanie Telford,” said Robin, scrolling back to the top of the screen to reveal the head shot of a jowly ed blonde “Do you want me to skip the rest?”

“No, no, keep going”

Robin cleared her throat once more and continued

“ ‘The answer, surely, is no’ That’s the bit about aspiringdeterred”

“Yeah, got that”

“Right, well…‘A hundred years after Eeneration of pubescent fe better than to be reduced to the status of a cut-out paper doll, a flat avatar whose fictionalized adventures mask such disturbance and distress that she threw herself froner Guy So one of his dresses, which sold out in the twenty-four hours after her death What better advert could there be than that Lula Landry chose to meet her maker in Somé?

“ ‘No, it is not the young woman whose loss we beirls who dripped fro across a e that sold us clothes and handbags and a notion of celebrity that, in her demise, proved to be empty and transient as a soap bubble What we actuallyantics of that paper-thin good-ti abuse, riotous living, fancy clothes and dangerous on-off boyfriend we can no longer enjoy

“ ‘Landry’s funeral was covered as lavishly as any celebrity wedding in the tawdry azines who feed on the faer than liiven the tiniest picture of all; they were a surprisingly unphotogenic lot, you see

“ ‘Yet the account of one enuinely touched me In response to the inquiry of a man who she may not have realized was a reporter, she revealed that she had met Landry at a treatment facility, and that they had become friends She had taken her place in a rear pew to say farewell, and slipped as quietly away again She has not sold her story, unlike so many others who consorted with Landry in life Itabout the real Lula Landry, that she inspired genuine affection in an ordinary girl As for the rest of us—’ ”

“Doesn’t she give this ordinary girl from the treatment facility a name?” interrupted Strike

Robin scanned the story silently

“No”

Strike scratched his imperfectly shaven chin

“Bristow didn’t mention any friend from a treatment facility”

“D’you think she could be i in her swivel chair to look at him

“It could be interesting to talk to sohtclubs”

Strike had only asked Robin to look up Landry’s connections on the internet because he had nothing else for her to do She had already telephoned Derrick Wilson, the security guard, and arranged aat the Phoenix Café in Brixton The day’s post had comprised two circulars and a final deanized everything in the office that could be alphabetized, stacked or arranged according to type and color

Inspired by her Google proficiency of the previous day, therefore, he had set her this fairly pointless task For the past hour or so she had been reading out odd snippets and articles about Landry and her associates, while Strike put into order a stack of receipts, telephone bills and photographs relating to his only other current case

“Shall I see whether I can find out irl, then?” asked Robin

“Yeah,” said Strike absently, exa ht jeans The besuited man was Mr Geoffrey Hook; the redhead, however, bore no resemblance to Mrs Hook, who, prior to Bristow’s arrival in his office, had been Strike’s only client Strike stuck the photograph into Mrs Hook’s file and labeled it No 12, while Robin turned back to the computer

For a few raphs and the tapping of Robin’s short nails against the keys The door into the inner office behind Strike was closed to conceal the cans of habitation, and the air was heavy with the scent of artificial limes, due to Strike’s liberal use of cheap air-freshener before Robin had arrived Lest she perceive any tinge of sexual interest in his decision to sit at the other end of her desk, he had pretended to notice her engage down, then made polite, studiously impersonal conversation about her fiancé for five minutes He learned that he was a newly qualified accountant called Matthew; that it was to live with Matthew that Robin had moved to London fro was a stopgapa permanent job

“D’you think she could be in one of these pictures?” Robin asked, after a while “The girl from the treatment center?”

She had brought up a screen full of identically sized photographs, each showing one or more pe

ople dressed in dark clothes, all heading fro for the funeral Crash barriers and the blurred faces of a crowd formed the backdrop to each picture

Most striking of all was the picture of a very tall, pale girl with golden hair drawn back into a ponytail, on whose head was perched a confection of black net and feathers Strike recognized her, because everyone kneho she was: Ciara Porter, the model hom Lula had spent much of her last day on earth; the friend horaphed for one of the most famous shots of her career Porter looked beautiful and somber as she walked towards Lula’s funeral service She seemed to have attended alone, because there was no dise back

Next to Porter’s picture was that of a couple captioned Filui was built like a bull, with short legs, a broad barrel chest and a thick neck His hair was gray and brush-cut; his face a crus and moles, out of which his fleshy nose protruded like a tuure in his expensive black overcoat, with his skeletal young wife on his ar could be discerned of Tansy’s true appearance, behind the upturned fur of her coat collar and the enorlasses

Last in this top row of photographs was Guy So a erated cut His face was bowed and his expression indiscernible, due to the way the light fell on his dark head, though three large diaht the flashes and glittered like stars Like Porter, he appeared to have arrived unaccoroup of ends, had been captured within the frame of his picture

Strike drew his chair nearer to the screen, though still keeping th between himself and Robin One of the unidentified faces, half severed by the edge of the picture, was John Bristow, recognizable by the short upper lip and the ha older wohastly, the nakedness of her grief touching Behind this pair was a tall, haughty-looking s in which he found himself

“I can’t see anyone whothe screen down to scrutinizesad and serious “Oh, look…Evan Duffield”

He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and a military-style black overcoat His hair, too, was black; his face all sharp planes and hollows; icy blue eyes stared directly into the caile coeolder woesture as though to clear a path ahead of the a sick child away from a party Strike noticed that, in spite of Duffield’s air of disorientation and distress, he hadhis eyeliner