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The door between inner and outer offices was closed, and he could not hear any ood Then he sahite oblong lying on the floor, just inside the door, pushed under the gap at the bottoerly on to his hands and knees, and retrieved what he soon saas a note from Robin

Dear Cor back to “Mr Strike” now),

I read your list of points to investigate further at the front of the file I thought I yeman and the Malmaison Hotel) I will be on my mobile if you would rather I came back to the office

I have set an alarh titon Place, to interview Ciara Porter and Bryony Radford

There is water, paracetamol and Alka-Seltzer on the desk outside

Robin

PS Please don’t be e you should regret

He sat quite still on his ca whether he was about to throw up, but enjoying the warm sunshine on his back

Four paracetalass of Alka-Seltzer, which al question for hiy toilet, with results offensive to both nose and ear; but he was sustained throughout by a feeling of profound gratitude for Robin’s absence Back in the outer office, he drank two more bottles of water and turned off the alar in his skull After some deliberation, he chose a set of clean clothes, took shower gel, deodorant, razor, shaving crea trunks out of the botto, extracted the pair of gray metal crutches fro over his shoulder and the crutches in his other hand

He bought himself a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk on the way to Malet Street Bernie Coleman, an acquaintance in the Army Medical Corps, had once explained to Strike how the over were due to dehydration and hypoglyce Strike h the chocolate, crutches ja his head, which still felt as though it was being coht wires

But the laughing god of drunkenness had not yet forsaken hireeably detached fros, he walked down the steps to the ULU pool with an unfeigned sense of entitleed hi roolance of arrested interest at the prosthesis Strike was unstrapping, kept his eyes politely averted His false leg stuffed into a locker along with yesterday’s clothes, and leaving the door open due to lack of change, Strikeover the top of his trunks

He noted, as he soaped hi to take the edge off his nausea and pain Now, for the first tie pool There were only two students in here, both in the fast lane and wearing goggles, oblivious to everything but their own prowess Strike proceeded to the far side, set the crutches down carefully beside the steps and slid into the slow lane

He was ainly and lopsided, he kept swi into the side of the pool, but the cool, clean water was soothing to body and spirit Panting, he coth and rested there, his thick ar the responsibility for his heavy body with the caressing water and gazing up at the high white ceiling

Little waves, outrunners sent by the young athletes on the other side of the pool, tickled his chest The terrible pain in his head was receding into the distance; a fiery red light viewed through mist The chlorine was sharp and clinical in his nostrils, but it no longeroff a bandage on a congealing wound Strike turned his attention to the thing he had attempted to drown in alcohol

Jago Ross; in every respect the antithesis of Strike: handsome in the manner of an Aryan prince, possessor of a trust fund, born to fulfill a preordained place in his faenerations of well-docuh-flying jobs, developed a persistent drinking problem, and was vicious in the manner of an overbred, badly disciplined animal

Charlotte and Ross belonged to that tight, interconnected network of public-schooled blue bloods who all knew each other’s fa and old-school ties While the water lapped his thickly hairy chest, Strike seereat distance, fro end of a telescope, so that the arc of their story became clear: it mirrored Charlotte’s restless day-to-day behavior, that craving for heightened emotion that expressed itself o Ross as a prize when eighteen, the most extreme exaibility, as her parents had seen it Perhaps that had been too easy, and certainly too expected, because she had then dumped him for Strike, who, for all his brains, was anatherel What was left, after all these years, to a woain and again, until at last the only way to leave with real éclat was to move full circle, back to the place where he had found her?

Strike allowed his aching body to float in the water The racing students were still thrashing their way up and down the fast lane

Strike knew Charlotte She aiting for him to rescue her It was the final, cruelest test

He did not swih the water, using his ar physiotherapy in the hospital

The second shoas more pleasurable than the first; he made the water as hot as he could stand, lathered himself all over, then turned the dial to cold to rinse himself

The prosthesis reattached, he shaved over a sink with a towel tied around his waist, then dressed with unusual care He had never worn the ifts from Charlotte on his last birthday: rai at him as he stared at his unfathin their carry case ever since, because he and Charlotte had not gone out much after last November; because his birthday had been the last truly happy day they had spent together Soon afterwards, the relationship had begun to stagger back into the old farievances, into the same mire in which it had foundered before, but which, this time, they had sworn to avoid

He ht have incinerated the suit Instead, in a spirit of defiance, he chose to wear it, to strip it of its associations and render itof the jacket made him look slimmer and fitter He left the white shirt open at the throat

Strike had had a reputation, in the ar able to bounce back from excessive alcohol consu at him out of the small mirror was pale, with purple shadows under his eyes, yet in the sharp Italian suit he looked better than he had done in weeks His black eye had vanished at last, and his scratches had healed

A cautiously light meal, copious amounts of water, another evacuatory trip to the restaurant bathroom, more painkillers; then, at five o’clock, a proton Place

The door was answered, after his second knock, by a cross-looking woray bob She let him in with an appearance of reluctance, then walked briskly away across a stone-floored hall which incorporated a“Guy! Somebody Strike?”

There were rooms on both sides of the hall To the left, a small knot of people, all of who in the direction of soht source that Strike could not see, but which illuminated their rapt faces

Soh this door into the hall He too earing glasses, which y and ripped and his white T-shirt was e blood, which on closer examination proved to be red sequins

“You’ll have to wait,” he said curtly “Bryony’s busy and Ciara’s going to be hours You can park yourself in there if you want,” he pointed towards the right-hand rooe of a tray-laden table was visible, “or you can stand around and watch like these useless fuckers,” he went on, suddenly raising his voice and glaring at the huddle of elegant young ht source They dispersed at once, without protest, so the hall into the room opposite

“Better suit, by the way,” Somé added, with a flash of his old archness He marched back into the room from which he had come

Strike followed the designer, and took up the space vacated by the roughly dispatched onlookers The roo and almost bare, but its ornate cornices, pale blank walls and curtainless s gave it an atroup of people, including a long-haired rapher bent over his camera, stood between Strike and the scene at the far end of the roohts and light screens Here was an artful arrangement of tattered old chairs, one on its side, and three models They were a breed apart, with faces and bodies in rare proportions that fell precisely between the categories of strange and impressive Fine-boned and recklessly slim, they had been chosen, Strike assu and features Sitting like Christine Keeler on a back-to-front chair, long legs splayed in spray-on white leggings, but apparently naked froirl as dark-skinned as So, seductive eyes Standing over her in a white vest decorated in chains, which just covered her pubis, was a Eurasian beauty with flat black hair cut into an asy alone and sideways on the back of another chair, was Ciara Porter; alabaster fair, with long baby-blonde hair, wearing a white seh which her pale, pointed nipples were clearly visible

The makeup artist, al over the black girl, pressing a pad into the sides of her nose The three models waited silently in position, still as portraits, all three faces blank and e to be called to attention The other people in the roorapher appeared to have two assistants; Soernails on the sidelines, was accolasses) all spoke in lowsome delicate equilibrium

At last the makeup artist joined So; she stepped back into the bright light and, without speaking to thetouched, but waited in patient silence Bryony retreated into the shadows onceand gave her some inaudible instruction that had her look around until her eyes rested on Strike

They nificent staircase

“Hi,” she whispered “Let’s go through here”

She led hihtly se table covered with buffet-style food Several long, wheeled clothing racks, jaed according to color, stood in front of a marble fireplace The displaced onlookers, all of the quietly, picking in desultory fashion at the half-e into, or playing with, their phones Several of the looks as he followed Bryony into a small back room which had been turned into a makeshift makeup station

Two tables with big portable le hich looked out on to a spruce garden The black plastic boxes standing around re, except that Bryony’s draere crammed with colored powders and paints; tubes and brushes lay lined up on towels spread across the table tops

“Hi,” she said, in a nor the tension with a knife, eh? Guy’s always a perfectionist, but this is his first proper shoot since Lula died, so he’s, you know, seriously uptight”

She had dark, choppy hair; her skin was sallow, her features, though large, were attractive She earing tight jeans on long, slightly bandy legs, a black vest, several fine gold chains around her neck, rings on her fingers and thumbs, and also what looked like black leather ballet shoes This kind of footwear always had a slightly anaphrodisiac effect on Strike, because it reminded him of the fold-up slippers his Aunt Joan used to carry in her handbag, and therefore of bunions and corns