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“You eneral?” she said at last “On principle?”

“No,” said Strike, continuing his report “Icounsel in the trial of the person who killed Lula Landry to get off because he was able to show that I can’t keep records properly, thereby calling into question my reliability as a witness”

Strike was showing off again, and he knew it; but he could not help hiht have questioned the taste of finding amusement in the midst of a murder inquiry, but he had found humor in darker places

“Couldn’t nip out for some sandwiches, Robin, could you?” he added, just so that he could glance up at her satisfyingly astonished expression

He finished his notes during her absence, and was just about to call an old colleague in Ger two packs of sandwiches and a newspaper

“Your picture’s on the front of the Standard,” she panted

“What?”

It was a photograph of Ciara following Duffield into his flat Ciara looked stunning; for half a second Strike was transported back to half past two that , when she had lain, white and naked, beneath hi silky hair spread on the pillow like a mermaid’s as she whispered and moaned

Strike refocused: he was half cropped out of the picture; one arm raised to keep the paparazzi at bay

“That’s all right,” he told Robin with a shrug, handing her back the paper “They think I was the minder”

“It says,” said Robin, turning to the inside page, “that she left Duffield’s with her security guard at two”

“There you go, then”

Robin stared at hiht had terminated with himself, Duffield and Ciara at Duffield’s flat She had been so interested in the various pieces of evidence he had laid out before her, she had forgotten to wonder where he had slept She had assuether

He had arrived at the office still wearing the clothes in the photograph

She turned away, reading the story on page two The clear implication of the piece was that Ciara and Duffield had enjoyed an amorous encounter while the supposed minder waited in the hall

“Is she stunning-looking in person?” asked Robin with an unconvincing casualness as she folded the Standard

“Yeah, she is,” said Strike, and he wondered whether it was his iination that the three syllables sounded like a boast “D’you want cheese and pickle, or egg mayonnaise?”

Robin made her selection at random and returned to her desk chair to eat Her new hypothesis about Strike’s overnight whereabouts had eclipsed even her excite to be difficult to reconcile her view of hihted romantic with the fact that he had just (it seemed incredible, and yet she had heard his pathetic attempt to conceal his pride) slept with a supermodel

The telephone rang again Strike, whose mouth was full of bread and cheese, raised a hand to forestall Robin, sed, and answered it himself

“Cormoran Strike”

“Strike, it’s Wardle”

“Hi, Wardle; how’s it going?”

“Not so good, actually We’ve just fished a body out of the Thames with your card on it Wondered what you could tell us about it”

10

IT WAS THE FIRST TAXI that Strike had felt justified in taking since the day he had s out of Charlotte’s flat He watched the chargesThe taxi driver was deterrace Strike sat in silence for the entire trip

This would not be the first ue Strike had visited, and far from the first corpse he had viewed He had becounshot wounds; bodies ripped, torn and shattered, innards revealed like the contents of a butcher’s shop, shining and bloody Strike had never been squeamish; even the most mutilated corpses, cold and white in their freezer drawers, became sanitized and standardized to a man with his job It was the bodies he had seen in the raw, unprocessed and unprotected by officialdoh his dreams His th bell-sleeved dress, gaunt yet young, with no needlein the blood-spattered dust of that Afghanistan road, his face unscathed, but with no body below the upper ribs As Strike had lain in the hot dirt, he had tried not to look at Gary’s elance down and see how …but he had slid so swiftly into the maw of oblivion that he did not find out until he woke up in the field hospital…

An I on the bare brick walls of the saze on it, wondering where he had seen it before, and finally re’s

“Mr Strike?” said the gray-hairedaround the inner door, in white coat and latex gloves “Come on in”

They were almost always cheerful, pleasant men, these curators of corpses Strike followed the e, less inner rooht-hand wall The gently sloping tiled floor ran down to a central drain; the lights were dazzling Every noise echoed off the hard and shiny surfaces, so that it sounded as though a s into the room

A metal trolley stood ready in front of one of the freezer doors, and beside it were the two CID officers, Wardle and Carver The for; the latter, paunchy and mottle-faced, with suit shoulders covered in dandruff, runted

The mortician wrenched down the thick metal arm on the freezer door The tops of three anonymous heads were revealed, stacked one above the other, each draped in a white sheet worn lis Thethe central head; it bore no name, only the previous day’s scribbled date He slid the body out s-runnered tray and deposited it efficiently on to the waiting trolley Strike noticed Carver’s jaorking as he stepped back, giving the mortician room to wheel the trolley clear of the freezer door With a clunk and a sla corpses vanished from view

“We won’t bother with a viewing roo as we’re the only ones here,” said the ht’s best in thethe trolley just beside the drain, and pulling back the sheet

The body of Rochelle Onifade was revealed, bloated and distended, her face forever wiped of suspicion, replaced by a kind of empty wonder Strike had known, from Wardle’s brief description on the telephone, whom he would see when the sheet was revealed, but the awful vulnerability of the dead struck him anew as he looked down on the body, far smaller than it had been when she had sat opposite hi information

Strike told the it so that both the mortician and Wardle could transcribe it accurately on to clipboard and notebook respectively; he also gave the only address he had ever known for her: St Elmo’s Hostel for the Homeless, in Hammersmith

“Who found her?”

“River police hooked her out late last night,” said Carver, speaking for the first time His voice, with its south London accent, held a definite undertone of animosity “Bodies usually take about three weeks to rise to the surface, eh?” he added, directing the coave a tiny, cautious cough

“That’s the accepted average, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be less in this case There are certain indications…”

“Yeah, well, we’ll get all that froist,” said Carver, dismissively

“It can’t have been three weeks,” said Strike, and the ave him a tiny smile o

f solidarity

“Why not?” demanded Carver

“Because I bought her a burger and chips teeks ago yesterday”

“Ah,” said theto say that a lot of carbohydrates taken prior to death can affect the body’s buoyancy There’s a degree of bloating…”

“That’s when you gave her your card, is it?” Wardle asked Strike

“Yeah I’ible”

“It was stuck in with her Oyster card, in a plastic cover inside her back jeans pocket The plastic protected it”

“What was she wearing?”

“Big pink fake-fur coat Like a skinned Muppet Jeans and trainers”

“That’s what she earing when I bought her the burger”

“In that case, the contents of the stoan the mortician

“D’you know if she’s got any next of kin?” Carver demanded of Strike

“There’s an aunt in Kilburn I don’t know her name”

Slivers of glistening eyeball showed through Rochelle’s alhtness of the drowned There were traces of bloody foam in the creases around her nostrils

“How are her hands?” Strike asked the mortician, because Rochelle was uncovered only to the chest

“Never mind her hands,” snapped Carver “We’re done here, thanks,” he told thearound the room; and then, to Strike: “We want a ith you Car’s outside”