As Strike drew level with Park Place, a line of cream-painted townhouses leading off St. James’s Street, he noted that the sudden memory of Charlotte clinging to his hand no longer hurt, and felt like an alcoholic who, for the first time, catches a whiff of beer without breaking into a sweat or having to grapple with his desperate craving. Perhaps this is it, he thought, as he approached the black door of Pratt’s, with its wrought iron balustrade above. Perhaps, two years after she had told him the unforgivable lie and he had left for good, he was healed, clear of what he sometimes, even though not superstitious, saw as a kind of Bermuda triangle, a danger zone in which he feared being pulled back under, dragged to the depths of anguish and pain by the mysterious allure Charlotte had held for him.

With a faint sense of celebration, Strike knocked on the door of Pratt’s.

A petite, motherly woman opened up. Her prominent bust and alert, bright-eyed mien put him in mind of a robin or a wren. When she spoke, he caught a trace of the West Country.

“You’ll be Mr. Strike. The minister’s not here yet. Come along in.”

He followed her across the threshold into a hall through which could be glimpsed an enormous billiard table. Rich crimsons, greens and dark wood predominated. The stewardess, who he assumed was Georgina, led him down a set of steep stairs, which Strike took carefully, maintaining a firm grip on the banister.

The stairs led to a cozy basement. The ceiling had sunk so low that it appeared partially supported by a large dresser on which sundry porcelain platters were displayed, the topmost ones half embedded into the plaster.

“We aren’t very big,” she said, stating the obvious. “Six hundred members, but we can only serve fourteen a meal at a time. Would you like a drink, Mr. Strike?”

He declined, but accepted an invitation to sit down in one of the leather chairs grouped around an aged cribbage board.

The small space was divided by an archway into sitting and dining areas. Two places had been set at the long table in the other half of the room, beneath small, shuttered windows. The only other person in the basement apart from himself and Georgina was a white-coated chef working in a minuscule kitchen a mere yard from where Strike sat. The chef bade Strike welcome in a French accent, then continued carving cold roast beef.

Here was the very antithesis of the smart restaurants where Strike tailed errant husbands and wives, where the lighting was chosen to complement glass and granite, and sharp-tongued restaurant critics sat like stylish vultures on uncomfortable modern chairs. Pratt’s was dimly lit. Brass picture lights dotted walls papered in dark red, which was largely obscured by stuffed fish in glass cases, hunting prints and political cartoons. In a blue and white tiled niche along one side of the room sat an ancient iron stove. The china plates, the threadbare carpet, the table bearing its homely load of ketchup and mustard all contributed to an ambience of cozy informality, as though a bunch of aristocratic boys had dragged all the things they liked about the grown-up world—its games, its drink and its trophies—down into the basement where Nanny would dole out smiles, comfort and praise.

Twelve o’clock arrived, but Chiswell did not. “Georgina,” however, was friendly and informative about the club. She and her husband, the chef, lived on the premises. Strike could not help but reflect that this must be some of the most expensive real estate in London. To maintain the little club, which, Georgina told him, had been established in 1857, was costing somebody a lot of money.

“The Duke of Devonshire owns it, yes,” said Georgina brightly. “Have you seen our betting book?”

Strike turned the pages of the heavy, leather-bound tome, where long ago wagers had been recorded. In a gigantic scrawl dating back to the seventies, he read: “Mrs. Thatcher to form the next government. Bet: one lobster dinner, the lobster to be larger than a man’s erect cock.”

He was grinning over this when a bell rang overhead.

“That’ll be the minister,” said Georgina, bustling away upstairs.

Strike replaced the betting book on its shelf and returned to his seat. From overhead came heavy footsteps and then, descending the stairs, the same irascible, impatient voice he had heard on Monday.

“—no, Kinvara, I can’t. I’ve just told you why, I’ve got a lunch meeting… no, you can’t… Five o’clock, then, yes… yes… yes!… Goodbye!”

A pair of large, black-shod feet descended the stairs until Jasper Chiswell emerged into the basement, peering around with a truculent air. Strike rose from his armchair.

“Ah,” said Chiswell, scrutinizing Strike from beneath his heavy eyebrows. “You’re here.”

Jasper Chiswell wore his sixty-eight years reasonably well. A big, broad man, though round-shouldered, he still had a full head of gray hair which, implausible though it seemed, was his own. This hair made Chiswell an easy target for cartoonists, because it was coarse, straight and rather long, standing out from his head in a manner that suggested a wig or, so the unkind suggested, a chimney brush. To the hair was added a large red face, small eyes and a protuberant lower lip, which gave him the air of an overgrown baby perpetually on the verge of a tantrum.

“M’wife,” he told Strike, brandishing the mobile still in his hand. “Come up to town without warning. Sulking. Thinks I can drop everything.”

Chiswell stretched out a large, sweaty hand, which Strike shook, then eased off the heavy overcoat he was wearing despite the heat of the day. As he did so, Strike noticed the pin on his frayed regimental tie. The uninitiated might think it a rocking horse, but Strike recognized it at once as the White Horse of Hanover.

“Queen’s Own Hussars,” said Strike, nodding at it as both men sat down.

“Yerse,” said Chiswell. “Georgina, I’ll have some of that sherry you gave me when I was in with Alastair. You?” he barked at Strike.

“No thanks.”

Though nowhere near as dirty as Billy Knight, Chiswell did not smell very fresh.

“Yerse, Queen’s Own Hussars. Aden and Singapore. Happy days.”

He didn’t seem happy at the moment. His ruddy skin had an odd, plaque-like appearance close up. Dandruff lay thick in the roots of his coarse hair and large patches of sweat spread around the underarms of his blue shirt. The minister bore the unmistakable appearance, not unusual in Strike’s clients, of a man under intense strain, and when his sherry arrived, he swallowed most of it in a single gulp.

“Shall we move through?” he suggested, and without waiting for an answer he barked, “We’ll eat straight away, Georgina.”

Once they were seated at the table, which had a stiff, snowy-white tablecloth like those at Robin’s wedding, Georgina brought them thick slices of cold roast beef and boiled potatoes. It was English nursery food, plain and unfussy, and none the worse for it. Only when the stewardess had left them in peace, in the dim dining room full of oil paintings and more dead fish, did Chiswell speak again.

“You were at Jimmy Knight’s meeting,” he said, without preamble. “A plainclothes officer there recognized you.”

Strike nodded. Chiswell shoved a boiled potato in his mouth, masticated angrily, and swallowed before saying:

“I don’t know who’s paying you to get dirt on Jimmy Knight, or what you may already have on him, but whoever it is and whatever you’ve got, I’m prepared to pay double for the information.”