The bar was crowded with after-work drinkers and Strike had a sudden apprehension that he might not get a seat inside, an unwelcome prospect, because leg, back and neck were tight and sore after yesterday’s long drive and the hours he had spent in Harley Street today, watching Dodgy Doc.

Strike had just bought a pint of London Pride when the table by the window became free. With a turn of speed born of necessity, he nabbed the high bench with its back to the street before the nearest group of suited men and women could annex it. There was no question of anybody challenging his right to sole occupancy of a table made for four. Strike was large enough, and surly enough in appearance to make even this group of civil servants doubt their ability to negotiate a compromise.

The wooden-floored bar was what Strike mentally categorized as “upmarket utilitarian.” A faded mural on the back wall depicted bewigged eighteenth-century men gossiping together, but otherwise all was pared-back wood and monochrome prints. He peered out of the window to see whether Robin was within sight, but as there was no sign of her he drank his beer, read the day’s news on his phone and tried to ignore the menu lying on the table in front of him, which was taunting him with a picture of battered fish.

Robin, who had been due to arrive at six, was still absent at half past. Unable to resist the picture on the menu any longer, Strike ordered himself cod and chips and a second pint, and read a long article in The Times about the upcoming Olympics opening ceremony, which was really a long list of the ways in which the journalist feared it might misrepresent and humiliate the nation.

By a quarter to seven, Strike was starting to worry about Robin. He had just decided to call her when she came hurrying in through the door, flushed, wearing glasses that Strike knew she did not need and with an expression that he recognized as the barely contained excitement of one who has something worthwhile to impart.

“Hazel eyes,” he noted, as she sat down opposite him. “Good one. Changes your whole look. What’ve you got?”

“How do you know I’ve—? Well, loads, actually,” she said, deciding it was not worthwhile toying with him. “I nearly called you earlier but there have been people around all day, and I had a close shave this morning placing the listening device.”

“You did it? Bloody well done!”

“Thanks. I really want a drink, hang on.”

She came back with a glass of red wine and launched immediately into an account of the message that Raphael had found on the answering machine that morning.

“I had no chance of getting the caller’s number, because there were four messages after it. The phone system’s antiquated.”

Frowning, Strike asked: “How did the caller pronounce ‘Chiswell,’ can you remember?”

“They said it right. Chizzle.”

“Fits with Jimmy,” said Strike. “What happened after the call?”

“Raff told Izzy about it when she got back to the office,” said Robin, and Strike thought he detected a touch of self-consciousness as she said the name “Raff.” “He didn’t understand what he was passing on, obviously. Izzy called her dad straight away and he went berserk. We could hear him shouting on the end of the line, though not much of what he was actually saying.”

Strike stroked his chin, thinking.

“What did the anonymous caller sound like?”

“London accent,” Robin said. “Threatening.”

“‘They piss themselves as they die,’” repeated Strike in an undertone.

There was something that Robin wanted to say, but a brutal personal memory made it hard for her to articulate.

“Strangling victims—”

“Yeah,” said Strike, cutting her off. “I know.”

Both of them drank.

“Well, assuming the call was Jimmy,” Robin went on, “he’s phoned the department twice today.”

She opened her handbag and showed Strike the listening device hidden inside it.

“You retrieved it?” he asked, staggered.

“And replaced it with another one,” said Robin, unable to suppress a triumphant smile. “That’s why I’m late. I took a chance. Aamir, who works with Winn, left and Geraint came into our office while I was packing up, to chat me up.”

“He did, did he?” asked Strike, amused.

“I’m glad you find it funny,” said Robin coolly. “He isn’t a nice man.”

“Sorry,” said Strike. “In what way is he not a nice man?”

“Just take it from me,” said Robin. “I’ve met plenty of them in offices. He’s a pervert, but with creepy add-ons. He was just telling me,” she said, and her indignation showed in the rising tide of pink in her face, “that I remind him of his dead daughter. Then he touched my hair.”

“Touched your hair?” repeated Strike, unamused.

“Picked a bit of it off my shoulder and ran it through his fingers,” said Robin. “Then I think he saw what I thought of him and tried to pass it off as fatherly. Anyway, I said I needed the loo but asked him to stay put so we could keep chatting about charities. I nipped down the corridor and swapped the devices.”

“That was bloody good going, Robin.”

“I listened to it on the way here,” said Robin, pulling headphones out of her pocket, “and—”

Robin handed Strike the headphones.

“—I’ve cued up the interesting bit.”

Strike obediently inserted the earbuds and Robin switched on the tape in her handbag.

“… at three thirty, Aamir.”

The Welsh male voice was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Feet scuffled near the power point, the ring ceased and Geraint said:

“Oh, hello Jimmy… half a mo’—Aamir, close that door.”

More scuffling, footsteps.

“Jimmy, yes…?”

There followed a long stretch in which Geraint seemed to be attempting to stem the flow of a mounting tirade.

“Whoa—now, wai… Jimmy, lis… Jimmy, listen—listen! I know you’ve lost out, Jimmy, I understand how bitter you—Jimmy, please! We understand your feelings—that’s unfair, Jimmy, neither Della nor I grew up wealth—my father was a coalminer, Jimmy! Now listen, please! We’re close to getting the pictures!”

There followed a spell in which Strike thought he heard, very faintly, the rise and fall of Jimmy Knight’s fluent speech at the end of the telephone.

“I take your point,” said Geraint finally, “but I urge you to do nothing rash, Jimmy. He isn’t going to give you—Jimmy, listen! He isn’t going to give you your money, he’s made that perfectly clear. It’s the newspapers now or nothing, so… proof, Jimmy! Proof!”

Another, shorter period of unintelligible gabbling followed.

“I’ve just told you, haven’t I? Yes… no, but the Foreign Office… well, hardly… no, Aamir has a contact… yes… yes… all right then… I will, Jimmy. Good—yes, all right. Yes. Goodbye.”

The clunk of a mobile being set down was followed by Geraint’s voice.

“Stupid prick,” he said.

There were more footsteps. Strike glanced at Robin, who by a rolling gesture of the hand indicated that he should keep listening. After perhaps thirty seconds, Aamir spoke, diffident and strained.