Then Robin bit back a cry of dismay as a hobbling, bloody Strike appeared, also being led along by police. Behind them, an altercation in the crowd had not subsided, but was growing. A barrier swayed.

“Pull up, PULL UP!” bellowed Chiswell at the driver, who had just begun to accelerate again. Chiswell wound down his window. “Door open—Venetia, open your door!—that man!” Chiswell roared at a nearby policeman, who turned, startled, to see the Minister for Culture shouting at him and pointing at Strike. “He’s my guest—that man—bloody well let him go!”

Confronted by an official car, a government minister, the steely, patrician voice, the brandishing of a thick embossed invitation, the policeman did as he was told. Most people’s attention was focused on the increasingly violent brawl between police and CORE, and the consequent trampling and pushing of the crowd trying to get away from it. A couple of cameramen had broken away from the press pen up ahead, and were running towards the fracas.

“Izzy, move up—get in, GET IN!” Chiswell snarled at Strike through the window.

Robin squeezed backwards, half-sitting in Izzy’s lap to accommodate Strike as he clambered into the back seat. The door slammed. The car rolled on.

“Who are you?” squealed the frightened Kinvara, who was now pinned against the opposite door by Izzy. “What’s going on?”

“He’s a private detective,” growled Chiswell. His decision to bring Strike into the car seemed born of panic. Twisting around in his seat to glare at Strike, he said, “How does it help me if you get bloody arrested?”

“They weren’t arresting me,” said Strike, dabbing his nose with the back of his hand. “They wanted to take a statement. Knight attacked me when I went for his placard. Cheers,” he added, as, with difficulty given how tightly compressed they all were, Robin passed him a box of tissues that had been lying on the ledge behind the rear seat. He pressed one to his nose. “I got rid of the placard,” Strike added, through the blood-stained tissue, but nobody congratulated him.

“Jasper,” said Kinvara, “what’s going—?”

“Shut up,” snapped Chiswell, without looking at her. “I can’t let you out in front of all these people,” he told Strike angrily, as though the latter had suggested it. “There are more photographers… You’ll have to come in with us. I’ll fix it.”

The car was now proceeding towards a barrier where police and security were checking ID and investigations.

“Nobody say anything,” Chiswell instructed. “Shut up,” he added pre-emptively to Kinvara, who had opened her mouth.

A Bentley up ahead was admitted and the Mercedes rolled forwards.

In pain, because she was bearing a good proportion of Strike’s weight across her left hip and leg, Robin heard screeching from behind the car. Turning, she saw a young woman running after the car, a female police officer chasing her. The girl had wild tomato-red hair, a T-shirt with a logo of broken Olympic rings on it, and she screamed after Chiswell’s car:

“He put the fucking horse on them, Chiswell! He put the horse on them, you cheating, thieving bastard, you murderer—”

“I have a guest here who didn’t get his invitation,” Chiswell was shouting through his wound-down window to the armed policeman at the barrier. “Cormoran Strike, the amputee. He’s been in the papers. There was a balls-up at my department, his invitation didn’t go. The prince,” he said, with breathtaking chutzpah, “asked to meet him specifically!”

Strike and Robin were watching what was happening behind the car. Two policemen had seized the struggling Flick and were escorting her away. A few more cameras flashed. Caving under the weight of ministerial pressure, the armed policeman requested ID of Strike. Strike, who always carried a couple of forms of identification, though not necessarily in his own name, passed over his genuine driving license. A queue of stationary cars grew longer behind them. The prince was due in fifteen minutes’ time. Finally, the policeman waved them through.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” said Strike in an undertone to Robin. “Shouldn’t have let me in. Bloody lax.”

The Mercedes swung around the inner courtyard and arrived, finally, at the foot of a shallow flight of red-carpeted steps, in front of an enormous, honey-colored building that resembled a stately home. Wheelchair ramps had been set either side of the carpet, and a celebrated wheelchair basketball player was already maneuvering his way up one.

Strike pushed open the door, clambered out of the car, then turned and reached back inside to assist Robin. She accepted the offer of help. Her left leg was almost completely numb from where he’d sat on her.

“Nice to see you again, Corm,” said Izzy, beaming, as she got out behind Robin.

“Hi, Izzy,” said Strike.

Now burdened with Strike whether he wanted him or not, Chiswell hurried up the steps to explain to one of the liveried men standing outside the front door that Strike must be admitted without his invitation. They heard a recurrence of the word “amputee.” All around them, more cars were releasing their smartly dressed passengers.

“What’s all this about?” Kinvara said, who had marched around the rear of the Mercedes to address Strike. “What’s going on? What does my husband need a private detective for?”

“Will you be quiet, you stupid, stupid bitch?”

Stressed and disturbed though Chiswell undoubtedly was, his naked hostility shocked Robin. He hates her, she thought. He genuinely hates her.

“You two,” said the minister, pointing at his wife and daughter, “get inside.

“Give me one good reason I should keep paying you,” he added, turning on Strike as still more people spilled past them. “You realize,” said Chiswell, and in his necessarily quiet fury, spit flew from his mouth onto Strike’s tie, “I’ve just been called a bloody murderer in front of twenty people, including press?”

“They’ll think she’s a crank,” said Strike.

If the suggestion brought Chiswell any comfort, it didn’t show.

“I want to see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,” he told Strike. “Not at my office. Come to the flat in Ebury Street.” He turned away, then, as an afterthought, turned back. “You too,” he barked at Robin.

Side by side, they watched him lumbering up the steps.

“We’re about to get sacked, aren’t we?” whispered Robin.

“I’d say it’s odds on,” said Strike, who, now that he was on his feet, was in considerable pain.

“Cormoran, what was on the placard?” said Robin.

Strike allowed a woman in peach chiffon to pass, then said quietly:

“Picture of Chiswell hanging from a gallows and, beneath him, a bunch of dead children. One odd thing, though.”

“What?”

“All the kids were black.”

Still dabbing at his nose, Strike reached inside his pocket for a cigarette, then remembered where he was and let his hand fall back to his side.

“Listen, if that Elspeth woman’s in here, you might as well try and find out what else she knows about Winn. It’ll help justify our final invoice.”

“OK,” said Robin. “The back of your head’s bleeding, by the way.”