‘There was,’ agreed Robin.
‘How d’you fancy a musical prodigy for Anomie?’ asked Strike as they turned the corner at the end of the road.
‘Are you serious?’
‘He ticks quite a few boxes on our profile. Not working. Supported by his family. Plenty of time on his hands.’
‘You don’t get that good at the cello by sitting around on the computer all day.’
‘True, but he’s not being watched by a supervisor nine to five, is he? I get the feeling that’s a family where individual members are happiest staying well away from each other. Ever see that old film The Ladykillers?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Gang of crooks rent a room in an old lady’s house, pretending to be a musical quintet. They play classical records while planning their heist and only pick up their instruments whenever she knocks on the door to offer them tea.’
‘Gus didn’t get into the Royal College of Music by playing them records.’
‘I’m not suggesting he never plays, I’m saying there might be times when he doesn’t. And he’s had potential access to a lot of personal information on Josh and Edie via his mother.’
‘If I were Gus Upcott,’ said Robin, ‘I’d stay downstairs as much as possible. And as they’ve soundproofed the upper floor—’
‘He could’ve bugged the upstairs.’
‘Come on—’
‘If he’s Anomie, he’d bloody bug the upstairs!’ said Strike. ‘A bad case of hives and a cello aren’t good enough reasons not to have a good look at him.’
‘Fine,’ said Robin, ‘although I’m not sure how we put surveillance on him if he’s holed up in his bedroom all the time.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s the bugger of this case, isn’t it?’ said Strike. ‘Keep going left,’ he added, checking the map on his phone. ‘We’ve got to go round the edge of the Heath to the other side.
‘We need to get inside that fucking game,’ Strike said. ‘It’s going to take years to narrow down the suspect list if all we’ve got is Anomie’s Twitter feed… That said,’ Strike continued, struck by a thought, ‘Gus Upcott’s going to his doctor’s in Harley Street tomorrow afternoon. If we get lucky and Anomie tweets while Gus is reception-free on the Tube, we can count him out. Might see if Barclay can do that little job,’ he added, now typing out a message to the office manager. This done, he said:
‘How’s your application to get into North Grove going?’
‘I’m in,’ said Robin, ‘but the course doesn’t start for another fortnight.’
‘Good going… Incidentally, have you had any luck on that girl with the tattoos who lives off Junction Road?’
‘She isn’t on any record I can find,’ said Robin. ‘Maybe she only just moved in.’
‘Then it’ll probably have to be surveillance on her as well, to find out who she is,’ said Strike. ‘Jesus, we could put everyone on the agency on this case and still be stretched.’
Robin, who hadn’t forgotten he had just added another case to their workload, one she considered entirely of his own making, said nothing. After a brief pause, Strike said,
‘So Blay thinks Anomie stabbed them. “I’ll take care of things from here, don’t you worry” – hard to see what that meant, unless it was the cartoon.’
‘D’you think Maverick would still have made the film if Josh and Edie had both died?’ asked Robin. Annoyed as she felt at Strike personally, the interest of the discussion was temporarily overcoming her irritation.
‘I’d’ve thought it would have felt pretty bloody tasteless to press on,’ said Strike.
‘So in some senses, Anomie would be in charge of the fandom. All there’d be left were old episodes and Drek’s Game.’
‘The police’ll be concentrating on who knew Josh and Edie were going to be in the cemetery that afternoon, and now we know the Upcotts did, for starters.’
‘Katya knew,’ Robin contradicted him, ‘but we can’t be certain about any of the others. It was a Thursday morning: Flavia would have been at school, and you just said yourself, the family seems to be happiest shut up away from each other.’
‘Katya might still have told them. Or they could have overheard.’
‘Inigo couldn’t have stabbed anyone. He really isn’t well,’ said Robin, as Hampstead Heath appeared through railings on the left-hand side of the road. ‘You saw how badly his hands were shaking.’
‘Pretty sure some of that was rage,’ said Strike unsympathetically. ‘But yeah, he doesn’t look strong. His legs are wasted… though, of course, we don’t know the killer went to the cemetery on foot. And tasering someone before stabbing them means you won’t have to physically subdue them to get the job done.’
‘Phillip Ormond surely knew they were meeting,’ said Robin, ‘given that he was living with Edie?’
‘Yeah, assuming she made the call within earshot of him, or that she felt comfortable telling him she was meeting her ex-boyfriend at a spot that presumably had romantic significance for them,’ said Strike. ‘Alternatively, Edie might not have made the call from home, and might not have told Ormond, which leaves the question of where she made the call from, and who else could have been listening in.’
‘And on the other end of the line we’ve got Josh at North Grove—’
‘Well, you’re going to be getting into the art collective soon. Maybe you’ll be able to find out who was around at the time.’
‘There’s also a period of what sounds like a couple of hours at least,’ said Robin, ‘where Josh went wandering off into the night after being chucked out of North Grove.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Well, I’m sure the police have traced his movements in that period. Maybe you could chat up Murphy and see whether—’
‘You chat him up, if you want that done,’ snapped Robin.
Strike looked around at her, surprised by her tone.
‘I wasn’t suggesting – I’m only saying, he might not mind doing a bit of reciprocal back-scratching. You helped the police out, telling them all about Edie’s visit to the agency, didn’t you?’
Robin said nothing. The very mention of Murphy had brought back memories she could do without.
‘We’re close,’ Strike said, pointing ahead, and still puzzled by the source of Robin’s uncharacteristic irritability. ‘We should probably park wherever you can get a space.’
‘You realise where we are?’ said Robin, slowing down.
‘Where?’
‘Millfield Lane, where Josh’s flat is.’
‘Now, that,’ said Strike looking around at the houses that bordered the narrow street, ‘is an odd coincidence, isn’t it?’
They got out of the Land Rover, crossed the road and entered the Heath, between two large ponds that might more properly have been called lakes. Strike’s stump, which was painful enough while walking on tarmac, complained worse than ever as they reached the uneven path.
‘It’s this one,’ said Strike, indicating the pond to their left, which was fringed with trees. Various kinds of waterfowl were bobbing serenely on the khaki-coloured water, or clustering hopefully near the bank, should passers-by happen to have bread on them.
‘So,’ said Strike as they came to a halt beside a low railing, ‘what made the killer come here?’
‘Well, it definitely wasn’t to throw Edie’s phone in the pond, because the police dragged the bottom and didn’t find it,’ said Robin, casting a look all around them. ‘But the pond mightn’t have been their objective at all. This might just have been the place where the killer realised one of the phones was still switched on.’
‘True, in which case the killer was heading – where?’