Strike travelled back to Denmark Street that evening with the now familiar faint depression dogging him. Talking to Robin, even on work matters, tended to lift his mood, but that option wasn’t open to him and might not be possible for weeks. Another text from Bijou, which arrived while he was making himself an omelette, caused him nothing but irritation.
So are you undercover somewhere you can’t get texts or am I being ghosted? 
He ate his omelette at the kitchen table. Once finished, he picked up his mobile with a view to dealing with at least one problem quickly and cleanly. After thinking for a few moments, and dismissing any idea of ending what, in his view, had never started, he typed:
Busy, no time for meet ups for foreseeable future
If she had any pride, he thought, that would be the end of the matter.
He spent most of a chilly Sunday on surveillance, handing over to Midge at four o’clock, then drove out to Ealing for his meeting with Abigail Glover.
The Forester on Seaford Road was a large pub with an exterior featuring wooden columns, window baskets and green tiled walls, its sign showing a stump with an axe sticking out of it. Strike ordered himself the usual zero-alcohol beer and took a corner table for two beside the wood-panelled wall.
Twenty minutes passed, and Strike had started to wonder whether Abigail had changed her mind about meeting him, when a tall and striking woman entered the bar, wearing gym gear with a coat hastily slung over it. The only picture he’d found of Abigail online had been small and she’d been wearing overalls, surrounded by fellow fire fighters who were all male. What hadn’t been captured by the photograph was how good looking she was. She’d inherited her father’s large, dark blue eyes and firm, dimpled chin, but her mouth was fuller than Wace’s, her pale skin flawless and her high cheekbones could have been those of a model. He knew her to be in her mid-thirties, but her hair, which was tied back in a ponytail, was already grey. Strangely, it not only suited her, it made her look younger, her skin being fine and unlined. She nodded greetings to a couple of men at the bar, then spotted him and strode, long-legged, towards his table.
‘Abigail?’ he said, getting to his feet to shake hands.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘Timekeeping’s not me strong point. They call me “the late Abigail Glover” at work. I was in the gym, I lost track of time. ’S my stress buster.’
‘No problem, I’m grateful you agreed to—’
‘D’you wanna drink?’
‘Let m—’
‘’S’OK, I’ll get me own.’
She shrugged off her coat, revealing a Lycra top and leggings. One of the men she’d already greeted at the bar wolf-whistled. Abigail gave him the finger with one hand, which elicited gales of laughter, while rummaging in her gym bag for her purse.
Strike watched her buying a drink. Her rear view showed a lot of muscle, which made him reflect that his own daily exercises weren’t having nearly such a dramatic effect. She was almost as broad across the back as the man nearest her, who evidently found her very attractive, though she didn’t seem to return his interest. He wondered whether she was gay, then wondered whether wondering this was offensive.
Having secured her drink, Abigail returned to Strike’s table, sat down opposite him and took a large gulp of white wine. One of her knees was jogging up and down.
‘Sorry we couldn’t do this at me flat. Patrick, my lodger, ’e’s a pain in the arse about the UHC. ’E’d get overexcited if he knew you was investigatin’ ’em.’
‘Has he been your lodger long?’ asked Strike, purely to make conversation.
‘Free years. ’E’s all right, really. ’E got divorced an’ needed a room an’ I needed rent. On’y, ever since I told ’im where I grew up ’e’s been bangin’ on, “you should write a book abou’ your child’ood, make some proper money.” Wish I’d never said nuffing to ’im about it. I just ’ad too much wine one night. I’d been out to a bloody terrible ’ouse fire where a woman an’ two kids died.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Strike.
‘’S the job,’ said Abigail, with a slight shrug, ‘but sometimes it gets to you. That one did – arson – the farver did it ’imself, tryna work an insurance scam on ’is shop, downstairs. ’E got out all right, bastard… I ’ate it when there’s kids involved. We got the younger one out alive, but it was too late. Smoke in’alation done for ’im.’
‘What made you join the fire service?’
‘Adrenaline junkie,’ she said with a fleeting grin, her knee still bouncing up and down. She took another gulp of wine. ‘I got outta Chapman Farm an’ I just wan’ed to fuckin’ live, wan’ed to see some action and do somefing wiv a point to it, instead of makin’ effing corn dollies to sell for starvin’ kids in Africa – if that’s where the money even wen’. Doubt it. But I never ’ad much education. I ’ad to study for GCSEs when I got out. Scraped free of ’em. Older’n all the other kids in the class. Still, I was one o’ the lucky ones. Least I know ’ow to read.’
As she picked up her glass again, a bearded man passed their table.
‘Been on Tinder, ’ave you, Ab?’
‘Fuck off,’ said Abigail coldly.
The man smirked, but didn’t move away.
‘Baz,’ he said, holding out his hand to Strike.
‘Terry,’ said Strike, shaking it.
‘Well, you watch yourself, Terry,’ said Baz. ‘She goes froo men like diarrhoea.’
He swaggered away.
‘Bastard,’ muttered Abigail, looking over her shoulder. ‘Wouldna come in ’ere if I’d known ’e’d be ’ere.’
‘Work mate?’
‘No, ’e’s a friend of Patrick’s. I wen’ out for a drink wiv ’im a coupla times an’ then I told ’im I didn’ wanna see ’im again, an’ ’e was pissed off. Then Patrick gets drunk wiv ’im and blabs stuff abou’ what I told ’im abou’ the UHC, and now, whenever that arsehole sees me, ’e uses it to… s’my fault,’ she said angrily. ‘I should’ve kep’ me mouf shut. When men ’ear…’
Her voice trailed away and she took another gulp of wine. Strike, who assumed Baz had been told about the church’s spirit bonding practices, wondered for the first time how young girls were when they were expected to join in.
‘Well, as I said on the phone, this talk’s strictly off the record,’ said the detective. ‘Nothing’s going to be published.’
‘Unless you bring the church down,’ said Abigail.
‘You might be overestimating my capabilities.’
She was rapidly emptying her wine glass. After considering him for a moment or two out of her dark blue eyes she said, a little aggressively,
‘Fink I’m a coward, do yah?’
‘Probably the last thing I was thinking,’ said Strike. ‘Why?’
‘Don’ you fink I should try’na to expose ’em? Write one of them bloody misery books? Well,’ she said, before Strike could respond, ‘they’ve got far better lawyers than I can afford on a fire fighter’s salary, an’ I get enough grief about the UHC, just from people like that arsehole knowing.’
She jabbed an angry finger at Baz, who was now standing alone at the bar.
‘I won’t be publicising anything,’ Strike assured her. ‘I only want to—’
‘Yeah, you said on the phone,’ she interrupted, ‘an’ I wanna say somefing about that Kevin Pirbright bloke what rang me. There was this one fing ’e said an’ it really bloody upset me.’
‘What was that?’
‘It was abou’ me mum,’ said Abigail, ‘an’ ’ow she died.’