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1

2011

This Ain’t the Summer of Love

He had not ed to scrub off all her blood A dark line like a parenthesis lay under theit out, although he quite liked seeing it there: a memento of the previous day’s pleasures After a , he put the bloody nail in hisrecalled the smell of the torrent that had splashed wildly onto the tiled floor, spattering the walls, drenching his jeans and turning the peach-colored bath towels—fluffy, dry and neatly folded—into blood-soaked rags

Colors see, the world a lovelier place He felt serene and uplifted, as though he had absorbed her, as though her life had been transfused into hied to you once you had killed them: it was a possession way beyond sex Even to kno they looked at thebodies could experience

With a thrill of excitement he reflected that nobody knehat he had done, nor what he was planning to do next He sucked his ainst the all in the weak April sunshine, his eyes on the house opposite

It was not a smart house Ordinary A nicer place to live, admittedly, than the tiny flat where yesterday’s blood-stiffened clothing lay in black bin bags, awaiting incineration, and where his knives lay glea, washed clean with bleach, rammed up behind the U-bend under the kitchen sink

This house had a s Thite front doors had been cra that the three-story building had been converted into upper and lower flats A girl called Robin Ellacott lived on the ground floor Though he had made it his business to find out her real name, inside his own head he called her The Secretary He had just seen her pass in front of the bo, easily recognizable because of her bright hair

Watching The Secretary was an extra, a pleasurable add-on He had a few hours spare so he had decided to colories of yesterday and tomorrow, between the satisfaction of what had been done and the excitement of ould happen next

The right-hand door opened unexpectedly and The Secretary came out, accompanied by a man

Still leaning into the all, he stared along the street with his profile turned towards the for a friend Neither of them paid him any attention They walked off up the street, side by side After he had given them a minute’s head start, he decided to follow

She earing jeans, a light jacket and flat-heeled boots Her long wavy hair was slightly ginger now that he saw her in the sunshine He thought he detected a slight reserve between the couple, eren’t talking to each other

He was good at reading people He had read and char the blood-soaked peach towels

Down the long residential street he tracked the for the shops, his sunglasses unreently in the slight spring breeze At the end of the street the pair ahead turned left into a wide, busy thoroughfare lined with offices Sheet glass s blazed high above hi

Now The Secretary’s flatmate, or boyfriend, or whatever he was—clean-cut and square-jawed in profile—was talking to her She returned a short answer and did not smile

Women were so petty, mean, dirty and s men to keep them happy Only when they lay dead and empty in front of you did they become purified, mysterious and even wonderful They were entirely yours then, unable to argue or struggle or leave, yours to do hatever you liked The other one’s corpse had been heavy and floppy yesterday after he had drained it of blood: his life-sized plaything, his toy

Through the bustling Arcadia shopping center he followed The Secretary and her boyfriend, gliding behind theod Could the Saturday shoppers even see hiifted with invisibility?

They had arrived at a bus stop He hovered nearby, pretending to look through the door of a curry house, at fruit piled high in front of a grocer’s, at cardboard ent’s atching their reflections in the glass

They were going to get on the number 83 He did not have a lot ofher that he did not want it to end yet As he climbed aboard behind theht a ticket and followed them upstairs

The couple found seats together, right at the front of the bus He took a place nearby, next to a gru Their voices carried so, The Secretary looked out of the , uns, he was sure of it When she pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes he noticed that she earing an engage ht He hid his faint smile in the upturned collar of his jacket

The warh the dirt-stippled bus s A group ofseats A couple of theby shirts

He felt, suddenly, as though the day’s radiance had dimmed Those shirts, with the crescent moon and star, had associations he did not like They reod He did not want his happy day spotted and stained by oldaway Angry now—a teenage boy in the group caught his eye, but looked hurriedly away, alarot up and headed back to the stairs

A father and his sht to the pole beside the bus doors An explosion of anger in the pit of his stomach: he should have had a son Or rather, he should still have had a son He pictured the boy standing beside hi hione, which was entirely due to a man called Cormoran Strike

He was going to have revenge on Cor to wreak havoc upon him

When he reached the paveht one last gliain in less than twenty-four hours That reflection helped calht of those Saracens shirts The bus rumbled off and he strode away in the opposite direction, soothing himself as he walked

He had a wonderful plan Nobody knew Nobody suspected And he had some

thing very special waiting for hie at home

2

A rock through anever comes with a kiss

Blue Öyster Cult, “Madness to the Method”

Robin Ellacott enty-six years old and had been engaged for over a year Her wedding ought to have taken place three months previously, but the unexpected death of her future mother-in-law had led to the cere the threeshould have happened Would she and Matthew have been getting on better if vows had been exchanged, she wondered Would they be arguing less if a golden band was sitting beneath the sapphire engageer?

Fighting her way through the rubble on Tottenhaument of the previous day The seeds had been sown before they had even left the house for the rugby Every time they met up with Sarah Shadlock and her boyfriend To that Robin had pointed out as the argued on into the s

“Sarah was shit-stirring, for God’s sake—can’t you see it? She was the one asking all about hi on and on, I didn’t start it…”

The everlasting roadworks around Tottenham Court Road station had obstructed Robin’s walk to work ever since she had started at the private detective agency in Dene chunk of rubble; she staggered a few steps before recovering her balance A barrage of histles and lewd remarks issued from a deep chasm in the road full ofstrawberry-blonde hair out of her eyes, red in the face, she ignored the irresistibly to Sarah Shadlock and her sly, persistent questions about Robin’s boss

“He is strangely attractive, isn’t he? Bit beaten-up-looking, but I’ve never uy, isn’t he?”

Robin had seen Matthew’s jaw tightening as she tried to return cool, indifferent answers

“Is it just the two of you in the office? Is it really? Nobody else at all?”

Bitch, thought Robin, whose habitual good nature had never stretched to Sarah Shadlock She knew exactly what she was doing

“Is it true he was decorated in Afghanistan? Is it? Wow, so we’re talking a war hero too?”