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“And then, ’cos ’e’d ’elped me all them times, one day I asked ’im in, y’know, jus’ as a thank-you, really. I’m not a prejudiced person. Ev’ryone’s the same to me. Fancy a cuppa, I sez, that were all. And then,” said Marlene, harsh reality clanging down amidst the vague impressions of teacups and doilies, “I finds out I’m expecting.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Oh yeah, an’ ’e was full of ’ow ’e was gonna ’elp, an’ shoulder ’is respons’bilities, an’ make sure I wuz all right. An’ then it was the college ’olidays. ’E said ’e was coming back,” said Marlene, contemptuously. “Then ’e ran a mile. Don’t they all? And what was I gonna do, run off to Africa to find ’im?

“It was no skin off my nose, anyway. I wasn’t breaking me ’eart; I was seeing Dez by then. ’E didn’t mind the baby. I moved in with Dez not long after Joe left.”

“Joe?”

“That was his name. Joe.”

She said it with conviction, but perhaps, thought Strike, that was because she had repeated the lie so often that the story had become easy, automatic.

“What was his surname?”

“I can’ fuckin’ remember. You’re like her. It was twenny-odd years ago. Mumumba,” said Marlene Higson, unabashed. “Or something like that.”

“Could it have been Agyeman?”

“No.”

“Owusu?”

“I toldya,” she said aggressively, “it were Mumumba or something.”

“Not Macdonald? Or Wilson?”

“You takin’ the piss? Macdonald? Wilson? From Africa?”

Strike concluded that her relationship with the African had never progressed to the exchange of surnames.

“And he was a student, you said? Where was he studying?”

“College,” said Marlene.

“Which one, can you remember?”

“I don’t bloody know. All right if I cadge a ciggie?” she added, in a slightly more conciliatory tone.

“Yeah, help yourself.”

She lit her cigarette with her own plastic lighter, puffed enthusiastically, then said, mellowed by the free tobacco:

“It mighta bin somethin’ to do with a museum. Attached, like.”

“Attached to a museum?”

“Yeah, ’cause I remember ’im sayin’, ‘Ay sometimes visit the museum in my free ahrs.’ ” Her imitation made the African student sound like an upper-class Englishman. She was smirking, as though this choice of recreation was absurd, ludicrous.

“Can you remember which museum it was that he visited?”

“The—the Museum of England or summit,” she said; and then, irritably, “You’re like her. How the fuck am I s’posedta remember after all this time?”

“And you never saw him again after he went home?”

“Nope,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to.” She drank lager. “He’s probably dead,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Africa, innit?” she said. “He coulda bin shot, couldn’t ’e? Or starved. Anythin’. Y’know what it’s like out there.”

Strike did know. He remembered the teeming streets of Nairobi; the aerial view of Angola’s rainforest, mist hanging over the treetops, and the sudden breathtaking beauty, as the chopper turned, of a waterfall in the lush green mountainside; and the Masai woman, baby at her breast, sitting on a box while Strike questioned her painstakingly about alleged rape, and Tracey manned the video camera beside him.

“D’you know whether Lula tried to find her father?”

“Yeah, she tried,” said Marlene dismissively.

“How?”

“She looked up college records,” said Marlene.

“But if you couldn’t remember where he went…”

“I dunno, she thought she’d found the place or summit, but she couldn’t find ’im, no. Mebbe I wasn’ remembrin’ his name right, I dunno. She used to go on an’ fuckin’ on; what did ’e look like, where was ’e studyin’. I said to ’er, he was tall an’ skinny an’ you wanna be grateful you got my ears, not ’is, ’cause there wouldna bin no fuckin’ modelin’ career if you’d got them fucking elephant lugs.”

“Did Lula ever talk to you about her friends?”

“Oh, yeah. There was that little black bitch, Raquelle, or whatever she called ’erself. Leechin’ all she could outta Lula. Oh, she did herself all right. Fuckin’ clothes an’ jew’lry an’ I-dunno-what-the-fuck else. I sez to Lula once, ‘I wouldn’ mind a new coat.’ But I wasn’ pushy, see. That Raquelle din’ mind askin’.”

She sniffed, and drained her glass.

“Did you ever meet Rochelle?”

“That was ’er name, was it? Yeah, once. She come along in a fuckin’ car with a driver to pick Lula up from seein’ me. Like Lady Muck out the back window, sneerin’ at me. She’ll be missin’ all of that now, I ’spect. In it for all she could get.

“An’ there was that Ciara Porter,” Marlene plowed on, with, if possible, even greater spite, “sleepin’ with Lula’s boyfriend the night she fuckin’ died. Nasty fuckin’ bitch.”

“Do you know Ciara Porter?”

“I seen it in the fuckin’ papers. ’E wen’ off to ’er place, di’n’t ’e, Evan? After he rowed with Lula. Went to Ciara. Fuckin’ bitch.”

It became clear, as Marlene talked on, that Lula had kept her natural mother firmly segregated from her friends, and that, with the exception of a brief glimpse of Rochelle, Marlene’s opinions and deductions about Lula’s social set were based entirely on the press reports she had greedily consumed.