![]() Strike, whose mouth was full of sausage, jabbed a finger at one of the bits of paper, on which an office address was scribbled. He shuffled feverishly through the bits of paper, some of which were covered in Strike’s own writing. “Fucking hell,” he said quietly, after a while. Culpepper pulled out the contents and began to read. Strike fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out an envelope and slid it across the table. “Well?” demanded Culpepper, with the hot mug in his long pale hands. It was almost pathetically easy to wind up the ex-public schoolboy, who ordered tea with an air of defiance, calling the indifferent waiter (as Strike noted with amusement) “mate.” “Rather wait till you can get a croissant?” asked Strike, grinning. “Want some food?” asked Strike through a mouthful of sausage. “This better be good,” Culpepper said as he sat down, pulled off his gloves and glanced almost suspiciously around the café. A strange asymmetry, as though somebody had given his face a counterclockwise twist, stopped him being girlishly handsome. The journalist was almost as tall as Strike but thin, with a choirboy’s complexion. He had just started on his sausages when Dominic Culpepper arrived. The nearest arched entrance, numbered two, was taking substance as the darkness thinned: a stern stone face, ancient and bearded, stared back at him from over the doorway. He ate gazing dreamily at the market building opposite. His jaw was grimy with stubble and bruise-colored shadows enlarged his dark eyes. He was large and dark, with dense, short, curly hair that had receded a little from the high, domed forehead that topped a boxer’s broad nose and thick, surly brows. Strike blended well with the strong men banging their way in and out of the café. ![]() Within five minutes a full English breakfast lay before him on a large oval plate. Almost before he asked, the Italian owner placed tea in front of him in a tall white mug, which came with triangles of white buttered bread. Strike maneuvered his bulk into the small space and sank, with a grunt of satisfaction, onto the hard wood and steel chair. Two men in fleeces and waterproofs had just vacated a table. Exhausted and hungry, he turned at last, with the pleasure that only a man who has pushed himself past his physical limits can ever experience, into the fat-laden atmosphere of frying eggs and bacon. Ladbrokes would not open for another three hours, so Strike made a detour down a side alley and in a dark doorway relieved himself of a bladder bulging with weak coffee drunk in the course of a night’s work. The café had no bathroom, but an arrangement with the bookies a few doors along. Across the road, glowing like an open fireplace against the surrounding darkness, was the Smithfield Café, open twenty-four hours a day, a cupboard-sized cache of warmth and greasy food. As he entered Long Lane, he became merely one among many heavily muffled men moving purposefully about their Monday-morning business.Ī huddle of couriers in fluorescent jackets cupped mugs of tea in their gloved hands beneath a stone griffin standing sentinel on the corner of the market building. Strike could hear voices through the gloom, shouted instructions and the growl and beep of reversing lorries unloading the carcasses. The slight unevenness in his gait became more pronounced as he walked down the slope towards Smithfield Market, monolithic in the winter darkness, a vast rectangular Victorian temple to meat, where from four every weekday morning animal flesh was unloaded, as it had been for centuries past, cut, parceled and sold to butchers and restaurants across London. “Smithfield Café on Long Lane,” said Strike and rang off. Strike could hear the rustling of sheets. You need this now if you’re going to use it.”Ī groan. “Culpepper, I’ve got another client this morning, he pays better than you do and I’ve been up all night. “You told me,” said Strike, stifling a yawn. “How d’you know where I live?” demanded the voice. “It’s half past, but if you want what I’ve got, you’ll need to come and get it,” said Cormoran Strike. “It’s six o’clock in the fucking morning!” The large unshaven man tramping through the darkness of pre-dawn, with his telephone clamped to his ear, grinned. “Someone bloody famous,” said the hoarse voice on the end of the line, “better’ve died, Strike.” With a wreath about his head of burning match instead of bays. …blood and vengeance the scene, death the story,Ī sword imbrued with blood, the pen that writes,Īnd the poet a terrible buskined tragical fellow, ![]() If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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