The Kings Arms is a picturesque Victorian corner pub on Roupell Street in the Waterloo area of London south of the Thames. Matthew Cunliffe chooses the pub as the place to finally meet Cormoran after Robin had been working for him for eight months. Cormoran wasn’t at all happy about meeting Matthew, and vice versa, but they both go through with it to please Robin.

The pub is known for serving Thai food (which we have noticed must be one of Matthew’s favourite cuisines, as he goes to numerous Thai restaurants throughout the books including Windmill on the Common, The Mango Tree and an unnamed Thai restaurant at the beginning of The Cuckoo’s Calling near Piccadilly where he was planning on proposing to Robin).

As Strike enters the pub, the bar is small. He starts to worry he would be asked to leave for wearing dirty clothes.

Robin and Matthew were sat in the conservatory room in the back of the pub when Strike arrived, “sitting at the long wooden bench that they had been forces to share with a party of cackling students”.

Strike arrives late, which gives Matthew more reason to complain about him: “‘you’re forty minutes late and then you piss off during dinner. We’ll just sit here waiting till you deign to come back'” he said to Robin, whilst Strike left the pub to use the phone and smoke.

“Reaching the dark pavement, Strike pulled out a cigarette and his mobile phone. Lighting up, he walked away from his fellow smokers to the quiet end of the side street to stand in darkness beneath the brick arches that bore the railway line.” Here, Strike calls Dominic Culpepper.

“In no particular hurry to return to Matthew, Strike smoked his cigarette down to the butt before moving back inside.”

This is the chapter in which Strike concludes that Matthew is both a “tosser” and a “tit”.

You can come to your own conclusions, and have some Thai food, at The Kings Arms on Google Maps here: