Shortly after the agency has taken Sir Colin Edensor’s case, Strike persuades Fergus Robertson, a journalist, to speak to him. Robertson wrote an article around ten years previously about the UHC, after having interviewed an ex-member. They arrange to meet in a pub called the Westminster Arms.

‘The Westminster Arms, where Strike had agreed to meet journalist Fergus Robertson, lay close beside Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament’ (chapter 14).

‘On entering the Westminster Arms, Strike spotted Fergus Robertson, who he’d Googled earlier, sitting in a corner at a table for two, typing on a laptop’ (chapter 14). There aren’t currently any tables on the ground floor of the Westminster Arms — just standing room and a few bar stools at the edges.

Strike goes to the bar and buys himself a drink before sitting down at the table with Robertson.

They discuss the allegations made by Robertson’s source about the UHC and the legal and personal repercussions that the church had inflicted upon him after the article was published.

You can find the Westminster Arms here: