SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, appears in the novel not as a visited campus but as an online point of contact between Lula Landry’s private research and the history of her birth family. A saved version of its homepage links her to Professor J. P. Agyeman, whose work she had been exploring in the month before her death; the clue helps establish that her search for identity had become active and specific.

Online Trace in the Investigation

While examining Lula’s computer, Spanner tells Strike that the password had been reset five days before Lula died: “Agyeman.” The name was a Ghanaian surname, and Lula had bookmarked the SOAS homepage. Spanner retrieves the version she saved, which appears almost identical to the current page but includes a link to the obituary of Professor J. P. Agyeman, an emeritus professor of African politics.

The saved page is significant because it joins a cluster of browsing evidence. In the month before her death, Lula had looked at books by the professor on Amazon and at other books about African history and politics. The pattern shows sustained research rather than an isolated encounter with the university’s website. Spanner finds no evidence that she applied to SOAS, so the record supports intellectual and genealogical inquiry, not a plan to enroll.

Family History Behind the Clue

The university link acquires its personal meaning through the concealed history of Lula’s biological father. Near the end of his life, Jonah Agyeman’s father told him that a white woman named Marlene might have borne another child, though he had never been certain that her claim of pregnancy was true. He had kept the possibility from his wife and told Jonah only when he was dying. Lula later contacted Jonah, who was on leave, and said she did not want to hurt anyone by raising the matter with his mother.

That history makes the surname on the password and the professor’s obituary more than incidental search terms: they situate Lula’s interest in African history within a wider investigation of ancestry. The evidence does not establish that Professor J. P. Agyeman was her father or a relative; it establishes that she had been researching his work and the subject of African politics while pursuing questions about her own origins.

Narrative Significance

SOAS functions as an archival trace of a search that other people did not fully see. The homepage, obituary link, password, and browsing history preserve a sequence of choices on Lula’s laptop, allowing Strike’s investigation to recover an intention from digital remnants. The distinction between research and application matters: the trail reveals curiosity and an effort to understand lineage, but leaves the precise outcome of Lula’s inquiries unresolved.