The Hallmarked Man

106

In spite of what she kept telling Murphy, Robin wasn’t ‘all right’, ‘fine’ or ‘completely OK’. She was constantly on the verge of tears. She kept seeing her attacker’s face, distorted by the strange square shadows thrown by the oblique angle of the street light. She seemed to feel the strong hands throttling her. Swallowing was painful. When she looked in the mirror she saw dark grey bruising on her neck; when she showered, she saw more bruises on her hip and stomach, where her attacker had knelt on her. She was having flashbacks to the man who’d nearly killed her when she was nineteen, the gorilla mask inches from her face, the patch of white vitiligo beneath his ear, which she’d noticed and which her police liaison officer had told her later had been key in identifying and convicting him. The eight-inch scar on her forearm seemed to tingle, reminding her of yet another man who’d come at her, out of the dark.

If she told these stories to a stranger, they’d ask how on earth it was possible that she’d tangled with three different men intent on strangling or knifing her, and that was before she mentioned being held at gunpoint, or sexually assaulted by a cult leader. They’d think she was lying, that she was desperate for attention. It was absurd. It was ludicrous. These things simply didn’t happen. And if they did happen, they certainly didn’t all happen to the same woman. What was she doing to attract this? What was wrong with her?

She was the weak link. She was the one it was easiest to intimidate. For the rest of her life, she’d be dragging her history of victimhood behind her, for anyone to see and to use against her.

She couldn’t say any of this to Murphy. They couldn’t both be having enormous work crises at the same time. If he was worried about her now, when she hadn’t told him half of it – no, she hadn’t told him a hundredth of what was going on – Robin could just imagine what he’d say if he knew Green Jacket had followed her at least twice before, and threatened her with a knife and, she was almost certain, shoved a small gorilla into her hand in Harrods. She couldn’t tell Murphy that her attacker was almost certainly one of Branfoot’s ex-offenders, because that led directly to Malcolm Turnbull, the Met and the masons, and if she told him she’d been tailed by a second man in a Honda Accord, or about the threatening calls to the office, he’d just get angry. Why didn’t you tell me?

And the answer to that was simple: because he’d tell her to stop re-traumatising herself, to give up the job that had given her the scar and the bruises, the insomnia and the nightmares, which she didn’t doubt was the advice any sane person would give her. Murphy would want her to retreat into the hermit-like state she’d been in after her shattering rape, when she’d been almost incapable of leaving the house. He didn’t understand that this job had given her back a sense of self she’d lost at nineteen. In addition to every other thing the most recent attack had left her with, she’d been forced to face the stark fact that she’d rather give up anything, Murphy included, than the agency. That realisation made her afraid of speaking to a therapist. She didn’t want her career choice analysed and didn’t want to relive the rape all over again, with a box of tissues within easy reach and a nodding psychologist making notes.

Strike, meanwhile, had insisted over the phone that Robin take time off. They’d argued about it. Robin was terrified of not being able to leave her flat if she spent too long there. Finally, she’d agreed to work from home for a week.

What Robin didn’t know was that Murphy had phoned Strike the day after the incident in Beaconsfield. The conversation had been brief and blunt. Murphy had told Strike that Robin was in a very bad way. Strike responded by saying he’d be happy for Robin to take as long a break as she liked, and it was she who was insisting on a mere five days.

‘She only had a week off after Chapman Farm,’ said Murphy in an accusatory tone.

‘Which was also her choice,’ said Strike.

But when the call had ended, Strike, who was sitting in his BMW watching Two-Times’ office, was left with increased concern about Robin’s mental health. He didn’t need Murphy to tell him Robin should have taken longer off from work after leaving the cult she’d investigated the previous year, nor did he need to be taught about the realities of PTSD, because he’d suffered it himself.

He’d heard a proprietorial note in Murphy’s voice that had never been so obvious before, doubtless because he and Robin were now officially engaged, and this had made Strike shorter than he might otherwise have been on the phone. Nevertheless, the call had had its intended effect, which was to remind Strike that he had ethical responsibilities towards Robin, even though she was a partner in the firm and no longer an employee. These musings led him to approach his and Robin’s next conversation with a tact for which Strike knew he wasn’t generally renowned. When a pretext for getting in touch presented itself on Wednesday, he called her from the office.

‘I’ve got news.’

‘Oh good,’ said Robin. ‘I’m so bored, I’m sitting here watching the Budget.’ This wasn’t entirely true. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was indeed addressing Parliament on Robin’s muted television screen, but in reality she’d been looking at an old and amateurish website devoted to supposed sightings of Reata Lindvall, following her alleged murder.

‘Well, firstly: Barclay’s nabbed Two-Times. Photos of him coming out of a hotel with a mini-skirted blonde wearing industrial amounts of make-up.’

‘Great. Have you told Mrs Two-Times?’

‘Yeah, and I think she’s going to absolutely rinse him, so it’ll be a few years before he can afford to indulge his surveillance kink again. But I’ve got even better news than that. Guess who’s agreed to meet me on Friday?’

‘Who?’

‘Funny bloke off the telly. Goes on quiz shows a lot. Pays to have porn stars killed.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope. And it gets better. He wants to buy me dinner at the Goring Hotel.’

‘Why?’

‘Smarm offensive,’ said Strike. ‘His police contacts must’ve told him by now William Wright wasn’t Jason Knowles, so I’d say he’s even more worried we’re messing with the case. I called his office this morning and said I wanted to talk to him about regulation in the detective business, following his comments in the press. “Oh, absolutely, what a top-hole idea.”’

‘He never said “top hole”.’

‘He did. Also “spiffing”.’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘You wait,’ said Strike. ‘I said I wanted to bring my detective partner. He said he’d be delighted.’

‘Fantastic, I need to get out of this bloody flat,’ said Robin fervently, which was precisely the reaction Strike had been hoping for. ‘The Goring… isn’t that where royalty always stays in London?’

‘I think we’re supposed to be immensely impressed.’

‘Why’s he trying to butter us up?’

‘I’d imagine he’s keen to present as a man who has absolutely nothing personal against us, just a professional interest in regulating the industry. I expect he’s also hoping we tell him everything we know about bodies in silver vaults while we’re eating our lobster thermidor.’

‘I don’t like lobster.’

‘Then order it and leave it untouched. He’s paying,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed. ‘You and I should meet early, in the bar, get our strategy clear.’

‘Great,’ said Robin. ‘What are you up to at the moment?’

‘Back on the dark net.’

‘Doing what?’

Strike doubted she was in a fit psychological state to hear he’d been watching Daesh execution videos again, so he chose to tell the most palatable part of the truth.

‘It took me the best part of twelve hours, but I think I’ve found Rena Liddell asking for advice on how to get a gun, online. She was calling herself “Mirbat” there, too. I thought I might find her somewhere. If she was going to ask me, a complete stranger, for a gun, why not throw it open to the internet? Anyway, she made glancing contact with a bloke who said he might be able to help and she blithely gave him her mobile number. I’ve got a feeling he wasn’t who he said he was. I think he was there to entrap her.’

‘Why?’

‘The punctuation and spelling were too good and they were asking artful questions. They’ll have been disappointed with what they got out of her, because when offered the chance to lay hands on a weapon she started asking whether killing people wasn’t wrong, after all. I can’t see that they’re going to have grounds to keep her forcibly in a psychiatric facility for long. I’ve left a message on the mobile.’

‘Are you sure pursuing her’s—?’

‘Wise? Will it annoy MI5? Will Ralph Lawrence be pissed off I haven’t run for the hills because he told me to?’

‘Yes to all of the above,’ said Robin.

‘He made me climb up onto the fucking roof of that pub to prove a point. I’m not breaking any laws, calling a phone number.’

‘I know, but—’

‘He wears Aviator shades. Case closed.’

Against her better judgement, Robin laughed again.

‘Anything new your end?’ asked Strike.

‘Not much,’ said Robin, taking a deep breath because she wanted to sound casual and offhand when saying the next thing. ‘The guy who jumped me in Beaconsfield has been let out on bail.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike.

He’d known it would happen, but deplored the fact that it had. Strike considered that certain kinds of criminals were treated far too leniently by the criminal justice system, a viewpoint shaped in adolescence by the sight of his stepfather repeatedly committing violence, then being released on bail conditions he ignored.

‘Have they told you anything new about him?’ Strike asked.

‘Not much,’ said Robin. ‘They still seem to think he attacked me at random, even though I told them about the other times I’d seen him—’

‘“Times”, plural?’ said Strike sharply.

‘Please don’t start,’ said Robin, ‘but I – I saw him on Saturday, outside my flat.’

With immense difficulty, Strike prevented himself ‘starting’ by remembering that he’d been a dick to Robin on Saturday, which had presumably disinclined her to call him back and mention Green Jacket being on the prowl.

‘So he knows where you live?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘You know that rubber gorilla, and the masonic dagger he threw at me?’

‘Yeah, strangely enough, both stuck in my mind.’

‘I’ve got them both wrapped up in freezer bags at home. I told the police about them, but nobody’s come round for them yet. They seem to be leaning towards the fact that he’s an opportunist or a stalker, as opposed to someone trying to stop me investigating. They weren’t very interested in me saying a man with the same jacket had been outside my flat on Saturday.’

‘Can’t Murphy make them take this more bloody seriously?’

‘He’s done all he can,’ lied Robin.

‘So that’s all they’ve told you, that he’s out on bail?’

‘And that he lives in a completely different area of London to me. I think they thought that would make me feel safer – though as he definitely knows where I live, it didn’t, really,’ Robin admitted. ‘Anyway, all the usual bail conditions apply: he can’t change address, he’s not allowed to contact me and he’ll be reporting to the police once a week.’

‘Yeah, that’ll stop him,’ said Strike injudiciously, before remembering that that probably wasn’t a very helpful thing to say. ‘What about that older bloke in the Honda Accord? Have you seen him again?’

‘Not since I told you about him.’

‘OK, well, we need to decide how we’re going to deal with this stuff, going forwards.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Strike.

He’d deliberately suggested she join him for dinner at the Goring before embarking on this part of the conversation, because he wanted to reassure her she wasn’t being cut off from the case. The lack of response from the other end of the phone told Strike that Robin was waiting on tenterhooks to hear what he was about to say, but the time for prevarication and soft-pedalling was over. He wasn’t going to get as angry as he had in Ironbridge, but nor was he going to shirk what he knew to be his duty, even if Robin didn’t like it. The news that the man in the green jacket had been more persistent than Strike had previously known had more than confirmed his opinion that stricter security measures must be taken.

‘Someone, probably Branfoot, is trying to scare us off, and you’re the one they’re targeting,’ said Strike.

‘Because I’m—’

‘Because they think they’ve spotted a vulnerability,’ said Strike firmly. ‘And when your opponent’s spotted a vulnerability, you don’t keep presenting it to him, you defend it. You’re literally the best I’ve ever worked with. Ever. But you had no qualms telling me I wasn’t fit for the job when I was on crutches, and I’m returning the favour. No public transport, no lonely locations and especially no more night-time excursions on your own. None, until we’ve wrapped up this case.’

‘But—’ said Robin, whose eyes had filled with tears when Strike had said she was the best he’d ever worked with.

‘There’s no “but”,’ said Strike. ‘We’ve had this discussion before. If you aren’t shaken up by all this, you bloody well should be. Doesn’t mean you can’t work, just means you’ll be working differently for a while.’

‘But Strike, I can’t stop night work. If Plug and his friends are plotting revenge on that man in Carnival—’

‘Nothing’s happened so far and that could’ve been hot air and bullshit. Look,’ said Strike, and it cost him some pride to admit he’d remembered her exact words, ‘you told me you “didn’t want to lose me”. I don’t want to lose you.’

Though Strike couldn’t hear it this time, because she had her hand pressed over her mouth, Robin was crying again. The hot tears trickled down over her fingers, and she didn’t trust herself to speak.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Strike. ‘I was at Rokeby’s when you called on Friday.’

‘Where?’ said Robin, in a slightly strangled voice.

‘Rokeby’s,’ repeated Strike.

‘What’s that, a restaurant?’ said Robin, struggling to sound normal.

‘No, it’s the house of Jonny Rokeby,’ said Strike. ‘The man who contributed half my DNA. My father, if you must.’

‘What?’ said Robin, the information having precisely the distracting effect Strike had hoped it would. ‘You – what? Why? How?’

When Strike had finished explaining, Robin said, stunned,

‘You said you’ll go for a drink with him?’

‘Didn’t have much choice, did I? Not after he dug me out of that hole. But if you check the paper today, you’ll see a retraction and an apology about Candy. They’ve buried it on page sixteen, but still.’

‘Wow,’ said Robin, who’d wiped her face dry with her sleeve and was feeling – even after the imposition of new working conditions – far better than she had at the start of the conversation. It was strangely consoling to be reminded that Strike, too, had made errors of judgement that had threatened not only his peace of mind, but his ability to do the job.

‘What did you think of him?’ she asked. ‘I mean, meeting him properly for the first time?’

‘Liked him slightly more than I thought I would,’ Strike admitted. ‘He was more honest than I expected, about his life. I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet him again if he’d just struck up conversation in a bar. But he was all right.’

‘That’s good,’ said Robin. ‘And I’m really glad about the Candy apology,’ she added, making a mental note to direct her mother’s attention to it.

‘Anyway,’ said Strike, ‘I want you to take a cab to and from the Goring on Friday, all right? And there’s something you can do from home that I haven’t got time for. I’ve been looking through Truth About Freemasons and Abused and Accused for any usernames, questions or personal details that appear on both sites, paying particular attention to anyone who posted before or around June last year, but I haven’t found anything. I’d appreciate it if you did a thorough, systematic search.’

‘We don’t know that Wright ever posted on either site,’ said Robin, who suspected she was being given something unlikely to yield results, but which would keep her safe and occupied in her flat. ‘He might just have been browsing. And how likely is it he used the same username in both places?’

‘If he’s smart, he won’t have done,’ admitted Strike, ‘but it’s worth a try.’

‘All right,’ sighed Robin, ‘I’ll have a look.’

‘I’d also be grateful if you put some more pressure on Tish Benton, because we’re completely stalled on Fleetwood.’

‘I’ve been keeping an eye on her Instagram,’ said Robin. ‘She’s having a great time flying between Clairmont hotels.’

‘Clairmont, did you just say?’ asked Strike.

‘Yes. You know, it’s that massive luxury chain. It was in a hashtag under one of the pictures I showed you, on her Instagram.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘I should’ve registered that.’

‘Why?’

‘Charlotte’s great-grandfather owned the original hotel. Her mother was born Tara Clairmont. I think she’s still on the company’s board of directors.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin.

‘Which seems an odd coincidence,’ said Strike, but as Robin didn’t respond, he said he’d better get going and rang off, wondering why she hadn’t told him she was engaged, and concluding that she was probably waiting to tell him in person.

The mention of Charlotte had given Robin a strange twisting feeling in her heart that she couldn’t explain, but she didn’t particularly want to investigate. She seemed to be a mass of hypersensitive nerves and really did need to pull herself together, to stop being so thin-skinned and jittery, especially when Strike had succeeded in making her feel better. Nevertheless, she cried more after he’d hung up. Having stumbled to the kitchen to fetch paper towels on which to dry her eyes and blow her nose, she told herself that the real problem was that she was tired, then returned to the sofa and the website about Reata Lindvall, which hadn’t been updated in several years.

The heading at the top of the page read: ERIC MAES HAS SERVED TEN YEARS FOR A CRIME HE DID NOT COMMIT.

In fact, Maes had now served sixteen years for the double murder of Reata and her daughter. His photograph showed an angry-looking man with an underbite, heavy eyebrows and a grubby-looking face due to heavy stubble; in fact, he was a most plausible-looking double murderer.

Beneath his mugshot were more photos. On the left were genuine pictures of Reata, on the right, pictures purporting to show her in various locations on the continent following her supposed death.

Spotted Ossendorf bar, June 1999. Hair dyed obviously but note eyebrow shape, one higher than the other. Ossendorf 1 hour drive from Liège!!!!!!

September 2001 lobby Dortmund hotel – Lindvall about to get in lift, hair re-bleached.

April 25th 2002 has gained a LOT of weight and cut hair, but right profile EXACT MATCH.

There was also a photo showing Jolanda at about three years old, dark where her mother was fair, sitting on Reata’s lap. Both looked serious, intent, their gaze fixed in the same direction. The absence of smiles on both subjects’ faces was taken as damning evidence of Reata’s indifference to her child by whoever had captioned the picture: ‘A loving mother’. Looks like it, doesn’t it?

The last few photos had been selected to ‘prove’ how much happier Reata was in Jolanda’s absence. One showed Reata wearing a mini dress and dancing to a live band in a crowded, cavern-like venue in Liège, her blonde hair flying.

He told her she reminded him of a Swedish girl he used to know…

Robin clicked away from the website and returned to that of the missing persons’ charity where she’d first discovered Sapphire Neagle. The girl still hadn’t been found.

With a sigh, Robin went to fetch herself coffee and biscuits. She felt the need of sustenance if she was going to spend days trying to work out whether any of the hundreds of users on Truth About Freemasons and Abused and Accused might connect, however remotely, to one of their candidates for William Wright.

107

The readjustment of Robin’s work schedule would have made it extremely difficult to cover the agency’s current jobs, had they not resolved Two-Times. Strike had asked Wardle to prioritise finding out anything he could about Green Jacket, also known as Wade King, and in the meantime, Strike was postponing taking the next client off the waiting list, a man who feared his wife, a high-ranking civil servant, was cheating.

‘We should try workin’ smarter, not harder,’ asked Barclay, when his and Strike’s paths crossed at the office on Thursday.

‘Like that’s ever fucking worked,’ growled Strike.

On Friday afternoon Strike returned to his attic flat after several hours’ surveillance of Plug, who was still, infuriatingly, at large, to change into a suit for dinner with Lord Oliver Branfoot. While knotting his tie, he reminded himself that he’d have to act better than he’d ever acted in his life when Robin told him she was engaged.

‘Congratulations,’ he muttered aloud, while looking into his bathroom mirror, which was the only one he had. His reflection looked as though it was announcing a death.

Wardle phoned Strike while the latter was heading down the metal staircase towards the street.

‘Got you a bit on Wade King.’

‘Excellent. Go on.’

‘Thirty-six, was a long-distance lorry driver until a few months back, currently unemployed, lives with a girlfriend in Rainham, one kid. A neighbour suspects him of domestic abuse – the girlfriend wears dark glasses a lot.’

‘Any previous?’

‘Aggravated assault when he was twenty-five. Nothing since. Never been inside.’

‘Any idea how he lost his job?’

‘No,’ said Wardle, ‘but he worked for the company for five years before they fired him.’

‘Interesting,’ said Strike.

It was hardly a surprise to discover that King was violent, but Strike had expected to hear that the man was very young, living in some squalor, desperate for money and recently released from jail: in short, exactly the kind of youth Lord Branfoot could use as a henchman. Why would a man who until recently had had a steady job, albeit one he’d now lost, not to mention a partner and child at home, attempt to abduct a woman, purely for cash? And he’d been a long-distance lorry driver… the dead Todd had also had a long-distance driving job from which he’d been fired. Could this be coincidence?

As Strike travelled by cab towards the Goring, one of the very few five-star hotels in London he’d never visited, he found himself musing once more on the mysterious Oz. Maybe, as Robin had suggested, King was Oz? Had the police just arrested then released the man Strike believed had killed at least four people in under a year? He pulled out his notebook and wrote himself a reminder to find out, if at all possible, where Wade King had been when William Wright and Sofia Medina had been murdered.

Upon arrival in the Goring’s cocktail bar he found Robin already seated at a small, round table beside the marble fireplace, framed botanical prints on gold paper on the wall behind her, and looking (which made nothing any easier) as good as he’d ever seen her, with her strawberry blonde hair clean and loose and wearing a high-necked, form-fitting dress of dusky pink, which Strike found sexy in its ostensible demureness. As he approached her, she set down the same magazine he’d read in the Savoy, with the windswept Cosima Longcaster on its cover.

‘Hi,’ he said, pulling out a velvet chair to sit down, and he added, because what did it matter, now? ‘You look great.’

‘Thought I should make an effort,’ said Robin, trying to deflect the compliment, though it had pleased her. Rather than admitting she’d chosen the pink rather than the black version of the dress because of Dino Longcaster’s unsolicited styling advice, she said, ‘I bought it online, because I needed something to cover my neck.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Marks?’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to see what’s under here.’

Try me, thought Strike.

She handed him the menu with her right hand, but her left was out of sight.

‘Have you ordered?’ Strike asked.

‘Not yet. I’m going to have something non-alcoholic.’

Having asked the waiter for a whisky and a mocktail, Strike turned back to see Robin pushing her hair out of her face with a left hand that bore no jewellery whatsoever. Robin, who’d noticed his sharp glance, checked the back of her hand in case there was something there she hadn’t noticed: smeared mascara, for instance, as he’d failed to inform her about in Ironbridge.

‘Any particular reason for not drinking?’ Strike asked, wondering whether abstaining from alcohol was a concomitant of egg harvesting.

‘Just don’t fancy it,’ said Robin, choosing not to say that she wanted to be in full possession of her wits. She’d be getting a cab home, but there was still the walk between pavement and door. ‘Why?’

Strike suddenly decided to carry the battle into the enemy’s territory.

‘Wardle told me Murphy’s fallen off the wagon.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, far from pleased Strike knew this. She wanted distraction, not discussions about her relationship. ‘Well – yes, he had a lapse, when things were so tough for him at work. But he’s back at AA now. He’s doing fine.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Still moving in together?’

‘No, actually,’ said Robin. ‘The house fell through.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Still looking, then?’

‘It’s on hold just now, with everything else we’ve got on. Anyway,’ she said, clearly not wanting to pursue the subject of house hunting, ‘I’ve found someone on Abused and Accused who also posted on Truth About Freemasons – that, or two people using the same username.’

‘Seriously?’ said Strike, surprised. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Austin H,’ said Robin.

The word ‘fuzz’ popped incongruously into Strike’s mind; why, he didn’t know, but before he could pursue the subject, a plummy male voice said,

‘Hello, hello!’

Strike and Robin looked up to see Lord Oliver Branfoot, tall and podgy, with his trademark messy hair and drooping eyes, a genial smile curving his full lips.

Beside him, in a skin-tight, knee-length black dress, stood Kim Cochran.

108

Branfoot’s entrance had caused a ripple of excitement to pass through the room. Many heads had turned, and most expressions were amused.

Strike was the first to recover from the surprise of seeing Kim. As he stood to accept Branfoot’s handshake, his mental processes seemed to move up a gear, as they were wont to do when he was under pressure. He saw laid out in front of him, like a sequence of toppling dominoes, the trail of events that would have brought this pair together; he felt certain it was Kim who’d initiated contact, and Branfoot who’d gleefully accepted the Navabi agency’s expensive assistance in neutralising the threat posed to him by Strike and Robin.

Robin felt her bag slip off her lap and bent down to pick it up, glad of a reason to hide the shock she knew had shown in her face.

‘You and Miss Ellacott alweady know Miss Cochwan, I think?’ Branfoot said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Strike.

Neither Kim nor Strike extended a hand to the other.

‘Pwease don’t let us huwwy you,’ said Branfoot genially, as Strike drained his glass of whisky.

‘Not at all,’ said Strike. ‘We’re ready for our dinner.’

Robin, who’d picked up her bag, stood up in the knowledge that she probably looked as she felt: definitely ruffled.

‘The pwess photographs don’t do you justice, Miss Ellacott,’ said the beaming Branfoot.

Robin reluctantly allowed Branfoot to shake her hand. This was the man who’d tried to have Danny de Leon killed, and who was doing his best to sabotage their agency: his flattery added insult to the injuries concealed by the pink dress.

‘Shall we, then?’ said Branfoot, waving a long arm in the direction of the hall.

More heads turned as the foursome headed for the door, and Branfoot beamed back at every smiling face, acknowledging a few with a half salute. Kim walked beside him, looking neither left nor right, her heels an inch higher than Robin’s, every hair on her dark head in place. Robin glanced sideways at her partner, trying to gauge his reaction to this unexpected situation, but Strike’s expression told her nothing. At the same time, Robin’s mind had begun to race, and a suspicion dawned on her as she walked behind Kim, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she felt that she was right.

As they walked through the lobby, with its wallpaper painted with palms, an elderly man gave a cry of delight at the sight of Branfoot and stopped to wring his hand.

‘We need you back!’ he told Branfoot earnestly, while his wife hovered, smiling nervously. ‘You’d win in a landslide!’

‘Aut viam inveniam aut faciam,’ said the chortling Branfoot. ‘Watch this space.’

As the three detectives and Branfoot entered the large, grand, white-walled dining room complete with chandeliers and a crimson carpet, Strike said,

‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, I need to make a quick phone call.’

‘Of course,’ said the smirking Branfoot.

In complete ignorance of who Strike was calling, or why, or indeed whether he was actually making a phone call at all, Robin was led, along with Branfoot and Kim, to a round corner table with a snow-white cloth. The waiter’s deferential air was tinged with the same anticipatory amusement shown by others who’d recognised Branfoot. It was as though he was the friend whose arrival is greeted with delight at a party; now the fun would truly start.

‘Well,’ said Branfoot, ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Ellacott. Let me say, I have the gweatest wespect faw what you did with wegard to that dweadful cult last year. That was indeed a noble undertaking.’

‘Thank you,’ said Robin.

‘Young people are vulnewable in ways society often overlooks – young men in particular. The otherwise healthy desire faw a cause, faw service, faw a mission, leads many young men astway, and what you did was all the more wemarkable given that you have no formal twaining in police work, do you?’

‘Well, I’ve had nearly seven years on the job n—’

‘You were Mister Stwike’s secwetary, in fact?’

‘Not exactly. I worked for the agency as a tempor—’

‘As a temp, yes, exactly, that’s what I meant,’ said Branfoot genially. ‘Wemarkable caweer pwogwession! And given your personal histowy you’ve displayed weally extwaordinary bwavery.’

Robin might have asked ‘what personal history?’ but didn’t trust herself to do so. Branfoot might be talking about the knife wound on her right forearm, which had been in the press, but if Strike was correct in his theory that Green Jacket was one of Branfoot’s young criminals, Branfoot knew about her rape. She reached for bread and was angry to see her fingers trembling.

‘I understand you’re womantically involved with a CID officer, is that wight?’ Branfoot persisted.

‘I’d rather not talk about my personal life, if you don’t mind,’ said Robin firmly.

‘Oh, ordinawily I’d agwee secwets of the bedchamber should wemain pwivate,’ said Branfoot, still smiling, ‘but Mr Stwike wants to talk about wegulation in your industry, and it’s pwecisely the murky overlap of wegulated and unwegulated investigators that concerns me. Indeed, I know it concerns the police themselves.’

Robin looked across the table at Kim.

‘Tell Navabi, the man in the Honda Accord is rubbish.’

‘Sorry?’ said Kim coldly.

‘The PI in the Honda Accord, the grey-haired man with the tiny nose. You should tell Navabi, I’ve spotted him repeatedly.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sorry,’ said Kim, but a faint pink blush seemed to indicate that Robin’s shot had hit home.

Strike, meanwhile, was pacing up and down on the pavement in front of the hotel while concluding an urgent conversation with Wardle.

‘I need a name,’ Strike said, ‘and fast, or we’re fucked.’

‘I’ll get back as soon as I can,’ said Wardle, and hung up.

Strike now called Fergus Robertson.

‘Well, well, well,’ said the latter, answering almost immediately. ‘I was going to call you when I got a—’

‘Has Danny de Leon been in touch?’

‘This morning,’ said Robertson, lowering his gleeful voice, ‘and I owe you fucking big time for this. I’m gonna fly out to the Channel Islands Monday and interview him face to face. We’ll need corroboration, obviously, but this could be fucking mass—’

‘So the story’s not about to run?’

‘Jesus fucking Christ, Strike, you can’t slam something like that in the paper without running it past the legal department!’

‘Then you need to get someone with a camera out to Branfoot’s flat on Black Prince Road this evening.’

‘Why, what’s—?’

‘Nothing yet, but I’ll lay you odds before the night’s over he’ll have sent minions to strip out filming equipment and maybe the two-way mirror.’

‘Wait – you’re gonna fucking warn the cunt?’

‘If de Leon had talked when I told him to, you’d already have published your scoop and I wouldn’t be sitting opposite the fucker at a dinner table,’ said Strike angrily. ‘I’m doing you a favour here: if you want to salvage your exposé, get someone out to Black Prince Road. I’ve got to go, I’m expecting a phone call.’

He hung up and continued to pace, watched by the Goring’s bowler-hatted doorman, but after a further five minutes Wardle still hadn’t called back. Deciding he couldn’t leave Robin alone with Branfoot and Kim any longer, Strike climbed the steps back into the hotel.

‘Ah, here he is!’ said Branfoot, as he spotted Strike heading for their table. ‘Shall we order before we get down to business? Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle!’

‘Catullus wanted Fabullus to provide the food and drink, though,’ said Strike, sitting down. ‘I thought you were paying?’

This surprised a laugh out of Branfoot.

‘He also wanted Fabullus to pwovide a girl, “pwetty and willing”, don’t forget, but yes, Mr Stwike, I’m paying. So you know Catullus?’

‘Some,’ said Strike.

‘Lucky our gwisly little woke fwiends haven’t ever wead him, isn’t it? They’d be burning down our libwawies.’

Branfoot kept up a volley of cheery talk while the four consulted their menus.

‘I can heartily wecommend the twuffle-stuffed chicken. Don’t stint yourselves, I shall be starting with the caviar myself, the oysters are wather wonderful here, too…’

Once food had been ordered, and the wine waiter had been dispatched after a fairly lengthy discussion with Branfoot, the latter said,

‘You speak Latin too, Miss Ellacott?’

‘No,’ said Robin.

‘Pedicabo ego uos et iwumabo, Auweli pathice et cinaede Fuwi… those are the opening lines of Poem Sixteen, in which Catullus thweatens to sodomise Auwelius and owally wape Fuwius, because they’d jeered at his soppier poems,’ said Branfoot. ‘Only pwoper way to deal with cwitics, eh?’

‘I’d run that past a focus group before you make it your election platform,’ said Strike, and Branfoot laughed again.

‘Where have we got to, so far?’ Strike asked the table at large.

‘We’ve barely scwatched the surface,’ said Branfoot, with the slight smirk that Robin had noticed never quite left his face. ‘I was congwatulating Miss Ellacott on the important wole your agency played in closing down the UHC and adumbwating some of my concerns wegarding the pwivate detective business. Miss Ellacott has been playing her cards vewy close to her chest.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re a man who appreciates plain talking, so shall we get right down to it? You became very interested in us shortly after we started investigating the body found at Ramsay Silver last summer.’

‘This is the case in which you were hired by Decima Mullins?’ said Branfoot.

Robin felt a sudden dread that had nothing to do with her own affairs.

‘Told him everything, have you?’ Strike said to Kim, on whose face a faint pussycat smile now appeared. ‘Broken your NDA?’

‘Farah and I decided we ought to look into Decima Mullins after I left the agency,’ said Kim. ‘You never told me she had a baby she’s trying to hide. I wasn’t sworn to secrecy on that.’

‘You total bitch,’ said Robin, taking Strike by surprise. Kim smiled more widely and Branfoot laughed.

‘A baby’s a matter faw celebwation, shawly?’ he said.

‘Except that she’s losing her mind as well as her restaurant,’ said Kim, ‘and you two have been milking her for every penny while you go on jaunts and do pointless surveillance, pretending to find out who that body was. She was at casualty two days ago, convinced the baby’s ill because it won’t stop crying. That’s who you’re exploiting. And you’ve been colluding in hushing up the kid. I suppose if you’d alerted a social worker you might’ve been letting someone in on the situation who’d have stopped you milking her for cash.’

‘Nice angle,’ said Strike appreciatively. ‘Yeah, I can see how the press could spin that. Well-to-do restaurateur with her secret baby, got a delusion about her ex-boyfriend, newsworthy detectives stringing her along… not bad at all.’

The wine arrived. When Robin refused any, Branfoot chortled.

‘My word, I’ve never met anyone who’d turn down a Montwachet ’92. Still, all the more faw us, eh, Mr Stwike – or may I call you Cormowan?’

‘Feel free,’ said Strike.

Once the wine waiter had departed, Strike said,

‘So, what’s the deal? We stop investigating the body in the vault, and you don’t talk about Decima and her baby to the press?’

‘I have no personal intewest in the matter, you understand,’ said Branfoot, ‘but this is pwecisely the kind of thing I feel should be maw stwictly wegulated. Financial exploitation of vulnewable people, exowbitant fees faw vewy little gain, a notably lax attitude to child pwotection – now, I don’t deny you two have done some pwaiseworthy things, but – to speak completely fwankly – I have excellent police contacts thwough my chawitable twust and – cowect me if I’m wong – you were questioned wecently about cowupting witnesses. Dangling money in fwont of them, which of cawse wenders their evidence suspect in court.’

‘Well, it sounds like you’ve got us properly stitched up,’ said Strike. ‘Is that everything?’

‘Not quite,’ said the smiling Branfoot. ‘Miss Ellacott’s boyfwiend – I apologise for bwinging him up again—’

Three amuse-bouches now arrived for each of them. The waiter gave loving descriptions of each, but Robin didn’t hear a word of it. She felt slightly sick. If Murphy’s career was ruined through association with her…

‘Where was I?’ said Branfoot, when the waiter had left again. ‘Oh, yes: DCI Murphy. Yes, I’m sowwy to have to mention this, but he’s welevant. In wather a lot of twouble at work, isn’t he? Between the dwinking and the wongful awest? And he’s been passing you infawmation beneath the counter, to boot.’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘he hasn’t. The only person who’s passed us confidential information she shouldn’t have is sitting right opposite me.’

Branfoot laughed.

‘I can tell yaw not in politics, Miss Ellacott. Does DCI Murphy pass the smell test? The public don’t like law enforcement officers who make wongful awests, and wough up suspects, and leak information on murder cases to whichever pwetty young woman they happen to be sleeping with – and that’s befaw we get to the daytime dwinking. So if you’ll forgive me faw saying so, I think the pwess will find your pawamour smells wather whiffy.’

‘Well, you certainly seem to have got the goods on us,’ said Strike. He turned to Kim. ‘Picked up anyone good in Lambeth lately?’

‘What?’ said Kim.

‘Anyone been chatting you up in the vicinity of Lord Branfoot’s office? Anyone who owns a flat on Black Prince Road?’

Kim’s expression became strangely blank. She stared at Strike, and Robin, though she knew she should deplore such a thing, found herself hoping that Kim had indeed allowed herself to be talked into going back to that flat. Then she looked at Branfoot.

The mask of the genial buffoon had melted away. His eyes burned dark in the usually comic, gnome-like face, and suddenly it was easy to imagine him handing over an envelope of cash to a dangerous young criminal, and telling him that he wanted a second young man murdered. Yet she thought she read calculation rather than panic in Branfoot’s expression. Perhaps he was reminding himself of the panoply of lawyers, politicians, police, masons and press contacts available to him, should the danger he’d just glimpsed become acute, just as Robin herself had found reassurance in the feel of the pepper spray in her bag.

Strike’s mobile buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw a two-word text from Wardle:

Ed Billings

He returned the mobile to his pocket. The waiter reappeared to take away the plates on which the amuse-bouches had arrived. Then Strike said,

‘One of the “jaunts” Miss Cochran’s just mentioned us taking was to the island of Sark, although you’ll be pleased to hear we didn’t bill Miss Mullins for that. Ever been to Sark?’

Branfoot didn’t answer. His sudden, uncharacteristic stillness was less of a prey animal than of a carnivore preparing to attack.

‘Interesting place,’ said Strike conversationally. ‘Lots to see. And guess who we met there? An acquaintance of yours.’

Strike helped himself to a bread roll. The silence continued unimpeded until the starters arrived.

There was a good deal of fuss in assembling the component parts of Branfoot’s caviar. Strike, who’d ordered Cornish mackerel, had taken a couple of mouthfuls in the time it took for the waiter to have placed the egg whites, the blinis, the raw onion and the caviar to his symmetrical satisfaction. When at last the waiter had departed, Strike said to Branfoot,

‘I’d’ve given a grand to hear your hitman explain why he had to kill de Leon in the vault of a masonic silver shop. What did he do, pass it off as a bit of 3D chess? Masonic overkill – useful you being a mason, you’ll be able to head them off? Don’t get me wrong, it fits together. I seriously considered the possibility you’d been pulling a double bluff, especially as you’ve been behaving like a man who believed his hit had come off. But long investigative experience has led me to the conclusion that if you can have a face-to-face chat with a bloke, he’s definitely not dead.’

Robin had to admire Branfoot’s sangfroid. Seemingly unruffled, he was piling caviar onto a blini. Kim, on the other hand, hadn’t touched her spiced duck liver terrine.

‘If you were thinking of sending a second hitman after de Leon,’ said Strike, ‘you should know, it’s too late. He’s already talked. So, since we’re totting up items we think might interest the papers, there’s the Winston Churchill Lodge, to which both you and Malcolm Truman belong, the flat on Black Prince Road, your longstanding association with porn producer Craig Wheaton, photos of you and various adult actors going in and out of the flat, and, from what I hear, a sizeable list of people who, once they realise they’ve been covertly filmed fucking porn stars—’

Kim, who’d picked up her fork, dropped it on her plate with a clatter. Strike grinned.

‘I didn’t think he’d have been able to resist getting you on film,’ he said to her. ‘What did he do, take you to a local bar, introduce you to some good-looking bloke, then retire with apologies? Well, now you know. He wasn’t going home to the wife, he was sneaking off to the flat to wait behind the mirror, flies down, cock in hand.’

Still, Branfoot didn’t speak. He was continuing to eat caviar.

‘Now, I might be wrong,’ said Strike, ‘but I think masonic policemen, a TV rent-a-gob, secret filming, a bunch of porn stars and a bungled hit will be of far more interest to the papers than a woman who didn’t want her family to know she had a baby, and hired us to find out whether her son’s father is still alive. But I’ve got a recording of you making implicit threats to expose her,’ he added, tapping the mobile in his breast pocket, ‘so we can add blackmail to the list.’

Robin waited for some kind of outburst from Branfoot, but he merely stared at Strike across the table, mechanically chewing his last blini. At last, he got slowly to his feet and, looking down at Strike, said,

‘You can pay faw your own fucking dinner.’

He threw down his napkin, and, without so much as a glance at Kim, he walked out.

Kim was white-faced and seemed pinned to her chair by shock. Strike raised a hand to hail a watching waiter.

‘Could you cancel Lord Branfoot’s main course, please?’ he said. ‘He’s been called away unexpectedly. And cancel hers, as well,’ he added, pointing at Kim.

‘Are you—?’ began the waiter.

‘She’s sure,’ said Strike.

The confused waiter retreated.

‘So,’ said Strike, turning to Kim. ‘Your turn. You told me you left the force because of “politics”.’

‘I did,’ said Kim.

‘What’s political about giving a co-worker a blow job in a car while you’re both supposed to be on duty?’

Kim’s face grew scarlet.

‘That didn’t happen. People said it did, but it didn’t.’

‘So why’s Ed Billings’ wife chucked him out?’

‘It didn’t happen – that was a total – it was a rumour started by Ray’s ex!’

‘You didn’t give a shit what was true when you went to Dominic Culpepper and told him I’d fathered a baby with Bijou Watkins. Don’t even think about fucking bullshitting me,’ he added, when Kim opened her mouth. ‘I know it was you. But once the press have got hold of the film Branfoot took in his fuck pad in Lambeth, and found an ex-policewoman on camera, it’ll take them two minutes to find out you left because you were caught blowing a married colleague—’

‘I didn’t do it, it’s a lie, I didn’t—’

‘Oh, they’ll probably shove in a couple of “allegeds”, but from that point on, nobody’s going to care who else was in that flat. You’ll be the headline for weeks,’ said Strike.

‘You can’t—’

‘Watch me,’ said Strike. ‘How did Branfoot know details of Murphy’s work life? You told him. How did he know about Decima’s baby? You told him. But I promise you this: unless you keep your fucking mouth shut about those things going forwards, there will be no holds fucking barred our end. I’ll make it so no detective agency in the UK will touch you. Affairs with married men, Ray’s suicide, blowing Billings, popping off to Black Prince Road to film a bit of amateur porn – you think you’re fucking Teflon, but I’ll make sure so much muck sticks to you no power hose’ll get it off, and I won’t give two shiny shits how much of it’s true.’

Kim’s blush had faded to white again. Her eyes had filled with tears.

Strike returned to his mackerel, acting as though she’d ceased to exist. After a minute, Kim got up unsteadily and walked out of the restaurant.

‘Is it wrong,’ said Robin quietly, ‘that I really, really enjoyed that?’

‘If that was wrong, I don’t want to be right,’ said Strike through a mouthful of mackerel.

‘How did you—?’

‘Wardle. He tried to give me details of why she left the other night, but I was preoccupied with other matters.’

Remembering what those matters had been, he took another gulp of the Montrachet ’92, then said,

‘Wardle’s found out more stuff about Wade King of the green jacket.’

‘Really?’ said Robin, trying to sound simply interested. The mention of the man’s name had triggered a vivid memory of his face, distorted by cubic shadows.

‘He was a long-distance lorry driver until he got sacked.’

‘Long distance,’ repeated Robin. ‘Like—’

‘Our late friend Todd. Precisely.’

‘Has King been travelling to the continent?’

‘Probably. A lot of them do.’

Robin lowered her voice.

‘You think the trafficking ring’s still in operation?’

‘I think it’s possible.’

‘So, this looks as though King could be Oz?’

‘I think that’s possible, too. I’m trying to find out where he was the weekend of June the seventeenth to nineteenth of last year. In the meantime, our security measures remain in place, all right? You stick to daytime jobs and no evening work on your own.’

Robin chose not to argue the point. Relieved by the absence of pushback, Strike said,

‘Go on with what you were telling me in the bar, about Austin H.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Robin. ‘Well, on Truth About Freemasons he asks if the masons protect each other.’

‘Think I saw that,’ said Strike, frowning slightly. ‘Didn’t someone respond saying he was thinking of the Mafia?’

‘That’s right,’ said Robin.

‘Fuzz,’ said Strike experimentally.

‘What?’

‘He didn’t say anything about “fuzz”, did he? I’ve got a feeling I saw the name Austin in connection with “fuzz”.’

‘As in the police?’ said Robin, puzzled.

‘No idea… it’s gone. I’ll go and have a look myself. What did Austin say on Abused and Accused?’

‘That his girlfriend’s father was spreading nasty rumours about him, and he wanted to know how to stop it. Most of the responders advised punching the father.’

‘Yeah, I noticed they’re not really talk-it-through types on Abused and Accused.’

‘But that might fit Rupert, mightn’t it?’ said Robin.

‘Maybe,’ said Strike, though he sounded sceptical. ‘But if “rumours” means Dino Longcaster telling people Fleetwood had nicked his nef, they were true. The one thing literally everyone seems to agree on, Fleetwood himself included, is that he did, in fact, nick the nef.’

Strike sat in thought for a further minute, then said,

‘I might have more information on Fleetwood on Monday. Following a lead. Might go nowhere. I’ll tell you if it comes off.’

Being honest about the lead he’d decided to follow up on Rupert Fleetwood would mean mentioning Charlotte, and nearly every time he’d done that lately Robin had immediately shut the conversation down.

A waiter arrived to clear their plates. Once he’d departed Strike said,

‘Christ knows how much they’re about to sting us for, but let’s have puddings. Might as well be hanged for a sheep and all that.’

Both of them thought, immediately, of the silver sheep charm on the bracelet Robin had never yet worn.

109

Strike rose at five o’clock on Monday morning and set off for Northumberland in darkness, choosing to drive himself, partly because the train wasn’t much quicker, but mostly because Heberley House, the mansion in which Charlotte had spent most of her childhood and teens, was difficult to access without a car.

He’d had a broken night. The Daesh execution videos he’d been watching had chosen to resurface, belatedly and in full Technicolor, in his sleep. He’d watched again as a line of bound, kneeling prisoners in Guantánamo Bay-inspired orange jumpsuits, each of their faces hidden by a sack, were shot through the back of the head, bloody holes appearing in the sacks as their faces were blown outwards. He’d seen more men beheaded, others being burned alive in a cage, and a hooded man chained to a metal dumbbell, dragged onto the balustrade of a bridge, then rolled into the river below, where he sank without trace.

He’d also relived in his sleep his own, personal encounter with al-Qaeda: the yellow dirt track and the young man running away, dragging a child; the IED that had torn driver Gary Topley’s body in two, ripped off half of Richard Anstis’s face and blown away Strike’s lower right leg and foot.

He’d woken, drenched in sweat, and vaped for a while. He didn’t need a psychologist to tell him that it was an imminent trip to Heberley that had stirred up these memories. Charlotte was forever entangled with memories of the injury that had ended his military career, because she’d come back to him, and stayed, and helped him recuperate before, inevitably, the deep, irreconcilable rifts between them had begun to widen once more.

Tired and gloomy, he drove northwards to a house he’d happily have never seen again. He had no fond memories of Heberley, which he’d visited as little as possible during his and Charlotte’s long, frequently fractured, relationship. Charlotte had always been at her most tense and volatile there, she and her mother sliding past each in the dining room and corridors like hostile cats. Ned Legard, Charlotte’s late stepfather and Sacha’s father, had been amiable enough, but was often absent, requiring regular stretches away from his wife to maintain even the pretence of a functioning marriage.

Lady Tara Jenson (formerly Tara Clairmont, Tara Campbell, Tara Longcaster and Tara Legard) had always deplored her daughter’s relationship with Strike, an opinion she’d been at few pains to disguise. Strike had been unfazed by her disdain even as a youth. Not only had he rarely met a person he disliked more, but his upbringing had equipped him with a resilience unlikely to be severely tested by icy silences punctuated with explosions of temper. However, as long as he could inveigle his way through the electric gates today, he was confident Tara would talk to him. Like her deceased daughter, she always enjoyed a chance to display her formidable powers of invective; it energised and elated her to lose control.

He’d called ahead to check that Lady Jenson was in residence, posing as a Cartier salesman who was entrusted with the delivery of an important necklace. This choice of cover had been influenced by the twin facts that Tara was exactly the sort of woman to whom exorbitantly priced necklaces were delivered in person by slavish salesmen, and her birthday fell in March, though Strike could no longer remember the exact date. Sacha was currently filming in America, which had a double benefit: he wouldn’t be at Heberley House to interfere, and might, plausibly, have chosen to send his mother a suitably expensive birthday gift.

The further north he drove, the more razor-sharp memories sliced Strike’s thoughts: Charlotte, running barefoot, sobbing, down the long drive, away from yet another row; Charlotte, laughing manically as the pair of them drove this road together, swearing she’d slap her mother around the face if she ‘started’; Charlotte, drunkenly crying in the small lodge that had once housed a gamekeeper, where she’d taken refuge one particularly acrimonious midnight, with Strike.

He found it hard not to reflect on the irony of his position. He’d taken this route long ago when young and in love, and now he was middle-aged and in love, as hopelessly, though for different reasons, as he’d been at nineteen. He remembered quoting Catullus at Charlotte on the night they’d first met. He’d wanted to impress, to prove a young man who’d attended seventeen different schools could be just as clever and cultured as the Old Etonians with whom she mostly associated. The memory was embarrassing, but was the forty-two-year-old really any wiser than the youth who’d memorised the love poems to Lesbia? At least the latter had known what he’d wanted and acted, no matter the subsequently disastrous consequences. His older self had chosen to be cautious where he should have been bold; in recognising too late what he wanted and perhaps even needed, he’d jettisoned what he was increasingly feeling was his one chance of real happiness.

Driving along the motorway, Strike thought how very fitting his first contact with Robin had been. He’d been hurtling out of the office, intent on following Charlotte, from whom he’d broken up mere hours previously and afraid (the memory of the overdose and bus in mind) she might be about to throw herself in front of a Tube train. Instead of catching up with his girlfriend he’d collided with Robin, with such force that he’d knocked her backwards off her feet on the landing and only his fast physical reflexes had stopped her falling down the stairs and possibly breaking her neck. Robin blocking his path back to Charlotte, him nearly killing her in exchange: there was a blunt bit of symbolism, if ever he’d met one…

Her ring finger might still be bare, but Strike was certain it was only a matter of time before that changed. This belief was predicated on his knowledge of Robin. She was the kind of person who stuck things out, even when loyalty might be considered unwise, and Strike could hardly complain about this trait, because he’d benefited from it himself. Nobody who’d had her best interests at heart would have advised her to stick with Strike and the agency in the early days, when she could have been earning far more money with a company that didn’t look as though it was going to go bust at any minute. No, Robin was a good and decent person, and good and decent people didn’t walk away when things were tough, nor did they walk out on their romantic partners when they were having crises.

Having resented Murphy for being fit and successful, Strike now deeply begrudged the man his alcoholic lapse and his work troubles.

110

The large, twisted trees lining the road and the stretches of prime farmland were like a landscape seen in a half-forgotten dream. Strike tried to take consolation from the magnificent indifference of nature to all human concerns, but the strategy was so ineffective it was almost a relief to turn up the side road leading to Heberley, and focus his mind on what needed to be done.

The tall wrought-iron gates loomed up before him, set between stone pillars on top of which were carved salmon in tribute to the Legard family arms and, perhaps, the River Tyne, which flowed past the house. Strike got out of the car and approached an intercom, which was new: the old one, he remembered, had been rusty. He pressed the bell, and a woman with an Eastern European accent answered.

‘Who is, please?’

‘Cartier,’ said Strike into the intercom, and by the time he’d got back to his car, the iron gates were slowly opening.

Rhododendrons lined the drive, but it was too early in the year for them to be in flower; instead they formed a dense, glossy dark green guard of honour as he drove up an incline. When the BMW crested the top of the hill, Heberley House came into view in the distance: an enormous rectangular block of reddish ashlar, with long windows and pillars in the Greek Doric style. Strike still had half a mile to cover, the track running through the deer park, where vast mature trees spread welcome pools of shade on sunny days, and the Legard family, if sober enough, had enjoyed the occasional picnic lunch, which wasn’t a matter of scratchy blankets, Tupperware and hard-boiled eggs, as Strike had experienced with Ted and Joan, but involved staff setting up trestle tables with snowy cloths, and carrying silverware across the lawn.

He parked on the gravel forecourt and as he approached the front door it opened to reveal the woman he assumed was a housekeeper: short, thin, light-haired and wearing a black dress. He didn’t recognise her, but hadn’t expected to. If there had ever been aged family retainers at Heberley House, they’d all peeled away since the arrival of Tara, who was notorious for an inability to hold on to staff who had to interact with her regularly.

‘You have necklace?’ said the housekeeper curiously, eyeing Strike’s empty hands.

‘It’s locked in my car,’ he said, pointing at the BMW. ‘I’m not supposed to get it out until Lady Jenson’s present.’

This implausible story seemed to satisfy the housekeeper, who turned to lead him into the marble-floored hall, which had changed very little since Strike had last been here. More carved salmon served as finials at the bottom of the wide staircase, and the eighteenth-century chairs he remembered were still set in front of an enormous stone fireplace.

Strike waited until she’d disappeared from sight, then, as stealthily as he could manage, headed firstly towards the drawing room door, which he opened so he could cast a sweeping look over the interior, before crossing the hall to look in on the dining room. He’d just seen what he’d come for when he heard footsteps again, and returned to stand beside the fireplace.

Tara was descending the staircase and talking as she came.

‘I thought you must be delivering something from my son, but—’

She stopped mid-sentence, still six stairs from the floor, staring at Strike.

Once as dark and breathtakingly beautiful as her dead daughter, Tara’s hair was now dyed blonde. Her face had been lifted, probably more than once, so that she had odd horizontal creases on either side of her mouth where the skin had been stretched upwards. Filler distorted the proportions of her face. She was as thin as she’d always been, wearing her expensive interpretation of country clothing, which in this case meant a silk blouse and tweed trousers. Had she been able to move her face properly, Strike knew it would have been wearing an expression of fury.

‘What the fuck are you doing here? Why did you let him in?’ she demanded of the housekeeper, who’d just returned to the hall, possibly to offer refreshments.

‘He said he from Cartier,’ said the housekeeper, looking terrified.

‘Did you ask to see his ID?’

‘No,’ said the housekeeper, looking as though she might cry.

‘It’s not her fault,’ said Strike.

‘You shut up,’ snapped Tara. ‘In fact, get out. Fucking get out, now, or I’ll get one of the groundsmen to drag you out.’

‘Unless you want to see Sacha plastered all over the papers for receiving stolen goods, I’d advise against doing that,’ said Strike. ‘And before you pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve just seen it on the sideboard in the dining room.’

For a few seconds Tara glared at him, then she barked ‘coffee!’ at the housekeeper, who scuttled away. Tara descended the stairs without looking at Strike, swung around in exactly the same way Charlotte, when drunk, had turned her back on those who were annoying or boring her, and strode into the drawing room. Strike followed and was in time to see Tara take a cigarette out of an ivory box, light it, then drop into a low brocade armchair.

The room had been redecorated at some point in the nine years since Strike had last been in it, when the walls had been of a pale, silvery blue. Now they were dark green and some of the pictures had been rearranged, although the same Augustus John portrait of Sacha Legard’s bored-looking great-grandmother hung over the mantelpiece.

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the fucking balls to walk in here,’ sneered Tara.

‘Why’s that?’ said Strike, sitting down without invitation on the sofa.

‘You know fucking well why not. After what you did.’

‘I’ve done a lot of things,’ said Strike, stretching out the leg bearing the prosthesis, which was cramping again, after the long drive. ‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘It’s your bloody fault she killed herself!’ shouted Tara.

Strike wasn’t remotely surprised that they’d arrived within seconds at this grotesque accusation, which to most people would have made sense only as the culmination of a vicious row. Tara’s tactic in arguments had always been to reach for the most damaging thing she could throw at her opponent before the latter had time to collect their wits. Charlotte had been forever branded with her mother’s opening salvos. I wish I’d never fucking had you. Go overdose again, whining attention-seeker. God, you’re a tedious, ugly little shit.

‘So whose fault were the two suicide attempts before I ever met her?’ asked Strike.

‘Fuck you!’

‘Eloquent as ever,’ said Strike. ‘Anyway, back to the sideboard.’

‘It’s none of your fucking business what’s on my sideboard!’

‘It’s not your sideboard, it’s your son’s, and he’s going to be royally fucked when the press find out where Dino Longcaster’s silver ship went, isn’t he?’

‘Sacha knows it’s here and he doesn’t care!’ said Tara, with what Strike was certain was gross mendacity. If Sacha knew what his mother had done, he’d be extremely nervous about anyone else finding out about it, most of all journalists. ‘I read Charlotte’s suicide note,’ she added loudly. ‘I know what you did to her.’

‘The worst I can be accused of with regards to Charlotte is not reconfiguring my entire life around her death wish,’ said Strike.

‘You were unfaithful, you were—’

‘I picked up the fucking pieces until there was no putting her back together any more,’ said Strike, ‘and I’m looking at the reason she was never going to make old bones.’

‘Bastard,’ said Tara. ‘And I mean that literally, of course.’

‘I’d say I’m a fairly good advert for having an unmarried mother, if you and Charlotte are the control,’ said Strike. ‘Back to the nef.’

‘If you think I’m going to explain anything to the thug who as good as killed my daughter—’

‘Fine,’ said Strike, getting up. ‘I’ll go to the press, tell them Sacha’s got the stolen ship and, trust me, I’ll enjoy it.’

‘Don’t you dare – come back here!’ shrieked Tara, as Strike made for the door. Before he could reach it, it opened to reveal the frightened-looking housekeeper.

‘Get out,’ Tara shouted at her, ‘this is priv—!’

The housekeeper checked, holding her tray. Tara made a noise of exasperation.

‘Bring the coffee in first,’ she said. ‘Then leave. Come back here!’ she yelled at Strike. ‘Come back!’

‘We’ve got nothing else to say to each other,’ said Strike, turning to look at her as the housekeeper set her tray down on the coffee table and poured Tara a cup with a quivering hand.

‘Yes, we have,’ said Tara furiously. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’

Strike didn’t move. It was liberating to be able to treat her as he considered she deserved; in the past, he’d always had to remember that Charlotte would pay the price if he permitted himself to lose his temper with Tara, but Charlotte was in Brompton Cemetery, finally beyond suffering, unlike the scrawny flesh and blood woman with the distorted, carefully made-up face and a lipstick-stained cigarette in her claw-like hand.

Having poured Tara’s coffee, the housekeeper scurried out of the room and closed the door while Strike remained standing.

‘Sit down,’ Tara said again. ‘Sit.’

‘I’m not a fucking dog,’ said Strike. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’

‘Yes,’ said Tara impatiently. ‘Sit down.’

Before returning to the sofa, Strike helped himself to coffee. Then he said,

‘I’m assuming you didn’t ask Fleetwood to steal the nef. He nicked it, then brought it here because he couldn’t think where else he might be able to offload it, right?’

He took Tara’s silence for assent.

‘How much did you give him for it?’

‘That’s none of your business. You can tell fucking Dino—’

‘He’s not my client,’ said Strike.

‘Don’t lie to me, I’m not stupid, and he hasn’t told you the full story, but you can tell him I’ve got the witnesses. Lottie Hazlerigg and Angus Lyall told me all about it!’

‘All about what?’

‘Dino cheated. He always coveted that nef, and Peter Fleetwood was so pissed the night he bet it, he was probably seeing two backgammon boards. Lottie and Angus were there and they saw it happen, they know what Dino did, but nobody wanted to challenge him, because he can turn bloody nasty, as I well know. He dislocated my bloody shoulder when—’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard the story about your shoulder,’ said Strike. ‘I remember the overturned table and the burns to your leg, I know you found him in bed with a teenager hired to serve at a party. I’m only interested in the nef.’

‘I’m telling you about it!’ she snapped. ‘Dino always bullied Peter, treated him as though he was still his fag at Eton, even when I was married to him. So you can go right back to that piece of shit and tell him from me—’

‘I’ve just told you, he’s not my client. I’m working for his daughter, Decima.’

‘Why does she care about the bloody ship?’

‘She doesn’t. She’s only interested in the whereabouts of Rupert Fleetwood. Did Rupert mention Decima when he came to see you?’

‘No.’

‘So how much was it worth to you, to get one over on Dino?’

‘I’ve just told you, that’s none of your bloody busi—’

‘It is my business, because if you gave Fleetwood fifty grand he’ll have been able to hide himself far more efficiently than if you gave him a tenner.’

Tara glared at him, took another drag on her cigarette, then said through a cloud of smoke,

‘I gave him six grand. There. Happy?’

‘I think you gave him something else, as well.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a job abroad, at a Clairmont hotel.’

‘I’m not in charge of hiring and firing.’

‘I doubt anyone on the board’s going to turn down the only surviving Clairmont if they say they want their nephew by marriage given a job in a restaurant or a kitchen. I doubt they’d even protest too much if you leaned on them to offer a brand consultant job to the only other person who knew where the nef had gone.’

‘Well,’ said Tara, eyes narrowed over her coffee cup, ‘aren’t you clever?’

‘The evidence points that way, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Which hotel is Fleetwood hiding out in?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tara. ‘I told them to find him something, and they did. I don’t know where he went. He wrote me a thank you card, though. Nice manners. I don’t remember any thank you letters from you.’

‘What the fuck would I thank you for?’ said Strike.

She was old, no longer the beauty who’d enchanted blue bloods and rock stars in the early seventies before marrying the safe bet: Sir Anthony Campbell, with his solid family money behind him, and his castle on Arran, but the way Tara was sparring with him held a spark of her vanished allure. Her fearlessness, her arrogance, her casual cruelty, in combination with her staggering beauty, had once held men captive, but Strike had been inoculated against that faint whisper of dangerous charm through prolonged contact with the daughter who’d so resembled her. Strike and Charlotte had once wondered whether their mothers had ever met; there was a photograph of Tara with Jonny Rokeby, after some concert or other: had he screwed her, too? ‘Maybe we’re brother and sister,’ Charlotte had said, an idea Strike found repulsive rather than exciting.

‘Did Rupert tell you why he wanted to go abroad?’

‘Because Dino was after him, obviously.’

‘Did he tell you he’d been at Sacha’s birthday party?’

Tara took another drag on her cigarette.

‘He didn’t, but Sacha told me he’d gatecrashed.’

‘Did Sacha say why?’

‘Presumably because he doesn’t often get to hang out with the beautiful people,’ said Tara.

‘Not good-looking enough for a front-of-house job, then? Dish washing, is he?’

‘I’ve just told you, I don’t know where he is and I don’t know what he’s doing.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I won’t trouble you any longer. Mind if I have a slash before I go?’

‘Yes,’ snarled Tara.

‘No need to get up,’ said Strike, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘I remember where the bog is.’

111

Preferring to leave the environs of Heberley House well behind him before he took a break for something to eat, Strike drove south to the city of York. Sitting in his parked BMW, and looking forward to a late pub lunch after he’d got this unpalatable duty out of the way, he phoned Decima Mullins.

When he’d finished giving an account of his interview with Tara, Decima said in a high-pitched voice,

‘No – that can’t be true. He’d never have – he wasn’t even in contact with Tara – no, she must be lying!’

‘She’s got the nef,’ said Strike, ‘and frankly, I feel stupid for not remembering that there was an ex-wife who’d be delighted to piss off Dino Longcaster, isn’t strong on ethics and has money to burn. She claims not to know which hotel Rupert’s working in, but I think she’s telling the truth about him working in one of them. She pulled strings to get him and Tish Benton jobs with the chain. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping for, but—’

‘So you’re going to call round all the Clairmont hotels, when he’s not even there?’

‘I think he is at one of those hotels,’ said Strike, trying to inject sympathy rather than impatience into his voice, ‘and no, I’m not going to call them. This ends the case.’

‘Wh – you’re walking out on me?’

‘There’s nothing to be done now that you can’t do yourself, so it would be wrong to keep billing you. I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I know you didn’t want to believe Rupert’s alive, but—’

‘It’s not that – how can you say that?’ she cried. ‘Of course I’d rather think he’s alive, but he’d never have left me like this, never!’

‘Sometimes we’re mistaken about people, however well we think we know them,’ said Strike, still striving for patience. ‘I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, the job’s done. I wish you luck,’ he concluded lamely, ‘and – better times.’

This call ended, Strike left the BMW and, limping slightly again, set off in search of food. While walking, he called Robin and told her the story of his trip to Heberley.

‘… so it’s over,’ he concluded. ‘The job of identifying William Wright returns to the Met. We’re out.’

Strike wasn’t surprised that a shocked silence followed these words.

‘But why did Rupert leave like that?’ said Robin at last. ‘Why do it so cruelly?’

‘I can only assume the easiest explanation is the right one,’ said Strike. ‘He didn’t want a baby and took the coward’s way out. Anyway, I’m starving and there’s a pub ahead, so I’ll talk to you later.’

The name of the pub, the Old White Swan, reminded Strike unhappily of Ironbridge, but as he didn’t want to have to walk any further he entered to find a pleasant space with white and blue painted walls. He’d just bought himself a pint of alcohol-free beer and ordered fish and chips when his Met contact, George Layborn, called him.

‘Hi,’ said the policeman. ‘I got your email about Wade King.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, sincerely hoping that this would wrap up the entire silver vault case completely. ‘So…?’

‘He was in France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth of June last year.’

‘France?’ repeated Strike, frowning.

‘Yeah, driving a lorry full of Scotch from Speyside to Cannes.’

‘This is cast iron, is it?’

‘Fully corroborated, yeah.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike. ‘No – I mean, that’s good to know. Cheers, I owe you one.’

He hung up. Layborn’s information, while useful, was unwelcome. Had Wade King been Oz, that would have settled everything, but as it was…

He accidentally dislodged his vape from his pocket in replacing his notebook there; it rolled away under an empty neighbouring table, and as Strike bent to pick it up again, he thought again of the tube-like object William Wright had dropped, which Mandy and Daz had thought was a doob tube, and which Wright had claimed had been a blood sample, and he wondered, yet again, what it had really been.

112

So the case was closed. The agency had replaced Decima with the top client on the waiting list, and the mutilated body of the man called William Wright continued to lie unidentified, eyeless and handless in an unknown morgue, and Robin wasn’t supposed to care about him, or about dead Sofia Medina or missing Sapphire Neagle, but her mind refused to expel the disconnected facts of the silver vault case, on which it continued to chew uncomfortably, as if on bits of grit. Had Wright really had a pregnant girlfriend? Why had he visited Abused and Accused? Where was the Murdoch silver? What did the eight digits Niall Semple had left for his wife mean? Why had Chloe Griffiths become so aggressive about a bracelet? What were the things that Albie Simpson-White had said Decima was better off not knowing?

Robin knew she had to let it all go. The case was the Met’s now and, as if to underline the fact, a police spokesman announced on Thursday that Jason Knowles hadn’t been the body in the vault after all. The Sun newspaper was the only one to give any prominence to the story, which ran beneath the headline MASONIC BODY: COPS ‘GOT IT WRONG’.

At Strike’s insistence, Robin was continuing to work either in her flat or at the office. She was starting to feel like Pat’s assistant, dealing with paperwork and small bits of research that could be done online. On the other hand, she knew her mental state was as bad as it had ever been. As the days passed, instead of getting better, she seemed to be worse. Unexpected noises, even her phone ringing, startled her; she couldn’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, and kept having flashbacks of the man who’d tried to throttle her in the Land Rover. The smallest things made her want to cry: spilled orange juice, a lost button. She was trying her best to hide all of this from everyone around her, including Murphy, certain that telling the truth would lead to a row, or an insistence that she stop work altogether for a while.

Wade King was out on bail, and he knew where to find her. Having loved living alone for the freedom it gave her, Robin now felt unsafe in her flat, which was why she was travelling to and from Denmark Street every day. Her preference would have been for being in the company of people she knew and trusted, at all times.

As she turned into Blackhorse Road on Thursday evening, expecting Murphy for dinner, he called her.

‘I’m not going to be able to come over this evening.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, angry at herself for wanting to cry again. ‘Why?’

‘An hour ago I visited a suspect at home who’s just turned out to have what looks like two pipe bombs at the bottom of his wardrobe.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah, and the terrorism threat’s at “severe”, so we’ve evacuated half the street and we’re waiting for the bomb squad.’

‘Well, that puts my afternoon docketing receipts into perspective,’ said Robin, and Murphy laughed. She was surprised at how relieved she was to have amused him; it felt as though there hadn’t been a lot of laughter between them lately.

‘Tomorrow night?’ he said, and Robin agreed.

Darkness was drawing in. Once parked outside her block of flats, she reached into her bag for the fresh bottle of pepper spray she’d made, her first having been confiscated by the police, then sat where she was for several minutes, trying to muster the courage to cross the dark car park. No matter how much she told herself there was nobody lurking in wait, she didn’t seem to be able to convince her subconscious.

‘Come on,’ she told herself firmly, and got out of the car.

She was halfway to the door of the building when she heard male voices, shouting. Flooded with panic, she started to run back towards the Land Rover.

Two men burst out of her building, heading straight for her. She was shaking so badly she dropped her car keys. As she bent to pick them up she heard the snarled words ‘fucking bitch’ and then the first man had dashed past her, curly hair silhouetted in the street lamp – it’s him – but the second man, who was taller and broader, was slowing; he’d nearly reached her—

‘NO!’ Robin screamed, pulling out her pepper spray.

‘Rob, it’s me,’ said a familiar voice. ‘It’s me!’

‘Martin?’ said Robin weakly, leaning back against her car, pepper spray in hand, keys still on the ground. ‘What—?’

‘Who was that guy?’ he said.

Martin was holding a crumpled piece of paper. Robin couldn’t marshal her thoughts. Unable to stop herself, she burst into tears.

‘Rob,’ said her brother, putting his arms around her. ‘The fuck’s going on?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ she gasped, knowing what a ludicrous response this was. ‘Why are you here? How did you—?’

‘What’s going on?’ repeated Martin.

‘I – I got that man arrested, he—’ but she couldn’t tell Martin about the attack, she couldn’t bear her mother, in particular, finding out, ‘—so he’s got it in for me – how did you even—?’

‘It was raining. One of your neighbours let me in. I was sitting on your stairs waiting for you to come home and that fucker showed up and tried to slide this under your door,’ said Martin, holding up the crumpled paper. ‘I said, “who the fuck are you?” and he got aggressive so I got aggressive back, and then he ran.’

‘What’s on the paper?’ said Robin, pulling out of Martin’s arms, but it was clear he didn’t want to show her. ‘Martin, give it to me.’

He held it out reluctantly. The paper had a picture of a gorilla’s face on it.

Martin knew of the significance of gorillas in Robin’s past.

‘How does he know?’ he asked.

‘It’s online,’ said Robin. ‘Look, I’m really pleased to see you, but why are you here?’

‘Carmen’s chucked me out.’

‘Oh, Mart, I’m sorry,’ said Robin.

Under ordinary circumstances, her dominant emotions on finding Martin on her doorstep would have been annoyance and amazement. It was typical of him to turn up unannounced, or rather, nearly two weeks after he’d asked whether he could visit, and without having been told it was convenient. However, she was so grateful he’d been here at this crucial moment, and so delighted to have a guest overnight, she hugged him tightly again.

‘It’s lovely to see you. Come in and you can tell me everything.’

‘You’ve got a new Land Rover,’ said Martin, as they walked back towards her building. ‘What happened to the old one?’

‘It failed its MOT.’

‘You must be making good money these days,’ said Martin, glancing back at the car, his tone between envy and admiration.

‘It’s the business’s,’ said Robin, ‘not mine.’

She loved her brother, but he’d never been shy about asking people in the family for money. Until now, he’d never troubled Robin in this respect, because he’d known she didn’t have any to spare.

Martin retrieved his holdall from the stairs where he’d abandoned it and followed Robin into her flat.

‘Nice place.’

‘Thanks,’ said Robin automatically. The gorilla picture was rustling; she looked down at it and realised she was shaking.

Without taking off her coat, Robin walked through to the kitchen to fetch yet another freezer bag and put the gorilla picture inside it. Would the police take this seriously? They still hadn’t shown up for the masonic dagger or the rubber gorilla forced into her hand in Harrods.

‘Listen,’ she said, turning to face Martin with the now protected picture in her hand, ‘please – please – don’t mention this at home. I’m begging you, Martin. I can’t take Mum having a go at me on top of everything else I’ve got going on.’

‘You gonna call Ryan?’

‘He’s got far more important things to worry about than me, this evening,’ said Robin, thinking of the pipe bombs. ‘Look, there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge—’

Her phone rang: Strike.

‘I’ll take this in my bedroom, help yourself to anything you want.’

Still holding the picture of the gorilla’s face, and wearing her coat, Robin went into her bedroom, sat down on the end of her bed and answered her partner’s call.

‘Hi.’

‘Just checking in,’ said Strike. ‘Get home OK?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin shakily. ‘Where are you?’

‘Haringey. Plug and his son are sitting in his van on Carnival Street.’

‘Oh no,’ said Robin angrily. ‘He’s going to involve his son in a revenge stabbing?’

‘Looks like it. Barclay and Shah are tailing two more members of the revenge posse and they all seem to be converging in this direction. I think tonight’s the night.’

Robin immediately dismissed the idea of telling Strike that Wade King had come calling. He was trying to foil a possible stabbing: now wasn’t the moment. Strike, however, had detected a note of strain in her voice.

‘You sure everything’s OK?’

‘Yes. My brother Martin’s here. He turned up unexpectedly.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, pleased to hear this on two counts: Robin had a large man there for protective purposes, and assuming Murphy hadn’t already done so, he’d be unlikely to propose tonight. ‘Well, give him my regards.’

‘I will,’ said Robin. ‘Good luck with Plug. I really hope nobody gets hurt.’

‘Might do Plug some good to get clobbered,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ll do my best to stop anyone hurting the kid.’

Robin hid the sheet of paper she was holding in the same drawer as the dagger and rubber gorilla. She was still shaking. On sudden impulse, she picked up her mobile again and, before she could second-guess herself, called Strike’s therapist half-sister Prudence.

‘Robin!’ said Prudence, on answering. ‘How are you?’

‘Um… not fabulous, to tell you the truth,’ said Robin. ‘I’m really sorry to lay this on you, Prudence, and obviously it can’t be you, personally, but I was wondering whether you could recommend someone to me… a therapist, I mean. For me. But, Prudence – I’m sorry,’ Robin repeated, aware that she was gabbling slightly, ‘it can’t be – I don’t want anyone who’s going to try and talk me out of what I do for a living. I need someone – someone who – I don’t know – gets it – someone who’s – I can’t really explain what I mean—’

‘Robin, has something happened?’ said Prudence, sounding concerned. ‘Something new, I mean?’

‘A load of things have happened,’ said Robin, ‘and I’m… I’m not in great shape. I should probably – after Chapman Farm – but I didn’t.’

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Prudence said thoughtfully, ‘I think I know exactly the right person.’

‘You do?’ said Robin, surprised and hopeful.

‘Yes. She’s quite unconventional, but her patients love her.’

‘OK,’ said Robin a little warily, wondering whether ‘unconventional’ meant crystals and reiki; she seemed to see Strike smirking in her mind’s eye. ‘In what way—?’

‘She can be quite directive,’ said Prudence.

‘Meaning she tells you what to do?’

‘Yes, she has opinions. She also swears a lot.’

‘I work with your brother, that won’t worry me,’ said Robin, and Prudence laughed.

‘She’s not cheap.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Robin. ‘If she’s good… I know I need something. I’ve got to do something,’

‘I’ll send you her details, although, come to think of it, she might be away at the moment.’

‘If she’s the right person, I don’t mind waiting,’ said Robin. ‘I think I’ll feel better just for knowing I’m doing something about it all… and Prudence, please – please don’t tell Strike I called.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ said Prudence, ‘but—’

‘He knows,’ said Robin with difficulty, ‘that I’m not in a great place. I’d just rather he didn’t know I’ve roped you into it.’

‘It’s not “roping”, Robin,’ said Prudence. ‘I’m glad to help.’

After the call had ended, Robin sat for a moment, phone in hand, feeling better simply at the idea of the unknown, sweary therapist. She took off her coat, slung it on her bed, took a deep breath and re-entered the sitting room, where she found her brother sitting on her sofa, pouring wine into a mug.

‘I’ve got glasses,’ she said.

‘Couldn’t find any,’ said Martin, which meant, as Robin knew from long experience of her brother, that he couldn’t be bothered to open more than one cupboard. She went to fetch herself a glass, then sat down beside him on the sofa.

‘Why did Carmen chuck you out?’

‘I caught her fucking cheating.’

‘What?’

‘Got home last night and her fucking ex-boyfriend was there. “Oh, hiya Martin. Jason was just bringing Dirk a present.”’

Robin didn’t like the way Martin imitated his girlfriend; her ex-husband, too, had always adopted a whining falsetto to impersonate women.

‘He’s married, as well, the fucker.’

‘Were they—?’

‘Nah, they hadn’t got down to it yet.’ Martin glugged half a mug of wine. ‘Or maybe they’d already done it and got dressed again.’

‘Mart, are you sure—?’

‘What was he doing there, when I was out?’

‘Well – bringing the baby a present. Was there a present?’

‘Yeah,’ said Martin, ‘and I booted it out the window right in front of him.’

Robin groaned inwardly. She knew her brother: incurably hot-headed, impetuous and prone to rages an objective observer would judge to be entirely unjustified. Jealousy had been an issue in quite a few of his previous relationships.

‘How long ago did Carmen and this man split up?’

‘I dunno, six, seven years ago—’ Robin was reminded of Tyler Powell, and the allegation that he’d been jealous enough over a girlfriend he’d had at sixteen to sabotage a car. ‘I told her I didn’t want her seeing the slimy bastard any more and then she goes and has him over when I’m out!’

‘Martin, you haven’t got the right to tell Carmen who she’s allowed to see.’

‘Why didn’t she tell me he was coming?’

‘Maybe she didn’t know, maybe he just dropped in because he was passing?’

‘Funny how it happened when I was out.’

‘Or,’ said Robin, bracing herself for an outburst directed at her instead, ‘maybe she didn’t tell you because she knew you’d have a meltdown?’

‘Has she called you?’ demanded Martin.

‘No, of course not. She hasn’t got my number, unless you’ve given it to her.’

‘I said to her, “how do I know Dirk’s not his?”’

‘You didn’t! Martin, for God’s sake…’

He drained his mug and reached for the wine bottle again.

‘Do you honestly think,’ said Robin, unaware that she was paraphrasing what Strike had said to Bijou Watkins not so long ago, ‘she’d be having sex with an old boyfriend in your flat, six weeks after she’s given birth?’

‘She’s always fucking talking about him!’ said Martin furiously. ‘Fucking dickhead. Got his own business. Know what it’s called? Excalibur,’ said Martin, with so much contempt Robin had to fight not to smile.

‘What kind of business is it?’

‘Skip hire.’

In spite of her best efforts, Robin burst out laughing. It was a release and a relief; she had difficulty stopping.

‘He’s coining it in,’ said Martin bitterly, over Robin’s gasps of laughter. ‘Skips all over Yorkshire, he’s cornered the fucking market. Fucking Excalibur – and he puts the sword on everything, the side of the skips and on his fucking employees’ overalls. Surprised he didn’t make Carmen tattoo it on her arse.’

Robin fought her laughter back down and said,

‘I’m sorry – sorry, but you can’t say it’s not funny. “Excalibur Skip Hire”.’

A reluctant grin flickered on Martin’s face, but he said,

‘He’s a fucking twat. Him and Carmen used to play Dungeons & Dragons together and all that fucking shit. I’ve been round his house, with Carmen, he was having a party – showing her what she could’ve had, if they hadn’t split up. Fucking widescreen telly and a home gym. He’s put the fucking logo on all his stuff at home! On fucking cushions – he hires out skips for a living and he thinks he’s – who owned Excalibur?’

‘King Arthur,’ said Robin, still fighting a desire to laugh.

‘Him, yeah,’ said Martin, and he downed his second mug of wine. ‘Flexing his fucking biceps at her. Swords on his T-shirts and his fucking weights. Fucking arsehole.’

‘He sounds an idiot,’ said Robin.

‘He is,’ said Martin, who seemed to find some consolation in this comment. ‘Yeah.’

But Robin understood why, whatever the man’s personal absurdities, he’d aggravate her brother’s latent insecurities. Martin had neither savings nor property, and had never stuck with jobs, or indeed anything that required sustained hard work.

‘Mart,’ said Robin gently, ‘are you sure you’re not imagining this?’

‘Why did she chuck me out?’ demanded Martin, with characteristic lack of logic.

‘Maybe because you kicked your son’s present out of the window and accused her of shagging a skip hire-outer who thinks he’s King Arthur,’ suggested Robin, which surprised a reluctant snort out of her brother.

It was odd to sit here with Martin and realise that he’d chosen to come to her, rather than any other member of the family. Possibly he’d simply flown to the furthest spare bed he thought he could get, but Robin couldn’t escape the not particularly flattering suspicion that he saw her as more of a kindred spirit than he’d ever done before, pursuing a strange, intermittently dangerous career of which their mother disapproved, with a failed marriage behind her, and her house-buying on hold, unlike happily married father-of-two Stephen, and Jonathan the graduate, with his conventional new job in brand management. But then Robin remembered a very drunk Martin taking a swing at her ex-husband, on their wedding day, and she laughed again.

‘Just remembering you nearly thumping Matthew.’

‘Ah,’ said Martin, and he grinned properly this time. ‘He’s a real fucking tosser.’

‘He is,’ Robin agreed. ‘Not as big a tosser as the bloke you’re worried about, though. Listen… I think you should call Carmen and apologise.’

‘I’m not fucking—’

‘I really don’t think she’s done anything wrong, Martin.’

Robin knew her brother too well to press him; he was incurably contrarian and would do the right thing in his own time, or not at all. She got up from the sofa.

‘I’ll make us something to eat.’

She’d just opened her fridge to scan the paltry contents when, struck by a sudden thought, she returned to the sitting room.

‘Mart, did you just say that Excalibur man put the logo on his weights?’

‘Yeah, he puts it on fucking everything,’ said Martin.

‘You can put custom designs on weights?’

‘If you’re the kind of prick who likes that sort of thing. Why?’

‘No reason,’ said Robin. She returned to the kitchen.

113

Robin left Martin asleep on the sofa bed in the sitting room the following morning and headed for the office. There was something she wanted to say to Strike face to face, so she forced herself to drive into town, checking her rear-view mirror constantly, and feeling shaky and exposed during the short walk to Denmark Street.

Arriving shortly after nine, she found Pat already at her desk, and Wardle talking to Strike in the inner office.

‘Didn’t we have three fish in there?’ Robin asked Pat as she hung up her coat, because the large black fish and the smaller gold one appeared to have lost a companion.

‘Travolta died,’ grunted Pat. ‘He says he found him floating when he got in this morning.’

‘Travolta?’

‘Yeah, we had Cormoran, Robin and Travolta. Yours is the only one that hasn’t given any trouble. Makes sense,’ added Pat darkly.

Strike emerged from the inner office, unshaven and looking exhausted.

‘Morning,’ he said to Robin. ‘You missed a real shit show last night. I was just telling Wardle…’

She followed him into the inner office, where Wardle stood, arms folded, leaning against the wall.

‘We intercepted Plug, two mates and his son as they were heading for the front door of fifteen Carnival Street,’ said Strike. ‘They jumped to the conclusion we were allied with the dog killer and pulled out knives. Long story short, Shah got stabbed in the leg.’

Robin gasped; the speech she’d been about to make to Strike fled her mind.

‘Is he OK?’

‘Ish. He was let out of hospital this morning but the wound’s deep. Barclay restrained Plug, and I took down his biggest mate, but the third guy scarpered. We managed to persuade Plug’s son to stay put, though, poor little bastard. You weren’t lying about half his face being chewed off, were you?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I think he’s going to be scarred for life – in more ways than one. Where is he now?’

‘With his great-uncle and his gran,’ said Strike. ‘With luck, Plug’ll get a long stretch inside and the boy’ll now have a fighting chance at a normal life. Anyway, we had to give statements to the police and it’s bloody lucky we had plenty of photographic evidence to prove we’ve been tailing Plug for months, or I think we’d have been done for assault, which, as we know, the Met would bloody love. And we’re down one man, maybe permanently.’

‘What d’you mean?’ said Robin.

‘I think there’s a possibility we’re going to lose Shah to Navabi.’

‘What?’ said Robin, horrified. ‘Dev wouldn’t leave!’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that. He and I had an argument last night while we were waiting for Plug to make his move. He had all Kim’s arguments down pat. We shouldn’t have taken the silver vault case, we were exploiting Decima, “colluding in covering up her baby”, going on jaunts round the country, et cetera. I think old mates at the Met have been telling him he works for a proper wrong ’un. He also thinks I sexually harassed Kim.’

‘Wh—?’

‘She’ll have told him so,’ said Strike wearily. ‘She and Navabi seem very keen on fucking with me. Have they tried to poach either of you yet?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I suppose I should feel offended.’

‘I’ll talk to Shah about bloody Cochran,’ said Wardle, scowling. ‘I’ll tell him exactly who she is. I told you before, she caused trouble on every single job she worked. Fucking liability.’

‘That’d be helpful, cheers,’ said Strike, rubbing his eyes, which were stinging with tiredness, ‘and while you’re at it, you can tell Shah the silver vault case continues, and I’m paying for it out of my own pocket.’

‘What?’ said Robin, her spirits lifting immeasurably at this news.

‘I’d better go,’ said Wardle. ‘I’m on that cheating civil servant in half an hour.’

When Wardle had closed the dividing door behind him, Strike looked up at Robin said,

‘What’re you looking so happy about?’

‘You mean it? The silver vault case continues?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘I’ll contribute financially, too. You can’t bear all the expenses; you won’t have anything left of your inheritance at this rate.’

‘I don’t need it for anything,’ said Strike indifferently.

‘Don’t you ever want to buy a place?’

‘What for? Nothing’d be as convenient as the flat,’ said Strike.

He might have said that if Robin wanted to move in with him, he was more than happy to start house-hunting, but naturally didn’t.

‘Why’re you so pleased we’re keeping it going?’ he asked.

‘Because – don’t yell, all right?’ said Robin.

‘What’s happened?’ said Strike ominously.

‘Nothing, but probably only because Martin was there.’

Robin described the previous evening’s happenings and concluded,

‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I want to end this case, properly.’

‘Did you call the police about King breaking his bail conditions?’ said Strike, exercising maximum control to do as she’d requested, and keep calm.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘and I reminded them I’ve still got two other things he foisted on me, but—’

‘They weren’t interested.’

‘I don’t think it’s lack of interest,’ said Robin. ‘The terrorism threat’s at severe; I can see how a bit of A4 with a gorilla on it isn’t absolutely top priority. Anyway,’ she went on quickly, because she could tell Strike was struggling not to start laying down the law about security and protection, ‘I want to interview Hussein Mohamed.’

‘We’ve been through this. I don’t want you out on the street,’ said Strike, still struggling to keep his temper. ‘And I’d have thought last night proves—’

‘OK, fine,’ said Robin, ‘one of the others can interview Mohamed; I don’t care, I just want it done.’

‘Why?’

She took a deep breath.

‘All right, you might think this is crazy, but Martin told me last night about this man he knows who put his company logo on the weights in his home gym. He’s a businessman who’s got an obsession with Excalibur and he puts it on everything, apparently.’

‘You think Wright ordered custom weights?’ said Strike, with raised eyebrows.

‘We know Oz and Medina went back to Wright’s flat in the early hours for something even Oz could barely carry, right? You were the one who said it was probably the weights. Well, what if they had something on them, some personal – I don’t know, a motif, a personal slogan—?’

‘Custom weights would be a bloody extravagant purchase for a bloke who only had enough money to live in that shithole,’ said Strike.

‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘but they needn’t have been custom-made, exactly, they could have had – I don’t know, stickers on them, or something. Stickers Medina couldn’t scrape off, and even if she’d managed to do it, the traces might have pointed to something the killer wanted to hide, something that would have identified Wright. Or else the weights were a brand, or a colour, or something, that might have pointed to who Wright was. We know Mandy and Daz never went inside Wright’s room, but Mohamed might have done. I know it’s a really long shot, but Strike, I think we’re a long way ahead of the police. We’ve taken the possibility Wright wasn’t Knowles seriously much longer than they have. I just feel as though—’

There was a knock on the door and Pat entered, looking grumpy.

‘That was Plug’s uncle. He wants you to pretend the boy wasn’t there. Says it’s not his fault, his dad made him.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ exploded Strike, ‘we’ve already given statements to the police. What next? Does he want Shah to pretend he stabbed himself in the leg?’

‘That’s a “no”, then,’ said Pat, scowling, and she closed the door again.

Strike now lowered his voice.

‘Was she banging on about that bloody fish when you arrived?’

‘Travolta?’

‘What?’

‘It’s what she called it. I’ve just found out.’

‘The fuck’s she naming them for?’

‘People do that, with pets,’ said Robin, amused.

‘I knew it was going to be like this,’ said Strike in exasperation. ‘The look she gave me when I told her it had died, you’d think I’d fucking eaten it… where were we?’

‘Mohamed,’ said Robin. ‘Plus, I got this, late last night, from Chloe Griffiths. Look…’

She handed him her phone and Strike read:

Hi Chloe, this is Robin Ellacott. I’m sorry to contact you again, but I’ve got a few more questions and I think you’re the only person who can answer them. I do understand how difficult this is for you, and I wouldn’t disturb you again if I didn’t think it was important.

What questions?

I’ve spoken to Hugo’s father and he mentioned a big argument you had with Tyler and Anne-Marie about a bracelet.

So?

I’m just a bit confused about your and Tyler’s relationship.

Haven’t you got FUCKING EYES? Does that look like Tyler on my fucking Instagram?

I wasn’t suggesting Tyler’s interrailing with you.

To this, Chloe had made no reply.

‘Bit aggressive,’ said Strike, handing Robin’s phone back.

‘It is, isn’t it? I know she might just not want to be bothered with it—’

‘I don’t want to be fucking bothered with it,’ said Strike, running a hand over his unshaven face, ‘but Rena Liddell called me at seven o’clock this morning. She’s been discharged from hospital and claims she’s fine now she’s back on her clonazepam, though it hasn’t done much for her paranoia, being sectioned. She wants to meet me, but she’s scared “they’re listening in”. We’re going to meet at the Engineer in Camden, where she and Semple had a drink before he disappeared. Ralph Lawrence turning up again is a risk we’ll have to take.’

As Strike hadn’t shouted about Wade King, Robin thought she ought to exercise similar restraint, so rather than query the advisability of further antagonising MI5 she said,

‘So Rena’s the reason you want to keep investigating?’

‘No, I’d decided to carry on before she called. I came in here after I got back from the whole stabbing-and-hospital clusterfuck and I had… maybe not a revelation, but an idea, about the Gibsons delivery and the Oriental Centrepiece, and the more I think about it, the more I think I might be on to something. Blame Tom Waits.’

‘The singer?’ said Robin, confused.

‘Yeah. Listen to this.’

Strike pressed a button on his keyboard, and a tinkling piano began playing.

‘Wait for the chorus,’ said Strike.

‘I… don’t understand,’ said Robin.

‘Come round here,’ said Strike, beckoning her to his side of the desk, and he smelled her perfume again as she moved to look at the frozen footage from Ramsays’ internal camera on Strike’s monitor. While Tom Waits continued to sing, Strike pressed play.

Larry McGee entered the shop, dumped the crates, and left.

Wright took the first crate down to the basement.

The young blonde arrived and engaged Pamela’s attention.

Wright took the second crate down to the vault.

He took the third crate downstairs.

Todd entered the shop and helped Wright lift the largest crate downstairs.

Wright returned to the shop floor.

Todd was still in the basement. He remained there for nearly twenty minutes.

Todd reappeared.

The blonde left.

Pamela descended alone to the vault.

Pamela returned to the shop floor, holding items she then placed in a bag.

Wright left, carrying the bag.

Pamela received her text.

Pamela told Todd to stay.

Pamela received a call. She pointed Todd towards the door. He left the shop.

Wright and Todd returned, staggering under the weight of another large crate.

They carried it down to the vault.

Todd came back upstairs and handed Pamela her bag.

Pamela left.

Todd had his coughing fit.

Forty-four minutes passed.

Wright re-emerged from the basement.

He and Todd argued.

Todd left.

Strike pressed pause. Tom Waits continued to sing:

‘D’you see it?’ said Strike.

‘Nothing I haven’t seen every other time I’ve watched it,’ said Robin.

‘OK,’ said Strike, rewinding, and yet again he played the piece of footage in which Todd and Wright carried the largest crate of the original delivery towards the vault. Todd was moving very slowly, crabwise, and looked in risk of dropping it.

‘Are they acting, would you say?’ said Strike. ‘Pretending it’s a lot heavier than it is?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘It looks genuinely heavy.’

‘But the Oriental Centrepiece isn’t inside, is it? Because it’s gone to Bullen & Co. Now…’

Strike fast forwarded again and pressed play. Pamela came back upstairs from the vault, holding small items in her arms which she placed into a bag and handed to Wright, who left.

‘Pamela took off the lid of the big crate downstairs, right?’ Strike said to Robin. ‘And instead of the centrepiece, she saw the small items she’d bought for her own business.’

‘Right,’ said Robin.

‘Which she – a woman in her late fifties, with dodgy knees – managed to carry upstairs. So…?’

‘Why was the crate so heavy, going downstairs,’ said Robin, aghast. ‘Why didn’t I see that?’

‘Same reason I didn’t. Same reason Pamela didn’t twig, or Wright himself. Same reason people still fall for the three-cup scam,’ said Strike. ‘And then I started thinking about that footprint in the blood round the head, and the buggered blind, and that warped door behind the desk. Light would’ve been visible through the window if the killer had turned it on in the basement…

‘This doesn’t tell us why,’ said Strike, ‘and it doesn’t tell us who, but it does tell us something important about our killer. That vault was literally the only place where they’ve had a realistic chance of taking William Wright by surprise. Necessity. They had literally no other choice.’

114

Martin returned to Yorkshire after a second night at Robin’s. Carmen had accepted his apology after what seemed to have been a further twenty-four hours of mutual recriminations, delivered by phone. Robin had been given no option but to listen to Martin’s side of the arguments, and even to catch most of Carmen’s, so loudly did she scream. In between bouts of arguing with Carmen by phone, Martin had confided in Robin that Dirk slept only an hour at a time, that Carmen’s episiotomy scar continued to trouble her and that her nipples had bled so much that she’d had to give up breastfeeding. Robin hadn’t wanted these grisly details, but Martin seemed to gain some relief from telling her about them. Robin saw him leave with mixed feelings. His proper place was undoubtedly with his partner and baby, but she’d found his presence reassuring.

Robin continued to alternate between days in the office and at her flat, which, as she’d feared, had started to feel more like a cell. Unfortunately, unless Strike was at the office with her (she didn’t like admitting this to herself, but it was the truth) Denmark Street didn’t make her feel much safer. That was where the letter ‘G’ had been painted on the door, and Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road were noisy and busy, making her even jumpier.

When she woke on the twenty-second of March, Robin decided the day would be spent at her flat, because her business partner was tailing the allegedly unfaithful civil servant. Her front door was double-locked, her alarm on, and a dining room chair propped beneath the handle of the front door. She was trying not to feel envious of Midge, who was currently keeping watch for Hussein Mohamed in Forest Gate. Robin had given Midge a full briefing, telling her that she was especially interested in knowing whether Mohamed had ever seen weights inside Wright’s flat, but she wished she could have conducted the interview in person.

She’d made an appointment with the therapist Prudence had recommended, and while she couldn’t be seen for another three weeks, Robin felt, as she’d told Prudence, a certain comfort in knowing that she’d be accessing help. She hadn’t told anybody else about the appointment, not even Murphy. What that said about the state of her relationship, Robin didn’t want to ponder.

After finishing breakfast, Robin sent a new WhatsApp message to Chloe Griffiths, who’d gone silent after her last, angry outburst.

Chloe, I realise you don’t want to be questioned about this, but the police have found out Tyler was on the phone from Ironbridge to someone in London when Anne-Marie and Hugo crashed, so he can’t have had anything to do with it.

Slightly to Robin’s surprise, she received an answer within a few minutes.

So? I never said for sure he did it.

Robin typed,

So why do you think he left Ironbridge?

How do I know? responded Chloe immediately.

Mr Whitehead says you and Tyler were close.

He’s talking shit. I told you, Tyler’s a creep.

Your dad and Wynn Jones think Tyler went to work in a pub. Did Tyler ever mention that to you?

Yeah, once he said he was thinking of going to work in a pub somewhere else.

Can you remember where?

Wolverhampton, probably. He’d want to be near Molineux Stadium.

That’s where Wolves play, right?

Yes.

Sorry for being pedantic, Chloe, but when you first messaged me you told me Tyler ‘never wanted to live anywhere else before’.

This time, Chloe didn’t answer. Robin was about to put down her phone when it rang.

‘Where are you?’ said Murphy’s panicked voice.

‘At home, wh—?’

‘Thank Christ. There’s a terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge.’

‘Oh my God, what’s—?’

‘Some bloke deliberately ploughed his car into pedestrians. I’ve got to go, I just wanted to check you were out of the way.’

Murphy hung up. A wave of cold sweat passed down Robin’s body. Strike was in Westminster, tailing the civil servant. She called him. He didn’t pick up.

She sped to the television and turned on Sky News.

The terrorist’s car had mounted the pavement on the bridge and mown down pedestrians, one of whom had fallen over the balustrade into the Thames. He’d driven on, crashing into the perimeter fence of the Palace of Westminster, then fled on foot, armed with a knife, and stabbed an unarmed police officer.

Eyes fixed on the screen, Robin called Strike yet again. No answer.

‘Oh, please God, let him be OK,’ she whispered.

The driver of the car had been shot dead by armed police. The entire attack had spanned eighty-two seconds, but tens of broken and bloody humans had been harmed and possibly killed.

Robin’s mobile rang: Strike.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘had my mobile on mute to listen to her talking to a friend.’

‘Where are you?’ said Robin, who could hear sirens and good deal of shouting.

‘St Stephen’s Tavern.’

‘You were right by it!’ said Robin, who knew the pub; they’d been there together.

‘Yeah, and we’re not allowed to leave, there’s armed coppers everywhere,’ said Strike, who was having to raise his voice over the surrounding commotion. ‘I’ll keep you posted, but I’m fine.’

‘Great,’ said Robin faintly.

Her legs were trembling. When Strike had rung off, she dropped down onto her sofa, staring at the television. The act of wanton brutality had ratcheted up her feeling of ever-present danger.

Then an ugly thought flashed through her head. Would she have been as terrified and stricken if it had been Murphy who’d been in Westminster, Murphy whom she hadn’t been able to contact?

Of course I would, she told herself furiously. Of course.

115

As Strike drove towards Camden at seven o’clock that evening, he listened to the car radio. Four passers-by had been killed by the still-unidentified terrorist who’d ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. More than twenty had been injured, some seriously. A woman had been knocked over the balustrade into the Thames and was in a critical condition.

Strike hoped nobody he knew would ever find out what he’d felt and done when he’d heard the screams outside St Stephen’s Tavern, glimpsed armed police running and civilians fleeing, then heard the gunshot. Hours later, he remained mortified by the memory of his own instinctive, unthinking reaction.

Cold sweat had drenched his entire body and he’d limped as fast as he could towards the street, barging past panicking drinkers, as though he was still armed and wearing a bullet-proof vest, and had two whole legs, and it was on him, personally, to save London. A running policeman had bellowed at him to get the fuck back inside, and Strike’s reason had reasserted itself in a wave of shame; he retreated into the pub, a forty-two-year-old have-a-go hero…

But for a few seconds, the pub and the screams and the drinkers had blurred into non-existence: he’d been back on the yellow dirt road in Afghanistan, in the vehicle that was about to blow up, because he’d shouted ‘brake’ too late. Strike suspected his blood pressure had remained elevated for hours after the terror attack and wasn’t confident it was normal now.

He had no idea what effect the attack would have had on Rena Liddell, who deplored the influx of Islamists into Britain, and who’d made a half-hearted attempt to procure a gun, so she could shoot Muslims. He thought it likely that she wouldn’t turn up for their rendezvous at the Engineer at all. The effect of cataclysmic acts of violence on minds already unbalanced could, as Strike well knew, be catastrophic. He remembered the story told to him by an army medic friend, of a severely injured man who’d been in a state of paranoid psychosis, and appeared to believe he, personally, was causing buildings to blow up in Baghdad, even though he was lying in a hospital bed in Germany.

Strike parked his BMW in Gloucester Avenue, where the Engineer stood. The pub, he noted, was only a couple of hundred yards away from a bridge over Regent’s Canal. The sign over the pub’s door showed the top-hatted Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Upon entering Strike found a stylish gastropub. The bar was of highly polished wood, the walls were of scarlet and the clientele all looked well groomed. There was no woman with a face tattoo, either inside or in the beer garden. Resolved to make absolutely certain, he returned to the bar.

‘My name’s Cormoran Strike and I was supposed to be meeting someone here. Has any message been left for me? A young blonde woman.’

The young barman looked slightly amused, for which Strike couldn’t blame him. Who left messages to be passed on by human beings, in a world where mobile phones existed? Didn’t this aged idiot realise he’d been stood up? But an older woman behind the bar looked round at Strike’s words.

‘Has she got a tattoo on her face?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘It’s her,’ the barmaid told the barman. ‘That filthy one that started shouting.’

‘Oh,’ said the barman, clearly revising his opinion of Strike’s state of delusion, though apparently despising his taste.

‘I don’t think she’s very well,’ said Strike. ‘When was she here?’

‘Hour ago, something like that.’

‘Did she leave a message?’

‘No,’ said the barmaid. ‘She shouted something about a bridge, and then she left.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks.’

He left the pub for the street again. What would Rena have done after fleeing the Engineer? Hitchhiked out of London? He looked towards the bridge over the canal; no blonde stood there.

He walked on, and when he spotted steps to his left leading down from the street to Regent’s Canal, he descended them with no very clear idea why he was doing it, except that his own natural impulse when close to a body of water was to go and look at it, but also because he was wondering whether Rena might have gone this way.

He emerged on a stretch of footpath running parallel with the sludge-green, slow-moving canal, so that he was standing between two bridges, one made of brick, for cars and pedestrians, the other of iron, bearing train tracks.

The evening light was fading fast. Shadows from the trees splayed patches of deeper darkness over the sluggish water. A single swan glided slowly towards Strike, its small dark eyes knowing. He watched it drift beneath the iron bridge, its pure white turning dirty grey in the shade, and then he spotted a dark, huddled mass beneath the bridge that he thought might well be human.

A jogger passed Strike, scowling because Strike had forced him to deviate a foot from his self-determined course. He ran past what looked like a pile of rags without glancing at it. This was London: unless people were screaming their distress and belonged to a demographic likely to evoke sympathy, and sometimes not even then, their fellow city-dwellers were too busy to stop and too tired to care. Strike knew this from personal experience. He was too large, too male and too menacing-looking to raise protective impulses in the breasts of passers-by, as he was aware from the universal suspicion with which he’d been treated when he’d fallen and been unable to get up off a city pavement, on the occasion when his hamstring had packed up completely.

Strike approached the figure slowly. It was curled up in the foetal position, silent and unmoving, beside a bulging rucksack. The filthy hands resting on the top of the dirty blonde head were clutched there, covered in self-inked tattoos. It was small; definitely not male.

‘Rena?’ he said quietly.

She looked up. Even in the gloom of the sheltering bridge he could see her complexion was unhealthily pale and spotty. She had an ugly herpes sore on her lower lip, and a blurry tattoo of a tear beneath her right eye.

‘I’m Corm—’

From start to finish, that morning’s terror attack had lasted eighty-two seconds. This happened far faster, but Strike’s reaction was all the quicker for having so recently been near mass murder. He’d seized her thin wrist before his conscious mind knew he’d seen the muzzle of the gun, he pointed it upwards, his other hand prising it from her grasp; she screamed and beat him on the legs with her free fist, her voice echoing around the underbelly of the bridge.

He fended her off, trying not to be rougher than he had to be, his nostrils full of the smell of her; it was as though she hadn’t washed in months.

‘It’s me – Cormoran Strike – you wanted to meet me – fuck’s sake,’ he said, catching hold of the hand doing most of the punching, ‘it’s me, you’ve been calling me for weeks!’

The sense of his words seemed to have penetrated: she stopped fighting and he let go of her at once, not wanting to be accused of assault. He looked down at the gun to check whether it was loaded, and saw at once it was a replica, and an unconvincing one at that. Shoving it into his pocket, he held out a hand.

‘Get up. You’ll catch your death of cold, sitting under here. We can get some food.’

‘Fuck off,’ she said fiercely. ‘Ah’m stayin’ here.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah want tae. Ah’ve got people aftae me.’

As Strike knew for a fact that Rena was of interest to MI5, he couldn’t attribute the belief entirely to Gatesheadery.

‘Well, it’s good to finally meet you,’ he said.

She squinted up at him and he thought she seemed half-intrigued, half-suspicious.

‘Are ye really him, are ye? The detective?’

‘I am, yeah,’ said Strike.

‘They told me not tae speak tae ye.’

‘I know,’ said Strike. ‘They think I want to make trouble. I don’t. I’m just trying to find out what happened to Niall Semple.’

‘Ah thought you were tryna find mah brother?’

Shit.

He’d seen Rena’s tweet saying that she didn’t believe her brother, Ben, was dead, of course, but he’d hoped the truth might have sunk in over the succeeding two years. This situation, he knew, would require very careful handling, because he had no idea whether the brain-damaged Niall Semple had fed her false hope that her brother was still alive.

‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ he said, in what was supposed to be an encouraging tone.

‘Naw,’ she said again, still squinting up at him in the semi-darkness, and then, ‘ye were army, weren’tcha? Ah seen online.’

‘I was in the army, yeah,’ said Strike.

‘Ah dunnae believe in armies, Ah dunnae think we should even fuckin’ have them, Ah seen what goes on.’

Long exposure to people in the grip of addictions and mental health issues during Strike’s childhood had taught him that unless you enjoyed rapidly escalating conflict and ugly scenes, calm agreement, wherever possible, was the best policy.

‘Yeah, bad stuff goes on,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we just walk a bit?’

Rena ignored this suggestion. Her blonde hair was in dreadlocks and Strike wouldn’t have been surprised to see insects crawling in it. He didn’t blame her for the physical state she was in, but he wondered what the psychiatric facility had been doing, letting her go, however convenient it was to him that they’d done so.

‘Ah think it was here he meant,’ said Rena, gesturing at the bridge.

‘Who, Niall?’

‘Aye. He said he’d left stuff for me. More stuff. Mebbe hid behind the bricks?’ she said, looking vaguely upwards.

‘Yeah, you told me he gave you something when you met,’ said Strike. ‘What was it?’

‘Ah’m not givin’ it tae ye,’ she said, seized with suspicion again.

‘I’m not after it,’ Strike assured her. ‘I was just interested, because you told me about it.’

‘Ah nivver.’

‘Must’ve imagined that, then,’ he said placatingly. ‘Come on, let’s walk a bit. We can come back here. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Ye’re not workin’ fer the fuckin’ security service fuckers now, are ye?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘They aren’t happy with me. They don’t want me meeting you.’

‘Aye, Ah know tha’,’ she said. ‘’Cause o’ what Ah might say.’

‘It’s getting cold. Why don’t we walk a bit?’

She picked disconsolately at her thumbnail for a moment or two, then said,

‘Aye, all righ’.’

She got up and hauled up her rucksack, too.

‘D’you want me to carry that?’ Strike asked as she swung it over her shoulders.

‘Naw… ye’ve only go’ one leg, have ye?’

‘One and a half,’ said Strike, and he raised his right trouser leg to show Rena the metal rod that served as his ankle.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Have ye got any fags?’

‘No,’ said Strike, as they set off along the canal bank. ‘I’m vaping these days.’

‘Whut’re they like, them things?’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Not as good as smoking.’

‘Huh,’ said Rena, in what seemed to be mild amusement.

‘Did you meet Niall in the Engineer?’ Strike asked.

‘Aye.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘He jus’ told me he was off tae make up fur Ben. Find him.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘Aye. Tha’s why them fuckers dunnae want me tae talk. They left mah bruther over there wi’ no way o’ gettin’ back an’ they don’ wan’ annyone to know it.’

Night was falling rapidly now. Strike wasn’t finding the towpath particularly easy on his right leg.

‘Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?’ he asked.

She looked sideways at him through the gloaming.

‘Aye, all righ’.’ she said.

She seemed to have left her hostility beneath the shadowy bridge, a state of affairs Strike hoped would last. They returned to the steps down which he’d descended and climbed up to the street together, Strike’s knee and hamstring aching, then entered the Engineer.

He thought he saw misgivings on the face of the bar staff when he entered with the very smelly and dirty Rena, but nobody prevented the pair taking a table beside the window in the red-walled room, although a middle-aged couple wrinkled their noses ostentatiously as Rena passed them.

‘Ah cannae remember anything before Ah was six,’ Rena announced once seated, apropos of nothing.

‘Really?’ said Strike. He had long experience of random, disconnected statements from the mentally fragile.

‘Aye,’ said Rena, picking at her fingers again. ‘Tha’s when our parents died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Strike. ‘How did they die?’

‘In an earthquake, in Turkey, when they wuz on holiday. Izmit. ’Cept Ah dunnae think they were mah real parents. Ah can remember a blonde woman, an’ the woman that died wuz dark.’

Strike wondered whether the earthquake story was true. Repeated traumatic losses might well account for Rena’s mental problems, but he was also reminded of a woman he hadn’t thought about in years, whom he’d met as a child in one of the grimmer squats to which his mother had dragged him and Lucy. She’d had broken teeth and a manic glare, and had told anyone who’d listen she was the illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret and her first paramour, Peter Townsend, that she could prove it with times, dates and her earliest memories, which included a woman in a tiara sobbing over her crib.

They both ordered a drink, Rena requesting a pint of beer.

‘See,’ said Rena, once again without prompting, and ignoring the menu the barmaid had set in front of her, ‘he give me this.’

She groped under her layers of dirty clothing and freed a silver necklace. It bore an odd pendant: a chequerboard square.

‘Niall gave that to you, did he?’ said Strike, eyeing the thing.

‘Aye. He said it wuz magic,’ said Rena. ‘Fur protection. He give it me when we met. An’ he wuz gonnae give me more. He told me. At the bridge.’

‘He was going to give you more silver jewellery?’

‘Aye, yeah, Ah think so. He’s hid it, at the bridge.’

‘At the bridge where I met you?’

‘Aye, Ah think so. Or maybe the one next tae it. Ah dunno.’

‘Did Niall have a briefcase with him when he met you?’

‘Aye,’ said Rena, ‘an’ it was really heavy. Ah think there was more in there.’

‘More silver?’

‘Aye.’

Rena’s beer arrived and she gulped half of it down with relish. Strike wondered how well lager mixed with clonazepam, the drug she’d told him she was on.

‘So Niall told you he was off to get Ben, when he met you?’

‘Aye,’ she said, with a sudden resurgence of anger, ‘’cause no other fucker’s gonnae get him, are they?’

‘Did you and Ben grow up together, after your parents died?’

‘Naw. Ah hadtae go an’ live with mah gran an’ he wen’ with our uncle. Our uncle isnae married, an’ Ben was older. He didnae wanna little girl.’

Strike was reminded immediately of his mother, and her forcible separation from Ted at the age of two. Would Leda’s life have been better had she been able to remain with her brother? Would Rena’s?

‘Ah think he’s mah brother,’ said Rena restlessly. ‘Ah think he is.’

‘Where were you living, when Niall got in touch with you last year?’ asked Strike. ‘Still with your grandmother?’

He judged her to be in her mid to late twenties, although it was hard to be sure. She might be younger than her lined and hollow face suggested.

‘Naw,’ said Rena, ‘she’s long gone. Ah wiz in a Place.’

The inflection on the word suggested Rena might have been in a psychiatric facility, or perhaps a drug dependency unit.

‘Did Niall tell you how he knew where you were?’

‘Ah think Ben mighta told him,’ said Rena vaguely.

‘So you and Ben kept in touch?’

‘Sometimes. He told me,’ she said, with sudden animation, ‘aboot a battle on mah birthday, nineteenth July, an’ they wouldnae give this big guy who got killed, who was, like, really fuckin’ brave, an’ he wasnae from Britain, he wiz from Fuji or somewhere, Ah dunnaw where, an’ they never give him a proper medal ’cause nobody was s’posed tae know they were there, so that’s the kind of fuckin’ shit they get up tae in the army.’

‘Talaiasi Labalaba,’ said Strike. ‘Battle of Mirbat.’

‘How d’ye know that?’ asked Rena, half-excited, half-unnerved.

‘There’s a statue of him at the SAS base in Hereford,’ said Strike.

He’d just remembered why the username ‘Austin H’ had put the word ‘Fuzz’ into his mind, back in the Goring Bar with Robin. He’d seen it on Truth About Freemasons:

Pretty sure Austin ‘Fuzz’ Hussey (also SAS, Battle of Mirbat) was a mason.

116

Robin was at home, alone. Night had fallen, her curtains were closed, her door double-locked, her alarm on, and the dining room chair was still propped beneath the handle of the front door. The television news was muted and she’d turned on subtitles to find out more about the Westminster Bridge attack. The dead terrorist hadn’t been named, but his physical description suggested he might be a Muslim. She knew it wasn’t doing her anxiety much good, staring at pictures of the carnage, but she didn’t seem able to look away.

Her phone rang, making her jump.

‘Hi,’ said Midge, who sounded triumphant. ‘Got what you wanted off Hussein Mohamed. Poor bastard came home from work early. “It’s a bad day to be a Muslim driving a car in London.” I’m going to send you the audio file now, so you can hear it for yourself.’

‘The weights?’ said Robin, with a surge of anticipation. ‘Did he mention—?’

‘Just listen to it,’ said Midge, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘You won’t be disappointed. Start seven minutes in.’

So Robin hung up and did as she was told, opening the audio file and turning the volume on her phone up to maximum.

‘… don’t recognise any of these photos?’

‘The hall was so dark, you see,’ said a male voice with a Syrian accent. ‘We never saw him very clearly, and with the beard and the glasses…’

‘But you spoke to him?’

‘Me personally, only a couple of times. The first time, he’d offered to help us with Hafsa’s wheelchair. It was difficult, living on the top floor. We said we’d manage – anything to get out of the detention centre. We invited him inside for coffee, but he said he had things to do… he definitely wasn’t the thief?’

‘No,’ said Midge. ‘Why?’

‘Because it seemed to make sense of some things, if he was a thief. He didn’t ever want us to see inside his room. He would wait till we’d gone past, to open the door, even.’

‘He told you his girlfriend was expecting a baby, didn’t he?’

‘Not me, he told my wife one day, when I was out and he was helping her with Hafsa again. He said he hoped for a little girl. She said to him, “most men want a son”. He told her men cause most of the trouble in the world, and he didn’t want to add another one… My wife asked why his girlfriend wasn’t with him, if she was expecting his baby, and he said she’d be arriving soon. He said her family disapproved of him, so it was difficult. We thought, after he was killed, maybe the girlfriend’s family had something to do with it – but maybe that was all a lie, what he told her.’

‘Did you ever speak to him again?’

‘One time only.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Lions,’ said Mohamed.

‘Lions?’

‘Yes. My wife and I and Hafsa had been out all day. We were expecting a parcel. The man on the bottom floor said he’d seen William taking boxes up to his flat. I wondered whether he was keeping ours for us, so I knocked on his door. He took a while to answer the door. He’d drawn the curtains and there was only a lamp on, so it was dark and he’d done something strange. He’d thrown a sheet over his weights but it slid off while I was standing there. He went and threw it back over them. I could tell he didn’t want me to see them – at the time, I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand it. But if he’d stolen them, that made sense. Maybe they came from a house he’d burgled?’

‘Can you remember anything about the weights?’ asked Midge, while Robin’s heart rate accelerated almost painfully.

‘Yes, they were yellow, with the face of a black lion on them, or maybe a lioness, drawn like a cartoon. I only saw them for a second. He looked at me strangely when he’d covered them again. Guilty, you know? But he knew I’d seen, so I said – to show I didn’t care, to be friendly – “ah, the lion is my lucky animal. Hafsa’s name means lioness cub”. I told him that. And he smiled and said “but don’t they call al-Assad the lion of Syria?” which is true, and not something everyone knows, so I said, “but that’s not the fault of lions” and he laughed. He gave me my package, and that was all – no,’ said Mohammed, ‘not all. There was a suit and he was ironing it. He told me he was starting a new job on the Monday. He seemed pleased about it.’

‘Did you tell the police about the yellow weights you saw in Wright’s room?’

‘No. They’ll have seen them for themselves, won’t they, when they went in there?’

‘Did you know two people – a man and a woman – went into William’s flat twice, before and after his murder, and removed things?’

‘I heard they’d been there, but not that they took anything. The woman on the ground floor asked me if I’d seen them, but I hadn’t. They stole, you say? They robbed the flat?’

‘Yeah, we think so. Can you remember anything else William said to you or your wife? Like friends, co-workers, anyone else he knew in London?’

‘No… except, he told us about a foodbank in… Stone Road, I think it was.’

‘Had Wright used it?’

‘I think so. He told us he didn’t have much money.’

‘Stone Road, yeah?’

‘Yes. My wife and I went there a few times, after he told us.’

Robin texted her gratitude to Midge, then noticed she’d received a WhatsApp response from Chloe Griffiths.

No I don’t know why Tyler left, he was hardly talking to me before I went interrailing and my boyfriend was getting angry if I even said hello to him in the street after he gave me that crappy birth flower bracelet thing. Why are you still pestering me? I DON’T KNOW WHERE TYLER POWELL IS AND I DON’T FUCKING CARE.

Robin sent a fresh WhatsApp message.

Out of interest, where were you, the night that Hugo and Anne-Marie crashed?

She had a hunch that Chloe might want to do some thinking before she answered that one.

Robin now looked up Stone Road in Newham, where William Wright had visited a foodbank. They needed just one person who hadn’t been drunk, drugged, or suffering visual problems when viewing Wright by daylight; just one, who’d look at a photograph and say, with conviction, it was him…

Mohamed had, understandably, mistaken the name of the street where the foodbank was situated: it was ‘Strone’, not Stone. Robin made a note of this, remembering as she did so Wynn Jones’ smug correction of herself: on Wellsey Road – Wesley Road…

Words that were easily mistaken for each other… things that looked as you expected them to look. A sheaf of corn, or a tree. A black lion on a yellow background…

Names… William Wright was a wholesale manufacturer of catering silverware, or an eighteenth-century Scottish botanist, or a famous English football player, or a Freemason who’d drowned in the First World War… the meaning of names…

Struck by a random idea, Robin looked up the meaning of a name on Google.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

With shaking hands, she opened Instagram yet again. She had to be sure, before she contacted Strike. She must be absolutely certain.

An hour passed, and for the first time since she’d been attacked outside the Whiteheads’ house, Robin forgot her fear. She neither jumped at small night-time noises, nor did she get up from her table to re-check that the door was locked. It didn’t occur to her to cross to the window to stare down into Blackhorse Road, in case Wade King was watching her windows. All she cared about was proving the shocking theory that had leapt out at her, from the meaning of a name.

At last, she reached for the mobile beside her and called her partner’s number.

Strike answered almost immediately.

‘Where are you?’ asked Robin.

‘Just left Rena Liddell in a Travelodge,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve paid for her to stay there a couple of nights. How’re you?’

‘Strike, I think I’ve got something important – really important.’

‘Funnily enough,’ said Strike, who was limping towards to his BMW, ‘so have I.’