The Hallmarked Man

124

Eleven days after Ian Griffiths and friends had been taken into custody, and Strike and Sapphire Neagle had been driven by ambulance to the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, Strike donned his only black suit in his attic flat, and drove, again, to Hereford.

He and Robin had been planning to tidy away the last fragment of the silver vault case that very day, but then Jade Semple had called the office and issued Strike with a personal invitation to her husband’s funeral. Semple’s decayed and waterlogged corpse had been found, as Strike had guessed, at the bottom of Regent’s Canal, beneath the railway bridge, weighted to the bed by a briefcase full of bricks to which the body’s wrist remained handcuffed.

‘Think I should go,’ he’d told Robin, though with some regret. He’d fancied another trip with her, even if he’d lost all hope of capitalising on beautiful scenery to derail her impending engagement. ‘You’ve earned the last bit, you can do it alone.’

Strike had no worries about Robin’s safety today. Even if Griffiths had trafficking associates in Italy, there’d be no point attacking Robin now that multiple computers and phones were being examined by forensic experts, and a network spanning across the continent was being slowly and methodically revealed. The full scale of the story hadn’t yet seeped into the press. No journalist knew of the connection between the murdered man at Ramsay Silver and the trafficking ring. All that had been reported was that a missing girl had been found at a house in Ironbridge and, a few days later (which had reached several newspaper front pages), that the body of a second young woman had been recovered under the lumpy concrete floor of Griffiths’ homemade basement. The corpse hadn’t yet been identified, although the agency’s Met contact, George Layborn, had confidentially revealed to Strike that the body was that of a young, pregnant female.

The detective agency’s involvement in Griffiths’ arrest was, so far, unknown to the papers, which Strike imagined suited the police as well as it did him. Nobody had made much of a fuss about skeleton keys this time; nobody close to the case seemed to feel unnecessary force had been used against Griffiths and his fellow rapists. Strike’s almost severed ear had helped there, of course. There also seemed tacit agreement that as long as the agency stepped quietly aside, allowing the police to talk blandly of ‘sources’ and ‘tips’, and take credit for busting the trafficking ring, any unorthodox or indeed illegal acts committed by Strike, Wardle and Barclay, up to and including several physical assaults, could be overlooked.

Meanwhile, Robertson’s scoop on Lord Oliver Branfoot had been published in the Sunday Telegraph (‘fuckin’ lawyers near enough took a fuckin’ stool sample off me’, as the journalist had informed Strike by phone) and for the previous forty-eight hours, it had appeared there was little other news in the United Kingdom, even including the body found under Griffiths’s basement floor. Danny de Leon had cut himself a lucrative tell-all deal with the Sun; Branfoot’s wife and sons had been followed down the street by shouting reporters, until one young Branfoot took a swing at a cameraman, missed and hit a female journalist in the jaw; the regular host of the quiz show on which Branfoot had made a dozen appearances had issued a ‘shocked and disgusted’ statement; Branfoot himself, who was rumoured to have hired the most expensive PR agency in London, had disappeared from public view, though he’d issued a statement that neither confirmed nor denied anything, but did so in a tone of dignified injury; Craig Wheaton appeared to have vanished off the face of the earth; and several young women who’d unknowingly been caught on film in Black Prince Road had banded together to hire none other than Andrew Honbold QC.

It was of this furore that Strike found himself thinking as he stood in the weak April sunlight, standing respectfully at the back of the crowd surrounding the grave into which Niall Scott Semple’s earthly remains would be lowered. The churchyard of St Martin’s already had its fair share of SAS graves, all with almost identical headstones of pale stone, engraved with the regiment’s winged dagger badge.

Strike had been more affected by the discovery of Semple’s body than he’d expected or admitted, even to Robin. Compared to the sensation made by Branfoot’s wrongdoings, and the discovery of Jolanda’s body under the concrete floor, Semple’s suicide had occasioned hardly a ripple in the press. The unspoken consensus appeared to be that his death was sad, but the sort of thing you’d expect to happen to a brain-damaged soldier, and then the public moved on, preferring to gloat over Lord Branfoot’s gaudy, dirty excesses. To Strike, though, there was something in this ending in murky water, the body lying there unseen and unnoticed, that tugged brutally at the gut, something beyond grief. At least part of the reason he was here, rather than travelling to Italy with Robin, was that he’d seen comments beneath the few, scattered news reports of Semple’s death that had angered him: token expressions of regret followed by lengthy diatribes about Britain’s foreign policy, and the role the army played in colonial and oppressive enterprises. None of them seemed to wonder whether Semple and his ilk had risked their lives so that more civilians, maybe even themselves or their families, might not be run down by a murderous extremist while crossing a bridge.

Such thoughts were distracting Strike from the vicar’s words, though not the throbbing in his left ear. He’d needed microsurgery to reattach it, because it had been almost completely cut off. He had a dim memory of someone saying he might lose the whole thing, and a slightly clearer memory of laughing when a nurse suggested he could still have cosmetic surgery, if he was worried about the appearance.

This wasn’t the first time Strike had turned up at a church service injured, but even so, he felt his ear bandage was unreasonably conspicuous. The bruising to his face – nobody had been swift enough to catch him when he’d fainted in Griffiths’ sitting room, meaning he’d slammed face first into the floor – hadn’t yet faded completely, either, which added to the impression of a man who’d decided to participate in a cage fight before driving on to the funeral.

The vicar concluded his remarks. Strike was tall enough to see the coffin being lowered, even though three rows of people stood between him and the grave. Jade was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief, flanked by her twin and her mother.

At last, the committal was over. Strike had just set off back to his car when his phone rang. He’d hoped it would be Robin, but it was Wardle. As Strike knew Wardle to be in contact with Iverson, the redhead on the murder investigation team, he took the call.

‘They’ve found the Wolves weights,’ said Wardle without preamble. ‘And a pair of human hands.’

‘Petts Wood?’

‘Yeah, yesterday evening. They’re still searching.’

An enormous wave of relief washed over Strike at this news. Even as he’d been driving along towards Hereford this morning he’d been plagued with doubts about whether Tyler Powell would be identified, and Griffiths’ hand in his death proven.

‘Sapphire’s talking,’ said Wardle, ‘a lot. Griffiths picked her up in London, kept her in a shitty room with two other underage girls, regularly visited by Wade King, Todd and assorted others, then moved her north to Ironbridge, where the shit-heels we met took turns.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike in disgust. ‘Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know whether Griffiths forced her to impersonate a couple of young women over the phone, would you?’

‘He did, yeah,’ said Wardle, who sounded surprised. ‘How did you—?’

‘Robin realised. She got calls from two girls, a supposed great-niece of Dilys Powell’s, and a girl called Zeta we never traced. Both times they were feeding her misinformation about Tyler Powell and trying to find out what we knew. One of those times, the girl got local names wrong.’

‘Ah,’ said Wardle. ‘Well, they’ve found about six different burner phones so far in Griffiths’ house, plus a curly wig and a ruby necklace hidden in a case on top of a wardrobe.’

‘Jesus, Iverson’s not shy about sharing information, is she?’ said Strike, surprised. ‘I’d’ve thought she’d have kept her mouth shut after the way they went after Murphy for helping us.’

‘She, ah… we had a drink last night,’ said Wardle, with a tone of embarrassed constraint that told Strike all he needed to know. Susan Iverson, he guessed, was in the same mood he’d been when he’d accepted Bijou Watkins’ suggestion of a drink over a year previously: in search of ego-salving distraction, her hopes of Murphy irrevocably dashed. Possibly, Strike thought, with a sagging of his spirits, the rebound onto Wardle meant Robin and Murphy were now, at last, definitely engaged. Instead of saying any of this, he asked,

‘Any ID on the body under the floor yet? Anyone contacted Belgium for Jolanda’s DNA?’

‘They’re doing it today, apparently. Oh, and that real music producer bloke, Osgood? They’ve retrieved his deleted emails.’

‘And?’

‘A cousin of Sofia Medina’s contacted him from Spain. Medina had told the girl she and her music producer boyfriend were going to play a joke on someone who’d double-crossed him.’

‘Did said trick involve him hiding a load of silver and robbing a shitty flat?’

‘Apparently,’ said Wardle.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike again.

‘I hear Quincy Jones is never happier than when breaking into silver shops,’ said Wardle, and, glum though he felt, Strike laughed. It was the first time in a long time he’d heard Wardle make anything close to a joke. Sex definitely cheered a man up… perhaps Strike, like Wardle, should start cutting his losses…

Call ended, he continued towards his BMW until a loud, husky voice called him by name. Turning, he saw Jade Semple, whose hand he’d briefly pressed as he headed into the church.

‘Will you come to the reception?’ she said breathlessly.

‘Yeah, of course,’ said Strike, though he’d far rather not have done.

So he drove to the hotel and joined the mourners flocking like morose crows in a large function room decorated in blue, where there were many circular tables but nowhere near enough chairs. A buffet was laid out along the length of one wall, but nobody was yet eating. Deciding the chairs should be left for the elderly and immediate family, feeling self-conscious and conspicuous because of his bandaged ear and slightly regretting not having brought painkillers with him, Strike bought himself a low-alcohol beer and headed towards an exterior smoking area, spotting the distinguished-looking Ralph Lawrence in the distance as he did so. The latter gave Strike a slight nod which the detective reciprocated: a gesture appropriate both for their degree of acquaintanceship, and the mixture of dislike and respect Strike suspected both felt for each other.

Once outside, having a good pretext and unable to resist the impulse, Strike called Robin.

‘Hi,’ he said, when she answered. ‘Where are you?’

‘In the back of a taxi,’ said Robin. ‘I should be at the hotel in ten minutes.’

She was currently travelling along a road in Sardinia fringed with palm trees, beneath a clear blue sky. As she’d flown into the capital, Cagliari, she’d felt as though she’d entered the Raoul Dufy print over her mantelpiece: glittering sea, pastel-coloured houses, hot sun on her skin. She knew her interlude on the island would be very short, which made the beauty of the place and the glorious weather bittersweet. At best, this was only a temporary reprieve from the myriad problems that remained behind her in gloomy grey London: she felt strangely as she had in the hospital, after her ectopic pregnancy; the same sense of unreality seemed to lie over everything.

‘Is the funeral over?’ she asked.

‘Just finished,’ said Strike. ‘Jade wanted me to come to the wake. I’m calling because Wardle just got an update from the murder investigation team.’

‘They’re still talking to us?’ said Robin, in surprise.

‘One of them is,’ said Strike, choosing not to give details. ‘Anyway…’

Robin’s reaction, when Strike had finished passing on Iverson’s information, wasn’t as celebratory as her partner had expected.

‘If I’d only twigged sooner,’ Robin sighed, staring out at the glittering sea to her left. ‘If I’d realised the same girl was calling me…’

‘Easy mistake,’ said Strike.

‘No, I should have known there was something up,’ said Robin. ‘She said the “Jockey & Horse” instead of the “Horse & Jockey,” “Wellsey Road” instead of “Wesley”. And I remembered something else last night: the first time she called me, I heard someone writing – it’ll have been Griffiths, telling her what to say, won’t it?’

‘Probably,’ said Strike.

‘I should have known,’ repeated Robin.

‘But Griffiths is completely fucked,’ said Strike.

‘I know, and I’m glad,’ said Robin, ‘but I can’t stop thinking about Jolanda. What a terrible, terrible life. Abducted by your mother’s killer. Forced to play a part for ever. And then, just as you think you might actually be able to break free… and there’s Tyler, too… I feel as though we’d sort of got to know him, by the end, without realising it. I think he was a genuinely good person.’

‘Me too,’ said Strike. ‘Maybe not book smart, but he was interested enough in the outside world to know Assad’s called the Lion of Syria, and he was a grafter, and he was prepared to run all kinds of risks to get the girl away from Griffiths.’

‘I suppose, as Jolanda got older, Griffiths couldn’t keep her entirely hidden. He had to let her go to school if he wanted to live in the UK.’

‘He was probably counting on the fact that she was too scared of him ever to tell anyone the truth. She’ll have been bloody useful in drawing in other young women, too. It’s a good pose, devoted single father, widowed young… but he got her pregnant. Hard to explain.’

‘You think it was his baby? Not Tyler’s?’

‘I suppose we’ll find out in due course, but yeah, I suspect it was his, and Tyler was prepared to help her raise it.’

Strike had asked himself whether he would have been as generous as Tyler Powell in this regard, without reaching a conclusion.

‘Strike, I’m going to have to go, I think I can see the hotel,’ said Robin.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll speak to you when you get back.’

He felt he ought not to remain outside, vaping, while the mourners thronged the function room, but as he turned to re-enter the hotel, he saw Ralph Lawrence exiting it. Strike suspected he’d been watching for the detective to end his call and waited, more in curiosity than concern, to hear what Lawrence wanted to say to him this time.

‘How are you?’ asked the man that Strike was now, reluctantly, prepared to concede was probably MI5.

‘Fine,’ said Strike. ‘You?’

‘You did a remarkable thing, finding him.’

‘Lucky guess,’ said Strike indifferently.

‘D’you know why he killed himself that way?’

‘I’ve got a suspicion,’ said Strike. When Lawrence looked quizzical, Strike said,

‘I saw a Daesh video on the dark net. Hooded guy chained to a barbell and chucked off a bridge. It occurred to me that that might have been Ben Liddell.’

Lawrence glanced over his shoulder at the function room, which was still filling with black-clad people, then said in a low voice:

‘Four men from E Squadron were smuggled into a territory British forces aren’t known to be operating in. The aim was to make contact with an anti-Islamic State group and provide them with state-of-the-art comms.

‘The mission went balls up. They were in a small plane, got hit by an anti-aircraft missile. Pilot died instantly, plane was on fire and nosediving; they had to bail at low altitude. Two Regiment guys died on impact with the ground, Semple was seriously injured and barely conscious, but was dragged to cover by Liddell.

‘They had a radio and enough ammo to hold off anyone trying to find them for a few hours, but it was touch and go whether help was going to arrive before they were captured or killed. When the rescue party arrived, they found Semple alone. Liddell had left the shelter to try and get water for Semple. He never came back.

‘MI6 passed the details to us when Semple went missing. They’d found the execution video you watched, but Islamic State don’t seem to have realised the man they caught was SAS, otherwise they’d have made a far bigger deal of it. Liddell will have known the top priority was not to admit to being Regiment. His Arabic was good. God only knows who or what he pretended to be.

‘We wiped every trace of the damn video from the surface net and, as you’ll have seen, Liddell isn’t recognisable on it. Our concern, all along, has been stopping Niall Semple broadcasting his addled version of the mission to the world. When he came out of his coma he was angry and disorientated. Pre-injury, he’d been entrusted with some very sensitive information. This is a brave new world, Mr Strike: in the old days, we were trying to stop journalists getting hold of classified information, but these days, with social media, all Semple needed was an internet connection, and people working under deep cover would have been put at immediate risk.’

‘Does Rena Liddell know how her brother died?’

‘Semple might’ve told her, but she’s still not prepared to believe her brother’s dead. You were right regarding my concerns about her. I wasn’t just worried that Semple might have told her a garbled version of what happened on the mission, I was afraid that he’d shared information we most certainly wouldn’t want in the hands of an erratic woman with mental health problems.’

‘So what are you going to do, shove her away in another mental health facility?’

‘Little though you may believe me,’ said Lawrence coolly, ‘I do believe in civil liberties – but sometimes national security requires measures that might infringe some dreamer’s ideal rule of justice.’

‘How old’s your grandmother?’ asked Strike, and Lawrence looked startled.

‘What?’

‘You’ve just quoted Albert Pike,’ said Strike. ‘There’s a passage in Morals and Dogma about the general who cuts away a bridge to save the main body of his army, even if it means he sacrifices a battalion. Such actions aren’t unjust, Pike says, but “may infringe some dreamer’s ideal rule of justice”.’

‘Ah,’ said Lawrence. ‘How old’s your grandmother?’

‘They’re both dead,’ said Strike.

Through the glass door leading back into the function he saw the stirring of the crowd that meant the family had arrived: Jade, in her black dress and coat, her twin beside her, holding her hand.

‘We should—’

‘Yes,’ said Lawrence, and side by side, they returned inside.

Strike had just taken up a standing position on the edge of the room when he spotted Jade wending her way towards him.

‘Fanks for coming back,’ she said.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Strike told her formally.

He could tell Jade was, again, on the verge of tears, but he didn’t begrudge her that today. No doubt she was feeling as he had at Ted’s funeral, as though an invisible paving stone was weighing on her chest.

‘You met ’er, d’in’ you?’

‘Rena Liddell? Yes,’ said Strike, and he realised by her tone of voice that she still had her suspicions about her husband’s precise relationship with his late friend’s sister. ‘They weren’t… there was nothing romantic there. He just wanted to make contact with her and give her that silver necklace thing.’

‘That shoulda been mine, though,’ wailed Jade, bursting into tears.

Heads turned. Some of the expressions were accusatory: Strike was upsetting the widow.

‘Shall we go outside for a moment?’ said Strike, who didn’t fancy putting on a miserable floor show for the mourners, and he led Jade back into the smoking area. She collapsed into a wooden chair and he sat down beside her while she sobbed. At last, she plunged a hand into her black handbag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

‘Not vaping any more?’ Strike asked, watching enviously as she lit up.

‘I’ll probably go back to it,’ said Jade, taking a deep drag of her Marlboro and blowing the smoke at the sky, ‘but I’m allowed a fuckin’ cigarette today, i’n I?’

‘Definitely,’ said Strike.

‘That silver necklace was Niall’s mum’s. ’Is dad bought it years ago, in Oman. Why’d ’e give it to Rena, not me?’

‘I think,’ said Strike, ‘to make up for something. Guilt, that he survived when her brother didn’t? And he thought it was protective.’

‘So why’d ’e wanna protect ’er, not me?’ insisted Jade, mascara streaking her face as she wept.

‘Because he knew she was in trouble and had no family, now that Ben was dead?’ suggested Strike.

Jade wept, her cigarette burned slowly downwards, and Strike wished he could take it from her and finish it. At last, Jade said,

‘You know that code, on the briefcase ’e filled wiv bricks? Know what it was?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘My due date, for the baby I lost. So… so it must’ve meant somefing to ’im, mustn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘It must… there were only bricks inside the briefcase, I heard?’

‘Bricks an’ stuff ’e’d written, all wrapped up in polyfene, but they told me nobody could read it. Waterlogged. I dunno if that’s true… maybe it was a le’er to me?’

‘Maybe,’ said Strike.

He personally would have bet that Semple had written what he’d believed to be the truth about his E Squadron mission, whatever that had been. He saw no other reason for him to leave hints behind him as to where he and his information could be found, or for its suppression, waterlogged or not.

‘Sometimes you wan’ someone so bad, even when you know it’s wrong an’ it’s not gonna work, but you still wan’ ’em, y’know?’ said Jade, in a choked voice.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, and Charlotte smiled sardonically in his mind’s eye.

‘We weren’ no good for each ovver, but we still wan’ed it. Couldn’ get out of it. We wasn’ compa’ible, I know what ev’ryone said, an’ fine, they was righ’, but we did – I did love ’im,’ she whispered. ‘I really did. I always fel’ like I couldn’ get at ’im. Like, if I could just get into ’im… but I couldn’.’

Strike thought of the belief he’d long ago abandoned, that he could somehow tinker with Charlotte, and fix her, and make her whole and happy.

‘You all right, babe?’ said a wary voice behind them.

The man with the ginger moustache Strike had glimpsed in Crieff had come to collect Jade.

‘Yeah,’ she croaked, getting to her feet again. ‘’M fine… see ya,’ she said to Strike, and Ginger Moustache led her away, with a suspicious glance back at the large man with the bandaged ear.

Strike watched as Jade was absorbed by the crowd. This time, he didn’t return to the function room. Once certain that nobody was looking at him through the glass door, he returned to his car.

125

The Hotel Serenità was even more beautiful in reality than on Instagram: a large building of weathered yellow stone, which had once been a country estate. Having paid the driver, Robin crossed the air-conditioned lobby with an assumed air of confidence, heading straight through it to an exterior area where she could see a few people enjoying lunch. She intended to order a meal, and then start making enquiries of the staff.

But that wasn’t necessary. Robin had barely been seated for two minutes when a round-faced, short-necked young man whose blond hair had been bleached nearly white in the Sardinian sun appeared, to offer her a menu written in English, and enquire whether he could get her a drink before she ordered.

‘Rupert,’ said Robin. Even though she’d expected him to be here, his sudden physical materialisation had come as a shock.

Fleetwood’s round face became suddenly slack with what Robin guessed was the culmination of months of dread.

‘My name’s Robin Ellacott,’ she said. ‘I’m a private—’

‘I know who you are,’ he said, in his deep, bass voice. ‘Oh Christ – she’s not here, is she?’

‘Decima?’ said Robin. ‘No, she’s in the UK.’

‘Does she—?’

‘She knows you’re working for a Clairmont hotel, but she doesn’t know which one. I guessed you were here. I knew Tish Benton came here out of season, and I thought she’d probably come to visit you.’

Fleetwood stared at her, frozen to the spot.

‘I’m not here to cause you trouble, Rupert,’ said Robin quietly, because a family at a nearby table were watching the waiter, intrigued by his strange, slack-jawed behaviour. ‘I just want to talk to you. When d’you get a break?’

She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then, with an air of hopelessness, he muttered,

‘Three.’

‘Could we talk then, please? I promise I won’t contact anyone before then.’

He assented with a miserable nod.

So, at three o’clock, Robin and Rupert Fleetwood met on a shady terrace with a canopy of bright pink bougainvillea that was just coming into flower. Fleetwood brought coffees for both of them with him, but seemed unable to meet Robin’s eye. When she’d thanked him he nodded, then added sugar to his own without looking at her.

‘How is she?’ he said, staring at the surface of the coffee he was stirring.

‘Not great,’ said Robin.

‘I tried to… I called your partner.’

‘I know,’ said Robin.

‘So she’d know I was alive.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘but that was even more painful to her than the idea you were dead. She couldn’t understand why you’d just have left her like that, especially when she was pregnant.’

Rupert dropped his spoon with a tiny clang that reminded Robin of the brick hitting the Murdoch silver.

‘Did she have an abortion?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘You’ve got a son.’

‘Oh God,’ he said, putting his face in his hands.

‘He’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘He was born without problems.’

After a while it became clear that Rupert was crying, not loudly, like Danny de Leon or Murphy, but soundlessly, his shoulders quaking.

‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘I think I know why you left.’

‘You can’t,’ came his muffled voice.

‘I think I can,’ said Robin. The pair of ’em looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee together – just imagine the moon-faced children. ‘You found out Decima’s your half-sister.’

He looked up, his tear-stained face aghast.

‘How—?’

‘I read a magazine interview with Cosima and saw she’d taken a DNA test. Then I realised you all look a bit alike,’ said Robin. ‘Dino, Decima and you.’

Rupert wiped his face roughly on his white waiter’s sleeve, but tears were still leaking out of his eyes. He had, Robin thought, a very likeable face; not precisely handsome, but better-looking in person than he’d been in the photo she and Strike had been showing people connected to William Wright.

‘How did you find out?’ she asked.

After wiping his face a second time on his sleeve, Fleetwood reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, took out a packet of Marlboro Lights, lit one, and said croakily,

‘Valentine.’

‘He told you?’

‘Not… definitely,’ said Fleetwood.

Robin waited. Fleetwood smoked for a full minute without speaking, then said,

‘He was really fucking down on me and Decima from the start… one night, he got really pissed at Dino’s and told me Dino had slept with my mother, that they’d had an affair… said he caught them together on a sofa when he was a kid… then… I dunno, he probably panicked that he’d said too much… tried to backtrack, said he was joking, and staggered out of the club…

‘Next day, I rang him up and he told me he just wanted me to stay away from Dessie and he’d only said it to try and scare me off… but…’

Fleetwood took a deep drag on his cigarette, then said,

‘I looked at Dino that afternoon and I could… see it. Him and Dessie and me, all three of us have got round faces and kind of… shortish necks. I always knew I never looked like Peter Fleetwood… I don’t even look like my mum, except she was fair… so… the more I looked at myself in the mirror, the more I knew I looked far more like a Longcaster than a Fleetwood…’

‘Did you tell Decima?’

‘Shit, no,’ said Fleetwood, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘I just… I took one of those DNA tests… and yeah. It linked to the test Cosima took, online… it showed we were half-siblings… which made sense of so fucking much. My aunt always hated me… she probably knew I wasn’t related to her at all, but she got lumbered with raising me. And she always fucking hated Dino Longcaster… it must’ve been disgusting for her, watching me growing up and looking more and more like him.’

‘So you went to Sacha’s party because—?’

‘I wanted to have it out with fucking Valentine,’ said Rupert. He took another lengthy drag on his cigarette, exhaled, then said, ‘I was so fucking angry. If he’d warned me and Dessie at the start, it wouldn’t have happened. Or even if he’d said it before she got pregnant… cowardly fucking prick. He didn’t want to upset Dino, that’s what it was. Let sleeping dogs fucking lie… I don’t know why the fuck Cosima was crying. Maybe she thought I was going to make a scandal in the papers or something. Dino fucking hates the press. Or she might’ve thought I’d have some claim on Dino’s estate, knowing her… worried she’d have to take a quarter, not a third…’

‘Who knows the truth?’ asked Robin. ‘Albie? Tish?’

‘Yeah, them,’ said Fleetwood, tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘Just them. I had to tell someone. I was going nuts… incest,’ he said, staring down at the table, and Robin heard the horror and shame she guessed had been eating at him for almost a year.

‘I’ve read that people who’re related but separated can be drawn to each other, when they meet,’ said Robin. ‘They can sense a connection, they can feel it. It isn’t either of your fault.’

‘That’s what Tish and Albie said, but that’s easy to say, when it’s not you… I slept with my sister, for fuck’s sake…’

Robin couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It felt strange and incongruous to be sitting amid so much beauty, with the teal sea sparkling in the distance and the bougainvillea all around them, and to discuss an ancient taboo, broken by two people who’d had no idea they were doing so.

‘S’pose you know about the nef, do you?’ muttered Fleetwood.

‘That you stole it and sold it to Lady Jenson? Yes,’ said Robin.

‘It was my mother’s,’ said Fleetwood in a low voice. ‘It belonged to the Legards. I’m still a Legard, nobody can take that away from me. Dino had no right to it. That’s all I’ll ever take from him, ever, but he owed me something. He fucking owed me.’

‘Rupert, Decima’s been torturing herself. She thinks you’re dead. She thinks it’s her fault—’

‘I died in the vault of a silver shop,’ said Fleetwood, closing his eyes briefly again. ‘I know, Albie told me. But I called your partner—’

‘She didn’t believe it was you. Rupert, it’d be far better – kinder – if you called Decima and explained everything yourself.’

He seemed to be thinking. Robin sipped her coffee considering the fact that, having found him so easily and quickly, she had no reason to postpone her return to London. With the Sardinian sun on her back and the bougainvillea fluttering overhead, she remembered Murphy asking why they’d never taken a foreign trip together and then, inevitably, the platinum and diamond ring he’d hidden in his briefcase. She was certain she had four days left before he offered it to her at the Ritz. Robin had done nothing to prevent the proposal, because she couldn’t see how to do so without revealing she’d searched his personal possessions.

‘See,’ said Fleetwood weakly, from across the table, ‘I still love her. I’ve been really trying not to… but I do.’

‘And she still loves you,’ said Robin, ‘but there’s a baby involved now, Rupert. The two of you have got to work something out. You can’t hide for ever.’

Rupert ground out his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘What’s she called him?’

‘Lion,’ said Robin.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Rupert, putting his face in his hands again. ‘After bloody White Lion? It meant nothing, he was never my dad…’

‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘she went through the birth alone. She’s been in hell for months, blaming herself for your death. Please, call her and tell her the truth.’

126

‘In a way,’ said Decima Mullins, ‘I feel as though he did die.’

It was late on Friday afternoon and their erstwhile client had requested a final meeting with Strike and Robin, at the office. Decima was better groomed today than either detective had ever seen her; still too thin, but quietly attractive, though with haunted eyes. As she’d already explained, she’d moved back to London with her son and intended to resume work at her restaurant shortly, though part time.

Robin, who theoretically had the day off, had wanted to be present for the meeting and had arrived wearing the dusky pink dress and high heels she’d worn to the Goring. Strike had already glanced at her left hand. It remained ringless.

‘If he’d just told me…’ Decima said.

‘I think,’ said Robin, ‘he was so horrified by the discovery—’

‘But to just run out on me like that… he knew I was looking for him, Albie and Tish told him so…’

‘I’m not defending him taking off,’ said Robin. ‘I know he ought to have stayed and been honest.’

‘There are times I wish we’d never known,’ said Decima miserably. ‘It could’ve been fine if we’d never found out. What’s the use in knowing? He called me again last night, you know. We were on the phone for six hours.’

‘Six?’ said Robin.

‘Yes. It’s always like that, when we talk; we can’t stop talking,’ said Decima. ‘I was so angry… and then we both cried, and then… after a while, it was almost like it used to be, but I felt as if I was talking to his ghost. But it’s over, obviously. I’ve got to think about him completely differently… we’ll never… we can’t go back. It’s a filthy mess, all of it… he says he wants to come back to London, get a job here and help me with Lion. He wants a proper relationship with him…’

She took a deep breath, and arrived at what Strike had guessed was the point of the meeting.

‘Val and Cosima won’t tell anyone, they’re too ashamed. So—’

‘None of our subcontractors know anything about it, and Cormoran and I will never breathe a word,’ said Robin. Strike nodded agreement.

‘Thank you,’ said Decima. ‘I don’t want Lion to hear any rumours, or find out before we’ve worked out how to… how to tell him.’

‘Do you need to?’ asked Strike, and Robin looked at him in surprise; she’d have assumed Strike would think the truth, however unpalatable, was always preferable to a lie, and she couldn’t help remembering his angry advice to her: we aren’t fucking social workers.

‘Why does he have to know anything except that his parents wanted him, but the relationship didn’t work out?’ said Strike. ‘He’s all right physically, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Decima, ‘he’s fine. I suppose we’re lucky nobody in the family’s got any serious genetic conditions. We’re all healthy.’

‘This kind of thing probably happened a lot more often than people realised, in the days before everyone could get a DNA test,’ said Strike. ‘I’d say your son’s a damn sight luckier than a lot of children. Parents who love him and are on good terms with each other. Father who wants to be involved in his upbringing. Yeah, I’d say he’s an extremely fortunate kid, compared to some.’

Robin noticed a kind of wonder in the look Decima now gave Strike. She appeared deeply struck by this practical view of the situation and Robin felt a wave of fondness for her partner, which immediately occasioned an inner spasm of guilt, because it was Murphy’s birthday, and she was due at dinner in an hour and a half, and she wasn’t supposed to melt inwardly at Strike showing unexpected sensitivity and compassion when the man she claimed to love was probably debating right now when exactly he should produce that diamond ring… she realised Decima was talking again and dragged her thoughts back to the present.

‘… found out who the dead man in the vault was. And that poor girl’s safe.’

‘And that’s down to you,’ said Strike. ‘Without you, there’d have been no justice for Tyler Powell, no end of the trafficking ring and Niall Semple’s wife still wouldn’t know where he was. Bottom line: you were right. William Wright wasn’t Jason Knowles.’

Decima smiled. She looked better than she had when she’d entered the office; less drawn and anxious.

‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘the childminder clocks off at six. Thank you both.’

She shook both their hands and departed. When they’d heard the glass door close in the outer office, Robin said quietly,

‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’

‘Could be better,’ admitted Strike.

‘I think they’re going to love each other for ever and never be able to do anything about it.’

Trying to dissemble the feeling of depression Robin’s words had just given him, Strike said, ‘Want a coffee?’

Robin checked the time on her phone. She still had well over an hour before she was due at the Ritz. Every time she thought about it, she experienced a ripple of panic in her stomach.

‘Yes, great,’ she said, glad to have a little longer where she could think only about work or, at least, try to.

Pat was still at her computer in the outer office. She always remained to make tea or coffee if a client was present, even if, as today, that meant staying past five o’clock.

‘You’re off duty,’ Strike reminded Pat, as he put on the kettle.

‘Gonna finish these accounts now I’m started,’ growled the office manager, her e-cigarette waggling in her mouth as she continued to type. ‘Won’t have to do it Monday.’

‘You got a replacement for Travolta,’ said Robin, realising the fish tank had a new occupant, this one speckled in white, black and orange.

‘Yeah,’ said Pat gruffly. ‘It looks too empty with just two.’

‘What’s this one called?’

‘Elton,’ said Pat, and Robin laughed.

When the two detectives had returned to the inner office with coffee, Robin said,

‘I haven’t asked how your ear is.’

‘Seems to be attaching itself back to my head,’ said Strike, ‘which is good, because I’d look a right prick trying to wear sunglasses without it.’

‘Is it still painful?’

‘No,’ said Strike, unsure exactly why he was lying, though he suspected he hadn’t yet lost the habit of trying to appear as fit and physically un-fucked as Murphy. ‘Been wall-to-wall star-crossed lovers, this case, hasn’t it?’ he said, preferring to get off the subject of his own physical decrepitude.

‘It has,’ Robin agreed. ‘Rupert and Decima. The Semples. Pamela Bullen-Driscoll and her husband…’

Strike grinned, but said more seriously,

‘And Tyler and Jolanda… it was that fucking bracelet that screwed them. Griffiths might’ve had his suspicions she was getting too close to Tyler, but the bracelet was the big mistake.’

Robin thought, yet again, of the silver charm bracelet hidden at home in her evening bag.

‘I can’t bear the thought of Tyler going down to London, falling in with all the disguise stuff,’ she said, ‘passing his interview at Ramsay Silver, thinking he’s getting a home ready for Jolanda… trying to find out if it was worth joining the Freemasons, for protection…’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘I know.’

Like Robin, the silver vault investigation was one of Strike’s least enjoyable ever. There was, of course, satisfaction in knowing that Griffiths and his fellow rapists and traffickers were in custody; he took theoretical pride in having found out where each of their five possible William Wrights had gone, or met their ends, but what he’d primarily feel when looking back over the past few months was bitter regret and endless self-recriminations that had nothing whatsoever to do with the silver vault, and everything to do with Robin.

‘I’d better get going,’ she said reluctantly when she’d finished her coffee.

Strike accompanied her to the outer office, where Pat was pulling on her coat, receipts evidently dealt with.

‘Have a good weekend,’ she said gruffly.

‘You too, Pat,’ said Robin. ‘Thanks for staying.’

As the door closed behind the office manager, Strike gestured at Robin’s dress.

‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘Yes,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘It’s Ryan’s birthday. We’re going to the Ritz – the restaurant,’ she added quickly, in an attempt to turn both their thoughts away from the bar. ‘Well, I’ll see you Monday.’

The glass door opened and closed again, and Robin had gone.

Strike was suddenly flooded with adrenaline. He might have been back on that yellow dirt track, knowing what was about to happen, because he’d spotted the youth who’d planted the IED running away from the road, dragging a small boy he was determined to pull clear of the imminent explosion. He’d yelled ‘brake’, but too late to avoid calamity.

He was almost certainly too late now. Nevertheless, he wrenched open the glass door.

127

Robin’s heels were making so much noise on the metal stairs she didn’t realise her partner had followed her until she heard him call her name. Turning, she saw him standing above her on the dingy landing. To her surprise, he said nothing, but just looked at her.

‘What?’ she said.

Strike descended a couple of steps.

‘Don’t make the same mistake twice.’

‘What?’ said Robin, confused.

‘Just because Murphy’s been decent over – you know – you don’t owe him.’

Robin, who felt nothing but astonishment, stared up at him. Then, suddenly, realisation hit her.

‘You know?’

‘Know what?’ said Strike.

‘That Ryan’s going to propose.’

‘So you know?’ he said, descending another step, trying to read her expression.

‘How—?’

‘He told Iverson. She told Wardle.’

Robin suddenly felt a powerful, inexplicable urge to cry. She hated the idea that people, especially Strike, knew the proposal was about to happen; it added almost unbearable pressure, when she had less than an hour in which to decide what on earth she was going to say when Murphy reached for the ring box in his pocket.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, and turned to leave.

‘Robin.’

‘What?’ she said, yet again.

‘You need to – I want to say something.’

Strike descended one more step, so that they stood only two apart, and the blood was pounding in his ears, exactly as it had the morning he’d found out Charlotte was dead. The seconds ticked past, until, almost aggressively, he said,

‘I’m in love with you.’

Robin neither moved nor spoke, but somewhere inside she felt a cold eruption, and couldn’t have told whether it was shock, pleasure or pain, and nothing occurred to her except to say for the fourth time, ‘What?’

‘I’m in love with you,’ Strike repeated.

Robin’s expression was entirely blank, her face a little paler than usual, but unreadable. The silence stretched on, and Robin simply stared. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard, but the conclusion she’d reached over the last few, excruciatingly painful months finally decided her to say in a clipped voice,

‘I know exactly what you’re doing.’ It was taking every ounce of her self-possession not to break down. ‘You’re scared I’ll leave the agency if I marry—’

‘Bullshit, that’s not—’

‘Then why say this tonight? Because you think you’re about to lose me,’ she said, before he could answer. ‘Well, you needn’t worry, I’m not going any—’

‘This isn’t about the agency. It isn’t,’ he insisted, before she could contradict him. ‘I’ll leave this fucking agency before you do. I’ve been trying to find the right time to say it for months. This wasn’t the plan,’ he said, gesturing at the dingy stairwell. ‘I was going to say it in the Lake District, and then on Sark—’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Robin, with difficulty, because her throat seemed to have swollen. She didn’t know whether this was out of anger – at Strike, at herself, at Murphy – or because of the terrible twisting pain in her heart. ‘If you genuinely – if this was real – I’ve got to go,’ she repeated, and she began to hurry down the stairs, leaving Strike where he stood.

He listened to her footsteps and debated following her, and was still standing there, undecided, when he heard her coming back up the stairs, and when she rounded the corner of the stairs she looked flushed and angry, but Strike, who believed a woman who had no feelings for him deeper than friendship would have been slamming the street door at this moment, suddenly knew hope.

‘You’ve had ages,’ said Robin, who was now shivering with anger. ‘Years. I was single. I was free. Every single time we got – even slightly close to – you pushed me away and went off screwing other women.’

‘Not lately,’ said Strike.

‘No, because it was safe to push the boundaries, now I’m with Ryan!’

‘You think I’ve been pissing around for my own amusement, do you?’

‘Maybe,’ said Robin, tears of fury now brightening her eyes. ‘Telling me Charlotte thought you were in love with me – what was I supposed to say to that? You’ve just been trying to make up your mind what you want – you’ve had years,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘and you said nothing!’

‘I was scared of fucking it up, fucking everything up—’

‘The agency, it’s always—’

‘It wasn’t just the agency, it was this, us, the friendship—’

‘Well, I’m still your friend, so you needn’t—’

‘I don’t want to be your fucking friend,’ said Strike, his own voice rising now, ‘that’s what I’m fucking telling you. I’m in love with you. Everyone else can see it, why can’t you?’

‘And you expect me to just throw away a two-year relationship, so I can be the latest woman you get bored with after a couple of months, do you?’ said Robin, her voice echoing around the stairwell.

‘It’s been seven years and I’ve never been bored. You think I’d be saying this if I just wanted a fuck? I’m not asking you to cheat, I don’t want an affair. I want to be with you. Permanently. Marry me.’

Strike hadn’t expected to hear himself say that. Robin let out something between a laugh and a gasp.

‘You’re – you’re insane,’ she said, numb with shock. ‘You’re literally – you’ve lost your mind. We’ve never so much as—’

‘Easily remedied.’

Strike descended the stairs, and had placed his hands on her upper arms and pulled her towards him when she placed a fist on his chest and pushed him away.

‘No!’ she said, trembling at the contact, and angry at herself for doing so. ‘I’m not that person – I won’t do to Ryan what Matthew did to me!’

‘I had to tell you,’ said Strike. ‘You had to know.’

Robin struggled to find something to say and failed. At last, she turned and hurried downstairs, her heels clattering on the metal, and this time Strike heard her reach the hall, the sound of the street door opening, then slamming behind her.

He stood for a full minute, hoping to hear it open again, but it didn’t.

Fuck.

He turned and, heaving himself along with the aid of the banister, climbed the stairs back towards the second floor, then came to a sudden halt. Pat was standing on the landing.

‘I needed the loo,’ she said defensively.

If Strike had wondered whether his and Robin’s voices had carried through the bathroom door, he didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

‘Don’t worry,’ she growled. ‘I won’t gossip.’

Unable to think of anything to say, Strike walked past Pat into the office and dropped down into her chair. It was a few seconds before he sensed he wasn’t alone and looked up. Pat had followed him.

‘’Course, he’s very good-looking, Murphy,’ she said, in her gravelly baritone.

‘There’s the shot in the arm I needed,’ said Strike bitterly.

‘But she hasn’t seemed happy lately. Not happy at home.’

Strike didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t propose like that, shouting at a woman on the stairs, because her boyfriend’s about to ask,’ said Pat.

‘I didn’t mean – it just came out.’

‘Well, don’t go telling her that,’ said Pat sharply. ‘Bad enough, without backtracking.’

Strike emitted a low groan and put his head in his hands. If he’d been looking at her, Strike might have seen a slight softening of Pat’s simian face.

‘You can’t expect her to say it back tonight, can you?’

‘Why not?’

‘For a clever man, you can’t half be thick,’ said Pat, exasperated. ‘What’s she supposed to do, when her boyfriend’s waiting for her round the corner with a ring in his pocket? Anyway, you’ve messed her around, haven’t you?’

‘How’ve I—?’

‘You waited till another man wants to marry her before saying anything. ’Course she thinks you’re saying it to stop her going off.’

‘I didn’t plan it this way.’

‘Need a new plan, then, don’t you?’ said Pat bracingly. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got people coming over for bridge.’

She turned and departed, closing the door behind her. Strike was left looking at the glass panel, on which was etched Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency.

This wasn’t like waking up in hospital minus half his leg, nor was it like finding out that Charlotte had killed herself. This time, he was no mere victim of fate: he himself had voluntarily brought about the seismic and possibly catastrophic change. Staring at the door, it occurred to him that while he’d always considered himself master of his own destiny, he’d really been good at rolling with punches he’d been forced to take. Three times, in his entire life, he’d made a conscious, unforced, life-changing decision he could blame on nobody and nothing else.

The first time, he’d crossed a crowded room as a student at Oxford, drunk and expecting a rebuff, to talk to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The second, he’d started this detective agency, braving humiliation and financial ruin to do it. Tonight was the third. He’d finally, and perhaps too late, found something he wanted more than solitude and safety, and he supposed all he could do now was wait to find out whether Robin Ellacott decided whether she wanted it, too.

The phone on the desk in front of him began to ring. Strike let the answering service get it. As he dragged his vape pen from his pocket, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. The black fish called Cormoran was again flailing helplessly at the top of the tank.

‘Stupid arsehole,’ he snarled. ‘You’ve done it to your fucking self.’

The phone stopped ringing. Strike sat in the silence for another minute, vaping, then pushed himself into a standing position, ear and knee both throbbing. In the absence of anything else he could do to improve his present situation, he set off for the attic to fetch the empty margarine tub, and some peas.