The Hallmarked Man

14

‘Where are you?’ were Strike’s opening words on the second of December, when Robin answered his call.

‘On the A40,’ said Robin, who was having to speak loudly because she was in her decrepit Land Rover, which didn’t have Bluetooth. ‘Mrs A’s staying near Stroud. I’m taking over from Midge.’

‘Kim’ll do Stroud,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve just got off a call from the owner of Ramsay Silver. I didn’t expect him to be so keen to talk to us; he nearly bit my hand off. He wants to know if we can go along there today at one.’

‘OK, great,’ said Robin, who was considerably more interested in seeing the site of William Wright’s murder than she was in staring at a deserted croquet lawn from behind a hedge. ‘I’ll come back.’

‘Meet you outside Freemasons’ Hall at half twelve.’

So Robin turned London-wards again. The chilly day was overcast, but from time to time the sun slid out from behind clouds, revealing the dirt on the windscreen she’d been first too busy, and then too recently operated on, to clean. The ancient Land Rover had developed a mysterious rattle in the past few days, which Robin hadn’t yet managed to trace to its source. Its MOT was imminent and she had a strong feeling that this time it might not scrape through.

The prospect of visiting Ramsay Silver had raised her mood, which happened to require some lifting, because, prior to Strike’s call, she’d been brooding about a couple of recent conversations she’d had with Murphy. Her boyfriend hadn’t said so explicitly, but Robin could tell he was angry about the agency taking the silver vault case, even though she’d claimed they were trying to find Rupert Fleetwood, rather than identify the body. Then, the previous evening, Murphy had been complaining over the phone about his own unsatisfactory neighbour, whose slamming doors and shouting matches with her teenage children were a constant bar to relaxation, when he’d suddenly said,

‘You know, if we bought a place together, we could get away from all these wankers.’

At these words, Robin had felt something very like panic. However, feeling guilty about the way she’d lied about the silver vault case, she felt she owed him.

‘Yes, I suppose we could,’ she said.

‘Don’t be too enthusiastic.’

She’d laughed nervously.

‘No, it’s definitely an idea.’

Ever since the call had ended, Robin had been trying to argue herself out of an increase in anxiety. She loved Murphy, didn’t she? Yes, she really thought – knew – she did. And most women would be delighted to know that the man they loved, and who loved them, wanted to make this kind of commitment, wouldn’t they? And didn’t it make sense to find a better place together, without rowdy neighbours?

But when Robin thought about cohabitation, the image that presented itself was of the third and last home she’d shared with her ex-husband. Robin knew it had been a lovely house, in an eighteenth-century terrace that had been built for shipwrights and sea captains, but she couldn’t picture it in any detail now. What she mostly remembered was the leaden feeling of constriction and misery in which she’d spent too many of the days she’d lived there.

But that was Matthew. Ryan’s not Matthew.

Murphy’s unexpected suggestion that they move in together had come just an hour after Robin had opened a letter from her GP, which had been lying on her doormat when she’d got home, late, after hours of surveillance. The doctor wanted her to make an appointment for a check-up after her recent hospitalisation. She hadn’t told Murphy about this. She didn’t want to go; she didn’t see what the point was. She had all the information she needed already, and she felt well, and the operation site had healed, so what could the GP do or say that was of any benefit to her? Before Strike had called, thoughts of egg freezing had been tangling themselves in her complicated feelings about house-hunting, and she had a sense, not for the first time, that she wasn’t like other women, that she wanted different things, and was prepared to bear different hardships, and she couldn’t help remembering Strike’s words:

That’d be my view in your position, but some might say that’s why I’m still single.

As Robin got out of the Land Rover on Great Queen Street an hour and a half later, a corpulent, balding passer-by said cheerfully,

‘Don’t see many of that age still on the roads!’

‘No,’ Robin agreed. ‘It’s on its last legs.’

She watched the man turn into the huge Art Deco building of pale grey stone beside which she’d parked. She’d never seen Freemasons’ Hall before. Had she thought about it, she might have expected those entering to require, if not a secret password, then at least a membership card, but a sign beside the glass doors proclaimed that there was a café inside, a museum open to the public, and guided tours.

Strike was standing on the corner ahead, collar turned up against the chilly day, vaping while staring up at the building’s front, and Robin walked towards him feeling far better for having something to think about other than her personal predicaments, and much more cheerful for seeing her work partner.

‘Impressive building,’ said Robin, when she reached him.

‘It is,’ agreed Strike.

From this angle, Freemasons’ Hall looked as though it had been constructed like a isosceles triangle, except that at the point where the two long sides converged it had been squared off, presenting a relatively narrow but very tall and grand frontage comprising columns, a square clock and a tower.

‘“Audi, vide, tace,”’ said Strike, reading an inscription high above them. ‘“See, hear, be silent.”’

‘Any chance of walking a bit?’ Robin asked, hands deep in her pockets. The Land Rover’s heating was non-existent, and the day near freezing.

‘Yeah, that’s why I wanted to meet early. Get a feel for the area.’

So they set off along Great Queen Street, with the massive stone hall to their right.

‘I think Ramsay’s keen to meet us because he’s hoping we’ll find his stolen silver,’ said Strike. ‘He’s had a hell of a run of bad luck in the last couple of years. His adult son and only child died in a jet-ski accident on holiday eighteen months ago.’

‘Oh no,’ said Robin.

‘And then his wife had a massive stroke. She’s still incapacitated. She was the one managing the shop, because Kenneth works at some financial services place up the road. I heard the whole story this morning. I think he was trying to get me as emotionally invested as possible in finding the silver.’

‘Well, if his wife needs medical care and can’t work…’

‘Not blaming him, just giving you a heads-up, because I think he’ll be most forthcoming if we pretend we’re as interested in the robbery as in the body. He told me they had a slight increase in custom after the murder, but it was mostly gawkers, rather than people wanting to buy masonic medals.’

Strike was scanning the street as they walked for CCTV cameras, and for side streets and lay-bys where silver could be divided between gang members, unobserved, but it was a populous area that would be well lit by night, and Strike doubted the felons could have counted on the absence of passers-by even then.

‘Can’t see our killers-slash-thieves making their getaway in this direction,’ said Strike. ‘No, I think the police are right: the silver went in that getaway car in Wild Street.’

Robin had an unbidden mental image of Murphy’s expression, could he have heard Strike (as Murphy would undoubtedly see it) deigning to agree with the police’s conclusions.

They turned right into Kingsway, a broader and even busier street. Canned Christmas music drifted out from a shop as they passed and both felt that undertow of sadness from which Christmas in adulthood is rarely free, Robin wishing she felt as straightforwardly happy at the prospect of her trip home as she would have done when she first moved to London, Strike suddenly visited by thoughts of Ted, Joan and the empty house in Cornwall, which had just gone up for sale.

‘The shop’s up an alleyway, to the right,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t have said it’s a great location, but given the proximity to Freemasons’ Hall, they must get some masonic trade…’

He checked his watch.

‘Bit early, but we might as well head there now.’

So they turned up an unlovely lane, which had a line of plastic bins on one side.

The silver shop, which sat at the join of the red brick Connaught Rooms and the pale grey stone of Freemasons’ Hall, looked dingy and old-fashioned. Medallions and ceremonial chains lay on black velvet in the window. Somebody had draped red fairy lights around these items, in a lacklustre tribute to the season. The black awning bore silver lettering, which read:

As Strike pushed open the door a bell tinkled and he noted that neither of the two locks were of a much higher grade than those of the average house.

The first sound they heard, drowning out the Christmas carol playing over hidden speakers, was the gabbling voice of a man in his fifties, who was standing at a desk with a silver bowl in his white-gloved hands, talking to a customer.

‘… pity you weren’t in last year if you like Art Nouveau, because we had two jewels in, designed by Alphonse Mucha, very special – Ah!’ said the man eagerly, becoming aware of the newcomers. ‘Mr Strike?’

‘Yes,’ said the detective.

‘With you in a tick!’ said Kenneth Ramsay.

His suit hung loosely on him, as though he’d lost a lot of weight in a relatively short space of time. The little hair he retained was silver and curly, which, combined with a strangely innocent-looking pink and white face that looked as though it never needed shaving, gave him the appearance of an ageing cherub. Turning back to his customer, who was a tall man in a cashmere overcoat, Ramsay said,

‘Something else you might like, if it’s Art Nouveau you fancy—’

‘I really just want the bowl,’ said the customer, who had his wallet out.

‘Sure? Tell you what we’ve got, though, and they’d would go very nicely with this – pair of 1926 candlesticks, came out of Aitchison’s Haven Lodge in Scotland. They’d make a lovely addit—’

‘No, thank you,’ said the customer firmly.

‘Right, hahaha, no problem, we’ll get this wrapped for you, then. Laura! Wrap this for me, please!’

A sulky-looking young woman in glasses, who was returning various other bits of silver to their shelf, slouched over to the desk and began plying Sellotape and bubble wrap.

‘Wonderful choice, a really fabulous piece. Lovely scrollwork. Are you a collector? Would you like gift wrapping? Got ribbon somewhere, haven’t we, Laura? Got any good Christmas plans? Staying in town? Would you like to join our mailing list? Well worth it, you’ll be given early notice, if anything special—’

‘Just the bowl,’ said the customer, no longer troubling to be polite.

Robin was looking around at the cramped and cluttered shop floor. The right and left walls bore racks of ceremonial swords and shelves laden with silver. Taller items, such as urns and ornamental centrepieces, stood on tables, while snuffboxes and jewellery were displayed in glass cabinets. Masonic symbols, now becoming familiar to Robin, were everywhere: eyes in triangles, sheafs of corn, beehives, coffins and skulls. The back wall broke the monotony of the sea of silver, because it displayed many antique aprons and sashes embroidered in gold, and Robin’s eye lingered on an apron embroidered with a bloody severed head, held up by a single hand.

Strike, too, was making a covert survey of the shop, though concentrating on security rather than silverware. Beside the street door was a keypad for the alarm, which looked as though it had been installed at least a decade earlier. A small camera, which also looked many years out of date, was positioned over a slightly warped black door behind the desk.

When at last the customer’s purchase had been put into its black and silver bag, Ramsay trotted to the street door to open it, and in the absence of his voice, they could hear the Christmas carol playing over the speakers.

The customer, one of whose eyes was hypertrophic and staring up at the ceiling, scanned Strike and Robin superciliously with the other as he went out of the shop. Ramsay inclined his head as the man passed, like a footman. Once the door had thudded shut, Ramsay stripped off his white gloves and strode to Strike to wring his hand, his demeanour no less frenetic than it had been with his customer.

‘When you called this morning, I thought, “at long bloody last”. Ray of hope, it really was. Ray of hope. I’ve been reading up on you. Couldn’t have asked for – I’ve been at my wit’s end, to be honest. You might be the godsend I’ve been hoping for.’

‘This is Robin Ellacott, my partner,’ said Strike.

‘How d’you do, how d’you do?’ said Ramsay. His eyes dropped from Robin’s face to her breasts and moved back again as he shook her hand in turn. ‘Lovely – I mean – what would you like to do first? Look around, or—?’

‘Yeah, let’s look around,’ said Strike.

‘Right, yes – Laura, you can take lunch now,’ Ramsay called to the sulky sales assistant. She disappeared through the door behind the desk, coming back a minute later with her coat and handbag, and left, setting the bell tinkling again.

‘So,’ said Ramsay, spreading his hands wide, ‘this is the shop floor, obviously, hahaha – I’ll show you the vault. This way.’

Ramsay led them to the black door behind the desk, Strike, by far the largest of the three, moving carefully so as not to topple any urns off their tables.

‘As you can see,’ said Ramsay, pausing to point up at the camera over the door leading to the vault, ‘state-of-the-art security. Camera covering the shop and another one over the door outside – alarm – iron blinds over the windows at night – and down here’ – it took him two attempts to open the black door, which fitted poorly into its frame; on the second shove, it opened to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading down to the basement – ‘we’ve got the vault.’

He flicked a light switch and illuminated both the stairway and a cramped basement area. The steep wooden stairs creaked as the threesome descended. The small space below smelled slightly of mould and looked as though it had been fitted out on the cheap, many years previously. The steel door facing them had a second keypad beside it and a wheel handle; to the right was a door that stood ajar to reveal a cramped toilet, and to their left was a sink, some laminate cupboards bearing mugs and a kettle, and a couple of wall pegs.

‘We’ll look away,’ said Strike, as Ramsay moved to tap in the code on the keypad.

‘Oh,’ said Ramsay distractedly, ‘yes – thank you.’

When the door had audibly swung open, Strike and Robin turned back to see the place where William Wright had died.

The vault, illuminated by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the low ceiling, was high enough for an average-sized man, if not Strike, to stand upright in, and deep enough to accommodate a man of the same height lying down. The walls were of brick, and lined with currently bare shelves. The vault contained nothing except five crates of varying sizes, all stamped with the name Gibsons, which Strike knew to be a minor auction house. He took out his notebook.

‘Those,’ said Ramsay, pointing, ‘are the crates the Murdoch silver came in… all stolen,’ he said, staring around at the shelves, ‘and I’d never even seen it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes… it was supposed to arrive on Friday at lunchtime. I came here to receive it,’ said Ramsay, as though the silver had been a visiting potentate, ‘but Gibsons had lots of deliveries that day, so it was delayed, and I had to go back to work. Pamela called later to say it had arrived…’

‘Pamela is…?’

‘Pamela Bullen-Driscoll. My sister-in-law – my wife’s sister. She was helping us out at the time, with Rachel being so ill. Gone back to her own business now.’

‘You had houseguests over the weekend, didn’t you?’ asked Strike.

‘That’s right, and I couldn’t leave Rachel alone with them, so I didn’t come in over the weekend.’

‘But you were here on Monday morning, when the theft was discovered?’

‘Oh, yes, because I wanted to see John Auclair myself.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Very important silver collector,’ said Ramsay. ‘Very wealthy… he’d asked me to put the Murdoch silver aside for him to view, before we offered it to anyone else. That’s why Pamela never took it out of the vault, just unpacked it and put it on the shelves…

‘I came down here – opened the door… and it was all gone… and Wright – well, Knowles,’ said Ramsay, pointing at the floor, ‘was there. Face down. His hands were missing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It didn’t look real.’

‘Face down, you say,’ said Strike, who was making notes.

‘That’s right. And there was dried blood around the head and…’

Ramsay swallowed, looking sick.

‘News reports said he was naked,’ said Strike.

‘Yes, he was, except – yes, he was naked.’

‘I heard a hallmark was carved into the body’s back?’

‘How do you know about that?’ Ramsay gasped, staring up at Strike.

‘It was mentioned in a news story,’ lied the detective.

‘Oh… I didn’t think they were going to give that out… yes, it was the Salem Cross. The Murdoch hallmark.’

Strike made a note, then said,

‘And the body was naked, except for…?’

‘I… DCI Truman told me not to talk about that.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, looking down at Ramsay.

‘Well, you see… they’d tried to make the killing look… Truman said it would mean more trouble for me. I saw his point. Considerate of him. I liked Truman, he was the only one who seemed interested in getting our silver back, but then he was taken off the case. We weren’t told why, nobody told us anything… I’m a big supporter of the police, very difficult job, but I haven’t been at all impressed with the lot we’ve had handling this business,’ said Ramsay resentfully. ‘Not since Truman left.’

‘Was the corpse wearing something masonic?’

Robin watched Ramsay’s weakening faith in the police do battle with his desire to assist the detectives he seemed to see as a last hope.

‘Yes,’ said Ramsay weakly, at last. ‘A masonic sash. I can’t remember which one. When they turned him over, I wasn’t… concentrating on the sash. The eyes and ears had been – Pamela screamed…’

Ramsay’s voice faded away.

‘All right, I think we’ve seen enough down here,’ said Strike. ‘Would you mind if I use your bathroom?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Ramsay, closing the vault door with what looked like relief. ‘Shall we?’ Ramsay said to Robin, who smiled, and the two of them climbed the stairs again. Once they’d disappeared, Strike, who had no need whatsoever of the bathroom, advanced on the keypad beside the safe to examine it more closely.

Upstairs, Ramsay beckoned Robin to one of the two chairs facing his desk, on which a computer sat.

‘Truman said it would be playing into the killers’ hands to talk up the sash and the hallmark,’ he said, sitting down opposite her. ‘It was obvious misdirection. He knew people can be silly about the masons…’

Unsurprisingly, being asked to describe the body seemed to have upset Ramsay.

‘I don’t know whether your partner told you,’ he added, as he fiddled with his cufflinks, ‘but it’s been a very difficult time for my wife and me – dreadful, actually – and then to lose all the Murdoch silver, when we weren’t insured… we’ve had a horrible couple of years, everything’s been… just hellish, actually. It’s been hellish.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Robin, remembering the jet ski and the dead son. Ramsay blinked rapidly. With no aim other than distracting him a little, Robin looked towards the nearest glass cabinet, which was full of small silver trinkets, and said,

‘You’ve got some lovely things.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ramsay, brightening, ‘and very affordable!’

To Robin’s consternation, he jumped to his feet again, pulled his white gloves back on, and proceeded to unlock the cabinet.

‘Nice little pocket watch,’ he said, holding it out to her in his cotton-covered palm. ‘Sterling, not plate! Triangular, of course. Masonic symbols instead of numbers, you see? More of a man’s piece, of course,’ he said, when Robin showed no sign of enthusiasm. ‘For the ladies – you’ll like this—’

He picked up a small silver orb charm, and flicked a catch, so that it transformed into a jointed cross.

‘Nice, eh?’ he said. ‘And again, you’ve got your masonic symbols, hidden inside.’

‘Very pretty,’ said Robin.

‘You should drop a hint to—’

Ramsay’s eyes flickered to her bare ring finger.

‘—or just treat yourself. For Christmas.’

To Robin’s relief, Strike now reappeared, his face somewhat contorted. The stairs were steep and his stump still complaining, post-Cornwall.

‘I could do you a good deal,’ said Ramsay, smiling anxiously at Robin.

‘Maybe another time,’ she said, embarrassed.

Ramsay locked up the cabinet with obvious reluctance, returned to his seat behind the desk, and rummaged in the desk drawer for a glossy auction catalogue.

‘I’ve circled everything I bought,’ he told Strike, as the latter sat down next to Robin. ‘So you know what you’re looking for.’

‘Great,’ said Strike, taking the catalogue. The cover read: The A. H. Murdoch Collection and featured a sword and a large silver ship on wheels.

‘Would that be a nef?’ asked Strike.

‘Ah, you know your silver!’ said Ramsay eagerly. ‘Yes, she was commissioned by Murdoch out of silver from his own mine – second largest in Peru, discovered in 1827 – and modelled on the Carolina Merchant, the ship that took the first ever Freemason to America. We were all delighted his great-grandson wanted to hold the auction here in London, rather than in the US…’

Ramsay now launched unstoppably into an explanation of the significance of the Murdoch silver, speaking with the peculiar, tone deaf intensity of the monomaniac.

‘… Murdoch, of course, was Inspector General of the Louisiana jurisdiction…’ ‘… largest, most valuable collection of masonic silver in the world,’ ‘… gadrooned borders…’ ‘… superb nineteenth-century setting maul…’ ‘… bright cut engraving…’

‘We can keep this, can we?’ interrupted Strike, stemming the flow of words by raising his voice.

‘Oh – yes, yes, I’ve got another copy.’

‘Are you on the square yourself?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ramsay. ‘You?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Ah. I thought, being ex-military – one of our best customers is a colonel in the Light Infantry. My wife’s father was a mason, too. She’s a Bullen by birth. Bullen & Co? Very old silver firm. They’re down in the London Silver Vaults. Been going a hundred and twenty-seven years.’

‘Wow,’ said Robin, to whom the job of being impressed by interviewees usually fell.

‘But when her father retired a couple of years ago, he handed the business over to m’sister-in-law and her husband. His choice, of course, up to him,’ said Kenneth sniffily. ‘We’d hoped… but, long story short, Pamela and Geoffrey and Rachel and I worked out a deal, and we took the masonic stock – Bullen & Co had a small side-line in masonic artefacts, nothing on our scale, of course – and we opened this place.’

‘What kind of business was here before you took over?’

‘A jewellers,’ said Ramsay, ‘so the place was already set up for us, really. Very convenient.’

‘You changed all the codes when you took the place over, though?’ said Strike.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Ramsay, before pointing at the catalogue in Strike’s hands and reverting to his favourite subject. ‘I got all the most important Murdoch pieces. Made an offer before the auction, and it was accepted. Put a few noses out of joint, as a matter of fact, hahaha. There were a lot of collectors who were very interested, waiting to bid.’

‘Let’s talk about William Wright,’ said Strike.

‘Of course, anything you need to know, ask away,’ said Ramsay, but he pressed on before Strike could speak. ‘Our security’s really top notch, as you can see, but Knowles was a professional, wasn’t he?’

‘Did you interview him for the job?’ said Strike.

‘Yes, with Pamela, and she liked him at the time, whatever she said afterwards. She was the one who’d been saying we needed someone else, because she wasn’t up to lifting the heavier stuff, especially taking it up and down the stairs – none of us are getting any younger and she’s got problems with her eyes.’

‘What sort of problems?’ asked Strike.

‘She had that laser eye surgery, and it didn’t work. She’s had a lot of trouble since. So we advertised.’

‘Did you have many applicants?’ asked Strike.

‘Not many. Young people have unrealistic expectations of salaries these days, very unrealistic,’ said Ramsay, bristling slightly, ‘but Wright seemed ideal. Short, but a strong lad – our security chap had resigned a couple of months previously, you see, so I thought Wright could cover both bases, as it were. He did jujitsu.’

‘Was he given the alarm and vault codes when he started here? Keys?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Ramsay. ‘No, of course not. Absolutely not.’

‘Did you see much of him yourself?’

‘Not really. I’d pop in here at lunch sometimes, see how things were going. No, it was really just Pamela – oh, and Jim, coming in to clean two mornings a week. He’s been with us since the start, couple of years now.’

‘This would be Jim Todd?’ asked Strike.

Ramsay didn’t question how Strike knew his cleaner’s surname, but said,

‘That’s right. Lovely man. Fell on hard times, so we helped him out with a job. He cleans for a few different businesses.’

‘So it would’ve been Pamela who had most to do with William Wright?’

‘Yes, and Jim would’ve seen a bit of him, too. More than me. As I say, I’ve been very busy, but it was important to keep the shop going. It’s our baby, you know, and—’

Ramsay’s voice broke, and Robin, thinking again of the dead son, said,

‘This must all have been incredibly difficult for you.’

‘It has,’ said Ramsay hoarsely. ‘Yes. It has.’

His gaze roved, apparently absent-mindedly, back to Robin’s chest. She folded her arms and he looked hastily away.

‘So William Wright was on your security footage, all that Friday the seventeenth of June?’ said Strike, his tone less sympathetic than Robin’s. He’d noticed the ogling.

‘Yes, yes, we’ve always got the camera on, in case of shoplifters. The police took that footage away, after the burglary, or – no, maybe it’s still on here,’ said Ramsay, peering dimly at the computer, ‘but I wouldn’t know how to…’

‘Could I have a look?’ asked Robin. ‘We’ve got a similar camera feed in our office. I might be able to find it.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Ramsay. ‘Password,’ he muttered, and after a couple of attempts, he succeeded in entering it correctly, then ceded his chair to Robin.

‘I understand Wright left the shop for a while, that Friday?’ said Strike.

‘Yes, very briefly, in the afternoon,’ said Ramsay, taking Robin’s vacated seat. ‘Stupid thing. The delivery driver mixed up two crates. Sent the Oriental Lodge centrepiece – you’ll see it in the catalogue, magnificent, it really is – to Bullen & Co by mistake, and delivered some of the things they’d bought to us. Pamela realised what had happened and sent Wright out to Bullens to get it back. Embarrassing for Pamela, actually,’ said Ramsay, his face growing a little pinker. ‘If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have known she and her husband had bid on some of the Murdoch collection. We had a gentlemen’s agreement that Bullen & Co wouldn’t set themselves up in competition with us. We were to concentrate on masonic silver.’

‘And Wright brought this centrepiece back, did he?’ said Strike.

‘Yes, in a taxi. He wasn’t gone long. The Silver Vaults are only just up the road.’

‘I think,’ said Robin, her eyes on the computer monitor, ‘I might be able to download the relevant camera footage. Would you be comfortable with us taking a copy, Mr Ramsay?’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Ramsay.

‘Would you have phone numbers for Pamela Bullen-Driscoll and Jim Todd?’ Strike asked.

Ramsay gave them. Strike now brought out the photograph of Rupert Fleetwood that Decima had given him.

‘In your opinion, is there any possibility that William Wright was this man?’

Ramsay glanced down at Rupert Fleetwood.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘No, no. What is he – a waiter? Wright wore glasses, and had a beard. He was dark.’

‘Disregarding the outfit,’ said Strike, ‘and trying to picture this man with a beard, and dyed hair—’

‘No, no,’ repeated Ramsay, who seemed annoyed, ‘no, he doesn’t look at all like Knowles.’

Strike took the picture back.

‘Did the police show you pictures of two men called Niall Semple and Tyler Powell?’

‘Yes, yes, but it wasn’t them, it was Knowles,’ said Ramsay, now almost agitated. ‘I’m certain it was Knowles.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, making a note. ‘Did anyone offer you a different nef for sale, around the time Wright came to work here?’

‘A different nef?’ said Ramsay, confused. ‘No, the Carolina Merchant’s the only one we’ve ever had in stock. We don’t deal in ornamental objects that aren’t masonic.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, making another note. ‘And is there anything you remember about Wright that seemed odd, or distinctive?’

‘No, not at all. As I say, I didn’t really – oh, but there were the things he searched for. The police found that out.’

‘“Things he searched for”?’

‘Yes, he’d looked things up, on this computer,’ said Ramsay, nodding at the monitor on the desk. ‘The police went all through the what-have-you, and they found he’d been looking at some odd things.’

‘They found his search history?’

‘Yes, exactly. He wasn’t supposed to be on that computer at all. It’s only there for website orders and our client database. I said to Pamela, “what was he doing, messing around on the computer?” She said it must have been when she went out for lunch. You know, a lot of this is down to Pamela’s carelessness,’ said Ramsay, in a sudden burst of temper. ‘We were supposed to be so grateful for her help, but she was the one who left early on Friday, which meant Wright could close the door without setting the alarm!’

‘Really?’ said Robin, who’d just successfully cut, copied and emailed the relevant portion of camera footage to the agency’s address. ‘Why did Pamela leave early?’

‘She – it was a private matter,’ said Ramsay, looking uncomfortable. ‘But even so – damn careless of her.’

‘What had Wright been doing online, d’you know?’ asked Strike.

‘He’d been looking up things about Freemasons, and he’d been on some website that was all about clearing your name and escaping prison and things like that.’

‘It’d be very helpful if you could remember the details of that website,’ said Strike.

Kenneth screwed up his cherubic face.

‘It was called something like “Innocent and Accused”. People complaining they’d been framed, or blamed for things they hadn’t done, and advising each other how to get out of it. Some really nasty stuff on there. Advocating vigilantism, some of them. How to get their own back.’

‘Can you remember what the website looked like? A logo, or colours?’

‘Had a sort of eye-for-an-eye logo,’ said Ramsay. ‘Two hands, each holding an eye.’

‘And there’s nothing else you can tell us about Wright?’ said Strike. ‘Accent, mention of home life, interests…?’

‘Well, he wouldn’t tell the truth about anything like that, would he?’ said Ramsay, sounding frustrated. ‘He was a criminal. He was playing a part. Oh,’ he added suddenly, ‘but there was the email. We think Wright sent a strange email, from here. He used the Ramsay Silver email address.’

‘Who was the email sent to?’ asked Strike.

‘A man called Osgood.’

‘Did you tell the police about this?’

‘Oh yes. Pamela found it, after we’d realised Wright had been using the PC. The police questioned us about it, but none of us had sent the email. We were all baffled, we’d never heard of the man – but I daresay Osgood was one of Knowles’ criminal associates. Possibly he was letting him know he’d managed to infiltrate the shop.’

‘Would you mind us taking a copy of the email?’ asked Strike.

‘No, of course not. It’s still on there,’ Ramsay told Robin, who found it without much difficulty and forwarded it to both her own and Strike’s accounts.

‘I know you need to get back to your office,’ Strike said to Ramsay, ‘so, last question: would you happen to have the address Wright was living at?’

‘I didn’t keep his CV,’ said Ramsay, ‘but I do remember the street. St George’s Avenue, Newham. I thought that was a good omen, when I saw it. Saint George.’

‘Would you happen to remember the house number?’

‘No, I’m afraid not… maybe directory enquiries…’

‘Well, thanks for meeting us,’ said Strike. ‘It’s been very helpful.’

He got to his feet, holding the catalogue Ramsay had given him.

‘If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to call me,’ said Ramsay, as he too stood up. Now that Strike and Robin were about to leave, he once again seemed eager and a little pathetic. ‘Here – take my card. Whatever you need…’

They shook hands again.

As Ramsay bustled ahead to open the door for the detectives, Dean Martin’s voice crooned over the shop’s speakers:

15

Strike glanced up at the camera over the street door as he and Robin emerged into the chilly afternoon. Strike suspected it was inactive, because it had a noticeable crack in the lens. This, he assumed, was the reason there’d been no pictures in the press of the killers entering the shop.

‘Let’s have a look at Wild Street,’ he said, and they headed onwards, away from Kingsway, onto a much quieter road without shops or cafés.

‘Yeah, they must’ve brought the silver here,’ said Strike, looking up and down the street, ‘and bunged it in the getaway car. There’s a pub up there,’ he added, pointing back towards the place where they’d met. ‘Fancy some food?’

‘Great,’ said Robin.

‘What was Ramsay trying to flog you, when I came upstairs?’ asked Strike as they walked.

‘Um – first a triangular pocket watch, and then a charm that was a ball that turned into a cross marked with hidden masonic symbols when you opened it. I could’ve been persuaded into buying that one.’

‘Never had you pegged as a pushover for salesmen.’

‘I’m not, but it was pretty and—’

‘You felt sorry for him.’

‘I did,’ Robin admitted, ‘yes.’

‘You haven’t got enough money to go round trying to save idiots from bankruptcy.’

‘“Idiot”’s a bit harsh.’

‘He’s an idiot,’ said Strike implacably. ‘I’m sorry for his personal misfortunes, but state-of-the-art security my arse, it’s about as lax as it could be without leaving the bloody doors and windows open. He would’ve punched in the code for the vault right in front of us if I hadn’t stopped him, he didn’t insure this silver he’d paid a mint for, he hires an untrained security guy on the cheap, he didn’t check Wright’s references properly, never upgraded the alarm or the camera after buying the place, the locks on the front door—’

‘I know all that, but he’s lost his son, his wife’s seriously ill… people don’t always make the best decisions when they’re under a lot of stress.’

‘People who’re already in trouble are the very people who can’t afford to get careless,’ said Strike sententiously.

He didn’t notice Robin’s slightly clouded expression, and wouldn’t had understood its significance if he had. He had no idea how much of Robin’s free time was currently spent castigating herself for what she now saw as a cavalier disregard for warning signs at the ages of both nineteen and thirty-two.

‘What were you up to, pretending to need the bathroom?’ she asked.

‘Wanted to have a shufti at that staff area. It wouldn’t take much to guess which six digits open the vault, because the keys are worn. All you’d have to do is memorise the pattern made by whoever was punching in the code. The sink and bog are clean, so Todd doesn’t seem to have been acting in an unusual manner when he scrubbed the staff area before the police turned up. The cupboards under the sink are full of silver polish and Dettol.’

‘You’re thinking collusion?’

‘First thing you’ve got to ask, when there’s a burglary like this. Todd wiped the place clean of prints and Pamela left early on the day of the killing, leaving Wright to shut up. Any standard set of skeleton keys would open up the latch lock on that door, as long as the mortice hadn’t been locked. Makes you think.

‘That said,’ Strike continued, the Prince of Wales pub now in sight, ‘they all seem to have very solid alibis, so it could’ve just been sloppiness. If this Pamela was worried about her knees and her eyes, going up and down the stairs, she might’ve given Wright the vault code so he could lug stuff in and out of it for her, and not wanted to admit it to Ramsay, or the police. After you.’

Robin walked through the door Strike was holding open for her, into the large, crowded and noisy pub, which had wooden floorboards, tiled pillars and a good deal of red and gold tinsel hanging from the ceiling.

‘I’ll get the drinks in,’ said Strike. ‘What d’you want?’

‘Orange juice, please.’

‘Have some reading material,’ said Strike, handing her the catalogue Ramsay had given him. He headed for the bar, already weighing the non-investigative possibilities offered by this apparently casual lunch, while the oblivious Robin sat down at a table beside the window and flicked through the catalogue.

The introduction explained that the ‘museum quality’ objects on sale had all been purchased or commissioned by A. H. Murdoch, nineteenth-century American explorer, industrialist and Grand Master Freemason. The Murdoch hallmark had been used as a backdrop to several of the pages. It was a curious symbol: a slanted cross with additional bars. Kenneth Ramsay had circled in Sharpie everything he’d bought, and by examining estimated prices, Robin worked out that he’d have had to pay a minimum of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to get the pieces removed from the auction. His business seemed to be far from flourishing, so she wondered how on earth he’d managed this.

A. H. Murdoch’s collection wasn’t entirely masonic. Here and there were bits of silver that were merely ornamental, but Ramsay hadn’t bid on any of these. Instead he’d obtained a selection of objects whose use was mysterious to Robin. What, for instance, was a ‘setting maul’? To her, it resembled a plunger, having a handle of polished oak and a cone-shaped piece of solid silver at the end, intricately engraved with eight-pointed stars. There were many trowels and set squares, and multiple ‘jewels’, which to Robin’s eye were medals, with elaborate designs, including a two-headed eagle on a Teutonic cross.

When Strike returned to the table with the drinks and two menus, he found Robin looking at the picture of an ornate silver centrepiece, which according to the catalogue measured nearly three and a half feet in height.

‘“Estimate: sixty to eighty thousand pounds”,’ Robin read out of the catalogue, turning it so that Strike could see it.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike, staring at the thing, which he found exceptionally ugly.

‘That’s the Oriental Centrepiece, which went to Bullen & Co by mistake,’ said Robin, turning the catalogue back towards herself to examine at the profusion of symbols that embellished the object. ‘Jacob’s ladder, acacia tree, the all-seeing eye, the blazing star…’

‘Been boning up on masonic symbolism?’

‘Yes… it’s strange, though.’

‘It’s an eyesore, is what it is,’ said Strike, looking at the upside-down centrepiece.

‘Not this – the theft. It’s not like stealing cash, or diamonds, which you could sell easily. The thieves can’t have been intending to melt the silver down, because its value is in its form. And this centrepiece alone must be massively heavy.’

‘Which is why I think it must’ve all gone in the getaway car in Wild Street. Why anyone wanted a pile of masonic crap, though…’

Robin thought of the spartan attic in which Strike lived, devoid of almost anything of sentimental or decorative value.

‘I think you might underestimate how obsessive people can get about objects, not being a things person yourself.’

‘A “things” person?’

‘Are there any physical objects you’re really attached to?’

‘Yeah, my prosthetic leg.’

‘Ha ha… you know what I mean. It’s not just the size and weight of them,’ said Robin, now turning the pages of the catalogue, ‘they’re all publicly linked to Wright’s murder. D’you think whoever stole them has just stashed them in a cellar somewhere, and they go down every night to gloat over it all?’

‘Good question,’ said Strike. He took a sip of his beer, then said, ‘Another good question is: why would Lynden Knowles want a pile of masonic silver?’

‘Maybe he knew a buyer who wouldn’t care how it was obtained?’ said Robin doubtfully.

‘Does that smell right to you? A gangster who deals in guns, suddenly turning high-class fence?’

‘Not really,’ Robin admitted.

‘And if he’d wanted the stuff for himself, which I think is highly unlikely, why tie his nephew’s murder to it?’

‘It is odd,’ admitted Robin. ‘And why kill Knowles in the vault? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to—’

‘Shoot him in the back of the head in the car on the way to a fake robbery, then dump the body? You’re right, it would… what d’you want to eat?’

‘Soup,’ said Robin. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

Strike, who was very definitely hungry, set back off for the bar, where he ordered soup for Robin and fish and chips for himself. When he returned to the table, Robin handed him her mobile, on which she’d brought up the email to the man called Osgood, allegedly sent by William Wright.

Ramsay Silver

Re: Something you should know

To: Osgood@goodtunes.co.uk

dear Mr Osgood (Oz)

I can help you with something that I know has been a problem for you if you would be happy to meet me.

‘Sent a week before Wright was killed,’ Strike noted. ‘No guarantee it was Wright who sent it, of course.’

‘If he didn’t, it’s odd nobody at the shop admitted to doing it,’ said Robin, taking her phone back.

‘True,’ said Strike. ‘But if the police thought this Osgood bloke had any bearing on the murder and theft, I’d have expected it to be in the press. We’ll try and contact him, though.’

‘It’s weird how quickly press interest died, isn’t it?’ said Robin. ‘Once they heard it was Knowles, nobody seems to have cared any more that his hands had been chopped off and his eyes gouged out—’

‘Standard operating procedure, isn’t it?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Let violent young men polish each other off. Who cares?’

‘But this was a really nasty killing. To do that to a body – if it had happened to a woman—’

‘Glad you said that, not me.’

‘Why?’

‘Not fashionable, to say men are seen as disposable in certain contexts.’

‘I’m not saying he was disposable—’

‘I know you’re not, but there wasn’t a tenth of the interest there would have been if he’d been a woman, even if she’d had a record. And you’re right, this was bloody sadistic,’ said Strike. ‘Proper butchery.’

‘I’m just saying, if it had been a woman, there’d have been salacious interest, because she was naked,’ said Robin.

‘True,’ said Strike, ‘but men don’t tug at the public’s heartstrings the way women and kids do. I’m not saying women have it easy,’ Strike added, pre-emptively defending himself against an accusation he seemed to hear hovering in the wings of the conversation, ‘but there are far more men sleeping rough and they get a lot less press traction when they go missing – I’m not saying women have it easy,’ he emphasised, ‘just stating facts. Look at those two blokes they couldn’t exclude on DNA. Semple got a bit of interest because he’s an injured veteran, but Powell got fuck-all. I’ve had a quick look for him, and not a whisper about him the press.’

‘I found some stuff,’ said Robin, rummaging in her bag.

‘Seriously?’ said Strike, surprised.

‘Yes – here—’

Robin handed Strike a couple of sheets of paper on which she’d printed out some photographs she’d found on Instagram, and which she’d been intending to put in the office file when she got a chance. All had been enlarged from group shots in which Tyler Powell had been tagged. He was a powerfully built young man with overlarge ears, a slightly lopsided face and mouse-brown hair. In one of the photos, he was wearing an England football strip.

‘I’m ninety-nine per cent sure he’s the right Powell. The photos were posted by people in Ironbridge.’

‘That’s up Birmingham way, right?’ asked Strike.

‘Exactly,’ said Robin.

Strike was pleased Tyler Powell hadn’t lived nearer to London. A trip to Ironbridge might just provide those hours of uninterrupted time with Robin he wanted.

‘Look at the back of the second page,’ said Robin. ‘I printed out some of the comments beneath the last picture.’

Strike did as he was told.

‘Seems to have made himself unpopular,’ said Strike, turning the page over to look at Powell’s picture again. He didn’t look much of a villain, but Strike well remembered a young private in the Rifle Corps who’d resembled a choirboy and been convicted of rape in Cyprus.

‘I haven’t found any social media for Powell yet,’ said Robin, ‘but I’ll keep trying.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, ‘and I’ll ask Hardy if he can find out anything on Niall Semple for me.’

Their food now arrived. Strike ate a couple of chips, then said,

‘You know, I wouldn’t mind knowing whether DCI Truman ever rolls his trousers up when he’s not paddling.’

‘What?’

‘You have to roll up your trouser leg during initiation into the Freemasons. Prove you’re unshackled – a free man. I don’t think the Freemasons killed Wright,’ Strike said, as Robin opened her mouth to speak, ‘but Truman wanting to hush up the sash and the hallmark on the body’s back makes you think, as does the fact that he fell over himself to rule out the Freemasonry connection to the press.’

‘Somebody said online that Truman is a mason. It was in the comments on one of the news stories. They even gave his lodge.’

‘Did they, now?’

‘But that’s the kind of thing people would say, isn’t it? I’ve been looking at some of the conspiracy theories about masons and people can’t make up their minds whether they’re a front for Jewish world domination, or affiliated with Ku Klux Klan.’

‘There was a good bit of Freemasonry in the army, when I was still in,’ said Strike. ‘Hardy used to take the piss out of me for saying it influenced promotions. His shtick was, masonry’s a man’s private affair, nobody’d let it spill over into his day-to-day life, but I witnessed people cosying up to a known Grand Master at mess dinners. Freemasonry used to be rife in the police, as well. Coppers and serious criminals belonging to the same lodges. Remember Duncan Hanrahan?’

‘No,’ said Robin.

‘Freemason and ex-copper turned crook. Tried to do a bit of bribery through his masonic connections on the force. Might see what I can turn up on DCI Truman,’ said Strike, making a note to that effect.

‘Is that necessary?’ said Robin.

Strike looked up. His partner was suddenly looking tense, and Strike guessed instantly that she was worried about her boyfriend’s reaction, should he learn that the agency had turned its attention on one of his fellow policeman. This situation, Strike knew, wanted playing very carefully. He raised his eyebrows.

‘You don’t think it’s relevant, if Truman had a personal motive for rushing out the ID of Knowles?’

‘I just can’t see how Truman being a mason would get us any nearer to identifying Wright,’ said Robin.

She had, indeed, suddenly become conscious of the possible ramifications of this light-hearted conversation. She’d already fibbed to Murphy by telling him they were trying to find Rupert Fleetwood rather than attempting to double-check the Met’s identification of Knowles. What would he say if he found out they were staking out masonic lodges for signs of a senior policeman entering and leaving?

‘I’d say it’s fairly relevant to our investigation, if the lead copper let personal loyalties override his professional duty,’ said Strike. ‘What if he suppressed information, because it was convenient to identify Wright as Knowles? What was the name of Truman’s alleged lodge, can you remember?’

‘No,’ said Robin truthfully, though she was further rattled by the ‘personal loyalties’ comment. She didn’t like this feeling of divided allegiances, which she’d never experienced before during a case.

Deciding to temporarily back off Truman and the masons – better by far for Murphy to be the one pissing Robin off, rather than him – Strike ate a few more chips, then said,

‘Well, we should have a look for this website Wright visited, for people who’ve been wrongly accused, but it’s a bloody odd thing for Knowles to have done. Career criminals like him don’t usually need internet strangers to tell them how to cover their arses.’

‘No,’ agreed Robin, ‘but it might fit Rupert Fleetwood. Maybe he was looking for advice on how to convince the police he hadn’t really stolen that nef?’

‘He marched upstairs in the club in broad daylight to nick it, then admitted to his girlfriend he had it and refused to give it back, which isn’t the behaviour of a man keen on covering his tracks. If you ask me, nicking that nef was about more than money. Fleetwood was sending a giant “fuck you” to Dino Longcaster. Longcaster’s his godfather. Fleetwood probably assumed he could slack off at work because of the family connection, then had a hissy fit when he realised he couldn’t. The whole thing smacks of arrogance and entitlement.’

‘Nice that you’re keeping an open mind about him,’ said Robin drily.

‘I don’t like grifters and leeches,’ said Strike. ‘But OK, for the sake of argument: say it was Fleetwood in the vault. He’s gone to ground at Ramsay Silver to evade his various problems and responsibilities, intending to flog his nef to Kenneth Ramsay, who’s just lied to us about being offered it. Why would he then use the work computer to find out how to worm his way out of a theft charge? He’d successfully disappeared from view and found a possible buyer for the goods. You’d think he’d be ordering champagne online, not asking for advice.’

Robin now looked even more troubled.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Strike.

‘I just… we aren’t doing something immoral, taking this case, are we?’

Shit.

‘I thought we agreed we’d do it to put Decima’s mind at rest?’ said Strike.

‘But if we really don’t think it was Fleetwood, if there’s not the slightest chance…’

‘There’s always a slight chance,’ said Strike, backtracking shamelessly. ‘We haven’t promised Decima we’ll prove it was Fleetwood in the vault. We’ll be giving her closure if we prove it was someone else.’

‘Until she starts imagining Rupert was the victim of another unsolved murder.’

‘If her delusion survives us proving Fleetwood wasn’t William Wright, I’m happy to be the bastard who tells her she’s in the grip of a morbid fixation.’

‘You don’t think it might be kinder to do that right now?’

‘Look, there are similarities between Wright and Fleetwood. Height, build, blood type, left-handed, Fleetwood disappears, Wright appears, the silver thing… actually, on the subject of Fleetwood, would you mind taking over trying to persuade Rupert’s friend Albie Simpson-White to talk to one of us? He’s still refusing to come to the phone whenever I call Dino’s. Woman’s voice: less frightening.’

‘OK,’ said Robin, writing herself a reminder.

‘I’ve also emailed Fleetwood’s drug-dealing ex-housemate, Zacharias Lorimer, but no response so far. I’ll give him a few more days, because I’m not wasting money calling Kenya if he’s just going to tell me to piss off. Haven’t tried Sacha Legard and Valentine Longcaster yet. Probably have to send Sacha a message through his agent.’

‘What’s he like?’ asked Robin, who’d been unable to suppress a small frisson at the mention of Charlotte’s Oscar-nominated half-brother.

‘Like someone who’d benefit hugely from being punched in the face.’

‘Strike!’

‘You haven’t met him.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘His whole life’s been laid out for him on a golden platter; everything he wanted, from birth. His parents worshipped the ground he walked on and he takes it for granted everyone else feels the same.’

‘And that clearly really pisses you off.’

‘No. Well,’ Strike conceded, ‘a bit. Doesn’t mean I want him dead.’

‘God above, I should hope not!’ said Robin, half-amused, half-shocked. ‘D’you usually want people you dislike dead?’

‘Some of them,’ said Strike, thinking of Jeff Whittaker, his mother’s second husband. ‘If I heard Mitch Patterson had dropped dead in the dock, I’d probably celebrate with a pint. Rather see him in the clink, though.’

Until a few months previously, ex-policeman Mitch Patterson had headed up the rival detective agency for which Kim Cochran had been working. There’d never been any love lost between Patterson and Strike, and in the course of attempting to bring down Strike and Robin’s business, Patterson had found himself arrested for the illegal bugging of a top barrister’s office.

‘The trial starts next week,’ said Robin.

‘I know, I’m looking forward to that more than Christmas. You know, thinking about it,’ Strike said, feigning a sudden thought, ‘if anyone’s going to talk to Sacha Legard, it might have to be you.’

‘Why? You’re the one who knows him.’

‘Yeah, that’s the problem. I assume he knows what Charlotte’s suicide note said, which means he won’t be very well disposed to me at the moment. Although, come to think of it, that probably extends to you, too.’

Robin felt a hot explosion in the pit of her stomach; she didn’t know whether panic or pleasure predominated, but she was afraid she was going red.

Strike noted the blush and waited to see whether Robin ignored what had just been said, or responded to it for the first time. Looking down at her soup, she said,

‘Sacha can’t blame you for what she wrote in that note. She was… the papers said she’d taken a load of drink and drugs…’

‘She knew exactly what she was saying. She’d said it all to me before, sober.’

This was news to Robin. Before she could muster a response, Strike’s mobile rang, and Robin seized the opportunity to get away from the table by muttering,

‘Need the loo.’

Annoyed by the interruption, which he considered extremely ill-timed, Strike answered his phone.

‘Hi,’ said Midge, ‘I’m just letting you know, Kim and I’ve swapped jobs this evening. She’ll do the Dorchester with you.’

‘Why?’ said Strike, frowning.

‘She thinks Plug clocked her yesterday, so she’d rather he doesn’t see her again today.’

‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

He hung up, still annoyed. He’d hoped to do the Dorchester job with Robin – sitting in the bar, both of them dressed up to infiltrate a charity ball, might have been exactly the right setting for the declaration he intended to make – but unfortunately, Robin was due the night off.

Meanwhile, an agitated Robin was inside a cubicle in the Ladies, asking herself what the hell Strike was playing at, bringing up Charlotte’s suicide note again. Knowing her work partner as well as she did, two possibilities occurred to her. Either he was making straightforward statements of fact untinged with embarrassment, referring to the note purely because it might indeed colour Charlotte’s half-brother’s attitude to him and Robin, or…

Or what? Was he trying to tell her indirectly that he did have deeper feelings for her than he’d ever admitted before? Was he pushing to see what she felt in turn? Or was it safe to play this game, now she was with Murphy? Was his aim to undermine her relationship, because it suited him better to keep her single, meaning the threat of her leaving the agency receded?

With mounting annoyance, Robin asked herself why, if Strike had something to say, it had to be couched in these plausibly deniable terms, out of the mouth of a dead woman. What was she supposed to say, in a crowded pub, in the middle of a job: ‘was Charlotte right? Are you in love with me?’ If Strike did indeed feel anything approximating love for her, he’d had countless opportunities to say so, hadn’t he? She’d suffered on account of her own feelings for him far more than she wanted to admit to herself nowadays. Had he hinted at such feelings two years previously, everything might have been different… or would it? As Robin knew from long, close contact with him, Strike didn’t do committed relationships. A few months was all she’d ever known him manage, and Robin was now old enough, and wise enough, to know she’d never be the kind of person who wanted casual sex, or short flings. It was important to remember that, whenever her ill-disciplined thoughts drifted towards Cormoran Strike…

She thought of Murphy, who didn’t play games, who said outright what he felt for her, who had no problem talking about a future with her, and didn’t bail on relationships at the first hint of trouble; who wasn’t, in short, an infuriating sod who messed with your feelings to further a confused, but probably self-interested, agenda. It was pointless, not to mention masochistic, to dwell on how she’d felt when she’d hugged Strike on her wedding day, or when they’d looked into each other’s eyes on the pavement outside the Ritz and she’d known he was about to kiss her, or when she’d groped for his hand in the bed they’d shared, after she’d fled Chapman Farm…

There was a loud knock on the door of the cubicle in which Robin was sitting, and she jumped.

‘Is anyone in there?’ said an angry voice.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, and she hastily pulled up her pants and flushed the toilet.

Back at the table, Strike was still eating chips when Robin’s mobile, which she’d left lying face up on the table, received a text. Being good at reading things upside down, Strike didn’t need to touch the phone to see:

Ryan

We could probably afford something like this www.rightmove.c…

Fuck. Fuck, fuck—

‘How’s your fish?’ said Robin, sitting back down opposite him. She glanced at her phone, then put it back in her bag without answering the text.

‘Pretty good,’ said Strike.

This indication that Murphy and Robin appeared to be thinking of moving in together had come as a significant blow to Strike. Furthermore, he sensed, from Robin’s tone, that continuing to milk Charlotte’s suicide note would be inadvisable just now. Reluctant to abandon the field completely, however, he said,

‘You’ve told Murphy we’re taking Decima’s case?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘How’d he take it?’

‘Fine,’ said Robin shortly.

Strike retreated, but only to marginally safer ground:

‘I’ll email Sacha Legard to see if he’s prepared to meet one or other of us.’

Whether because the conversation had veered back within orbit of Charlotte’s suicide note or not, Robin now glanced at her watch.

‘I’d better get going. I’m supposed to be in Camberwell in forty minutes.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, as she gathered up her things, ‘but let’s try and get out to St George’s Avenue and talk to Wright’s housemates soon. Probably have to be both of us or it’ll take all day to find the right house, given we haven’t got the number.’

‘Fine,’ said Robin again, now brisk. ‘Let me know when.’

16

Strike returned to the office in a far worse mood than he’d left it. It might be the height of hypocrisy for him to feel aggrieved that Robin (as he saw it) had hidden the fact that she was house-hunting with Murphy – how much had he concealed about his own private life, throughout their friendship? – but this in no way lessened his resentment.

Stick to the game plan. He went into the inner office, opened the rota and identified Monday as the best day for him and Robin to visit St George’s Avenue together, blocking out enough time not only to identify William Wright’s former residence and, hopefully, interrogate his neighbours, but also to have another drink with Robin, ostensibly to debrief. Having made the necessary adjustments, Strike turned his attention to Niall Semple, the ex-paratrooper who’d now been missing for six months.

As Strike had told Robin, there’d been a light smattering of press about Semple when he disappeared, though interest seemed to have died fairly quickly. Strike now opened an article he hadn’t yet read, in which Semple’s wife, Jade, pleaded for information on her husband’s whereabouts. The story contained three pictures: one of a clean-shaven Semple in the dress uniform of a paratrooper, the second, of the Semples’ wedding day and the third, the last known sighting of him, at a cashpoint in Camden.

Thick of neck, with high cheekbones, Semple was a handsome man with short blond hair and bright blue eyes, who resembled the physical type most often cast as a young Nazi in films, although his smile was engaging in the clean-shaven picture.

However, in the photograph of his wedding he was wearing a full beard – a most unusual choice for a soldier in the British army – and looked stern rather than happy. His wife, Jade, resembled an over-painted doll. Strike wasn’t a fan of the fashion for thickly pencilled, angular eyebrows, which Jade had embraced whole-heartedly. Her thick hair, which was dyed a blueish-black, was pulled back in a semi-beehive, with locks left loose over her shoulders, and the bodice of her wedding dress was partly sheer, and had been constructed to make the most of her cleavage. She looked small even standing beside Semple, who, according to the article, was five foot seven. Strike didn’t find Jade Semple attractive, but he could imagine that to men who liked that sort of thing, who enjoyed feeling large and masculine beside girlish women of tiny proportions, she’d be something of a catch.

The last picture, of Semple at the cashpoint in Camden on June the fourth of the previous year, showed a scruffy man with an unkempt beard who, rather incongruously, was holding a metal briefcase. Strike squinted at the hand gripping the briefcase. Either Semple was wearing a heavy metal watch, or he’d handcuffed it to himself.

He skim-read the article and learned that Semple had undergone brain surgery in 2014 and subsequently been discharged from the army, unfit for service. He’d disappeared from his family home in Crieff, Scotland, on the twenty-seventh of May, days after his mother’s funeral.

‘I’m desperate,’ says Jade Semple. ‘I’m so worried, I can’t sleep or eat, I just want Niall to get in touch and if anybody’s seen him, to please, please call the helpline. I’m really scared he’s living rough or in some kind of bad situation.’

Strike sat back in his computer chair, thinking not so much about what the article contained, but what it didn’t. The lack of detail on the incident that had left Semple so severely injured it had ended his military career was particularly interesting to him. He opened Facebook, found Jade Semple’s account easily enough and scrolled back to the date her husband had disappeared. A clutch of photos from the twenty-sixth of May all featured a fancy dress party. Jade was an identical twin: he couldn’t tell whether she was the one dressed as Princess Peach from the Nintendo franchise, or the one dressed as Rosalina. There was no sign of her husband in any of the party photos.

From that day onwards, Jade had posted only requests for information on her missing husband and links to news stories about his disappearance. The very last picture posted showed Jade holding a small orange puffball of a puppy, captioned #NewFurBaby.

Strike sent Jade a private message explaining who he was, that he’d been hired to look into the body found in the silver vault and giving her his mobile number. He then opened email and began searching for the message he’d received months previously from his former SIB colleague and friend Graham Hardacre, which he’d neglected to acknowledge or answer. He’d just found it when a text from Kim arrived.

Where do you want to meet this evening? Kx

Strike noticed the casually attached kiss and didn’t much like it. He texted back:

Outside Dorchester, 7

He’d only just sent this when his mobile rang with a call from Barclay.

‘There’s somethin’ up,’ said the Scot in a low voice, before Strike could speak. ‘Plug’s visiting some kinda compound, wi’ two men.’

‘What d’you mean, “compound”?’

‘Waste ground, high fences, sheds… we’re a good way north of Ipswich. Middle o’ nowhere. Ah can hear guard dogs. There’s somethin’ up,’ repeated Barclay. ‘If Ah stick around till after dark, Ah might be able to get in there.’

‘What about the dogs?’

‘Ah’ll change out o’ my sausage trousers.’

‘OK, but for fuck’s sake don’t get caught. Last time Midge trespassed on private land, she got chased off by a bloke with a riding whip.’

‘Aye, but that was the aristocracy,’ said Barclay. ‘The look o’ this lot, it’ll be knives.’

‘We haven’t got health insurance, Barclay.’

‘Ach, I used tae drink in Barlanark in the nineties,’ said Barclay. ‘No evenin’ complete wi’out a bit o’ light stabbin’. Talk later.’

When Barclay had hung up, Strike returned to his email to Hardacre, over which he took some care, remembering to ask after Hardacre’s wife and two sons, whose names he managed, with a significant degree of effort, to recall.

At half past five, he locked up the office and went upstairs to shower, eat a sandwich and change, prior to heading out to the Dorchester. His bad mood was worsened by the fact that he considered the evening’s activities – infiltrating a gala dinner in benefit of a children’s charity – entirely pointless. Mrs A was to be in attendance, and the client was insistent that his wife should be kept under surveillance there, even though Dominic Culpepper was currently in Lancashire. Mr A thought his ex might ‘talk about shagging him, when she’s got her guard down’.

Showered and changed into his dinner suit, Strike debated whether to walk to the Dorchester in the interests of counterbalancing his earlier fish and chips or get a cab, because his leg was still aching, and compromised by setting out on foot and waiting for a cab to present itself, which happened on Shaftesbury Avenue.

The night was chilly and the combination of London’s gaudy Christmas illuminations and the cheery end-of-working-week revellers thronging the dark pavements seemed to mock Strike’s mood. As the cab slowed in front of the Dorchester, which was decorated with much greenery and thousands of twinkling ruby-red lights, he saw Kim Cochran standing alone beside the steps in a clinging crimson dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, through which her nipples were clearly visible. She was very obviously braless.

He got out of the cab and paid the male driver, who, understandably, was staring at Kim rather than at the large, bent-nosed man shoving fivers into his outstretched palm.

‘Evening,’ said Strike, when he reached Kim.

‘Wow, you brush up well,’ said Kim, smiling.

‘Likewise,’ said Strike, out of politeness.

Many other men in black tie were making their way through the twin revolving doors at the front of the hotel, accompanied by thickly made-up women in silk and sequins. As Kim moved ahead of Strike to enter via the revolving door, he saw that the dress was backless; it revealed a long expanse of smooth skin and a single mole, slightly to the right of her spine.

‘There’s a place up there we can sit for a bit,’ said Kim, pointing up the long marble-floored lobby. ‘And I’ve recced the bathroom the women at the event will be using, so I’ll make sure I’m in and out of it regularly, in case she lets anything slip during girl talk. God, I could use a drink. I’ve had a very weird couple of hours.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, as they reached the seating area. ‘Why’s that?’

‘First of all, get this – I got a call from Farah Navabi.’

Strike was immediately interested. Farah Navabi was an extremely good-looking, though not particularly competent, detective who’d been employed by his sometime nemesis Mitch Patterson.

‘What did she want?’

‘To hire me. She’s starting her own agency.’

‘The fuck’s she going to manage that? She planted the effing bug for Patterson. She’s going to be doing time right along with him.’

‘She’s confident she won’t,’ said Kim. ‘You don’t know Farah like I do. That woman could wriggle her way out of anything. God, I could use a drink.’

‘So what did you say?’ asked Strike.

‘Told her to get stuffed, obviously. I’m happy where I am and – oh, here she comes,’ Kim added in an undertone.

Strike glanced around. Mrs A was walking towards the ballroom doors, the same fake-fur coat she’d been wearing in Mount Street hanging open to reveal a floor-length sequinned purple gown. She was accompanied by a blonde wearing a corseted gold dress so tight Strike wasn’t sure how her internal organs could still be in their rightful places.

‘I’ll go and see if anything interesting’s being said at the coat check,’ said Kim, getting up to follow the women.

‘I’ll be in the bar,’ said Strike, getting to his feet: Mrs A ought not to see him sitting there alone. They weren’t going to be able to follow her into the gala dinner, of course, but Strike knew from similar jobs that once food had been consumed, and as long as you were appropriately attired and carried yourself with the right degree of casual entitlement, these events were very easy to gatecrash.

After years of tailing the well-heeled, Strike was familiar with the layout of most of London’s five-star hotels, so turned left at the end of the lobby. The Dorchester’s bar was decorated in gold and green with Art Deco touches, and was bestrewn with more Christmas foliage and fairy lights. He was informed by the man at the door, who emphasised Strike’s good fortune, that they could squeeze him in at the bar itself. Having ordered a double whisky, Strike had just pulled out his phone to kill time, when it rang in his hand.

‘Strike.’

‘Yeah,’ said a female voice so loud that Strike winced and held the phone away from his ear, ‘i’s Jade Semple.’ Her Estuary accent was so strong she pronounced her surname ‘Sempaw’. ‘Niall’s wife. You’ve wrote to me, on Facebook.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Strike, ‘thanks for getting—’

‘’Ow do I know you’re ’oo you say you are?’

She was throwing her voice as though speaking to him from the bottom of a well, and Strike was reminded of Bijou Watkins, who’d been similarly loud.

‘We can switch to FaceTime if you’d like. I could screenshot my driving licence?’

He heard a male voice speak in the background, and knew he was on speakerphone.

‘Not hard to fake a driving licence,’ the man said.

‘Or we could meet face to face?’ said Strike.

The phone now seemed to change hands, because the man spoke next at full volume.

‘Who’s hired ye?’

‘I can’t disclose that, I’m afr—’

‘Newspaper,’ said the man confidently. ‘Told you, babe.’

The line went dead.

Strike immediately saved Jade Semple’s mobile number, which she’d incautiously failed to hide.

‘Nothing interesting at the coat check,’ said a voice in Strike’s ear. ‘Oh good, we’re drinking. Vodka tonic, please,’ Kim told the barman. ‘They’re all sitting down for dinner,’ she informed Strike.

Kim’s drink arrived at the same time as the man beside Strike got up off his bar stool, and she got onto it instead.

‘Whoops,’ she said, with yet another laugh, as her dress snagged on her heel, tugging it down at the back, leaving Strike with good reason to suppose she wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath it. She downed several gulps of her drink before saying,

‘God, I needed that… anyway, get this. Right after Navabi called me, I had my ex turn up at my front door. I was wearing this,’ she said, gesturing down at the dress, ‘so obviously he thought I was off meeting someone new… nice big row, obviously. He’s such a fool. We split up,’ she went on, although Strike hadn’t asked, ‘because he got made redundant and that became his entire personality, being jobless. I’m not even kidding! “Hi, I’m Ray, I don’t work.”’

She laughed again. Strike didn’t think she was drunk, but there was a slightly frenetic air about her that recalled Kenneth Ramsay, jabbering desperately in an effort to sell what wasn’t wanted. Strike had no desire whatsoever to hear about Kim’s private life, but protracted silence might provoke questions about his mood he didn’t want, so he asked,

‘What did he do?’

‘Worked for a hospital trust,’ said Kim, ‘and now it’s all “you left me when I was at my lowest”. I mean, there are other jobs, Ray. Just grow a pair and send out your bloody CV, hahaha. Oh dear God, look at her…’

Kim’s eyes were following the reflection in the mirror over the bar of a tall, willowy woman who’d clearly had a lot of cosmetic work done to her face. Strike was reminded of Charlotte’s mother, Tara, whose picture, the last time he’d seen one, had shown extensive overuse of fillers.

‘Why do they do it?’ Kim asked. ‘What’s the point? Look at her neck and her hands… you’re not fooling anyone… would you?’ she asked Strike, smirking.

‘What, have plastic surgery?’ asked Strike, knowing full well what she meant.

‘No,’ said Kim, laughing as she nudged him, ‘you know…’

All he had to do, Strike thought grimly, was get through the next couple of hours. He ordered another drink, so Kim did, too. She gabbled on and on, and though Strike paid as little attention as he could, and his responses were perfunctory, he unwillingly learned far more than he’d ever wanted to about his newest subcontractor. Ray, she told him, had been the husband of a friend also on the force (‘well, ex-friend now, obviously, hahaha’); their relationship had been the main trigger for Kim leaving the Met (‘it’s all politics, anyway, I’d had enough’); she’d also had two long, complicated affairs in her twenties, both with married policemen. Strike found it strange, to put it mildly, that she was telling him all these things unbidden, although she seemed to assume that he took her tales as sophisticated and exciting, rather than tawdry.

‘… wanted kids, which I don’t, so that was the end of that…’

Judy Garland was singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ over hidden speakers. Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Robin. A good long road trip to Scotland to interview Jade Semple would mean an overnight stay four hundred miles away from Murphy, which was exactly the kind of situation he’d been hoping this case would provide. He had to put pressure on Jade Semple. Robin and Murphy might be viewing the house he’d seen on Robin’s phone at this very moment. What if there was a ring-shaped Christmas present in Murphy’s gym bag?

‘… literally offered me money to stay. Can you imagine? Money!’

‘… glad to be working over Christmas, to be honest… I’ll go and check whether we can get in there yet,’ said Kim, and she slid off the barstool and walked back off towards the ballroom, her rear view attracting plenty of attention from men in the bar.

Strike ordered a third whisky, picked up his phone again and, in search of distraction, opened the website Truth About Freemasons and began to read answers to the many questions people had come on to the website to ask. GI-67: Can Jewish people be masons? Stolkin: Yes, masons can be any religion although Catholics aren’t allowed to join by their own church. AustinH: Is it true Freemasons protect each other? Gareb 7: In a brotherly sense, yes. If you’re thinking of concealing crimes, no, that’s the mafia.

‘Doors are open,’ said Kim’s voice in Strike’s ear. ‘She’s pissed and dancing.’

Strike paid the barman and followed Kim back out into the lobby. As they approached the double doors into the ballroom, Kim slid her hand under Strike’s arm, chattering and laughing, and they passed into the gala without challenge.

Tall vases full of white flowers and crystal icicles stood on the circular tables. Uniformed waiters and waitresses were winding through the party, clearing away empty bottles. The dancefloor was crowded, but Strike spotted Mrs A on its edge, dancing face to face with the woman in the gold dress to ‘Shout Out to My Ex’.

‘How fucking appropriate is that?’ said Kim jubilantly, already gyrating to the music. ‘Shall we dance?’

‘Not my forte,’ said Strike. ‘Leg.’

‘OK, I’ll go it alone,’ said Kim, and she sashayed away from him towards Mrs A and her friend, affording him another look at that long, bare expanse of back.

‘What,’ said a frigid voice beside Strike, ‘are you doing here?’

Strike looked down to see a pale, petite brunette with large dark eyes, who was wearing a strapless black dress.

Oh, fuck.

‘Friend invited me. Good cause,’ said Strike.

‘Bullshit,’ said the Honourable Nina Lascelles.

He’d slept with her twice, six years previously. She was pretty enough, but that wasn’t why he’d done it; she’d simply helped him gain important evidence in a case. It had seemed rude at the time not to have sex with her, because she’d clearly wanted it, but their awkward, if minimal, history was far from the only reason to deplore Nina’s presence here tonight. Nina happened to be the cousin of Dominic Culpepper, the journalist Mr A suspected his ex-wife of sleeping with, and Nina had clearly drunk enough cheap champagne to make her disinhibited.

With a view to keeping the conversation civilised, Strike asked,

‘Who’re you here with?’

‘My fiancé,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Strike, ‘congratulations. Which one’s he?’

Nina pointed at a large blond man staggering around on the dancefloor beside Mrs A.

‘Nice moves,’ said Strike. Nina didn’t smile.

‘What are you really doing here?’

‘I just told you,’ said Strike. ‘Kids. Good cau—’

‘You’re here after someone.’

‘I’m a donor. The charity helped out my godson.’

‘Oh,’ said Nina. She clearly imagined even Strike wouldn’t lie about having a seriously ill godson. ‘Right. Sorry.’

He wanted to walk away, but thought it inadvisable to do it in any way she’d consider rude. Why the fuck hadn’t he just said ‘thank you’, or sent her flowers, six years ago?

Shout out to my ex…

‘Dominic’s pissed off at you,’ Nina shouted up at him. ‘He says you’ve got too grand for him. You’ll only give tips to Fergus Robertson these days.’

‘Would you say Robertson’s grander than Dominic?’ asked Strike. Robertson was a short, balding Scottish journalist of working-class origins, whereas Nina’s showbiz reporter cousin was ex-public school. When Nina’s expression remained icy, Strike said, knowing full well he wasn’t,

‘Dominic here?’

‘No,’ said Nina. ‘Is that your date?’ she asked, watching Kim dancing virtually back to back with Mrs A.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘Huh,’ said Nina, with a faint sneer. She took a clumsy swig of wine.

‘Shout Out to My Ex’ had ended. Mrs A and her friend staggered, laughing, off the dancefloor and headed for what Strike assumed would prove to be the powder room. Kim followed.

‘What’s her name?’ asked Nina, her eyes following Kim.

‘Linda,’ said Strike, off the top of his head, then wondered why the hell the first name to spring to his lips was that of Robin’s mother, who detested him.

‘Is she a detective too?’

‘No, she works in a shop.’

‘Sure she does,’ sneered Nina.

‘People do work in shops,’ said Strike. ‘Not everyone works in publishing or PR.’

‘I know that, thank you,’ snapped Nina, taking another gulp of wine.

Strike wished he still had a drink, and wished even more that Nina would sod off. Didn’t she want to dance with her fiancé, who was now staggering around to ‘Rockabye’?

‘Still at Roper Chard?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Actually,’ she added, with a slightly snide laugh, ‘if they knew I was talking to you, they’d want me to offer a deal on your memoir.’

‘There won’t be a memoir,’ said Strike.

‘I didn’t think so,’ snorted Nina. ‘Not a truthful one, anyway.’

Strike’s ego wasn’t sufficiently enlarged to believe that this degree of anger could be accounted for by a very brief liaison, six years previously.

‘What’s that mean?’ he asked.

‘It means,’ said Nina, ‘you really fucked up a friend of mine’s life.’

‘How did I do that?’ asked Strike.

‘Never mind,’ spat Nina.

Strike spotted Kim wending her way back towards him.

‘Linda,’ said Strike, before Kim could speak, ‘this is Nina. Nina, Linda.’

‘Hi,’ said Kim brightly. ‘How do you know Cormoran?’

‘We fucked twice, a few years ago,’ said Nina, leaving Strike to deplore the tendency of the upper classes to call a spade a spade.

‘Oh,’ said Kim, without a flicker of discomposure. ‘He’s good, isn’t he? Speaking of which, Corm, I’d rather be doing that. Let’s go.’

She linked her arm through Strike’s.

‘Night,’ said Strike to Nina, as he and Kim walked away.

Kim unlinked her arm from his just as Strike was about to pull away.

‘Got her, bang to rights,’ she told Strike, and held out her mobile to show him the photo she’d just taken.

Two women, one in purple, the other in gold, were closely entwined in a passionate kiss, leaning up against a tiled bathroom wall.

‘The woman in gold is Lady Violet,’ said Kim triumphantly. ‘Dominic Culpepper’s wife.’

17

Strike called Robin on Saturday morning to give her two bits of news, neither of them particularly welcome.

‘Barclay was arrested last night.’

‘Shit!’ said Robin, freezing with a mug of coffee halfway to her mouth.

‘Yeah. He got taken by surprise by two men who found him trying to get inside that bloody compound Plug was visiting, north of Ipswich. Barclay managed to get onto the roof of a building from which – allegedly – there have been thefts of agricultural tools. So he’s been fucking fingerprinted and the police are going to recognise him if he goes sneaking around there again.’

‘What did he say he was doing?’

‘Said he climbed on the roof for a bet. Pretended to be pissed.’

Against her will, because it would be highly inconvenient if Barclay ended up in court, Robin laughed.

‘Glad someone finds it funny,’ said Strike.

‘Could he see anything from the roof, before he got dragged off it?’

‘No, he said the place was in total darkness, but there are dogs. That’s what tipped off the blokes who dragged him down, the guard dogs barking. Hope to fuck he’s not charged.

‘But in slightly better news, Kim’s cracked Mr A’s case,’ Strike went on. Having explained about the taking of the photograph in the Dorchester bathroom, he said, ‘… so you can take tomorrow off.’

‘Great,’ said Robin, trying to sound enthusiastic while imagining Kim’s smug self-satisfaction.

Delighted to learn that Robin had an unexpected day free, Murphy suggested lunch at the Prospect of Whitby, which she’d never visited before. It was the oldest of all the pubs that sat along the Thames, with wood-panelled walls and model ships on the window sills. The pair of them ate outside on the deck, watching the great river roll past, Robin well wrapped up against the cold. The peaceful interlude reminded Robin how well she and Murphy got on when neither of them was exhausted or stressed. With a glass of wine inside her, she concurred with more enthusiasm than she’d shown previously that they should start house-hunting in earnest, a decision made far easier because Robin’s upstairs neighbour had thrown a party on Friday that had meant she’d had barely an hour’s sleep. There was to be a viewing the following day of the terraced house in Wanstead for which Murphy had already sent Robin the details, and they agreed over lunch that they’d go, ‘just to get our eye in’, as Murphy put it. They further agreed that no properties would be viewed in Clapham, Ealing or Deptford, where Robin had lived with her ex-husband, or in Barnet, where Murphy had lived with his ex-wife.

Murphy was cheerful, conversation was easy and Robin felt nothing but affection for her boyfriend. Yes, there were things she wasn’t telling him – the GP’s letter, still unacted upon; the visit to Ramsay Silver to view the place where William Wright had been murdered and mutilated; the fact that she’d be attempting to locate Wright’s former residence the following day – but in the bracing chill, with the slight fuzziness given by the wine and the muddy Thames gliding past them, this didn’t trouble Robin overmuch. Nobody was talking about eggs, or their freezing; neither of them mentioned Cormoran Strike. To complete her good day, she received a text from Strike while she was buying more drinks at the bar, informing her that Barclay had been released with only a caution.

Great, she texted back. She hadn’t told her CID boyfriend about Barclay’s arrest, so when he asked why she looked so hazily happy on returning to the table, she said,

‘I’m with you,’ and was rewarded with a kiss.

On Monday morning, which was cloudless and chilly, Robin set off for St George’s Avenue, Newham, in the still-rattling Land Rover. She’d been driving for fifteen minutes when she received a call from Midge.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, having to shout over the Land Rover’s engine and its rattle. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve lost a bloody wodge of expense receipts,’ Midge said, sounding grumpy, ‘and Pat said to call you about it.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Robin. ‘Just write up what you think you spent and we can match it all against your credit card statement. Are you OK?’ she added, because Midge sounded immensely stressed, which she didn’t think could be entirely receipt-related.

‘No,’ said Midge bluntly. ‘Tasha’s not answering my fookin’ texts and Kim’s doing my fookin’ head in. Can I ask you something?’

‘Go on,’ said Robin.

‘Is there something going on with Strike and Kim?’

The receipts, Robin immediately realised, had been a pretext for Midge to call and ask this question.

‘What d’you mean?’ she asked, her heart rate suddenly accelerating.

‘Strike. Kim. Shagging. Because I’ve just met her at the office, and she was banging on about Friday night.’

‘Yes, she did really well,’ said Robin automatically.

‘I’m not talking about the photo – although that was hardly difficult, they were groping each other right there in the open. No, she says she and Strike were discussing their exes all evening and then he ran into one of them, at the party. And Kim told this woman they were off to shag, and the way she was saying it… I know he’s a player,’ said Midge, ‘but I didn’t think he’d shit on his own doorstep, y’know?’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ said Robin, hoping she was telling the truth.

‘D’you like her?’ asked Midge baldly.

‘She’s good at the job,’ said Robin.

‘’S not what I asked.’

‘Midge—’

‘All right, fine,’ said Midge grumpily.

She hung up. Robin continued driving.

Would Strike sleep with Kim? Had he? Surely not. No, he couldn’t have done… he wouldn’t (as Midge had put it) shit on his own doorstep. If there was one thing that Strike put first, above everything, it was the agency.

So he’d run into an ex at the Dorchester. Well, it couldn’t have been Charlotte (a nasty mental image intruded of that beautiful face seen through bloody water)… maybe Ciara, the model? Elin, the radio presenter? Lorelei, owner of a vintage clothing store? Madeleine, the jewellery designer? Bijou, the lawyer? Robin drove on towards Newham, her thoughts dwelling on the succession of gorgeous women who’d been briefly entangled with Cormoran Strike, and she was angry at herself for ruminating on Midge’s words, and angry, too, at her detective partner, though she’d have found it hard to justify that emotion if interrogated. Strike wasn’t proven to have done anything wrong… he wouldn’t have slept with Kim… God, she hoped he hadn’t…

She arrived in St George’s Avenue at eleven o’clock and parked. As she was getting out of the Land Rover, Strike’s BMW passed her.

‘Morning,’ he said, when they met on the pavement between their respective cars. ‘Just been talking to Shah. He’s going to have a go at that compound this afternoon. Try and get in the front, posing as a vet who’s been called out and mistaken the address.’

‘Great,’ said Robin, trying to dispel thoughts of Kim and the gala. ‘So, we’re looking for a place with multiple bells, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, wondering whether he was imagining a slight aloofness in Robin’s manner.

‘All right, why don’t you go that way, I’ll go this, and we can call each other if we find a likely house.’

So the partners split up, Strike walking up the street and Robin down.

18

St George’s Avenue wasn’t a particularly long street. Strike passed short terraces and a couple of squat, square blocks of flats, but a few minutes after he and Robin had parted, Strike’s eye fell upon a house he considered promising: tall, narrow, shabby, its bins overflowing and with four bells on a dirty panel beside the main door.

He phoned Robin.

‘Think I’ve found it.’

‘Already?’ said Robin, who was standing outside a primary school at the other end of the street.

‘It’s not far from where we parked.’

So Robin headed back up the street and found Strike standing at the top of a flight of filthy steps. He pressed each of the four doorbells in turn, but no responding voice issued from the intercom. Strike glanced at the only window on the ground floor. The thin curtains, which had come partially off their rail, had been drawn together against the light with a plastic hair claw.

A rangy-looking man with a long beard was walking past on the other side of the road. He stared at Strike and Robin as he passed, but carried on. Then Robin spotted a pale, overweight woman wearing leggings and a sweatshirt heading down the street, carrying a bulging plastic shopping bag in one hand and holding the hand of a small boy eating a chocolate bar with the other. The mother’s hair was dark and greasy, and she had tattoos on her hands and neck. Robin had a strong presentiment that mother and child lived in the building they were trying to enter, and sure enough, she stopped at the foot of the steps, staring up at the two detectives.

‘Morning,’ said Strike. ‘Don’t know whether you can help us?’

‘Wha’ d’you want?’ the woman said suspiciously, climbing slowly up towards them. Strike could smell the stale cannabis on her clothes.

‘Is this where William Wright used to live?’ asked Strike.

‘Yeah,’ she said suspiciously. ‘Why?’

Strike pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to her.

‘My name’s Cormoran Strike and this is my partner, Robin Ellacott. We’re private detectives.’

The woman took Strike’s card and stared at it. An expression of dawning comprehension spread over her face, and when she looked up again, she seemed slightly awed.

‘Are you ’im ’oo done that church? An’ got that strangler?’

‘She did the church,’ said Strike, indicating Robin. ‘I got the strangler.’

‘Ha,’ said the woman, looking from one to the other. It was clear that she considered herself in the presence of celebrity, and Strike reflected that here he was seeing the flipside of the inconveniences of becoming newsworthy: the lure, to potential witnesses, of reflected glory.

‘We’ve been hired to find out anything we can about Wright,’ he said, now pulling his wallet out of his pocket. The woman’s eyes followed it greedily as he extracted three tenners.

‘I fort they knew ’oo Wright was?’ she said.

‘Maybe,’ said Strike, ‘maybe not. Anything you tell us would be in strictest confidence. We’ve got nothing to do with the police,’ he added, in indirect acknowledgment of the strong smell of weed hanging in the crisp winter air.

She chewed her lip, thinking.

‘Yeah,’ she said at last. ‘All righ’.’

She plucked the banknotes out of Strike’s hand, then unlocked the front door while her son peered up at them with the blank, wary stare of small children. The foursome stepped over a mess of fliers lying inside the front door that nobody had bothered to pick up. The overhead lightbulb was out, the uncarpeted floor was of grimy stone, and there was a mingled smell of damp and cooking. The woman opened a door on the right, and led them into her home.

What must once have been a drawing room had been converted into a cramped bedsit, which smelled strongly of cannabis and body odour. Much of the floor was cluttered with bowls used as ashtrays, empty cigarette packets, and other, less readily identifiable bits of detritus. In one corner of the room stood an aged cooker and a fridge; evidently occupants were supposed to wash up in the dirty sink visible through the door to a cramped bathroom. There was a double bed, a cot, a television standing precariously on a cardboard box, a small sofa currently occupied by two bulging black bin bags, and a chest of drawers, on top of which were two mugs growing mould, and a slightly crumpled letter headed HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

Strike was instantly and unpleasantly transported back to those parts of his childhood spent with his mother. Even the man with long greasy hair who was lying face down in the double bed seemed familiar. The latter jerked awake as his partner closed the door.

‘Hurgh?’ he said groggily, turning a swollen-eyed face towards them. ‘The fuck?’ he repeated in dazed alarm, looking up at Strike who, even in civilian clothes, conveyed an air of officialdom to those primed to detect it.

‘’E’s Cameron Strike, the private detective,’ the woman, with dim excitement. ‘’Im what caught that Shacklewell Ripper an’ done that church. An’…’

She’d forgotten Robin’s name already.

‘Robin Ellacott,’ supplied Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said the woman. ‘They wanna talk abou’ William Wright. They’re not police, Daz.’

Strike, who had considerable expertise in this area, recognised in the sleepy man the signs of a fully committed pothead: slothful speech, dazed affect and a slight, though in this instance not unreasonable, paranoia.

‘Yeah, but – the fuck?’ said Daz again, weakly. ‘I’ve got nuffing fuckin’ on, Mandy.’

Mandy cackled, tugged a pair of jeans out of one of the black bin bags and chucked them at her boyfriend.

‘Put ’em on under the duvet,’ she instructed him, now heaving both bin bags off the sofa. ‘Gonna go the laundrette later,’ she informed the detectives. Her son ran to pick up a Spider-Man action figure which had been dislodged from between the sofa cushions.

‘Council put us ’ere,’ Mandy informed Strike and Robin. ‘Shit’ole, innit? You can sit down,’ she said, pointing at the sofa. It was extremely dirty, but the two detectives did as invited, forced to sit so close that their arms and thighs touched. Mandy perched on the end of the bed; Daz, now hidden beneath the duvet, was wriggling into his jeans.

‘They don’t fink William was that Jason Fing,’ Mandy informed the undulating lump beneath the bedclothes. ‘I never fort ’e was,’ she said proudly.

‘Yeah, you did,’ came Daz’s muffled voice from under the duvet.

Their son was now rummaging through Mandy’s bag of shopping.

‘No, Clint!’ said Mandy sharply. ‘Fuck’s sake—’

Clint began to cry.

‘Oh, all right,’ she said, relenting instantly. She pulled out a pack of chocolate biscuits, ripped them open with her teeth and handed him one. ‘Don’ blame me when the dentist wants to take ’em all out,’ she added, pulling out a packet of Mayfair cigarettes for herself, and unwrapping them.

‘Is it OK if we take notes?’ Robin asked.

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Mandy, looking rather excited.

‘I’ll do it,’ muttered Strike to Robin, pulling out his own notebook. He thought Robin might appear less threatening to Daz, whose head had just re-emerged from beneath the duvet.

‘So you didn’t think Wright was Jason Knowles, Mandy?’ asked Robin.

‘You did,’ said Daz, before his girlfriend could answer. ‘When it was on the news, you said, “fuck, ’e was on the run!” I was the one what said ’is voice was off. ’E wa’n from Doncaster,’ Daz informed Robin. ‘I ’ad a mate from Doncaster.’

‘You think he was putting the accent on?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Daz.

‘Could he have been Scottish?’ she said, thinking of Niall Semple.

‘Dunno,’ said Daz. ‘Maybe.’

‘Could he have been upper class, and trying to sound working class?’ Robin asked, thinking of Rupert Fleetwood.

‘Maybe,’ said Daz again.

‘I seen ’im out there,’ said Mandy, who seemed to want to reclaim the detectives’ attention, and she pointed towards the hall. ‘Seen ’im the day ’e arrived.’

‘Did he have much stuff with him?’ asked Robin.

‘Just a suitcase,’ said Mandy. She bent down, retrieved a lighter from beside a sock on the floor, and lit her cigarette.

‘Which room did he have?’ asked Robin.

‘One above this,’ said Mandy, pointing at the ceiling. ‘S’even worse. ’Alf the size. Mind, there was on’y one of ’im.’

‘Were you the people who identified William from the pictures in the press?’

‘Nah, that was Hussein,’ said Mandy, exhaling smoke. ’’E’s moved out now, ’im an’ ’is wife an’ daughter. They wuz in the rooms on the top.’

‘D’you know their surname?’ asked Robin. ‘Where they went?’

‘Mohamed, their surname was. Syrian. Dunno where they went. Their little girl was in a wheelchair. They got council ’ousing fast, because of being shoved up top, ’ere. Maybe if I shoved Clint in a wheelchair we’d get an ’ouse, ’an all,’ said Mandy bitterly.

Daz got out of bed, bare-chested and -footed, and switched on the kettle standing on top of the fridge. He was somehow both skinny but also soft-looking, a small white paunch hanging over his jeans. A large tattoo on his back showed the Roman numerals for four and twenty.

‘Did you see much of Wright?’ asked Robin.

‘Bit, yeah. Fort ’e was weird, din’t we?’ Mandy said to Daz.

‘Yeah,’ said Daz, with a snigger. ‘Looked like one of them on Guess ’Oo.’

‘Wh—? Oh, the children’s game?’ said Robin, after a few seconds’ confusion.

‘Yeah,’ said Daz, who was now looking for teabags. ‘Wiv ’is beard an’ ’is glasses… if ’e’d ’ad an ’at, hahaha… an’ ’e was fuckin’ orange… fake tan. An’ ’e worked out. Seen ’im getting’ fuckin’ ’eavy boxes delivered, an’ I said, “what’s that then?” An’ ’e said, weights, got ’em off eBay, really pleased wiv ’imself… carryin’ ’em upstairs… we could ’ear ’im fumpin’ around up there.’

Strike was taking rapid notes. Clint, who’d already consumed his first biscuit, helped himself surreptitiously to a second from the packet on the bed behind his mother.

‘We sorta laughed at ’im,’ said Mandy, ‘’cause ’e told me people might come round lookin’ for ’im, an’ if they did, we should say ’e weren’ there. Fort ’e was biggin’ ’imself up – but then look what ’appened,’ she said, with an air of dim surprise.

‘Did he say who might come looking for him?’ asked Robin.

‘Nah.’

‘He said “people”, did he? Plural?’

‘’E said “someone”, an’ then ’e said, “or ’e might send someone”.’

‘Makin’ out the mob was after ’im,’ said Daz, with a chortle. Turning to face them holding his tea, which he’d made in a mug bearing a cartoon picture of a penis captioned ‘Mr Bellend’, he said,

‘Know wha’ I fort ’e was? Stripogram. Fake tan an’ fuckin’ abs… I said to Mand, ’e’s a fuckin’ stripogram an’ ’e don’ wanna admit it.’

‘Clint, don’ do that,’ said Mandy sharply. Her son was trying to pull a plate off the top of the chest of drawers. When he showed signs of grizzling, she distracted him with a third biscuit. Daz, who was idly scratching his belly, said,

‘’E come down ’ere one time, Wright.’

‘Did he? Why?’ asked Robin.

‘Wan’ed to buy a bit of dope. We was ’avin’ a takeaway, an’ ’e ’ad a bit wiv us.’

‘Can you remember anything you talked about?’

‘’E said ’is girlfriend was gonna join ’im. Come an’ live wiv ’im, upstairs.’

‘Did he tell you his girlfriend’s name?’ asked Robin.

‘Nah,’ said Daz.

‘Rita, woz it?’ said Mandy vaguely.

‘Oh yeah, maybe,’ said Daz, although Robin had the impression he couldn’t remember. ‘An’ the gun fing,’ he said to Mandy, ‘remember?’

‘What gun thing was this?’ asked Robin, while Strike’s pen sped up.

‘We woz watchin’ John Wick while we was ’avin’ the Chinese,’ said Daz, ‘an’ he said someone weren’ ’olding their fuckin’ gun properly. Tryna be the ’ard man, see?’

‘No, that Rita fing…’ said Mandy, frowning. ‘Tha’ was when ’e was proper fuckin’ stoned… Rita Linda or somefing. Asked if we knew ’er. Remember?’ she said to Daz.

‘He asked if you knew someone called Rita Linda?’ said Robin.

‘Yeah… woz it Rita Linda? I fink ’e said… didn’ ’e say ’e knew what ’appened to ’er?’ she said, appealing to her boyfriend again. ‘An’ din’ ’e say we’d see it on the news?’

‘Dunno,’ said Daz, still scratching his navel.

‘It woz somefing like Rita Linda.’ Mandy ran the names together: ‘Ritalinda.’

‘Ritalin-da,’ said Daz. ‘Hahaha.’

‘He said he knew what had happened to Rita Linda?’ said Robin. ‘And it would be on the news?’

‘Yeah, somefing like… an’ ’e dropped ’is doob tube, remember, Daz? An’ ’e told you it was a fuckin’ blood sample, like you was gonna nick it off ’im.’

‘I don’t understand, sorry,’ said Robin. ‘He dropped what?’

‘’Is doob tube. You know, where you keep your stash. Fell outta ’is pocket when he stood up. Daz went to pick it up for ’im an’ Wright grabs it away, an’ Daz says, “all right, I wasn’t gonna fuckin’ take it,” an’ Wright says, “wouldn’t be no use to you, it’s my blood sample.”’ Mandy cackled. ‘Blood sample! Was it fuck.’

‘Did he say why he was carrying a blood sample around with him?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah, said ’e was gonna ’and it in at the doctors, an’ then ’e left.’

‘You saw the tube clearly, did you? It was definitely full of cannabis?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mandy, but then, ‘musta bin. ’E fort Daz was gonna nick ’is blow or why’d ’e be so weird about it?’

‘’E was a bit of a fuckin’ weirdo,’ said Daz. ‘Mind, when it come out, on the news, I says to Mand, “tha’s what the fuckin’ mason fing was.” ’E asked me what I fort of the masons. Sounded like ’e was finking of joining,’ said Daz, now idly examining half a joint left in an ashtray on top of the fridge. ‘Fuckin’ masons,’ he said, with a guffaw.

‘But when you heard he’d been killed in a masonic shop—’

‘Yeah, I knew why ’e’d asked. Fuckin’ masons,’ Daz said again, no longer smiling. ‘S’not funny, really, is it?’ he said, as though everyone else had been laughing.

‘Can you remember anything else he said?’ asked Robin. ‘Like, where he’d come from? Anything about his family?’

‘Nah,’ said Daz.

‘Don’t fink so,’ said Mandy regretfully, ‘I don’ fink… nah.’

‘Did he ever have visitors, that you can remember?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah, a girl an’ some dick’ead in sunglasses. But ’e wasn’ ’ere then, wozee?’ Mandy asked Daz.

‘I wasn’t ’ere eiver,’ said Daz.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Mandy, and she smirked. ‘I forgot.’

‘Wright had visitors when he wasn’t in?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Mandy, ‘it was after ’e was killed. No,’ she corrected herself, ‘the girl was before. The bloke was after. I only realised later. Toldja, din’ I?’ she said to Daz, who nodded.

‘Can you tell me about them?’ asked Robin. ‘Starting with the girl?’

‘She come, like, the evening before ’e was killed.’

‘You’re sure of the date? Friday the seventeenth of June?’

Mandy looked alarmed at being asked to be so precise, but then said,

‘Yeah, it was then, ’cause that weekend, when all what ’appened, ’appened, me an’ ’im’ – she pointed at Daz – ‘we’d ’ad a row an’ I told ’im to get out, an’ when I ’eard someone open the front door in the evening, I fort it was Daz come back, so I open our door an’ I seen ’er.’

‘She let herself in?’

‘Yeah, she ’ad a key,’ said Mandy. ‘She looked foreign. Like, maybe Pakistani, but light. Black ’air, really long. An’ wearing a pink top wiv flowers on it,’ she added, and she looked pleased to have remembered it. ‘An’ she was carryin’ a suitcase.’

Beside Robin, Strike’s pen was moving ever faster.

‘An’ I says to ’er, “you movin’ in?” ’cause of Wright sayin’ ’is girlfriend was gonna move in wiv ’im an’ she says, “just visitin’” an’ she didn’ sound English an’ she wen’ upstairs an’ about an hour later, she come back down, ’cause I was lookin’ out of the window—’

‘Lookin’ for me,’ said Daz smugly.

‘No, I wasn’,’ snapped Mandy. ‘I was jus’ lookin’ out the window! She come down an’ she could ’ardly carry the suitcase now, an’ she ’eaves it into the boot of a car an’ off she goes.’

‘What can you remember about the car?’

‘Silver coloured,’ said Mandy. ‘Looked new.’

‘Can you remember a make?’

‘Nah,’ said Mandy. ‘An’ then, really early nex’ day, like, five in the mornin’, I ’ears the front door again—’

‘Couldn’ sleep,’ Daz said smugly. ‘Missin’ me.’

‘Missin’ you, my arse,’ said Mandy loftily, ‘but I fort it was gonna be Daz this time, so I got up an’ I opened our door an’ I seen this guy wiv curly ’air goin’ up the stairs, an’ ’e ’ad an empty suitcase an’ all, an’ ’e looked back at me when I come out into the ’all an’ ’e was wearing sunglasses, indoors. ’E looked a real twat.’

‘Was he black, white…?’

‘White. So I come back in ’ere, an’ I gets back into bed, an’ about ten minutes later there’s this, like, ’uge bang on the stairs, an’ I finks, what the ’ell’s goin’ on, an’ I gets back up and opens the door an’ this twat in the sunglasses ’as dropped the suitcase down ’em, an’ I says, “make more racket, why don’t you?” an’ ’e din’ say nuffing, jus’ dragged the suitcase out the door an’ slammed it. An’ I went to look froo the window again an’ ’e got in the car and off ’e went.’

‘When you say “the car”, you mean the same one the girl had been driving earlier?’

‘Looked like it. Yeah, I fink it must’ve been ’er drivin’, cause ’e put the suitcase on the back seat an’ got in the front passenger seat.’

‘And you’re sure both the man and the girl had been in Wright’s room?’

‘Yeah, I could ’ear ’em walking ’cross our ceiling. An’ I asked Hussein later, “did you see eiver of them people?” An’ ’e said no. An’ then, on the Monday, it was on the news Wright ’ad been killed, and I said to Daz—’

‘I come back Saturday evenin’,’ Daz informed Strike and Robin. ‘She’d suffered enough.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Mandy vaguely. ‘No, so, I says to Daz, “that was weird, those two goin’ in an’ out ’is room”.’

‘I’m only asking this for our information,’ Robin said, ‘not because we’re going to pass anything on. Did you tell the police any of this?’

Daz gave a little ‘huh’ of laughter.

‘Nah,’ said Mandy, showing her brown teeth as she grinned. ‘Jus’ said we didn’ really know ’im.’

Daz, of course, was dealing pot, and possibly other drugs; Strike and Robin had both registered the Ritalin joke, just as they’d noticed the court summons lying on top of the chest of drawers. Robin could well imagine that Daz and Mandy’s dominant emotions on finding police in the house would have been panic and a firm disinclination for letting them enter this squalid room.

Robin asked a few more questions, but Mandy had no information to give about either the couple’s clothing or age; the woman, she said, looked young and the man older, but the hall, she reminded Robin, was quite dark.

‘Did either of you ever see inside Wright’s room?’ Robin asked.

Both shook their heads.

‘Before we go,’ said Strike, reaching into his coat pocket, ‘could I show you some pictures?’

He pulled out his phone and laid it on his knee as he sorted the pictures of Niall Semple, Tyler Powell and Rupert Fleetwood. While he was doing this, the screen of his mobile lit up and Robin saw a text from Kim, and the words, in capitals, ‘SO SEXY’. Next second, Strike’s large, hairy-backed hand had covered it, and he’d returned the phone to his inner pocket, leaving Robin to feel as though as ice cubes had just dropped into her stomach.

‘Could you tell me whether any of these men could have been Wright?’ Strike said, getting up to hand the pictures to Mandy. Daz, his half joint now lit, moved to the end of the bed and sat down beside Mandy to look.

‘Woss ’e wearin’?’ was Mandy’s only comment, as she surveyed Rupert Fleetwood in his waiter’s bow tie. ‘’Andsome,’ she said appreciatively, when she turned to Niall Semple’s picture. ‘Looks like Thor.’

‘Does ’e fuck,’ sneered Daz, scratching his small, flabby belly again.

‘’Is ears,’ sniggered Mandy, when she reached Tyler Powell. ‘But,’ she said, looking at Powell, ‘it could’ve been ’im, y’know. Wiv ’is ears covered, wiv ’is ’air.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘Nah,’ said Daz.

‘Could of been,’ said Mandy.

‘How sure are you?’ said Strike. ‘Out of ten?’

Mandy looked as alarmed as she’d been when asked to agree to a firm date, earlier.

‘Five,’ she said. ‘But ’e was a bit like ’im, too,’ said Mandy, now holding up Rupert Fleetwood’s picture, with an air of wanting to cover all her bases.

‘Right,’ said Strike, taking the photos back again. ‘Well, you’ve been very helpful, thanks,’ he said. ‘For the record, what did you think, when you saw Knowles’ picture?’

‘We never fort it was ’im,’ said Mandy.

‘You did,’ Daz contradicted her. ‘You said, when it come out, “fuck, ’e was for real, ’e was on the run.”’

‘I never,’ said Mandy crossly.

‘Is there anything else you can remember about Wright?’ asked Robin, but Mandy and Daz had given all they had to give. However, even Daz seemed slightly reluctant to let the detectives go: their visit had been an unusual, mildly exciting, interlude.

Robin wanted to get out into clean air again, but she felt a pang of guilt at leaving the family where they were, especially as Mandy began talking about housing when it became clear that Strike and Robin were really leaving.

‘We’ve bin on the waiting list for a council ’ouse for a year,’ she said, walking them to the front door.

‘That’s awful,’ said Robin.

Strike reached into his pocket again and took out a further twenty pounds.

‘For your trouble,’ he said. ‘Buy Clint something for Christmas.’

‘Oh, cheers!’ said Mandy, now far happier to see them depart.

The door closed behind Strike and Robin as they walked down the steps.

‘That was nice,’ said Robin.

‘Just hope it doesn’t all go on weed. Fancy a debrief? There’s a pub up—’

‘Could we do it tomorrow?’ said Robin. ‘I’ve actually got to get going just now.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Right.’

‘I’ve got a load of paperwork to file at the office, and I don’t want to put it off, because I’m going to view a house later,’ said Robin.

‘Right,’ said Strike again.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK.

Strike walked slowly back towards his BMW, pulling his mobile out of his pocket as he went. Another text from Kim had followed the one he’d glimpsed inside.

Omg, sorry, that wasn’t meant for you!

He scrolled up to the previous text.

He looked SO SEXY in his dinner jacket!

19

‘So,’ said Murphy, setting a glass of tonic water and a packet of crisps in front of Robin six hours later, ‘that was a waste of bloody time.’

‘I know,’ said Robin.

They were sitting in the corner of a loud and noisy pub situated close to the small terraced house in Wanstead they’d just viewed. Having spent an hour in Mandy and Daz’s bedsit that morning Robin would have expected anything to look good by comparison, but she doubted the ‘three bedrooms, separate lounge and kitchen’ had been decorated or restored in thirty years. Robin and Murphy had trailed around the place in the wake of a middle-aged couple who appeared to be looking at the house as an investment opportunity: renovate, sell and reap a fat profit.

Murphy had only ten minutes to spare before he needed to set off back to work. He hadn’t told Robin exactly what was happening on his gang shooting case, or what he’d be doing this evening, had arrived late for the house viewing and been almost monosyllabic throughout. He kept checking his phone.

‘Are you OK?’ Robin asked tentatively.

‘Yeah,’ said Murphy.

He took a sip of his zero-alcohol beer, then said,

‘The mother’s given a big interview to the Mail.’ Robin knew him to be referring to the woman who’d lost one child, and whose other was now blinded, in the gang shooting. ‘Probably be online soon.’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ said Robin.

‘I’m just sick to the back fucking teeth of it all,’ muttered Murphy furiously. ‘We had the guy who was driving the car the shooter fired from in custody. We applied for an extension to keep questioning him and it’s been fucking refused.’

‘Why was it refused?’

‘Because he’s got a shit-hot piece of shit lawyer, that’s why.’

Robin could tell her boyfriend was in the state where neither sympathy nor further questions would be welcome. She took a sip of tonic water and opened her crisps.

‘How was your day?’ said Murphy, with an obvious effort.

‘Fine,’ said Robin, with forced brightness.

‘What were you doing?’

‘Trying to find Rupert Fleetwood. We didn’t.’

Murphy forced a smile.

Five minutes later, after finishing his drink, he said,

‘I’m gonna have to go.’

‘OK. I’m going to stay a bit longer. Might get more crisps.’

Murphy kissed her, and left.

Robin had to admit to herself that it was a relief to see him disappear. Now she could let her face fall, relish the anonymity of this crowded, noisy pub and try and address her own mood, which was a combination of anxious, miserable and another emotion she didn’t particularly want to identify.

Aside from the depressing visit to the rundown property they’d just viewed, and the disquiet that had resulted from seeing that text to Strike from Kim, Robin was now weighed down by the knowledge that she and Strike were in possession of information the police had never been given. She’d assured Mandy and Daz they wouldn’t share anything the couple had said, but of course, that had been a lie: she and Strike had an obligation to pass on important evidence to the people who ought to be dealing with it, because, whatever Murphy might think, they weren’t in the business of trying to upstage or sideline the proper authorities.

Robin had been inwardly debating whether she should tell her boyfriend about the man and woman who appeared to have taken things from William Wright’s flat before and after he’d been murdered, but, given his mood when he’d finally turned up at the terraced house, she’d decided against doing it this evening. Had she gone for a debrief drink with Strike, they could have discussed all of this, of course…

SO SEXY. Staring at the tinsel-decked bar, Robin asked herself when she’d ever needed to send Strike a text with the words SO SEXY in it. Unless she was reporting an overheard conversation, she couldn’t imagine any circumstances under which she’d have done so, even after years of deepening friendship. At the very least, they suggested a hitherto unsuspected degree of familiarity and complicity between Kim and Strike.

Her mobile screen lit up. Strike had texted her.

How was the house?

Though Robin didn’t know it, Strike was also currently sitting alone in a pub: the Flying Horse, his favourite local. He, too, was feeling depressed, although at least he had the compensations of alcohol. It had taken him half an hour to decide on sending the four-word text. He wanted to push her into admitting that she and Murphy were moving in together because, unwelcome though the announcement would be, no carefully targeted offensive action could be taken against a hidden enemy.

Robin contemplated Strike’s message for several minutes. Annoyed at him as she currently felt, she was vaguely touched that he’d bothered to ask. They were friends, after all. Best friends.

Horrible, she texted back.

Strike was very slightly cheered by this answer. At least cohabitation wasn’t imminent. He began to type again:

I think I’ve found that website William Wright was looking at, at work. www.AbusedAndAccused.org

Robin pressed the link and was taken to a website headed by the logo Kenneth Ramsay had described: two stylised hands, each of them holding an eyeball.

She scrolled slowly downwards. The website was clearly the very last resort of the desperate. Lawyers of the less reputable type posted advertisements there, trawling for those looking for compensation or appeals against convictions. Laymen were either profligate with free advice that strayed into the criminal, or had visited the site in a spirit of Schadenfreude. Anon9: I have been arrested drunk driving but nobody give my miranda rites does this mean I can apeal Dogger: Miranda warnings are only given in the states you twat AustinH: my girl frend ‘s father spread rumors I done sonething really bad . how do I stop this do I need a lawyer Kojak: I can sort that for you no lawyers involved Kibosh: Have been accused of ‘inappropriate touching’ of work experience girl, suspended on full pay, would be grateful to hear of anyone else who has been subject of similar baseless accusation. Belter: Nonce C2J88: Nonce Japh: Nonce

Robin texted Strike back.

It does look like WW was hiding or on the run from someone/something.

Yeah. I’m going to call Wardle about that couple who took stuff from Wright’s flat, btw. We can’t sit on that.

Robin relaxed somewhat. She wouldn’t have to tell Murphy and, hopefully, her boyfriend would never hear where Wardle had got the information.

Strike, meanwhile, was interested in Robin’s willingness to engage in a text conversation with him. This seemed to suggest she wasn’t with Murphy right now. He sent another text.

I’ve emailed that Osgood bloke. No response yet.

Robin responded:

No. Well, he didn’t seem very fond of unsolicited emails

Strike typed true, then sent a further text.

Been wondering why a man would be carrying around a blood sample.

That must have been a lie?

I’d have thought so. Also been wondering whether the getaway car containing the Murdoch silver also contained a curly-haired man and a long-haired woman.

Yes

Wouldn’t mind pictures of the body. See whether there were defensive wounds.

Don’t want much, do you?

Might get lucky on some of it. Kim says she’s got an in.

A shard of red-hot resentment pierced Robin.

For God’s sake, calm down. You need information, said a rational voice in her head, but it was no match for the angry self that wanted to type, why don’t you just team up with bloody Kim on the case instead, if she’s got so many ins?

She lifted her glass to her lips, only to find it empty. Looking up, she realised that a group of women close by were throwing her unfriendly glances for hogging a table and texting, when she was neither drinking nor eating. Robin gathered up her things and left the pub.

The night was freezing, the stars overhead glinting, remote and unfriendly. Once inside the Land Rover, Robin locked the door and turned back to her phone. While she’d been walking to the car, Strike had texted again.

What do you think of her, incidentally?

Robin stared at these words for a few seconds, before typing back,

Who, Kim?

Yes

Unbeknownst to Robin, Strike was consciously trying to disarm what he feared might be a ticking bomb. He couldn’t be sure that Robin had seen the SO SEXY text, and maybe it was vanity to imagine that she’d have been remotely concerned, but he didn’t like the idea of what Kim might be saying behind his back, and after their evening at the Dorchester, he wouldn’t put it past her to be hinting at a mutual attraction that didn’t exist.

Back in the Land Rover, Robin was afraid of taking too long to answer.

She’s good at the job.

Strike pondered this answer, scowling slightly. Was this diplomacy, or had Robin not noticed a trace of flirtatiousness in Kim’s manner towards him? Or didn’t she care?

What do you think of her personally?

Robin, who was now wondering whether she was being asked to give her seal of approval for Strike’s affair, hesitated. She feared responding negatively, because she didn’t want Strike to realise… what? Then she saw the three dots that meant Strike was typing again, and waited.

Because she’s starting to piss me off

Suddenly the stars dimly visible through Robin’s misty windscreen were winking benignly. She could be generous, now.

She’s good at the job, though.

It’s just me who thinks she’s bloody full of herself then, is it?

No, thought Robin, feeling even more relieved than she had when Strike had said he’d tell Wardle about the couple who seemed to have stolen items from Wright’s flat, it isn’t. She considered telling Strike about Midge’s question of that morning, but something held her back. The thought of Murphy was somehow tangled in with her reasons for not opening a conversation about Strike being fancied by Kim: better, perhaps, not to go there at all.

She’s quite pleased with herself, but you can’t say she hasn’t anything to back it up. It was good work, getting that picture at the Dorchester. Have you shown it to Mr A, by the way?

Yeah. He’s pleased. Just hope there’s no fallout.

What do you mean?

I ran into someone at that dinner who knows me: cousin of Dominic Culpepper’s. If A uses that picture to try and wreck Culpepper’s marriage, it won’t take Culpepper long to work out who was keeping watch over his wife and Mrs A that night.

The smile now faded off Robin’s face. So whichever ex-girlfriend Strike had run into at the gala dinner was Dominic Culpepper’s cousin? That didn’t fit any of the former girlfriends she knew about. Exactly how many exes did Cormoran Strike have?

Oblivious to the new hole he’d inadvertently dug for himself, Strike was typing again.

I’ve been going through the footage from Ramsay Silver’s interior camera this afternoon.

Anything interesting?

A couple of bits I wouldn’t mind discussing. Have you had any luck on Tyler Powell?

I tried calling his grandmother this afternoon. No answer. I think I’ve also found his parents, but no landline for them. The whole family’s in Ironbridge. Odd that the grandmother called the helpline, not his mum or dad.

Robin’s fingers were becoming increasingly numb in the cold, but she typed on.

How did Dev get on at that Ipswich compound, by the way?

No dice. There was a kind of watchman who didn’t seem to buy his story.

Strike, I’m going to have go to, I’ve got to drive home and I’m freezing.

No problem. We’re both free Weds afternoon, we could review the Ramsay camera footage then?

Great, texted Robin.

Nine miles away in the Flying Horse, Strike replaced his phone in his pocket and contemplated the bottles behind the bar, feeling morose. He needed to start his bloody Christmas shopping. His sister, Lucy, kept sending him anxious texts about the sale of Ted and Joan’s house. There was bound to be a house out there, somewhere, that Robin and Murphy would like.

Nevertheless, he thought, getting to his feet, he’d secured another afternoon alone with Robin. Given her house-hunting activities, every conversation from now on had to be considered in the light of an opportunity.

20

‘Why have we got a fish tank?’

It was nine o’clock on Wednesday morning and Strike had just entered the office to find his office manager shovelling gravel into the bottom of an aquarium standing on a side table beside the sofa, where previously there had been a fake pot plant.

‘Because nobody told me Tilly’s nan was getting her one,’ said Pat sourly, over the clatter of gravel.

‘Tilly?’

‘One of my great-granddaughters,’ snapped Pat. ‘She wanted goldfish, it’s her birthday. I bought the whole kit and caboodle and then I find out her other nan’s bought her the lot. I’ll have to go out at lunch and get her something else.’

‘I assume you’re planning on putting fish in it?’

‘Well, I’m not going to shove a cat in,’ said Pat irritably.

Strike had no wish whatsoever to add the care of goldfish to his daily workload, but given Pat’s current irascibility he decided not to ask why she didn’t just sell the aquarium on eBay. As he headed for the kettle, he placed a sheet of paper headed ‘Hussein Mohamed’ on Pat’s desk. He’d asked her to make a search of online records for the Syrian family who’d lived upstairs from William Wright, and had a wheelchair-bound daughter.

‘We’ve had a couple of funny phone calls,’ Pat told him, over the clatter of gravel.

‘How, “funny”?’

Pat set down her bag of gravel, crossed to the desk and pressed a button on the phone. A reedy, petulant male voice said,

‘This is Calvin Osgood. I’d be grateful if you’d call me back immediately and tell me what this is all about. And for the record, nobody calls me Oz.’

The man dictated his mobile number and hung up.

‘That’s all right,’ Strike told Pat. ‘He’s just a bloke who got a strange email from Ramsay Silver. I’ll call him back after I’ve had a coffee. What’s the other funny call?’

Pat pressed the answer machine button again. Low, guttural breathing issued from the speaker, followed by a male voice rasping:

‘Leave it an’ you won’t get ’urt.’

‘That it?’ said Strike, turning to look at the machine as it beeped again. ‘Bit non-specific.’

‘Yeah,’ said Pat. He could tell she was trying to hide an unease for which he couldn’t blame her. They’d both been in the office when Pat had opened an explosive device. As Strike moved towards the kettle, he mentally reviewed the cases currently on the agency’s books, wondering exactly what ‘it’ they were supposed to leave.

Two-Times had been taken on as a client again because, whatever his personal peculiarities, he always paid his bills on time. However, unless his fetish for unfaithful women had developed a strange new offshoot, Two-Times would hardly be calling the office to tell them to stop tailing his wife. That left Plug and the silver vault case.

‘It could be one of the blokes who dragged Barclay off the roof of that compound,’ he said. ‘Kim thought Plug might have clocked her the other day, as well. I’ll check.’

‘Is that a new shirt?’ said Pat, squinting at him.

‘Er – yeah,’ said Strike. He’d put it on that morning because of his imminent tête-à-tête with Robin. Now he felt vaguely self-conscious, as though Pat had read his mind.

‘Suits you,’ she said gruffly, and returned to her fish tank.

Once at the partners’ desk, and fortified by half a mug of strong coffee, Strike called Kim. Her immediate response was a hitherto unexhibited sharp defensiveness.

‘Plug didn’t really spot me, I was just being super-careful,’ she said. ‘I thought there was a remote chance. Anyway, I was wigged up and wearing glasses. There’s no way he could have traced me to this agency, I just thought it was best if I didn’t follow him again too soon afterwards.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. He hadn’t forgotten that the job swap in question had meant Kim got to accompany him to the Dorchester in a backless dress.

‘It was probably Robin,’ said Kim. ‘She lost him, remember, at Victoria? He might’ve spotted her and deliberately shaken her off. She isn’t as careful as she should be about disguises, given she’s been in the press a l—’

‘Well, there’s no guarantee it was anything to do with Plug,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll let you get on.’ He hung up, drank some more coffee, then returned Calvin Osgood’s call.

Strike was halfway through explaining who he was, and why he was calling, when Osgood interrupted in the thin, whiny voice Strike imagined a mosquito might have, should it be granted speech.

‘I know who you are, you explained in your email! I haven’t got anything to do with Ramsay Silver. I told the police all this – somebody out there’s pretending to be me. That’s who this person must’ve thought they were emailing!’

‘You think your identity’s been stolen?’

‘I know it’s been stolen! He’s calling himself Calvin “Oz” Osgood, music producer, which is who I am, except I’ve never called myself Oz, and nor has anyone else, and he’s linked my LinkedIn profile to his bloody Instagram page, so I’ve been getting emails to him on my professional account!’

‘“Emails”, plural?’ said Strike, his mobile now pinned between shoulder and ear as he logged into LinkedIn and searched for Calvin Osgood music producer. ‘What did they say?’

‘Well, there was that one from Ramsay Silver talking about helping me with a problem, and some idiot asking if I was still interested in buying his van, and complete gibberish from a girl who couldn’t write proper English, saying I’d played a prank on her cousin, and what had I done to her, or some such crap.’

Strike had just found what he assumed was Osgood’s genuine LinkedIn profile. It featured a man with a chubby, though not unhandsome, face who Strike judged to be in his mid-thirties, but what interested him most was that Osgood had dark, curly hair. Skim-reading the page, Strike learned that Osgood produced incidental music for television shows, though not any that Strike had watched.

‘Did you keep these emails for “Oz”?’

‘I deleted them,’ said Osgood, adding defensively, ‘I didn’t know I was going to have the police and a private detective calling me about them, did I?’

‘Could the deleted emails still be in your email b—?’

‘I emptied it. The police haven’t been any help at all,’ Osgood continued, his reedy voice rising still higher. ‘What’m I going to be dragged into next?’

‘This must’ve all been very difficult for you,’ said Strike, not particularly sincerely. He’d just found the Instagram page Osgood had described. The account purported to be that of Calvin ‘Oz’ Osgood, music producer, there was a link to the real Osgood’s LinkedIn page, to bolster the fake account’s credibility, but ‘Oz’ didn’t feature in the Instagram pictures except for the occasional wisp of dark, curly hair, the back of an equally curly head, or one lens of his mirrored sunglasses. In the absence of full-face shots, the small visible traces of the fake Osgood might plausibly have been photographs of the real producer. The images showed glamorous, intriguing settings – infinity pools, long white beaches, fireworks in the Seychelles, mixing desks, photographs of well-known singers that appeared to have been taken from the wings of the stage and interior shots of private planes. The captions were short, giving little away, and tending towards brief hashtags: #HighLife, #GouldingGig, #MusicMagic. One showed a pair of tanned bare feet standing on a pair of scales that read 68kg, with the caption #TargetWeight.

‘And those are the only emails you’ve had from people who think you and Instagram Oz are the same person, are they?’ asked Strike. ‘The one from Ramsay Silver, the one about the van, and another one about some supposed prank?’

‘Yes,’ said Osgood, sounding still more defensive. ‘Why would I lie?’

‘Just checking,’ said Strike. ‘Well, thanks for getting back to me.’

‘I was in Manchester,’ Osgood said, ‘when that Wright person was killed, and I’ve already proved it to the police!’

‘Then I needn’t trouble you any longer,’ said Strike, and having thanked Osgood again for his time, he rang off and began reverse-searching the images Oz had posted to Instagram.

As Strike had suspected, all had been stolen from other accounts, with portions of Oz’s curly hair photoshopped in. Strike suspected the picture of the scales, showing a weight Strike would have had to lose at least a couple more limbs to achieve, was meant to explain the discrepancy in size between the real chubby-faced music producer on LinkedIn and his Instagram impersonator.

Strike took out a fresh notecard of the type he used to pin on the noticeboard and headed it: Oz

Strike pinned this card beneath the various press clippings and notes relating to their four possible William Wrights, returned to his desk, and spent the rest of the morning dealing with paperwork unconnected to the silver vault case.

He was still there, consuming a late lunch, when Midge arrived to file her most recent notes. Hearing her ask Pat, ‘Are we getting fish?’ and Pat’s snapped answer, ‘No, turkeys, what’s it look like?’ Strike called Midge through to the inner office and asked whether she thought Plug had spotted her lately.

‘No,’ she said with an unexpected degree of aggression. ‘Why? What’s Kim been fookin’ saying now?’

‘She hasn’t been saying anything,’ said Strike. He remembered Robin telling him Midge’s romance might be on the rocks, but he didn’t much appreciate her tone. ‘We’ve had an anonymous call to the office and I wondered whether it could’ve been him or one of his mates.’

‘Oh,’ said Midge, looking somewhat abashed. ‘Right. Well, he did something fookin’ weird last night. Left his mum’s at midnight, jumped in his van, and drove to an allotment up the road. He goes into the shed with a torch, stays five minutes, comes out, locks it up again, and drives home. I waited ’til he was safe in the house, then went back to the allotment. Long story short, nearly bust my knee climbing over the fence, and there’s something alive in there.’

‘What, in the shed?’

‘Yeah. It’s animal, not human – unless they’re deaf, I s’pose. I said “knock twice if you can hear me” and nobody did. Whatever it is sounds big, but it wasn’t moving a lot. The windows are blacked out and there’s a massive chain and padlock on the door.’

Strike heard Pat’s gruff ‘afternoon’ in the outer office and knew Robin must have arrived. He followed Midge into the outer office, where Robin was hanging up her coat and Pat was making more coffee.

‘Oh, are we getting—?’ began Robin, looking at the fish tank, but Strike interrupted,

‘How was Mrs Two-Times?’

‘Dull,’ said Robin. ‘All she seems to do is shop and meet her girlfriends for lunch. I just handed over to Dev in Harvey Nichols.’

Strike, Robin noticed, was wearing a blue shirt she’d never seen before.

‘We’ve had a threatening phone call,’ he informed her. Pat played Robin the second of the two messages the agency had received overnight.

‘“Leave it and you won’t get hurt?”’ Robin repeated. She’d once unwrapped a severed leg in this very office, so a non-specific whisper seemed fairly tame in comparison, but all the same, she didn’t fancy further unwanted packages. ‘What’s “it”?’

‘Christ knows.’

The two partners retired to the inner office.

‘Don’t mention fish,’ Strike told her, as he closed the office door. ‘The tank was supposed to be a birthday present for her great-granddaughter, but a rival grandmother beat Pat to it.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Robin. ‘Well, they’ll brighten the place up.’

‘Yeah, be a real morale-raiser, fish carking it and Pat blaming me,’ said Strike.

Robin laughed, then, noticing a few additions to the noticeboard since she’d last examined it, moved closer to look at them.

On the lower part of the board was Strike’s new note about ‘Oz’, and beside it a card headed ‘Wright’ bearing a summary of the notes Strike had made about the man who’d lived for a month in St George’s Avenue, and worked at Ramsay Silver for a fortnight.

At the very bottom of the board was a new photograph, showing a man with dark hair, a pronounced widow’s peak and a thick moustache. Beside this Strike had written:

Evidently, Robin thought, with a slight sinking feeling, Strike had found the online allegation that Malcolm Truman was a Freemason. Her gaze moved back up the board to the new note about ‘Oz’.

‘So that Osgood man’s a victim of identity theft?’ she said.

‘So he claims,’ said Strike. ‘He’s none too chuffed he’s been dragged into a murder investigation.’

‘Hardly surprising.’

‘He claims he was in Manchester when Wright was killed. I’ll check that out, but I suspect it’s true and the police concluded he was irrelevant. ’Course, the police weren’t aware a man with curly hair entered Wright’s room the morning after Wright was murdered.’

‘You think that might have been this “Oz” person?’

‘Got to be a possibility,’ said Strike, ‘but I’m keeping an open mind.’

‘Have you told Wardle about the curly-haired man and the South Asian girl?’

‘I have, yeah, and he’s passed the information to the team handling the case. I’ve also contacted the cleaner and the shop manager, Jim Todd and Pamela Bullen-Driscoll. Interesting responses.’

‘Really?’ said Robin, sitting down as Pat entered the room, holding two mugs of coffee, which she set down beside each partner.

‘Cheers, Pat,’ said Strike.

‘Biscuit?’ she asked.

‘No, thanks. Trying to be good.’

‘I won’t, either,’ said Robin. ‘Christmas coming.’

‘A biscuit won’t hurt you,’ said Pat.

‘You can close the door behind you, Pat,’ said Strike.

The office manager left, now smirking.

‘Go on, about Pamela and Todd,’ said Robin.

‘Todd’s happy to meet, but can’t till the nineteenth. Pamela Bullen-Driscoll all but told me to fuck off.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Very genteel,’ said Strike, ‘and very cold. “Ay’ve said all Ay’ve got to say to the police, Mister Strike.”’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘I got your email about Jade Semple, by the way.’

‘Yeah, another one who’s not keen on talking to me. I’ve sent her screenshots of my bona fides and no response whatsoever. Maybe she’s not as keen on finding her husband as she claimed to the press. There was a fairly shirty man with her when we spoke.

‘But I’ve been all through the Ramsay Silver camera footage for the relevant days,’ said Strike. ‘If you come round here, I’ll show you the edited highlights.’

So Robin picked up her coffee and rolled her chair around to sit beside Strike, and he smelled a trace of the perfume he’d bought her.

‘Right,’ he said, opening his notebook to a page on which were listed many different times, so he knew where to stop the footage. He pressed play and, immediately, fast forward.

‘Oh dear,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

The quality of the black and white film was very poor, the outlines of the cabinets, tables and silverware in the empty shop fuzzy.

‘Knew that camera was a pile of shit. Right,’ said Strike, watching the minutes pass rapidly on the small digital clock in the corner of the screen. ‘Twenty to nine, Pamela Bullen-Driscoll arrives.’

He pressed play. A boxy-looking woman appeared in silhouette behind the door’s glass panel, her facial features indistinguishable. She entered, turned on the lights, then punched in a number on the keypad beside it to turn off the alarm. Strike pressed fast forward again.

‘She opens the warped door to the basement on the third push, and we can deduce she was hanging up her bag and making herself a coffee, because she comes back upstairs minus handbag and plus mug. She raises the blinds,’ said Strike, as Robin watched Pamela wield a metal crank to do so. ‘Note, by the way, that the right-hand one’s damaged. It doesn’t go fully to the bottom of the window – another supposed bit of security Ramsay hasn’t bothered to fix or replace. At eight fifty-four, our murder victim arrives. That,’ he said, pressing play again, ‘is William Wright.’

A suited man as fuzzy and indistinct as Pamela entered the shop. His dark beard covered a lot of his face, as did his glasses, which had thick frames that were visible even on this poor-quality film, and Robin was reminded of Daz’s comment that Wright had looked like a character from Guess Who?. Wright raised a hand in greeting to Pamela, who was now sitting at the desk.

Strike pressed fast forward again.

‘Nothing interesting in the morning,’ he said, while Pamela and Wright moved around the shop floor in comically quick fashion. ‘Business is slow. Three browsers, only one of whom buys anything – him,’ said Strike, pointing at an elderly man zooming between glass cabinets.

Strike pressed play again at 11.46, and they watched William Wright write a receipt for the old man.

‘Definitely left-handed,’ said Robin.

‘Exactly,’ said Strike, pressing fast forward again. ‘Then, at three minutes past one, Kenneth Ramsay turns up.’

Sure enough, Ramsay appeared, recognisable to Robin because of his blur of silver hair.

‘Excited,’ said Strike, as the fast-forwarded Ramsay paced and gesticulated, exchanging comments with Pamela and Wright, ‘because he thinks the Murdoch silver’s about to arrive.’

The on-screen Ramsay left the shop three times to look up and down Wild Court in hope of seeing the Gibsons delivery van, but returned disappointed each time.

‘He hangs around till fourteen minutes past two,’ said Strike, ‘decides he can’t stretch out his lunch hour any longer, and leaves. Then, at a quarter past three, the stuff finally shows up.’

He pressed play.

A large delivery man in overalls appeared outside the door, which Wright opened. The man entered, pushing a sack truck loaded with two medium-sized crates and a smaller one.

‘Wright drags the first three crates off the trolley,’ said Strike, as Robin watched this happen on-screen, ‘and goes outside to help the delivery man with the largest crate. They get it off the trolley together – dump it beside the others – now, watch this… the delivery guy’s saying it’s not his job to carry the crates further than the shop floor.’

Pamela was now gesticulating; the delivery man was shaking his head. Pamela signed a document he offered her. The delivery man departed.

Pamela headed once more for the basement.

‘She’s gone to unlock the vault,’ said Strike. ‘Note that she doesn’t do it in front of Wright.’

They watched Wright lift the smallest crate and stand waiting for Pamela to reappear. When she’d come back upstairs, Wright headed down to the basement, and Pamela made a call on her mobile.

‘We’ll see the result of Pamela’s call at a quarter to four,’ said Strike, pressing fast forward again.

A blonde woman entered the shop and began darting between cabinets. In double-quick time, Wright lifted one of the medium-sized crates and hurried off towards the vault with it. The blonde customer spoke to Pamela, who donned white gloves to open a cabinet. While she was showing the customer indistinguishable small objects, Wright reappeared and took the third crate down to the basement.

At 15.47, yet another man appeared in the shop. He was balding, almost spherical in shape, wearing a backpack, and also appeared to be wearing overalls. Strike hit pause.

‘That’s Jim Todd, the cleaner.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Because when I spoke to him, he assumed I already knew he’d been summoned to the shop by Pamela, because Wright needed help getting the biggest crate down to the vault. Todd cleans for a local office on Friday afternoons, so he was in the vicinity. Pamela pressured him into leaving early and helping her out.’

‘He doesn’t look the heavy-lifting type,’ said Robin.

‘You’d be right about that,’ said Strike, pressing play again. ‘Watch.’

Wright, who’d just returned from the vault, joined Todd in lifting the largest crate, though Todd was clearly struggling to support the weight of it, and they edged, crab-like, towards the stairs to the vault and disappeared. Pamela was still busy with the blonde customer. Strike pressed fast forward. Wright returned to the shop floor alone.

‘I think Todd’s having a minor heart attack downstairs,’ said Strike. ‘Keep watching.’

The blonde customer was still making her choice of purchase, and Robin remembered the little silver orb charm she’d liked. Todd finally reappeared, massaging his chest. The blonde left the shop. Pamela descended the stairs to the vault alone.

‘This,’ said Strike, ‘will be when Pamela started prising off crate lids and realised part of the delivery’s got mixed up… she comes back upstairs…’

Pamela returned to the shop floor, holding unidentifiable objects in her arms.

‘The “minor items” Pamela bid on, that should have gone to Bullen & Co?’ said Robin.

‘You should be a detective,’ said Strike.

‘She finds a bag for the stuff, gives it to Wright, tells him to take it to Bullen & Co… he leaves… and now she makes another call.’

Strike pressed fast forward again. Pamela finished the call on her mobile, then had a conversation with Todd, who seemed, from his gestures, to be telling her he needed to be elsewhere.

‘Saying she still needs him,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘because Wright won’t be able to carry the centrepiece down into the vault alone, once they’ve got it back from Bullen & Co.’

Pamela went back down to the vault, reappearing at 16.42. She took something from her jacket pocket.

‘Watch closely,’ said Strike, hitting play again.

‘A text?’ said Robin, as the on-screen Pamela stared at whatever was in her hand.

‘I think so,’ said Strike. ‘Watch the body language.’

Pamela stood frozen for almost a minute, before Todd spoke to her. She looked up at him. Another animated conversation followed, Pamela pointing at the vault, then making hand-chopping movements.

‘Laying down the law,’ said Strike. ‘He wants to go, but she wants him to stay to help Wright downstairs with the centrepiece, once it arrives.’

Strike fast forwarded yet again, stopping at six minutes past five, when Pamela received yet another call on her mobile. With her mobile clamped to her ear, she pointed at Todd, who left through the front door. At nine minutes past five, both Wright and Todd reappeared, staggering under the weight of another large crate.

‘The Oriental Centrepiece has been delivered to the correct buyer,’ said Strike, as the two men staggered out of sight through the door leading to the vault.

Todd re-emerged from the basement, holding Pamela’s shoulder bag. She snatched it from his hand and, talking to him over her shoulder, strode towards the street door.

‘And she leaves,’ said Strike, pressing pause again.

‘For a woman who was punctilious about security earlier…’ said Robin.

‘Exactly. She’s buggered off, leaving two men in the shop who don’t have codes or keys – or shouldn’t have.’

Strike pressed play again. Jim Todd appeared to be having a coughing fit.

‘Is this where the heart attack happens?’ asked Robin.

‘He survives, but I think the manual labour’s taken its toll.’

He fast forwarded until five to six.

‘Wright comes back upstairs… Todd leaves…’

‘Hang on,’ said Robin, and Strike pressed pause again. ‘Wright’s holding something, isn’t he?’

Strike rewound and pressed play.

‘He is,’ said Robin. ‘A bag or something. He’s holding it to his chest.’

‘Maybe,’ said Strike. The film was so grainy it was hard to tell. ‘He puts down the blinds… the right-hand one still won’t go to the bottom of the window… turns off the light… and leaves, slamming the door.’

Strike paused the footage again.

‘Thoughts?’ he said.

‘The vault door could still be open. The front door hasn’t been properly locked. The alarm isn’t set.’

‘You’re good,’ said Strike.

‘Collusion between Wright and Pamela?’

‘Got to be a possibility. Now watch…’

Strike pressed fast forward yet again. The shop grew steadily darker as they watched. Ten p.m. Eleven p.m. Midnight. One a.m. A small amount of light penetrated through the sliver of window not covered by the broken blind.

At ten past one in the morning, Strike again pressed play.

Somebody was opening the shop door. The darkness was such that what was happening was barely visible: a faint glint on the glass in the door, a shadow moving across the shop floor. The camera was switched off at eleven minutes past one.

‘Keep watching,’ said Strike.

A second’s blackness, then the clock restarted at 3.07. A shadow again crossed the shop floor in the opposite direction. The almost indistinguishable figure paused by the alarm. The door opened and closed, and they were gone.

Robin picked up her lukewarm coffee, a nasty prickling sensation running up her spine. In the blank interlude on tape, a murder had happened, and she seemed to feel the eyes of the men on the corkboard behind her staring down on the pair treating the matter as an interesting puzzle.

‘And that’s all, for the night of the murder,’ said Strike, hitting fast forward again. ‘Literally nothing happens over the weekend… shop’s empty through Saturday… continues being empty on Sunday… then, on Monday the twentieth, we’ve got early opening. Eight o’clock in the morning, so Todd can clean before customers arrive…’

They watched Pamela Bullen-Driscoll appear in silhouette again and unlock the front door. Todd followed her inside, in his overalls.

‘Todd hasn’t got a key,’ commented Robin. ‘She has to let him in.’

‘Correct.’

Strike hit pause as Pamela was turning off the alarm.

‘Either she’s forgotten she didn’t set the alarm on Friday, or she expected someone else to have done it. She doesn’t seem concerned or confused about it being reset.’

‘Why did the killer reset it?’ asked Robin.

‘Very good question,’ said Strike. ‘Resetting it makes it look as though the culprit was either somebody who worked at the shop, or had a connection to one of them. On the other hand, it gave Todd a handy hour in which to wipe away as many fingerprints as he could,’ said Strike. ‘Now watch…’

Strike pressed play again. Todd disappeared down the stairs to the basement. Still in fast forward, they watched Pamela crank open the metal shutters. Todd reappeared, holding a bucket containing cleaning supplies, and began polishing the glass cabinets and desk.

‘Nine o’clock comes,’ said Strike, as the clock in the upper right-hand side of the screen ratcheted up the minutes. ‘Wright should be there, but isn’t. Pamela makes a call… no answer.’

Todd disappeared into basement.

‘He’s cleaning the staff kitchen area and bog. Pamela goes to look up and down the street for Wright, who’s now forty minutes late. She goes back to the desk, makes another phone call… no answer… and here’s Kenneth Ramsay.’

Robin watched Ramsay arrive. He disappeared down the stairs to the vault. Now Strike hit play again.

‘So, out of sight, Ramsay’s opened the vault door… I think he must’ve yelled out, because watch…’

Pamela moved hurriedly to the head of the stairs, looking down them.

‘Then she goes down, too…’

For two minutes, the shop was empty. Then the front door opened, and a small, bearded man in a dark suit entered.

‘That,’ said Strike, pausing again, ‘is John Auclair, the collector Ramsay thought he was going to flog the Murdoch silver to. I looked him up. Advertising millionaire.’

Pamela emerged from the stairwell, staggered to the phone on the desk and made a call.

‘Calling the police… she collapses into a chair… presumably tells the confused Auclair what they’ve just found… and, unsurprisingly, he buggers off…’

On-screen, the advertising mogul was backing towards the main door. He opened it and exited at speed. Strike pressed pause.

‘Rest isn’t worth seeing. Police turn up and it’s exactly what you’d expect. Door locked, Ramsay, Pamela and Todd corralled for questioning.’

Strike’s mobile rang, and to his surprise, he saw his old friend Shanker’s name.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Wanna word,’ said Shanker.

‘What about?’

‘In person.’

As Strike knew, Shanker was generally averse to long phone conversations. This was mostly because he preferred to do business in person, because it often took the form of beatings and stabbings.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘Soon. Now,’ said Shanker.

‘Where are you?’

‘Clapham Junction. You’ll ’ave to come to me. I gotta stay ’ere. Meetin’ a geezer.’

Strike’s gaze moved to the window. It was another wintry, grey day; his leg was still sore and he’d been counting on an afternoon with his partner, hoping, however over-optimistically, that he might get a chance to declare himself, but Shanker rarely got in touch without having something that was worth hearing.

‘All right,’ Strike said reluctantly. ‘Give me an hour.’

‘Falcon pub,’ said Shanker, and hung up.

‘What does he want?’ asked Robin.

‘To meet,’ said Strike. ‘Now.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe he’s found out Dredge the drug-dealer did have Rupert Fleetwood murdered in the silver vault?’

‘So the case might be wrapped up by teatime?’ said Robin, conscious of a faint disappointment, because she, too, had been looking forward to an afternoon together.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Strike, hoping he was right. He needed this case.

‘I like your shirt, by the way,’ Robin said. ‘Is it new?’

‘It is, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks.’

Feeling slightly more cheerful, he headed into the outer office to fetch his coat.

21

It took Strike forty minutes to reach Clapham Junction station. By coincidence, the last time he’d been in this part of London, he’d been running surveillance on Two-Times’ first PA-turned-lover. The area had become progressively more upmarket over Strike’s lifetime; he remembered Clapham Junction when it had been home to pawn shops and dodgy garages turning over stolen cars. Now there was a Waitrose, wine bars and brisk professionals bustling homewards to houses worth well over a million pounds.

He knew the pub Shanker had designated as their meeting place of old, but the Falcon, too, had been gentrified. Strike entered to find polished wood, a stained-glass chandelier and freshly upholstered leather benches. There was something reassuring about spotting Shanker sitting alone, scowling and compulsively clicking his fingers, thereby effortlessly repelling anyone who might consider sitting near him. Shanker’s beard concealed the deep scar that ran from the middle of his upper lip towards his cheekbone, which, unshaven, would reveal a mouth dragged upwards in a permanent Elvis-style sneer. His closely cropped head and the tattoos that covered his hands and neck marked him as of a life apart from the polite newcomers to the area, who clustered around the bar, some of them throwing Shanker sideways glances with a mixture of fascination and trepidation.

Shanker, as Strike well knew, was almost entirely amoral, a man raised in conditions most people in the developed world barely understood, where violence was a daily reality, and the only law was self-interest. The place where he and Strike had bonded, against all odds, was in their mutual love of a deeply flawed woman who’d been Strike’s biological, and Shanker’s adoptive, mother. Leda, who’d scraped the teenaged Shanker off the street after he’d been stabbed, and taken him home to the squat where she was living with her two children, had unwittingly forged a regard between the two teenagers that had survived a divergence of interests that should have been absolute, and they were occasionally useful to each other. Both would have been sorry to know the other was dead, but months and sometimes years had passed without contact, and it was highly unusual for Shanker to summon Strike to meet him, as he had today.

‘How’re you doing?’ said Strike, once he’d got himself a pint and sat down.

‘I’m lookin’ at firty-six monfs unless me fuckin’ lawyer pulls ’is ’ead out of ’is arse,’ said Shanker, glowering.

‘Yeah? What’s the charge?’ asked Strike, not bothering to act surprised. Shanker had been in and out of prison all his adult life.

‘Obstruction of fuckin’ justice. Load of bollocks. An’ Alyssa’s fuckin’ chucked me out again.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Strike.

It was news to the detective that Shanker’s girlfriend had already decided at least once already that her household would function better without Shanker in it, but it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

‘How’s Angel?’ asked Strike, who knew Alyssa’s older daughter had had leukaemia.

‘Doin’ well,’ said Shanker.

‘That’s good,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Shanker moodily. ‘I love them kids. Fuckin’ love ’er as well, fuckin’ bitch.’

He glugged some beer.

‘This what you wanted to talk about?’ asked Strike. ‘Because I’m not much of a relationship counsellor.’

‘Nah,’ said Shanker. ‘I know what I’m gonna do about fuckin’ Alyssa.’

‘Yeah? What?’ said Strike.

He stood ready to oppose any mooted plan of revenge or intimidation against a single mother whose eldest child had been seriously ill, but Shanker responded,

‘Jewellery.’

‘Jewellery,’ repeated Strike.

‘Got that tip off me old man, before ’e went senile,’ said Shanker. ‘Women never say no to jewellery. Only useful fing ’e ever fuckin’ told me. They don’ chuck it, an’ then they fink about you every time they fuckin’ look at it.’

‘Wise counsel,’ said Strike.

‘You can fuckin’ smirk, but ’e ’ad kids wiv abou’ ten diff’rent women.’

‘By giving them all jewellery?’

‘Well, ’e ’ad a nine-inch cock as well,’ said Shanker, and Strike laughed.

‘So why’m I here?’ he asked. ‘Dredge the drug dealer?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Shanker, as though he’d only just remembered this. ‘Dredge ain’t never killed that boy. He was jus’ tryna put the frighteners on. The kid give ’im a coupla grand in cash, so Dredge backed off.’

‘Wait, what?’ said Strike.

‘That kid,’ said Shanker impatiently, ‘Fleetfing, the geezer you fort might be dead. ’E ain’t. ’E gave Dredge a coupla grand to get ’im off ’is back, an’ Dredge let ’im off. Fleetfing wasn’ the one what done the dir’y on Dredge, was ’e? It was ’is mate, what fucked off to Africa.’

‘You’re positive about this?’ said Strike. ‘Rupert Fleetwood gave Dredge a couple of grand to leave him alone?’

‘Jus’ said that, d’in I?’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

‘Tha’s not why I wan’ed to meet ya, though,’ said Shanker, lowering his voice.

‘Really?’ asked Strike, puzzled. ‘Why’m I here, then?’

‘Doin’ ya a favour.’

Strike took a sip of beer, then waited, interested in what was coming next.

‘You’re diggin’ where you shouldn’t, Bunsen.’

Strike looked at him, perplexed.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meanin’,’ Shanker lowered his voice, ‘body in silver shop.’

Strike was momentarily struck dumb with surprise. He hadn’t told Shanker anything about the body in the silver vault, only that he wanted to find out whether Fleetwood had come to harm at the hands of Dredge.

‘How the hell d’you know I’m investigating that?’

‘For me to know, innit.’

Strike stared at him, before saying,

‘Knowles?’

Shanker raised his eyebrows.

‘It was Knowles,’ said Strike.

Shanker said nothing.

‘Don’t give me that inscrutable shit,’ said Strike impatiently.

‘What’s that?’ said Shanker, mildly interested.

‘That,’ said Strike. ‘Raising your fucking eyebrows. “For me to know.”’

Bad temper though he appeared to be in, Shanker grinned.

‘You wanna leave it, Bunsen.’

‘Was – it – fucking – Knowles?’

Shanker absent-mindedly clicked his fingers. At last, he spoke.

‘No.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Knowles is still alive?’

‘’Course ’e’s fuckin’ not,’ said Shanker impatiently. ‘’E was a narc. Got what was comin’ to ’im. But he wasn’ in no fucking silver shop.’

Strike stared at him. There were many subjects on which he knew Shanker to be almost impressively ignorant – the geography of anywhere beyond Greater London, how taxation worked, who made laws – but his knowledge of organised crime in London was peerless. The non-specific warning left on the office phone now took on a slightly different aspect.

‘Why’re you warning me off, if it wasn’t Knowles? Lynden doesn’t want me digging into it?’

‘Bunsen,’ said Shanker, lowering his voice and leaning forwards, ‘Lynden finks it’s funny the pigs fink that was Jason. Why would Lynden put ’im in a fuckin’ safe in a fuckin’ silver shop? Thass way more fuckin’ trouble than ’e fuckin’ deserved.’

‘That thought occurred to me,’ said Strike.

‘Ain’t got shit for brains then, ’ave ya?’ said Shanker.

‘So where’s Knowles now?’

‘Gawn to Barnaby’s,’ said Shanker, with a dark smile.

‘The hell’s “Barnaby’s”?’

‘For me to know,’ repeated Shanker.

‘If it wasn’t Knowles, why’m I getting this warning? Because Lynden Knowles doesn’t want me proving it wasn’t his nephew?’

‘Lynden wouldn’ give a shit eiver way,’ said Shanker, with a shrug. ‘Even if they found what’s left of Jason, they couldn’t pin it on ’im. Thass the ’ole point of Barnaby’s.’

‘Then why—?’

‘’Cause the bloke in the vault’ – Shanker dropped his voice again – ‘was an ’it.’

‘A hit?’

‘Yeah,’ said Shanker, ‘an’ you don’t wanna start fuckin’ wiv the geezer ’oo put out the ’it, awright?’

‘You know who ordered it?’

‘Know enough,’ said Shanker.

‘Who is he?’

‘Don’ know ’im person’ly,’ said Shanker.

‘You know the bloke who carried it out?’

‘We go back a long way, Bunsen, but you keep your side of the street an’ I’ll keep mine, know what I’m sayin’?’

When Strike merely looked at him, Shanker said,

‘Don’ know ’im well. People in common.’

‘And?’

‘’E’s gone to ground. Smart, for ’im.’

‘He’s not usually smart?’

‘’E’s a nutter. Moufy. Still, slick job,’ said Shanker, with professional appreciation. ‘Earned a packet for it, I ’ear.’

‘But he talked, or you wouldn’t know he’d done it.’

‘Well, yeah, ’e’s moufy. Like I said.’

‘So why was the guy in the vault killed?’

Shanker drained his glass, then said,

‘I ’eard he fort ’e could make a fast buck an’ didn’t fuckin’ realise what ’e was up against.’

‘Double cross?’ said Strike. ‘Blackmail?’

‘Ain’t stupid, are ya, Bunsen?’ said Shanker, with a gleam of appreciation.

‘Want another drink?’

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Shanker.

Strike bought two more pints. There were gold baubles strung along the top of the bar. He’d been so absorbed in his conversation he hadn’t noticed the Christmas music playing in the background.

‘How did you know I’m investigating?’ Strike asked, after sitting down again.

‘You was seen,’ said Shanker. ‘Seen where you shouldn’t ’ave been. An’ word got back, an’ the big shot what ordered the ’it ’ain’t ’appy you’re stickin’ your fuckin’ bugle in. S’all I know.’

‘Listen,’ said Strike, ‘if there’s a second Lynden Knowles after me, I need to know. This isn’t just about me, this is Robin and the rest of the agency. What exactly am I looking at here?’

‘Work it aht,’ said Shanker. ‘Where it ’appened.’

They looked at each other. When Shanker neither blinked nor laughed, Strike said,

‘You have to be kidding me. You think I’m going to be done in by the Freemasons?’

‘You know your problem, Bunsen?’ said Shanker, scowling. ‘You’re fuckin’ naive. You fink because some geezer’s got money an’ wears a fuckin’ suit, an’ ’e’s never been done for nuffin’—’

‘I don’t think that, but—’

‘You fink a man ’oo’s got a lot to lose, an’ pays to get rid of some geezer ’oo’s got the goods on ’im, an’ gets away wiv it, is ’appy when ’e ’ears you’re nosin’ around? You gotta name now, Bunsen,’ said Shanker, not without a certain admiration.

‘All right, you’ve told me this much, tell me who this big-shot Freemason is.’

‘Can’t. Toldja. I don’ know ’is name.’

‘You’re not just assuming he was a mason from where the body was found?’

‘No,’ said Shanker, now growing impatient, ‘I’m tellin’ ya, ’e’s a fuckin’ mason. The guy ’oo done the ’it, ’e said so. The bigshot’s a mason, ’e’s got money to burn, ’e’s got people to do ’is shit for ’im.’

Shanker sipped his pint, while Strike recalled Mandy’s words, back in St George’s Avenue: ‘’E said “someone” might come round lookin’ for ’im, but then ’e said, “or ’e might send someone.”’

‘You don’t know the mason’s name?’ asked Strike.

‘I’ve fuckin’ toldja, no.’

‘D’you know who the victim was?’

‘No, I jus’ know ’e ’ad somefing on the mason, so ’e got rubbed aht.’

‘The hitman doesn’t ever go by “Oz”, does he?’ said Strike, taking a shot in the dark.

‘What – like the fuckin’ wizard?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘Not that I ever ’eard.’

Shanker’s gaze swivelled right, towards the door.

‘Time’s up, Bunsen.’

Strike looked around. A large man even more comprehensively tattooed than Shanker had just entered the pub.

‘That’s all you’ve got?’ said Strike.

‘’S’all I’ve got,’ said Shanker, already raising a hand to alert the tattooed man in the doorway to his presence.

‘All right,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

He finished his pint at the bar, then left the Falcon without looking back at Shanker or his business associate.

To his knowledge, Shanker had never intentionally misled him, preferring a straightforward ‘keep the fuck out of it’ if Strike’s questions struck too close to home. Strike therefore had to take seriously the possibility that he and Robin had indeed stumbled unknowingly on to a crime that had lain undetected until they arrived on the scene to complicate matters.

Strike turned his coat collar up against the cold, then stood for a few moments, vaping and mulling over what his next move should be. One particular thing his old friend had just said gave rise to an idea. Slipping his vape pen back into his coat pocket, Strike set off again, not for Denmark Street, but for Wild Court.

22

Strike phoned Robin at home that evening to inform her that Rupert Fleetwood had somehow scraped together two thousand pounds to buy off the drug dealer with a grudge against his housemate, and to relay Shanker’s warning about the body in the silver vault. Murphy was there for dinner, and Robin’s flat was far too small for him not to be able to hear everything she was saying unless she locked herself in the bathroom. As pretending to want a shower immediately after her work partner had called her might give her boyfriend well-justified grounds for suspicion, her responses to Strike were deliberately concise and gave no hint of what they were talking about.

Fortunately for Robin, whose mind was racing post-call, Murphy asked no questions. He was very obviously low and tired, slumped on the sofa watching the news. Tuesday’s Mail had run its double-page interview with the mother of the boys who’d been shot in the gang shooting, and this had been followed by stories in other papers, today. For the first time, Robin, along with the rest of the newspaper-reading public, had learned that the bereaved mother’s estranged boyfriend had been arrested initially, and this, it was alleged, had wasted valuable hours and days in which the true perpetrators had been able to cover their tracks.

Once again, she sensed that Murphy would welcome neither sympathy nor questions, so she hadn’t mentioned the Mail article, or any of the spin-offs, but it was impossible not to suspect that Murphy had personally been involved in some part of what now seemed to have been early mistakes in the case. Remembering again how kind and understanding he’d been in the aftermath of her long stay at Chapman Farm, not to mention his consideration since she’d been hospitalised, she wanted only to be supportive and give him a respite from his stress and, perhaps, his guilt. They ate the ready-made lasagne Robin had heated up, and as both needed to be up very early the following morning, they were in bed by half past nine. They hadn’t had sex since Robin been released from hospital, but Murphy wrapped his arms around her in bed, kissed the top of her head and said,

‘I’m so fucking lucky to have you.’

‘I’m lucky to have you too,’ she said, kissing him back.

But after Murphy’s breathing lengthened, and he rolled away from her, asleep, Robin lay awake in the dark, ruminating on Strike’s call and its possible ramifications. What she really wanted to do was to slide out of bed and call her detective partner back, but she didn’t want to wake Murphy, so she stayed where she was, finally falling asleep to dream that she and Strike were standing in Ramsay Silver which, for some mysterious reason, had been filled with cuddly toys instead of masonic swords and aprons.

By nine the following morning Robin was back in Camberwell, watching the house where Plug was living with his elderly mother. She’d glimpsed the old lady through a downstairs window and her heart had ached with pity: she looked worried and seemed to be mumbling to herself. Then, five minutes after she arrived, Plug’s fourteen-year-old son, who ought to have been at school, burst out of the house looking terrified and set off at a fast walk up the road. With a split second to decide whether she should keep watching the house or follow the boy, she chose the latter.

Robin felt almost as sorry for Plug’s son as she did for Plug’s mother. Not only was the boy burdened with his father’s ears and overbite, he seemed lonely, forlorn and often looked scared. She could well imagine that being uprooted from Haringey to live with his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his verbally abusive father wasn’t fun. The boy was walking very fast, every now and then breaking into a jog, and Robin had a hunch that whatever he was doing, it was on his father’s orders. Robin soon had a dull stitch in her side – or perhaps, she thought, the operation site was aching. This reminded her of the letter from the GP she was still ignoring.

She’d been tailing the boy for fifteen minutes when her mobile rang.

‘Got a moment?’ asked Strike.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, trying not to pant. ‘I’m following Plug Junior on foot. Where are you?’

‘Liberty’s,’ said Strike, and Robin immediately remembered her thirtieth birthday, on which Strike had taken her to the old London store to buy her perfume, before that fatal trip to the bar at the Ritz. ‘Mrs Two-Times is in the hairdressers.’

‘I didn’t know Liberty’s had a hairdressers.’

‘Nor did I, and now I’m stuck hanging around the women’s clothing department looking like a weirdo,’ said Strike, shifting to allow a group of women to examine rows of what, to him, were exceptionally ugly, baggy dresses with large fluorescent flowers printed all over them.

‘It’s Christmas,’ said Robin. ‘Pretend to be buying presents. Actually buy some presents.’

‘Not in here,’ said Strike.

‘Why not?’

‘I just… can’t.’

The music, the bewildering choice, the crowds, his total ignorance of what the women he had to buy for might want: he’d rather face root-canal surgery. At least that would be quiet, and there’d be anaesthetic.

‘You’ll look more natural hanging around in there if you’ve got shopping bags. Who are you buying for, women-wise?’

‘Lucy and Prudence. I wasn’t going to get Prudence anything, but she’s invited me to their Christmas party. I can’t go, but that probably means she’s got me something.’

‘When did Mrs Two-Times start her hair appointment?’

‘Five minutes ago.’

‘Then you’ve got two and a half hours at least.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Because she’s got two different shades of highlights. That takes time.’

‘I called,’ said Strike, ‘to discuss Shanker, and that anonymous phone call to the office, which I’m inclined to take a bit more seriously now.’

‘We can discuss Shanker while you go down to the ground floor,’ said Robin.

‘Why’m I going to the ground floor?’ said Strike, moving off, nevertheless.

‘Handbags,’ said Robin, ‘and scarves. For Lucy and Prudence.’

‘Pretty sure they’ll both have a handbag and a scarf.’

‘God, you’re hopeless,’ said Robin. ‘I think Plug Junior might be going to that same allotment his dad visited the other night,’ she added, eyes on the figure ahead of her.

‘Maybe the crocodile or whatever they’re keeping in the shed’s chewed its way out,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going outside so I can hear myself think and we can discuss Shanker.’

‘All right,’ said Robin, ‘but afterwards—’

‘I’ll buy something, yeah,’ said Strike with a sigh.

He forged his way through the crowded stationery department and at last, with relief, reached the pavement and took out his vape pen.

‘So,’ said Strike, while Robin continued to stride along, the pain in her side becoming ever sharper, ‘I called Decima and told her we’re fairly sure Fleetwood shook off Dredge the drug dealer by giving him cash. She’s not having it – or, more accurately, she thinks this proves he sold the nef to Kenneth Ramsay, but thinks Dredge killed him anyway, as a warning to Zacharias Lorimer.

‘I’ve also called Wardle and told him our criminal contact is certain that Jason Knowles’ body went to “Barnaby’s”, whoever or whatever that is, and that Knowles wasn’t the corpse in the Ramsay Silver vault.’

‘Great,’ said Robin, who’d been worrying about having information the police ought to have; hopefully Murphy would never find out where this information had come from, either. ‘You didn’t tell Shanker about the plainclothes—?’

‘Fuck’s sake, of course not!’

‘Sorry,’ said Robin quickly. ‘Sorry, of course you didn’t, I don’t know why I…’

But she did know why she’d said it: she was consumed with paranoia about her boyfriend finding out that she and Strike were meddling in matters that didn’t concern them.

Plug Junior had slowed down to take a call on his mobile, so Robin adjusted her pace accordingly. Her lower right side was now throbbing.

‘I really called about this hit business,’ said Strike, ‘and the fact that whoever allegedly ordered it knows we’re investigating – or knows I am. Shanker didn’t mention you.’

‘Where d’you think you were spotted?’

‘It’s got to be Ramsay Silver or St George’s Avenue,’ said Strike.

An ornate clock was set high on an archway to his left, a mechanical Saint George and the dragon above it, a legend in gold beneath it:

Back in Camberwell, Plug’s son was unlocking the allotment gate and Robin, with relief, had taken refuge beside a postbox.

‘This is getting bloody strange and murky,’ said Strike. ‘If we accept the premise that a rich, powerful Freemason wanted a man who was blackmailing him dead – and blackmailing victims do tend to want their blackmailers dead – I can’t see any earthly reason why the hit had to be carried out at Ramsay Silver. In fact, you’d think a murderous Freemason would want to keep the whole thing as far away from a masonic silver shop as possible, and why the fuck he’d have given instructions that the corpse should be draped in a masonic sash…’

‘And if Wright really was the blackmailer of a wealthy Freemason,’ said Robin, watching Plug Junior hurrying towards the padlocked shed door, ‘why would he go and work for another Freemason?’

‘Well, exactly. The whole thing feels like something dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. It’s like the plot of a B movie.’

‘But Shanker’s not a conspiracy theorist.’

‘You say that,’ said Strike slowly, ‘but get Shanker on to the subject of what powerful people in the law-abiding world get up to and things get fantastical, fast. You’ll never convince him that people who’ve achieved wealth and power legally aren’t really crooks, and he’s a firm believer in secret associations and hidden influence that people like him can’t access – and I know,’ said Strike, guessing what Robin was about to say, ‘unfair advantages and old boys’ networks exist, of course they do, but what Shanker believes goes way beyond that. If you told him the Prime Minister siphons off half the nation’s taxes and puts them in his own bank account, Shanker would tell you you’re a mug for not thinking he takes three quarters. At bottom, he thinks everyone’s as bent as he is, and world leaders and billionaires just conspire with each other to get away with it.’

‘He can’t think everyone’s bent,’ said Robin reasonably. ‘He knows you.’

‘He accepts that freaks of nature like me crop up from time to time, but he’s more credulous than you might think once outside his area of expertise.’

‘So you think Shanker’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick? It’s all rubbish?’

‘He claims to know the actual killer. He says the guy’s been mouthing off, pleased he got away with it. We’ve got to take that seriously. And there was that call to the office, too. It could’ve been a random nutter – but it might not’ve been.’

‘D’you want to drop the case?’ Robin asked, and she was surprised how unhappy she felt at the thought of doing so.

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘I’m getting more and more interested – but it’s not just up to me. That’s why I called.’

‘Well, if Shanker’s right, the risk was there already, wasn’t it?’ said Robin. ‘Whoever killed Wright was never going to be happy we’re investigating, were they? I can’t honestly see that we’d be in any less danger if we give up. It’s not as if we can let them know we’re backing off. In fact, it’s far better to know they’re on to us. We’re forearmed.’

‘That’s exactly my thinking,’ said Strike. ‘What’s Plug Junior up to now?’

‘He’s inside the shed.’

The pain in Robin’s lower right side was still extremely sharp. For the first time, she thought she might make that appointment with her GP. Previous neglect of symptoms had led her directly into the mess she’d recently found herself in; the responsible thing was to get herself checked. Wanting distraction, she said,

‘Have you been following Patterson’s case?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Not exactly riveting so far, is it? I was hoping they’d just call him a cunt and give him ten years.’

‘Maybe it’ll hot up once he’s on the stand. Are you going to get back inside Liberty’s and buy some presents?’

‘Fine,’ Strike sighed, and he returned inside the shop, to be met with a blast of hot air and ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. ‘How’m I supposed to know what scarves to buy?’

‘Well,’ said Robin, her eyes still on the distant shed, ‘Prudence likes classic colours. Cream, navy blue, black… nothing multicoloured or, you know, hippy. And Lucy looks good in pastels, so go light, and nothing too dramatic or splashy.’

‘How d’you know these things?’ said Strike, in honest amazement.

‘How do I know what looks nice on people?’

‘All of it,’ said Strike, who was now standing in a bewildering array of scarves of different sizes and patterns. ‘Remembering what colours Prudence wears.’

‘The same reason you remember the legend of Hiram Abiff. Listen, I know you’re not going to like this, but I think we ought to get the staff Christmas presents, too.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ groaned Strike.

‘It’s good for morale,’ said Robin, ‘and we’ve got a really great team for once. We ought to be showing our appreciation.’

‘I’m not buying more scarves,’ said Strike firmly.

‘You don’t have to,’ said Robin. ‘I was thinking bottles of booze, or gift tokens. And,’ she added, because she didn’t doubt Strike was as clueless about what to buy her as he was about his sisters, ‘if you’re getting me a scarf, I like blue and green.’

‘Too late, I’ve already chosen your present,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going to have to go, I can’t hear a bloody thing. Speak to you later.’

He hung up, leaving Robin in a state of mild surprise.

23

The substitution of Two-Times for Mr A meant that the agency was once again working at full capacity. Strike and Robin saw each other only in passing over the next few days, so informed each other by text and phone call that nobody they’d approached for further information on the silver vault case had responded.

‘It’s Christmas,’ Robin reminded Strike on Monday, ‘people will be busy or visiting family.’

In spite of these frustrations, there were developments in two matters of mutual interest, both unrelated to the murder of William Wright. The first was a couple of days of high excitement in the Patterson case, which was being lavishly covered in the papers. On Tuesday, Farah Navabi took the stand, and turned in a heart-rending, charismatic performance. Breaking down in sobs, so that a solicitous judge asked whether she’d like a break to compose herself, the beautiful Navabi regaled the court with an account of how she’d been relentlessly bullied, intimidated and sexually harassed by her boss, and revealed that she’d only undertaken the job of bugging the barrister’s office because Patterson had made egregious threats of retaliation if she didn’t do as she was told.

‘I can’t tell you how much I regret it,’ she sobbed. ‘Andrew Honbold’s a good, good man, and Mitch had me convinced he was a monster.’

‘Told you,’ said Kim Cochran smugly, during what Strike made sure was a brief surveillance handover that evening. ‘She’s rented premises in Belsize Park and she’s already snagged a ton of Patterson’s clients.’

On Wednesday, Patterson, who was tall and broad-shouldered, with a deeply pitted and lined face, was pursued from car to court by paparazzi. His evidence, live-tweeted from court by several journalists, became instantly meme-worthy for his barked repetition of the phrase ‘wholly and completely untrue’. By the time he was permitted to leave the witness stand he’d said it forty-seven times, and nobody, with the possible exception of Patterson himself, was surprised when the following morning he was found guilty, with sentencing deferred to the new year.

Strike would have enjoyed all this far more had he not discovered, on the news website where he’d been reading about Patterson’s conviction, a supremely vicious piece about himself, written by Dominic Culpepper. Exactly as Strike had feared, Nina had clearly informed her cousin that it was Strike who’d been keeping his wife under surveillance at the Dorchester.

Another paper had tried to run a piece a few months previously, asserting that Strike was as big a womaniser as his father, that he routinely had sex with clients, and had slept with a woman who was also in a relationship with the very barrister whom Mitch Patterson had bugged. That article had never been published because Charlotte, of all people, had not only resisted the invitation to screw Strike over in print, but had contacted those of Strike’s girlfriends she knew, to ensure that nobody talked.

But the flimsy barricade Charlotte had erected had been swept away by Culpepper’s rage and Nina’s resentment. The journalist no longer needed quotes from the ex-lovers who’d declined to talk last time, because he had his cousin, Nina, who’d provided anonymous quotes with which Culpepper was able to bolster his portrait of a grubby, unscrupulous man who used women to obtain whatever he needed, bracketing Strike with Patterson as a libidinous, parasitic scavenger, profiting from human misery and callously manipulating good-hearted people. Culpepper had also re-hashed the story of Strike’s conception, which had famously taken place on a bean bag at a druggy A-list party in 1974, and had even found someone else to speak on the record about the grubby antics of private detectives: Lord Oliver Branfoot.

Strike had never met Branfoot, but he knew what the man looked and sounded like because Branfoot was one of those public figures who managed to penetrate the mass mind like a noxious, invisible gas. Marlborough-educated, a scion of nobility, Branfoot was a large, untidy man notable for an inability to pronounce his ‘r’s. Previously a Conservative MP, he now headed various charitable and political organisations and committees, was ever-ready with a quote for the papers, sprinkled his conversation with Latin tags and capitalised to the full on the English public’s weakness for a toff who seemed ready to laugh at himself, having a fondness for appearing on political quiz shows, where he played to the hilt the part of genial, bumbling blue-blood. While Strike didn’t know exactly why Lord Oliver Branfoot should want to attach his name to the excoriation of a man he didn’t know, he could think of one obvious reason why Branfoot might want to thunder in print that the private detective business ought to be far more stringently regulated.

Strike had no illusions as to the likely trajectory of Dominic Culpepper’s fury: this article, he suspected, was an opening shot in what was likely to become an ongoing vendetta. He was conscious of a strong desire to call Robin, because the sound of her voice usually made him feel better about whatever shit he was currently dealing with, but there was a possibility that she hadn’t spotted the article yet, and it seemed the height of folly to draw her attention to it if she hadn’t.

But Robin had, of course, already seen Culpepper’s attack on her partner, because she’d read the same online account of Patterson’s conviction, and it had certainly given her food for thought as she sat at lunchtime in the bar of the Rosewood Hotel, watching Two-Times’ beautifully coiffed wife enjoying a cocktail with a female friend.

Strike might have been very slightly heartened to know that Robin was by no means as horrified by the article’s accusations and insinuations as Culpepper intended the reader to feel. Nobody had worked more closely with Cormoran Strike over the past six and a half years than Robin Ellacott, and she was prepared to swear that whatever flaws Strike might possess, he’d never slept with, nor would he ever sleep with, a client, no matter that sundry divorced and divorcing women (she remembered in particular the alluring Miss Jones) had made their willingness to do so perfectly obvious. Robin had also noted that no ex-client was quoted, even anonymously, in the article.

Nevertheless, some unknown woman who’d helped him with a case clearly had a serious grudge against Cormoran Strike, and this, Robin presumed, was Culpepper’s cousin. The implication that Strike had seduced the unknown woman in pursuit of evidence wasn’t, Robin had to admit, a pleasant thought, although it might be argued that she didn’t have much right to condemn him, having allowed an important witness and potential suspect in a previous case to press her up against a pub wall and stick his tongue into her mouth.

At this point in her musings, two texts arrived on her phone, almost back to back. The first was from Murphy, and contained a link to a new property for them to view.

This might be worth a look? I see Patterson’s got what was coming to him. Have you read the thing on Strike? X

Strike would have been delighted to know that Robin’s immediate reaction to this message was annoyance at her boyfriend and protectiveness of her detective partner. Murphy had suffered himself from bad press of late and he hadn’t even been personally named, so Robin would have hoped he’d show some fellow feeling for another man being roughed up in print. Instead of answering the message, or opening the link to what appeared to be another terraced house, this time in Wood Green, Robin opened the second text, which was from Strike himself.

Two-Times just called. He’s about to join his missus and her friend for cocktails. You can stand down, he’ll be with her for the rest of the day.

Robin had just raised her hand for her bill when her mobile rang from an unfamiliar number, though she recognised the Ironbridge area code. She answered at once.

‘Hello, this is Robin Ellacott.’

‘Hello,’ said a tentative voice far too young to be Tyler Powell’s grandmother. ‘Are you the one who’s been calling my great-aunt?’

‘If your great-aunt’s Dilys Powell, yes,’ said Robin.

‘Well, she’s in the hospital,’ said the girl.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You picked up my messages, did you?’

‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘I’m feeding her cat. Why do you want her?’

‘I wanted to talk to her about your cousin Tyler,’ said Robin.

‘He’s not here,’ said the girl. ‘He left.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Robin. ‘Have you heard from him lately?’

Robin could hear the scratching of a pen, and surmised that the girl was either doodling or taking a note.

‘I don’t like him,’ the girl said finally. ‘We don’t talk.’

‘Well, would you mind telling your great-aunt I’ve called, and asking her to get in touch when she feels better?’ said Robin.

‘All right,’ said the girl.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Robin. ‘Can I ask your n—?’

But the girl had already hung up.

Ten minutes later the paunchy Two-Times entered the bar wearing a much-creased suit, smiling broadly at his wife and her friend. Robin gathered up her bag and coat and left, making sure not to make eye contact with Two-Times, who had a tendency to smirk whenever he spotted one of the detectives he’d paid to spy on whichever woman he was currently sleeping with.

In the lobby of the hotel, Robin paused beside a large Christmas tree surrounded by silver models of fawns. On her way here, she’d registered her proximity to the London Silver Vaults. She took out her mobile, and called Strike.

‘Hi. Listen, I’m five minutes’ walk away from Bullen & Co. What d’you think of me trying to interview Pamela Bullen-Driscoll?’

‘I think you’ll be very lucky to get her to talk.’

‘Even so,’ said Robin, now heading out onto the street, ‘she’s a key witness and pressure’s always easier to apply face to face.’

‘S’pose it’s worth a try,’ said Strike, who assumed from Robin’s friendly tone that she hadn’t seen the online hatchet job on him. ‘Maybe she’ll be more amenable to a woman. I’m heading to Ipswich in an hour or so, by the way.’

‘Why?’

‘One of Plug’s Ipswich mates has done a two-year stretch for embezzlement. Kim found out. Thought I’d go and have a nose around for what he might be getting up to these days that involves Plug, a lot of cash and a ledger.’

‘OK,’ said Robin, ‘Well, I’ll let you know how I get on with Pamela. You might be hearing back from me in ten minutes.’

She hung up, checked the route on her phone, then headed off along High Holborn, turned into Chancery Lane and finally entered Southampton Buildings.

24

The Silver Vaults’ entrance was a discreet wooden door with a small glass awning. Robin was admitted after pressing a buzzer and found herself facing a uniformed security man, who asked to search her bag. She then had to sign in at the desk, and was instructed to descend three flights of stairs, and take no photographs outside the individual shops.

Intrigued, Robin proceeded down broad, bare stone stairs, her footsteps echoing, and found herself in a space unlike any she’d seen before.

A long, low-ceilinged, arched underground passageway stretched away from her, the walls on both sides lined with heavy steel vault doors. She set off along the corridor, noticing the regularly spaced cameras watching her from the ceiling, and looking left and right through the open doors at Aladdin’s Caves of dazzling, gleaming silver. The bright light in both passage and shops almost hurt her eyes, especially when reflected from thousands of brightly polished silver surfaces. Robin turned a corner and saw that the subterranean labyrinth extended far beyond the first corridor.

Bullen & Co lay in the second passage she entered. It was one of the larger shops, carpeted in bright blue, and a veritable sea of silver met her eyes: shelves of platters, trays, boxes, urns, jugs and shields and, on sturdy mahogany tables, gigantic pieces including candelabra, centrepieces covered in cherubs and a huge nef representing a galleon in full sail.

A woman Robin recognised instantly as Pamela Bullen-Driscoll, because of her boxy back view, was speaking rapidly into the phone on a desk.

‘Ay’ve already told you, Geoffrey. Ay’ve told you – Ay simply don’t care!’

Pamela seemed to sense someone behind her, because she turned, said, ‘Ay’ve got to go!’ and slammed down the receiver.

Pamela had seen no need to change her style because fashions had moved on around her. From her stiffly lacquered hair to her large gold earrings and necklace, her double-breasted, shoulder-padded black blazer to her frosted pink lipstick, Pamela had never left the eighties, even though succeeding decades had deepened lines around her mouth and across her forehead. While not overweight, she was square and short-waisted. A pair of gold reading glasses hung on a crystal-studded chain around her neck.

‘Can Ay help you?’

‘I hope so,’ said Robin, drawing a business card out of her bag. ‘My name’s Robin Ellacott and I’m from the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agenc—’

‘Ay’ve got nothing to say!’ said Pamela loudly.

Recoiling, she bumped into a table laden with silver objects, and a fragile-looking horn cup in an elaborate silver casing fell to the ground. Pamela stood on it accidentally, and the horn shattered. She burst into tears.

Robin rushed to assist Pamela, who was groping for the pieces in a manner that suggested drunkenness, taking multiple attempts to place her hand on each piece.

‘Please leave!’ sobbed Pamela. ‘And close the door behaynd you! Ay have nothing to say to you!’

Robin turned, walked back to the shop entrance and did indeed close the door, but remained inside the fantastical silver storehouse, returning to Pamela to help her pick up all the bits of horn in silence. The shop owner seemed too distressed to care that Robin hadn’t followed her orders. She stumbled to a small desk, grabbed a handful of tissues from a silver box, dropped into her chair and cried.

Robin laid the shards of horn on the desk, feeling guilty and trying to project sympathy. After almost a minute’s weeping, Pamela said,

‘It’s may eyes! Ay had that laser eye surgery… and Ay can’t see properly… blurry… double vision… awful headaches… Ay need may eyes!’ said Pamela hysterically. ‘And may husband…’

She didn’t finish the sentence, but continued to weep, the already dark grey tissues becoming darker with specks of mascara.

‘Could I – is there anywhere I could make you a tea, or a coffee?’ asked Robin.

Pamela didn’t answer, so Robin decided to explore for herself. There was a small kiosk-like structure in the corner of the shop that contained a coffee machine and mugs. Robin made two coffees, added a lot of sweetener to Pamela’s, then returned to the desk and sat down opposite her. Pamela sobbed for another minute until she came to a hiccoughing halt and reached for her mug. It took her two attempts to grasp the handle. She sipped the sweetened coffee, then whispered,

‘Thank you.’

‘Can’t they do anything, for your eyes?’ Robin asked, in genuine concern.

‘Ay’m traying to find someone… they said it would clear up and it hasn’t…’

‘When was the operation?’ asked Robin, surreptitiously turning her mobile to record, in her bag.

‘January… the headaches… but Ay can’t stop work. It’s may own business!’

‘It’s an amazing shop,’ said Robin. ‘Bullen & Co’s a very old firm, isn’t it?’

‘F-four generations,’ hiccoughed Pamela. ‘May great-grandfather started it… but there are no Bullens left now. Ay couldn’t have children, and may – may nephew…’ She let out another sob. ‘Oh, we’ve all been through a dreadful tayme…’

Robin left a tactful pause before saying,

‘Mrs Bullen-Driscoll, we really do need an expert opinion. We know nothing about silver, you see.’

‘You want to t-talk about silver?’

‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. It would help to understand why the Murdoch silver was so significant and why someone would go to such lengths to steal it. Mr Ramsay says—’

‘Kenneth’s a fool!’ said Pamela, with sudden anger. ‘An idiot! Ay had no idea what he’d done! Ay’d have stopped him, but he didn’t tell me, didn’t tell may sister – he re-mortgaged their house, borrowed some exorbitant sum at a ludicrous rate of interest, cashed in all their shares – may sister knew nothing, nothing until it was too late. Insanity! Ay could have told him his stupid scheme wouldn’t work!’

‘What sch—?’

‘He paid much more than the Murdoch silver was worth – lunacy! He thought John Auclair – he’s a well-known collector – would come trotting along to his grotty little shop and give him half a million for it! Nobody in their rayte maynd would have paid that much for the stuff! Kenneth’s a fool, an absolute fool!’

‘You didn’t think he’d make a profit on the collection, then?’ asked Robin.

‘Of course not!’ said Pamela impatiently. The Murdoch collection’s really only of interest to a narrow subset of people.’

‘You mean masons?’ asked Robin.

‘Yes. Well, not necessarily only masons…’ The chance to talk about her specialist subject seemed to be soothing Pamela slightly. ‘A. H. Murdoch was quate a romantic figure, Ay suppose. One of those Victorian explorer taypes. Some of the pieces he collected had artistic merit on their own terms, but most of it – Skene’s dagger, and the Oriental Centrepiece, which quayte frankly is a monstrosity—’

‘That’s the piece that was delivered here, by mistake, isn’t it?’ said Robin.

‘Yes. Enormous, ugly thing, covered in masonic symbols, over three feet tall. Ay can’t imagine who’d want it, frankly. Ay told Rachel two years ago when they bought the shop, “you’re making a mistake!”’ said Pamela, with a resurgence of anger. ‘Everything, from start to finish, was misgayded, but she wouldn’t listen! “Kenneth thinks it’ll do very well”, “Kenneth knows the market”, “Kenneth knows people who’ll queue up to buy” – and of course, they’ve been making a loss ever since they opened! The location’s dreadful, and there simply isn’t a demand for that kind of specialist shop… if they’d been content to sell onlayne… but Rachel’s always been silly about business. Nayther of them had the first idea what they were doing. She was miffed our father put me in charge here, and Kenneth hates his day job and thought he was going to be able to give it up and talk masonic silver all day. And nayther of them have a clue about proper security. You’d think, with Rachel being a Bullen’ – Pamela said this rather as someone might have done on declaring their sister a Mountbatten-Windsor – ‘she’d realise what’s needed. This,’ said Pamela, gesturing around at the Silver Vaults, ‘is the fourth most secure building in the world. There’s never been a theft from the London Silver Vaults, ever. Stupid, baying that rundown place, thinking they could do everything on a shoestring. Ay tried to tell them! And then look what happened!’

‘It was very kind of you to go and help them out,’ said Robin.

‘Well, Ay had to. After may nephew…’ Tears welled in Pamela’s eyes again, ‘… and then m’sister had her stroke… of course Ay trayed to do what Ay could. Nayther of them wanted to let the shop go. “It’s all we’ve got now.” Naturally, Ay said Ay’d help.’

‘John Auclair did come in to view the collection at Ramsay Silver, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ snorted Pamela, ‘but one doesn’t get to be as rich as John Auclair is bay being a fool. Ay know John, Ay’ve sold him a few pieces over the years. He knew perfectly well Kenneth paid way over the real value of the silver. Ay knew John was coming in on the Monday to decide what he was going to take once Kenneth got desperate to claw something back. But of course, he never saw any of it, because…’

‘Awful, losing it all like that,’ said Robin, who didn’t want to introduce the subject of the body too early.

‘It was dreadful,’ said Pamela, with a shudder. ‘Ay had no idea anybody had been in the shop over the weekend. Wrayght didn’t work Saturdays, Kenneth looks after Rachel at the weekends, and Ay couldn’t be there, because Ay was attendin’ may cousin’s wedding.’

‘Presumably,’ said Robin, ‘you and Mr Ramsay were the only ones who knew the codes and had keys?’

‘Yes – well, I suppose Todd mayt have known where the camera controls were, but he shouldn’t have known the alarm or the vault codes, and he definitely didn’t have keys… Kenneth came rushing in after Ay arrayved, frayghtened he’d missed John Auclair, sneaking out of his office, as usual – he’s hanging by a thread at his day job – so he went down into the basement, and then he yelled out.’

Pamela swallowed.

‘Ay called down, “are you all rayte, Kenneth?” Ay thought he’d maybe slipped over, hurt himself. He didn’t answer. Ay went to the top of the stairs. Ay said, “are you all rayte?” And he still didn’t answer, so Ay went down there… he could have stopped me seeing,’ said Pamela bitterly. ‘He could have warned me… it was dreadful. Ay still have nayghtmares.… did Kenneth tell you? About Wrayght’s hands being missing, and… and everything?’

‘A little bit,’ said Robin. ‘It must have been awful.’

‘It was ghastly – and then John turned up. Ay’d just come back upstairs, to call the police. Ay nearly passed out in front of John. Ay’d just said to the operator, “there’s a body, we’ve found a body,” and then Ay had to sit down. John left – Ay can’t blame him, who’d want to be mixed up in that? Then Kenneth came upstairs, babbling, and Todd came up, too. He’d seen, of course. He’d been cleaning the bathroom when Kenneth went down there. Horrible man,’ said Pamela, with another shudder. ‘Horrible.’

‘Jim Todd, you mean?’ asked Robin.

‘Yes. Ay don’t like him at all. Ay don’t think he’s trustworthy.’

‘Really?’

‘Something very sneaky about him. Kenneth has appalling judgement,’ said Pamela, becoming suddenly heated again. ‘All the people Kenneth hired… he only cares if they’re cheap!’

‘Was Wright cheap?’ Robin asked.

‘Yes, and that’s a perfect example of what Ay’m talking about!’ said Pamela, in frustration. ‘They were paying their first security chap next to nothing, so naturally, he took the first job offer he got, and because they were losing money hand over fist, they didn’t replace him. But Ay didn’t want to be there alone when Ay went to help out, Ay couldn’t manage carrying everything up and downstairs, and how Rachel was supposed to do it, if she ever gets well enough – so Kenneth advertised for a sort of jack-of-all-trades, a salesman who could do heavy lifting and security.’

‘He said there weren’t many applicants,’ said Robin.

‘No, of course not, not on the salary he was offering! There weren’t many applicants. Ay told him Ay didn’t think much of Wrayght’s CV. Misspellings all over it.’

‘Misspellings,’ repeated Robin.

‘Yes. And then he layed.’

‘Wright did?’ said Robin.

‘No, Kenneth! He agreed we shouldn’t interview Wrayght, then sneaked his email address on to the list and Ay didn’t realise until Wrayght turned up that Kenneth had hoodwinked me into offering the man an interview. And then,’ said Pamela furiously, ‘he accused me of making the mistake, me of adding his email address to the list, bay mistake!’

‘That seems very unfair,’ said Robin, who was most interested in this information. ‘How many people did you end up interviewing?’

‘Just three – well, two. One of them didn’t turn up – the one Ay thought mayt be quite good. Ay suppose he had a better offer. So it was just Wrayght and this boy who was seventeen and looked as though he couldn’t fayt his way out of a paper bag. So, of course, with the physical requirements, Wrayght was the only choice.’

‘He claimed to be from Doncaster, didn’t he?’ said Robin. ‘Did he have a Yorkshire accent?’

‘Ay don’t really know. He didn’t sound very refayned… polite enough,’ said Pamela grudgingly, ‘but Ay knew straight away he knew nothing about silver or antiques, whatever he’d said at interview. Not even a basic understanding. He asked me what the lion passant meant!’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Robin.

‘The lion passant,’ repeated Pamela, with slight disbelief at Robin’s own lack of knowledge. ‘The most basic, common British hallmark. It means the item is sterling silver: point nine two five purity. When Ay explained that to Wrayght, he said “that’s funny”.’

‘“That’s funny,”’ repeated Robin. ‘What was funny about it?’

‘Ay’ve no idea,’ said Pamela. ‘But afterwards, when we found out he was Knowles, Ay thought, Ay should have known, from the name “William Wrayght”. They’re a well-known firm in Sheffield. They make silverware for hospitality. That’ll be where Knowles got the idea. Ay felt so silly for not seeing it.’

‘Mr Ramsay says Wright used the work computer to look things up,’ said Robin.

‘Yes, he visited “Truth About Freemasons” or some such sayte. Ay suppose you could argue he was traying to learn, but there’s no proper information on silverware on a sayte layke that. Just conspiracy nonsense, and people going on there to discuss masonic plots, and Freemasons arguing with them – nothing about masonic objects.’

‘Mr Ramsay’s given us the camera footage from the day the Murdoch silver arrived, but we haven’t had a chance to look at it yet,’ Robin fibbed. ‘Was it a normal kind of day?’

‘Yes,’ said Pamela, but there was a slight wariness in her tone. ‘Well – not with the Murdoch silver arrayving. But otherwayse it was normal.’

‘Mr Ramsay told us the silver arrived late,’ said Robin.

‘It did, yes. He’s been sacked – the delivery man from Gibsons. Ay’d had dealings with him once before. Name of Larry McGee. Careless, not at all the kaynd of person you’d trust with valuable deliveries. Ay’m not surpraysed Gibsons got rid of him.’

‘The silver was meant to arrive at lunchtime, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it didn’t get there until a quarter past three, and then McGee refused to carry it down to the vault, just dumped the crates in the middle of the shop, so Ay had to call Todd to come and help Wrayght lift it. Todd does Frayday afternoons at an office on Kingsway that closes at lunchtime, so he was nearby.’

‘And did anyone open the crates, to check the silver?’ asked Robin.

‘Yes, of course, Ay did mayself. Ay’m very careful about security, Ay wasn’t going to let those two handle valuable objects without me present. Ay opened the vault for them, and once they’d carried the crates inside, and were back upstairs, Ay went down, and took off the lids mayself. That’s when Ay opened the big crate and found McGee had delivered our things to Ramsays, so Ay knew the Oriental Centrepiece must be here. Wrayght went to fetch it from may husband.’ For a second, Pamela looked as though she might cry again, but she took a deep breath then said, ‘Afterwards, if you can believe it – after everything that had happened! – Kenneth grumbled that Ay’d bought a few things from the collection for Bullens. Said Ay’d broken a gentlemen’s agreement. Absolute nonsense! Nothing we bought was masonic, just a few nayce bits of general silverware. Ay think Kenneth believes anything A. H. Murdoch touched is his, by divayne rayte!’

‘He’s a personal fan of A. H. Murdoch, then?’ said Robin.

‘Oh, yes. Murdoch wrote books, you know. Kenneth’s got all of them. He belongs to some grotty little lodge in Lewisham – Kenneth, not A. H. Murdoch. May father was a mason, too, that’s whay Bullen & Co had a little saydlayne in masonic goods while he was alayve, but Daddy wasn’t anywhere near as silly about it all as Kenneth.’

‘So, once you’d put the Murdoch silver in the vault, it was a completely normal day?’ asked Robin. ‘You closed at the usual time, and so forth?’

A fractional pause followed, in which Robin was certain Pamela was reminding herself that she was caught on camera.

‘Ay had to leave a little early. Ay had an awful headache,’ said Pamela. ‘Ay’ve had them ever since the laser surgery.’

‘You got a text, didn’t you?’ said Robin casually. ‘Just before you left?’

‘What?’ said Pamela. ‘Oh – yes…’

Tears rose suddenly in Pamela’s eyes again.

‘Ay don’t want to talk about that. It had nothing to do with any of this, the Murdoch silver, or Wrayght. Ay asked Todd to man the shop until Wrayght got back. Everything was quayte safe. And then I went home.’

Leaving untouched the question of how Wright and Todd were supposed to have locked the door, set the alarm or opened the vault to place the centrepiece in it, Robin said,

‘I don’t suppose there’s any possibility of you giving us a clip of your own footage – just from when William Wright came here that Friday, to pick up the centrepiece?’

‘Well… Ay don’t see why not,’ said Pamela, still sniffing, but turning to her keyboard. Coffee and sympathy appeared to have softened her considerably. ‘But you won’t faynd it very helpful, Ay’m afraid. He’s only visible for a few seconds.’

When the segment of footage had been forwarded to her email, Robin said,

‘Would you mind looking at a picture for me?’

She took a copy of Rupert Fleetwood’s photo from her bag and held it out.

‘Our client would like to know whether this could have been William Wright.’

Pamela raised her reading glasses and peered at Rupert in his burgundy waiter’s uniform. Robin could tell she was having difficulty focusing. When Pamela shook her head, her stiffly lacquered hair didn’t move at all.

‘No, definitely not.’

‘You were all agreed William Wright was Jason Knowles, weren’t you?’ said Robin. ‘Everyone who worked at the shop, I mean?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Pamela. ‘Yes, it was definitely Knowles. Well, it made perfect sense. He’d spotted an opportunity. The security at Ramsays…’

‘The cameras look very old,’ said Robin.

‘Old?’ said Pamela, with resurgent scorn. ‘Bullen & Co replaced those models nay on twenty years ago, and the outside one hasn’t worked in all the tayme they’ve owned the shop. Kenneth never got round to fixing it. Thought just the sayt of it would be a deterrent.’

‘Right,’ said Robin. As she returned Fleetwood’s photo to her handbag, she said,

‘Mr Ramsay mentioned a funny email that had been sent from the shop, a week before the robbery. To a man named Calvin “Oz” Osgood? Saying they could help him with a problem?’

‘Yes, Wrayght sent it,’ said Pamela at once. ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me, and Kenneth didn’t do it. Nayther of us had ever heard of the man.’

‘What about Jim Todd?’ asked Robin.

‘He shouldn’t have had the password to the computer,’ said Pamela. ‘Ay certainly never gave it to him.’

‘Mrs Bullen-Driscoll, this has been so helpful,’ said Robin warmly, getting to her feet. ‘I really do hope the problems with your eyes get better.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pamela, also standing up. ‘You’ve been… very kaynd.’

Ten minutes later, Robin was standing alone beside the entrance to Chancery Lane Tube station, her mobile clamped to one ear, a finger in her other, and a broad smile on her face.

‘Ellacott,’ said Strike’s voice, audible even over the roar of the surrounding traffic, ‘you’re a fucking marvel.’

25

Strike’s trip to Ipswich yielded a small amount of further information about the friend of Plug’s whom Kim had identified as an ex-embezzler. According to a neighbour who’d emerged from her house with a Red Setter, and with whom Strike struck up a conversation by pretending to be a great dog lover, Plug’s friend had been prosecuted under the Animal Cruelty Act and banned from keeping any domestic pet for five years.

‘Disgusting,’ the neighbour told Strike, scowling in the direction of the man’s overgrown front garden. ‘I think you should get a lifetime ban on keeping pets if you’re prosecuted for cruelty. What he did to that lurcher… I’ve got no time for people who mistreat animals. They should have the same done back to them, if you ask me.’

While driving back to London that evening, Strike wondered whether animal cruelty formed any part of whatever business was driving Plug and his associates’ discreet exchanges of cash. On arriving home he made an anonymous call to the RSPCA, tipping off the animal welfare charity that a large animal or animals appeared to be incarcerated without fresh air or sunlight in Plug’s padlocked shed. That, he hoped, might flush out something interesting.

As he left the office, he noticed that Pat’s aquarium had now acquired three inhabitants, and stopped to look at them. These weren’t goldfish as he recognised them. Indeed, one of them, which was black, appeared to him to be so misshapen he wondered whether it wasn’t diseased, having what looked like a knobbly growth on its head, a lumpy body and a distinctly waddling action. Propped against the base of the tank was a card on which was written in Pat’s handwriting ‘DO NOT FEED I’VE ALREADY DONE IT’, an instruction with which Strike was more than happy to comply. He left, turning out the light.

His plan for the following day was to trace Larry McGee, the delivery man who’d been fired from Gibsons at some point after delivering the Murdoch silver. Strike set out for the auction house after breakfast, planning to pretend he didn’t know McGee had been sacked, and hoping to wring details of his dismissal from whoever he could manage to talk to.

A woman was standing on the corner of Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road as Strike approached it. Alert as he was for the possibility of journalistic interest after Culpepper’s story, Strike eyed her as he drew nearer, but discounted the idea that she worked for the papers. She was a well-built young woman with white-blonde hair extensions; as he drew nearer, he saw false eyelashes and plumped-up lips, and the figure revealed by the tightly belted coat showed evidence of cosmetic enhancement too, reminding him of Bijou Watkins, who’d also had large breast implants. The blonde bowed her head and hunched her shoulders as Strike passed her, but he suspected this was due less to any wish to preserve her incognito than a workaday wish not to be importuned by a random male, which he suspected might happen to her quite frequently.

Half an hour later, Strike arrived at Gibsons Auction House, which was situated in an elegant Edwardian building on Northumberland Avenue. Tasteful gold Christmas lights had been fixed around the edge of a large window, where a pair of abstract paintings were hung on almost invisible strings. A man as tall as Strike, who was wearing an immaculate black suit and had a goatee and a shaven head, stood guard outside the door.

‘Morning,’ said Strike, pulling a card out of his wallet and showing it to the security man. ‘I’m hoping to talk to Larry McGee.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ said the man.

‘Why’s that?’

‘He’s dead, mate.’

The security man looked down at the card Strike had handed him and raised his eyebrows.

‘You that bloke what solved the Lula Landry thing?’

‘That’s me,’ said Strike. ‘Was McGee was still working here when he died?’

‘Nah,’ said the security man, who was now looking at Strike with curiosity. ‘He wuz sacked.’

‘Any chance I could talk to someone about that?’

Five minutes later, and slightly to Strike’s surprise, because he’d anticipated a rebuff, he was led by the security man into a stark white office with another abstract painting hanging behind the uncluttered desk. Its occupant was a tall black woman in her thirties, who was dressed in a violet trouser suit and wore her hair in long spiral curls. The name plate on her desk declared her name to be Diana Boadu and her accent suggested a private education, though she displayed none of the superciliousness Strike might have expected from her stylish appearance and the beautifully appointed Edwardian building in which she worked. On the contrary, like the security man, Diana seemed intrigued if not mildly excited to be speaking to Cormoran Strike.

‘Why on earth are you interested in Larry McGee?’ she asked, when Strike had accepted an offer of coffee, and a redheaded underling had been dispatched to make it.

‘He delivered the Murdoch silver,’ said Strike.

‘Oh,’ said Diana Boadu. ‘I see.’

‘But I’ve just found out he’s dead.’

‘Yes, I heard he’d died,’ said Diana, who didn’t seem unduly saddened by the fact. ‘But that was after we fired him – months later,’ she added, as though afraid that Strike might get the impression the sacking had somehow killed McGee.

‘Any idea what he died of?’

‘Carter might know, our Head of Deliveries, but I think he’s out on a job.’

‘Would you be comfortable giving me Carter’s contact details?’

Strike’s coffee arrived while Diana was dictating Carter’s number. When Strike had thanked the redhead, he said,

‘Could I ask what McGee did, to get himself sacked?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Diana. ‘I assume – I mean, given your reputation’ (Strike thought fleetingly of the recent press article about his behaviour towards women; apparently not everyone had read it) ‘you’re discreet?’

‘Very,’ he assured her, drawing out his notebook.

‘Well, we suspected him of theft.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. The first incident concerned a pair of nineteenth-century Staffordshire pottery spaniels, which disappeared between the warehouse and the purchaser. The buyer was a fairly absent-minded collector and it took him a week to register that the spaniels hadn’t been in the delivery, because he’d bid on so many lots.

‘It was a tricky situation. They could’ve been stolen at the warehouse and never loaded into McGee’s van, and – well, candidly, there’s always a chance a buyer themselves is working a scam. We investigated, but we couldn’t prove anything, so we gave McGee the benefit of the doubt and reimbursed the buyer out of our insurance.’

‘McGee was alone on the delivery, was he?’

‘Yes,’ said Diana. ‘We usually send people out in pairs, but it was a particularly busy time, so he did this delivery alone. We think he spotted an opportunity.’

‘How much were these pottery dog things worth?’

‘Two to three thousand pounds,’ said Diana. ‘Then – oh, that’s Carter!’ she said in surprise.

Strike looked around to see a fit-looking white man in his early fifties looking through the glass panel of Diana’s door, fist raised to knock.

‘Come in, Charlie,’ she called.

‘Just wanted to tell you, the Burne-Jones delivery’s been postponed again,’ said Carter, opening the door and poking his head inside.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Diana crossly. ‘We aren’t a storage unit. He bought it, he needs to take receipt of it!’

‘He was calling from Istanbul.’

‘OK, fine,’ sighed Diana. ‘This is Cormoran Strike, Charlie. He’s a—’

‘Private detective, yeah,’ said Carter, sidling a little further into the room. ‘Bradley told me.’

Strike surmised that Bradley was the security man.

‘He’s here to talk about Larry McGee,’ said Diana. ‘D’you want to pull up a chair?’

Carter did so with such alacrity that Strike suspected the message about the delayed delivery had been a pretext to find out what was going on in Diana’s office. Carter looked ex-military or police; his thick grey hair was cut very short, his gaze was penetrating and his royal blue overalls were neatly pressed.

‘I’ve just been explaining about those disappearing dogs,’ Diana said. Turning back to the detective, she said, ‘Anyway, last January, the same thing happened on another delivery McGee made. This time, it was a kifwebe.’

‘A what?’ said Strike. If nothing else, the silver vault case was undoubtedly improving his vocabulary; first nefs, now this.

‘It’s a mask, produced by the Songye and Luba people. This was nineteen-twenties and especially fine, worth around five thousand. Again, it vanished between warehouse and purchaser and, again, the client had bought several items in the same auction, so didn’t immediately notice that one of the masks was missing. Two incidents of easily portable objects disappearing from multiple lots delivered to the same buyer, McGee the delivery driver on both—’

‘—is a hell of a coincidence,’ said Strike.

‘Well, quite.’

‘You’d let him go out alone again, had you?’

‘No,’ said Carter, before Diana could answer. ‘He never went out alone again after the pottery dogs disappeared. There were two of ’em on the kifwebe delivery, and the co-driver backed McGee up and said there hadn’t been any opportunity for McGee to have pinched it. He was right gormless, that kid,’ said Carter, shaking his head. ‘Panicked and thought he’d be sacked if he admitted McGee had been alone with the mask. We had to let ’im go in the end – nothing criminal, just dozy.’

‘And you didn’t involve the police?’ Strike asked Diana.

‘It’s tricky,’ said Diana.

‘You don’t want a reputation for poor security.’

‘Well, exactly. The losses weren’t huge, relatively speaking, but even so… We couldn’t prove McGee had taken the mask, but after that, management asked Charlie to keep a log of every infraction, every instance of lateness or laziness. We just wanted to get rid of McGee.’

‘He’ll have been background checked before he was hired, I suppose?’ Strike asked Carter.

‘He will’ve been, yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but not by me. I inherited ’im from the last Head of Deliveries.’ Turning to Diana he said, ‘Did you tell ’im about the porn?’

‘I hadn’t got to that,’ said Diana.

‘Porn?’ said Strike.

‘McGee was watchin’ it on ’is phone, at work,’ said Carter. ‘Every free minute, pretty much. Not bothered if anyone saw him, either – or he wasn’t till he got a verbal warning for doing it. No, he had quite a little fantasy life going, McGee,’ said Carter.

‘In what way?’

‘Two of the younger lads he went on jobs with told me he was always going on about women, and girls coming on to him.’

‘Larry McGee thought girls were coming on to him?’ said Diana, with a scornful laugh.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Carter. ‘Drawn to him like flies round – all over ’im, he claimed,’ Carter corrected himself quickly. ‘Teenager living opposite deliberately left her blinds up to undress in front of the window, that sort of thing. Girls sidling up to him asking him for cigarettes and flashing their knickers when they bent over. Anyway, ’e got ’is next warning for ’ow he was behaving to the girls who visited the warehouse.’

‘We’ve got storage facilities and garaging in Waterloo,’ Diana explained. ‘That’s where McGee was based most of the time. He was making off-colour jokes about what the younger girls were wearing, and their sex lives. After we got two complaints we started gearing up for a full disciplinary hearing, but then he handed us a cast-iron reason for firing him, so there was no need.’

‘What was the final straw?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, he really f – messed up,’ said Carter, correcting himself smoothly for a second time. ‘With the Murdoch silver delivery. He was with a co-driver as usual, they’d made a couple of drop-offs, then he deliberately ditched the other guy. Faked having a migraine. Begged the guy to go get him some stuff for it out of Boots, and when the guy come back out, the van was gone.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, who was now making rapid notes. ‘When did you find out what had happened?’

‘Dave called me immediately,’ said Carter.

‘What time did McGee take off in the van?’

‘Round half twelve,’ said Carter.

‘So the Murdoch silver was still in the back?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When I heard that McGee had got rid of his co-driver, I personally called the buyer, Kenneth Ramsay,’ said Diana. ‘He said the silver hadn’t turned up at the shop at the appointed time. I was extremely worried. I asked him to call me back if and when McGee turned up – I didn’t tell Ramsay what had happened, just that we were concerned about the delay. Anyway, he did call me back, to say McGee had turned up just after three. I was worried; I suspected that something would have gone missing again – it was another instance of a lot of items going to a single buyer, so the exact same conditions in which the mask and the dogs had disappeared – but Ramsay put me through to the woman who was in the shop, and she told me everything was there, except that two lots had got mixed up. A centrepiece had gone to Bullen & Co, and some of Bullen & Co’s items had gone to Ramsay Silver. I asked her to send photographs of everything she had there, and to contact me when the centrepiece was returned. I had to be sure we weren’t looking at another theft – although, of all the lots, I couldn’t see why McGee would have chosen that centrepiece to steal. It was incredibly recognisable and pretty much impossible for anyone but a weightlifter to carry single-handedly.’

‘And did she send you pictures?’

‘Yes, she took photos of the items and sent them, and they were all present and correct, and called me later to say the centrepiece had arrived, too. Everything was there – it was a huge relief.’

‘She sent a picture of the centrepiece as well, did she?’

Diana frowned, pulled out her iPhone and began scrolling. While she was doing this, Strike said to Carter,

‘Did you ever find out what McGee had done between ditching the other bloke and delivering the Murdoch silver?’

‘He claimed he’d got lost,’ said Carter, ‘but he didn’t expect to be believed. That was just something to say.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He came back to the warehouse after he’d finally delivered the stuff to Ramsays, I called him straight into my office and asked what had happened. He claimed Dave was taking too much time in the chemists, and he knew they were already late, so he thought he’d better get going, and then he got lost. He knew full well he was about to be sacked. Didn’t care. Pleased about it, if anything. Smirked as he walked out.’

‘Did you ever tell the police this?’

‘Yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but they took their time coming to see us. Some young copper turned up, just to tick a box, probably. I don’t think they cared about what happened to the silver before it got to Ramsays. Never heard anything back from ’em, anyway.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of Larry McGee, would you?’ Strike asked Carter, who pulled his phone out of his overall pocket.

‘Probably got one on here,’ he muttered, and began searching.

‘No,’ said Diana, who was still examining pictures on her own mobile. ‘The woman at Ramsay Silver never sent me a picture of the Oriental Centrepiece – but she did text me to say it had arrived.’

‘That’s McGee,’ said Carter, holding his phone out to Strike. ‘Big guy in the middle. It was Hassan’s stag.’

Strike looked down at a picture of a group of men in a pub. McGee, like Carter, had been in his fifties: tall, overweight, florid of face, with a droopy lower lip that gave him the look of a camel. The little hair remaining to him was grey.

‘Could I take a picture of this on my own phone?’

‘Feel free,’ said Carter.

Strike did so, then flicked over a page in his notebook and asked,

‘Did anyone keep in touch with McGee after he was fired?’

‘Bradley saw a bit of him,’ said Carter. ‘Our security guy. He and McGee both lived in Hounslow. Same local.’

‘Would it be all right to have a quick word with Bradley?’ Strike asked Diana.

A few minutes later, Carter led the security guard into the office, the latter looking intrigued.

‘Yeah, I ran into ’im in the pub a couple of times,’ said Bradley, when asked about his post-sacking contact with McGee.

‘How soon after he was fired?’

‘Er…’ Bradley scratched his goatee. ‘Firs’ time, it was the Saturday night after.’

‘The day following the delivery?’ said Strike. ‘Before the body and the theft were discovered, on the Monday?’

‘Yeah,’ said Bradley. ‘It was before all that was on the news. I jus’ asked ’im why ’e’d ditched Dave an’ buggered off, an’ ’e talked a load of his usual boll—’

Unlike Carter, Bradley was slow at finding a synonym for the word he’d decided not to use in front of Diana. After a tongue-tied pause he substituted, ‘rubbish’.

‘What did he say?’ asked Strike.

‘Told me ’e’d been ’eld up by an “’ot little blonde” who lured him up a side alley,’ said Bradley, with a smirk.

‘Chrissake,’ muttered Carter, with an eye-roll.

‘I told ’im ’e was full of it,’ said Bradley. ‘’E jus’ laughed. Told me ’e wanted to leave Gibsons anyway, and ’e was gonna be coming into a decent bit of cash soon, so it made no odds to him, getting the ’eave ’o.’

‘Any mention of where this cash was coming from?’

‘No,’ said Bradley, ‘I fort ’e meant a will or somefing. We didn’ talk long. I never much liked ’im. ’E just lived up the road, so I sometimes ran into ’im.’

‘Ever see him after that?’

‘Yeah, once. End of October, same pub. ’E’d really let ’imself go. Looked like ’e’d packed on a coupla stone. I asked if ’e’d ’ad his windfall yet, and ’e bit my bloody ’ead off, said ’e’d never said ’e was gonna be getting a windfall, and walked out. Next I ’eard, ’e’d been found dead in his flat, after a neighbour complained about the smell. It was in the local paper.’ He continued in a self-consciously grave voice, ‘Sad way to go.’

‘In the paper, was it?’ said Strike, who was still writing.

‘Yeah. ’Ounslow ’Erald. Natural causes. Always looked like ’e had ’eart disease. That sorta corned beef skin, y’know? ’S’ow my old man went.’

‘Proper catch for a hot young blonde,’ said Carter, and Bradley sniggered.

26

‘But that’s so… weird,’ said Robin, on the phone to Strike half an hour later, while he was walking back to the office.

‘It is, yeah,’ said Strike, a finger in his free ear to block out the sounds of traffic. ‘Very weird.’

His leg was paining him again, but, remembering Murphy’s gym bag and water bottle, he was resisting the temptation to hail a cab.

‘McGee seems to have thought he was going to be paid enough to make it worth his while to sacrifice his job,’ said Strike, ‘but paid for what?’

Robin, who was sitting in her Land Rover outside a house in Pimlico that Mrs Two-Times was visiting, didn’t answer immediately. After a short silence, both partners spoke at once.

‘I can only—’

‘I was think – go on,’ said Strike.

‘I was going to say, I can only think of two possibilities,’ said Robin. ‘Either he was doing something completely unrelated to the silver delivery, or he wanted to tamper with the silver in some way – but the silver wasn’t tampered with.’

‘You say that, but something did go wrong with the delivery. The Oriental Centrepiece didn’t go where it was supposed to.’

‘But it ended up at Ramsay Silver in the end. That seems such a pointless thing to do, switch the addresses on two crates, if that’s what he did.’

‘Pamela never saw the centrepiece, though. She dashed out of the shop right after the crate was put in the basement, so she never had an opportunity to photograph it and send the picture to Gibsons. We’ve got no proof it ever ended up there.’

‘You think Wright stole it, on the way back from Bullen & Co?’

‘Can’t see how he could’ve done. He couldn’t have lifted it alone and he arrived back at the shop bloody quickly for someone who’d have to have made a detour to deposit it with someone else.’

‘But of all the pieces to steal, the centrepiece would be the very last one, surely?’

‘That’s exactly what the woman at the auction house just said to me.’

‘Pamela told me it was virtually unsellable, even to masons.’

Robin’s eyes were currently trained on the front door of the house where Mrs Two-Times was visiting a female friend.

‘I assume,’ said Strike, breaking another short silence, ‘the police decided McGee’s detour’s irrelevant, but I’d still like to know whether they talked to him. Might try and trace relatives, find out if he was ever interviewed. Wouldn’t mind seeing the post-mortem results, either.’

Robin felt an increasingly familiar prickle of unease. Strike was, once again, checking back over the police’s work, and she thought again of Murphy, and that note on the office board about DCI Malcolm Truman’s alleged membership of a masonic lodge.

‘Not sure I’ve ever had a case where so many senseless things seem to have happened,’ Strike continued. ‘I can’t see why McGee disappeared off the radar before delivering the silver and I still can’t fathom why Wright had to be bumped off in the vault.’

‘We’re definitely accepting what Shanker said, are we? This was a planned killing, not a fight that got out of hand?’

‘Can’t say for sure until we know exactly how Wright died, can we? If there were defensive marks and stab wounds to the front of his body it still might’ve been a punch-up that got out of hand, but it still seems a bloody strange place for a fatal knife fight to break out. Like I said before, a heist is a quick in-out job. You get pissed off at someone during it, you wait until you’re off the premises to thrash things out. I don’t think we should neglect the Ramsay Silver angle, going forwards. It’s all very well trying to fit different candidates to Wright, but I’ve got a feeling that when we find out why he was killed in the vault, we’ll know who he was.’

‘What happened to “means before motive”?’ asked Robin, repeating back to Strike his own oft-quoted dictum.

‘This is means,’ said Strike. ‘The motive could be anything: rage, jealousy, he hadn’t paid a debt. What I want to know is why Wright was killed there. We know he left Ramsay Silver at six, and we know he returned to the shop by night. It beggars belief that he turned up there by chance at one in the morning without realising a large-scale robbery was about to take place, so that suggests Wright’s a crook himself. Trouble is, with Knowles ruled out, the only current candidate for Wright we know had already committed theft is—’

‘Rupert Fleetwood,’ said Robin.

‘Exactly.’

‘But you don’t think Wright’s Fleetwood.’

‘I suppose,’ said Strike reluctantly, ‘framed like this, he has to move up the suspect list a bit, with one proven theft of silver behind him, but there’s a hell of a difference between him marching out of his godfather’s club in broad daylight, staggering under the weight of that nef, and this meticulously planned robbery – because you’ve got to give whoever did it that much credit, they’ve got clean away with it. No trace of the silver since, and no leads. But if the dead man’s Fleetwood, I’d say it was particularly unwise for the gang to polish him off in the vault. Fleetwood was a well-connected upper-class young man, a famous actor’s cousin, and when people like that get killed, you expect payback. I struggle to see how, with three other men in the vault, one of them wouldn’t have stepped in to stop a fight between Fleetwood and his assailant, knowing what the potential consequences might be of leaving him dead on the floor.’

‘I agree,’ said Robin. ‘It doesn’t add up.’

‘But if Wright’s killing was deliberate, planned murder, it seems even stranger than a spontaneous fight. Of all the places to polish someone off, the vault of a masonic silver shop seems one of the stupidest. Ramsays’ security might’ve been shit, but it was still a risky place to get into and you’re absolutely guaranteeing press interest.’

‘Strike, I’m going to have to go, I think she’s off shopping again,’ said Robin, watching Mrs Two-Times descend the steps of the house with her friend, and she ended the call, leaving Strike, whose stomach was now grumbling, to enter a supermarket to buy lunch. Murphy still in mind, he chose a salad, rather than the large BLT he really wanted.

The blonde he’d noticed earlier on the corner of Denmark Street had gone, but when Strike opened the street door to his office he spotted a small white envelope that definitely hadn’t been on the doormat when he’d left. On bending to pick it up, he saw the usual approximation of his own name printed in capitals: CAMERON STRIKE. The writing had an odd appearance, as though carefully formed between two horizontal lines, and Strike, who’d previously had reason to consult handwriting experts, suspected this had been done to eradicate any trace of individuality.

On entering the office, he found Midge and Pat in conversation. They fell silent when he entered. Midge’s eyes, he noticed, were bloodshot.

‘Morning,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t noticed. Walking past the goldfish, he closed the door of the inner office, sat down at the partners’ desk and opened the white envelope. Inside was a piece of paper on which were written two lines of what he recognised as pigpen cipher.

‘The fuck?’ he muttered, and had just turned on his computer to translate it, when Pat knocked on the dividing door.

‘There’s a man ringing the buzzer. Says he wants to talk to you about Niall Semple.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, thinking immediately of the man who’d advised Jade Semple not to speak to him, on the phone. ‘Has he given a name?’

‘No,’ said Pat, looking disgruntled, ‘and he hasn’t got an appointment.’

She disapproved on principle of letting people in off the street without appointments.

‘Let him in.’

Strike got up, closed the wings of the noticeboard on which he’d pinned Semple’s and the other possible Wrights’ pictures, and slid the cipher note out of sight, beneath his keyboard. He then headed into the outer office in time to see Pat opening the glass door, Midge passing out of it, and a stranger walking in.

He was a good-looking man in his late fifties, broad-shouldered, almost as tall as Strike, and wearing a dark blue suit the detective could tell was tailored. He had a thick head of short salt-and-pepper hair, a square jaw and silver-framed glasses, and entered the office, not exactly with an air of expecting to be saluted, but something close to it. Strike wasn’t entirely surprised to see a smile of welcome replace Pat’s scowl; she always had a soft spot for handsome men.

‘Mr Strike?’ said the newcomer, in the kind of rich, upper-class voice Strike could imagine declaring a garden fete open. This definitely wasn’t the man who’d called Jade Semple ‘babe’.

‘That’s me.’

‘Ralph Lawrence.’

They shook hands.

‘Want a coffee?’ asked Strike.

‘No, thanks, pressed for time,’ said Lawrence.

‘I could do you a small one,’ said Pat.

‘All right,’ said Lawrence with what Strike thought was a consciously charming smile, ‘a small one, then.’

‘Come through,’ said Strike, standing back to let Lawrence pass.

He noticed the sweeping gaze the man gave the two rooms as he moved through to the partners’ desk, as though he was memorising details.

‘We’ve got an acquaintance in common,’ Lawrence said, sitting down in Robin’s chair as Strike closed the door.

‘Yeah?’ said Strike. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Angela Darwish.’

Strike’s interest in his uninvited guest sharpened considerably. He and Robin had met Angela Darwish in the context of a previous case, which had involved a far-right terrorist group. Darwish had been working in conjunction with the Met and had never disclosed either her precise job description or employer, but by the end of the investigation, Strike had known perfectly well she was MI5. That didn’t mean Lawrence also worked for the security service, of course, but certain suspicions lurking in the back of Strike’s mind about Niall Semple now took more solid form.

‘How can I help?’ he asked, also sitting down.

‘You’re currently trying to identify the body found in the silver vault at Ramsay Silver, yes?’

In the absence of proof that he was speaking to a genuine MI5 operative, Strike answered with a question of his own.

‘Did Semple’s wife tip you off I want to interview her, or are you monitoring private messages on her Facebook page?’

‘Have you spoken to anyone other than Jade yet?’ Lawrence asked.

‘Why d’you ask?’ said Strike, who could play question for question all day.

‘I think a man of your intelligence can probably guess why I’m asking,’ said Lawrence, with a faint smile.

There was a knock on the dividing door and Pat appeared, holding a tray. Childish as he knew it to be, Strike was nevertheless slightly irked that Pat had got out both the milk jug and the sugar bowl for their suave visitor.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Lawrence, smiling at the office manager, and Strike heard the gratification in Pat’s gruff ‘you’re welcome’.

‘Can I be candid?’ said Lawrence, once Pat had closed the door again.

‘I don’t know. Can you?’ said Strike.

He wasn’t being combative just because he was hungry and had only a supermarket salad to look forward to, nor because of Lawrence’s aura of easy assurance; Strike had met plenty of his ilk in the army. What Strike found offensive was the man’s assumption that he had only to hint he was MI5 for Strike to accept this as fact. Strike considered that he was owed a little more respect, so sat back in his chair without returning Lawrence’s smile and sipped from the chipped Arsenal mug Pat had deemed appropriate for her boss.

‘People better placed than you are already looking for Niall Semple,’ said Lawrence.

‘Yeah?’ said Strike. ‘My agency’s got a one hundred per cent success rate in tracking people down we’ve tried to find, but if you locate him before we do, give us a shout.’

He’d half-hoped to wipe the smile off Lawrence’s face with that, but no.

‘What d’you know about Semple?’

‘Nobody’s seen him alive since a corpse of his approximate height, weight and age turned up in a vault in Holborn.’

‘Who are you working for? A newspaper?’

‘If you are who you’re hinting you are, you can always hack our computers and find out,’ said Strike.

Lawrence’s smile didn’t flicker. The impression given was that he’d dealt with obstructive dolts like Strike too often to let them anger him.

‘Mr Strike,’ he said, ‘Niall Semple wasn’t the man in the silver vault. You have my personal guarantee on that.’

‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Bung me the proof and we’ll cross him off our list.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Lawrence, ‘I can’t provide proof without breaking the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Can’t count him out, then, can I?’ said Strike, unimpressed by the hint that he might be endangering national security by identifying a body.

Strike detected a certain chagrin in Lawrence that his appeal to Queen and country hadn’t worked. Lawrence now glanced down at the place where Strike’s prosthetic leg was concealed by the desk.

‘Herrick, yes?’ he said, referring to the British military operation in Afghanistan.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, knowing full well he was supposed to be flattered Lawrence knew this.

‘I understand you may have a – a certain fellow feeling for Semple, being ex-military yourself—’

‘I don’t need to have fellow feeling for a missing person to try and find out whether they’re living or dead,’ said Strike. ‘It’s my job.’

‘You haven’t got the resources we do.’

‘And yet, with all your resources, you haven’t found him.’

‘You’re fond of publicity, Mr Strike, but publicity, in this case, could do harm.’

Strike knew he had the whip hand now; he could tell Lawrence regretted his descent into personal attack immediately, because the man said swiftly,

‘Look – we’re on the same side.’

‘I want to find out whether Niall Semple’s dead. You want to stop me finding out. Those are very different fucking sides. Shall I tell you what I think’s going on here?’

‘Please do,’ said Lawrence, reaching for his coffee.

‘Worried by the possibility of a tabloid leak now I’m looking for Semple, you’ve decided a quiet approach should be made to me, to let the matter drop. The fact that high-level bureaucrats are trying to warn me off’ – he saw Lawrence’s eyelid flicker, and was pleased to see the man hadn’t liked being described as a bureaucrat – ‘makes me think Semple might have been injured on an operation you don’t want the public to know about. He’s brain damaged and might be a liability. Bottom line: it’d suit you if he’s dead, but you’d far rather it hadn’t happened in a newsworthy way.’

For a moment, they looked, unblinking, into each other’s eyes, Lawrence’s pale blue into Strike’s brown.

‘All right,’ said Lawrence, setting down his coffee and standing up. ‘Thanks for your time. Should you at any point wish to contact me, call that number.’

He took out a flat silver case and laid a thick white business card on the desk. ‘Goodbye.’

He left without a second handshake. Rather than walk him to the door, Strike picked up the card Lawrence had left and examined it, unimpressed. It bore only the man’s name, which Strike wasn’t necessarily accepting was his real one, and a mobile number. Strike opened the wings of the noticeboard and pinned the card beneath Semple’s picture, then he turned back to his PC, opened Facebook and sent a new message to Semple’s wife.

I’m not working for a newspaper. I’m just looking for a quick conversation.

If Lawrence really was able to access Jade’s private Facebook messages, Strike hoped he’d enjoy that one.

Sitting back down at the desk and ignoring his salad, because he was already in a bad mood, Strike retrieved the cipher note he’d hidden under his keyboard and set to work, translating the message symbol by symbol. Within minutes, he’d produced a sentence in English written beneath the code:

the | man | in | the| safe | was | dangerous | dick | delion | i | don’t | know | who | had | him | killed | but | he | is | on | TV

27

On Saturday morning, which was foggy and cold, Robin awoke, exhausted, in Murphy’s flat in Wanstead. She’d have liked another couple of hours’ sleep, because in spite of telling her boyfriend that she’d be ‘coming to bed soon’ and ‘just needed to send another couple of emails’, Robin had sat up in Murphy’s sitting room until two o’clock, perusing the Facebook page of Calvin Osgood, the genuine music producer, and the Instagram page of Calvin ‘Oz’ Osgood, his impersonator. After making her way through a digital labyrinth of connections and dead ends, she’d reached a website for missing young people and been unable to go any further.

She’d crept into bed so as not to wake Murphy, but her night had been restless and punctuated with nightmares about Chapman Farm. However, as she and Murphy had an appointment to view another house together, she rose, swollen-eyed but uncomplaining, at eight, dressed and ate breakfast, before setting out into the thick, chill mist. They were in Murphy’s Toyota Avensis, because Robin had now taken her Land Rover to a garage for its MOT. Leaving it there, she’d felt not unlike a pet owner waiting to hear whether the vet could save her beloved animal: the car’s rattle, which she still hadn’t traced to its source, had grown louder.

Murphy was in a better mood today. The Met had re-arrested the driver of the car from which the shooting of the two young brothers was believed to have happened. Murphy now told her, with cautious confidence, ‘I think we’ll get the bastards this time.’

The fog lay thickly on the road as they drove west to Wood Green, but the Avensis was warm and snug, and Robin thought of the old Land Rover and tried to tell herself it mightn’t be a bad idea to have a car with a working heater. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ was playing on the radio when Robin’s mobile rang and immediately connected to Bluetooth, revealing Strike’s name.

‘Hi,’ she said, answering, ‘what’s up?’

‘Got news, if you can talk.’

‘Actually,’ said Robin, slightly panicked – she didn’t want Strike to say anything that would reveal to Murphy what they were up to, and least of all did she want Strike to mention that they knew the body wasn’t Jason Knowles – ‘could I call you back? I’m on my way to see another house.’

‘No problem,’ said Strike, ‘speak later.’

Robin hung up. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ came back over the speakers.

‘What aren’t I allowed to hear?’ said Murphy.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Robin. ‘I’m just tired. I can’t be doing with a long work chat right now.’

They drove on through the fog, and after a while, Robin initiated a conversation about their imminent trip to Masham.

See? she thought. You’re the one I’m taking home. You’re the one I’m spending Christmas with.

‘This looks all right,’ said Murphy enthusiastically, half an hour later, when they arrived in Moselle Avenue. The terraced houses were of red brick, and all of them looking in far better repair than the one they’d recently viewed in Wanstead.

Robin had just got out of the car when her mobile rang again, and she recognised the same Ironbridge number she’d seen before. As she’d left yet another message for Dilys Powell the previous day, she said,

‘Ryan, I’ve got to take this, it’s about Rupert Fleetwood. You go in, I’ll be five minutes.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’

She wondered whether he thought it was Strike calling back.

‘It’s freezing, go in and look interested, we don’t want to miss the slot.’

So Murphy headed across the road, and was admitted to the house, while Robin answered her call.

‘Robin Ellacott.’

‘This is Dilys,’ said a cracked voice.

‘Mrs Dilys Powell?’ said Robin. ‘Tyler’s grandmother?’

‘Yes,’ said the woman, who sounded suspicious and befuddled.

‘I’m very glad to hear from you, Mrs Powell. I’m a private detective, and I was hoping to talk to you about your grandson.’

‘What? You called me.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, speaking slowly and clearly. ‘Your great-niece told me you were in hospital.’

‘What?’

‘I hope you’re better now?’ said Robin loudly.

‘Well, I’m home,’ mumbled Dilys Powell.

‘I called because we heard you were worried Tyler might have been the man at the silver shop. The body in the vault. Has he turned up since you contacted the police?’

‘No, he hasn’t turned up,’ said Dilys Powell. ‘Not a word.’

‘What made you think he might have been the man at the silver shop, Mrs Powell?’

‘What?’ said Dilys Powell. ‘Speak up, I can’t hear you.’

‘Could I come and see you?’ said Robin, raising her voice and enunciating clearly. ‘To talk about Tyler? I could come to Ironbridge.’

‘Took off,’ said Dilys Powell. ‘Told Griff where he was going. Never told me.’

‘Is Griff a friend of Tyler’s?’ asked Robin, now groping one-handed for her notebook.

‘He’s up the road. What d’you want?’

‘To talk to you,’ said Robin, even more loudly and clearly, ‘about Tyler. Could I come to Ironbridge? Maybe after Christmas?’

There was a brief pause.

‘Yeah, you can come.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Robin. The front door of the house for sale had opened, and she saw Murphy watching her. ‘Could I call you back, Mrs Powell, and we can arrange a date to meet?’

‘Call me back? Yeah. All right.’

Robin hung up, then hurried across the road.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It was urgent.’

A chatty pregnant woman of around Robin’s age started showing them around the house, which was bandbox neat. Her husband was entertaining a toddler and an older girl in the sitting room.

‘They were going to go to the park, but it’s so cold and Nate’s getting over a cough,’ the mother told Robin and Murphy as they moved past the rest of the family to look at the small, sparklingly clean kitchen. ‘It’s a lovely area, lovely neighbours. We’ve been so happy here, we just want a bit more space with another baby coming, and I’d like to be nearer my parents. Garden,’ she added, smiling, pointing towards the small, well-kept lawn outside the kitchen window.

Upstairs, she moved aside to let them look into the box room, which held a bed with the name Nathan carved into the headboard, and had planes in primary colours painted on sky blue walls. Murphy reached out for Robin’s hand and squeezed it. She felt a slight clenching of her stomach, and unbidden into her mind came the thought,

I will never live in this house.

‘And this is Laura’s, obviously,’ said the proud homeowner, beaming, as they looked into a second, larger bedroom, decorated in white and bubble-gum pink, ‘and ours.’

‘Lovely,’ said Robin automatically, looking blankly at the yellow duvet cover and pine furniture.

‘And the bathroom.’

Spotless, with blue and white tiles: a nice house in every way, except that Robin had already made up her mind. The stairs were narrow, and Murphy released her hand to let her walk down first. As they were descending, the doorbell rang.

‘Whoops, I think that’s the next lot, early!’ said the homeowner.

‘Have you had a lot of interest?’ asked Murphy.

‘We have,’ said the woman, with a note of apology. ‘If you’d like to go into the garden and have a proper look?’

So Robin and Murphy exited through the back door, to stand on the frosty lawn and breathe in the dank, sooty taste of the gradually lifting fog.

‘What d’you think?’ asked Murphy.

‘Nice,’ said Robin, who didn’t want to find fault too quickly.

‘I bet you it goes for way over the asking price.’

‘I was thinking that, too,’ she said, feigning regret, ‘and parking could be tricky, with two cars. Still, it is nice.’

Through the kitchen window they saw a family of four looking around.

‘Want to have another look upstairs?’ said Murphy.

‘There are good photos online. We could go and get a coffee, have a look at the area?’

‘Good idea.’

So they headed back through the house, thanked the owners, and emerged again onto Moselle Avenue. As they were about to cross the road, Murphy’s mobile rang.

‘Work,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

He walked away up the street, answering the call only once he was out of earshot. Robin waited until he was fifty yards away before calling Strike back.

‘How was the house?’ he asked.

‘Not great,’ said Robin, and she felt a sense of release in saying it, although she knew it wasn’t the house she hadn’t liked, but Murphy’s squeeze of her hand – in consolation? Hope? Encouragement? ‘Tell me your news, because I’ve got some, too.’

Strike told Robin about Ralph Lawrence’s visit to the office the previous afternoon.

‘God above,’ said Robin, immensely relieved that she’d prevented Strike telling her all this over the car Bluetooth. ‘MI5 are warning us off?’

‘Assuming he’s telling the truth about who he is,’ said Strike. ‘MI6 would be involved initially, if Semple was Regiment.’

‘What regiment?’

‘The Regiment,’ said Strike. ‘SAS, and, if I had to bet, I’d say E Squadron.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Covert ops, which explains why there were no details given in the press on how he got his brain injury. He was doing something the British public and the enemy aren’t supposed to know about. Also explains his beard. Special Forces are the only ones who’re allowed them. But I’m not worried about Lawrence.’

‘You aren’t?’

‘I think, if he genuinely had evidence Semple wasn’t the body in the vault, he’d have shared it. In the absence of proof, we’re well within our rights to keep investigating.’

Robin said nothing, although she was once again imagining Murphy’s expression, if he could hear what Strike was saying.

‘Anyway,’ Strike continued, ‘I’ve sent another message to Semple’s wife, and I’m hoping to hear back from my SIB mate Hardy, who I’ve asked to dig out some intel on Semple for me. But that’s not the only thing I had to tell you…’

Strike now described the note that had been pushed through the agency’s door. When he’d finished, Robin said,

‘What the hell?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and I think I know who posted it. There was a woman standing at the end of the road when I left the office yesterday, and she didn’t want me to see her face. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but I think she was heading for our door to poke the note through the letterbox when she saw me coming out. When I passed her she was trying to look like she was just waiting for someone, but it’s an odd meeting place, a freezing cold corner in a street full of pubs and kebab shops.’

‘Say the name again?’

‘Dangerous Dick de Lion.’

‘He sounds like—’

‘A porn star?’

‘I was going to say, a cartoon character.’

‘He’s a porn star.’

‘Wh—?’

‘I’ve looked him up. He’s a bona fide adult actor, and from the looks of the woman lurking in the street, she’s in the industry too. What’s more, if Dangerous Dick had any social media accounts, he’s deleted them all. Obviously that might mean a fresh start away from the porn industry – but it might not.’

Not entirely to Strike’s surprise, ten seconds of stunned silence from Robin ensued.

‘The note said “had him killed”?’

‘Yeah.’

‘By someone on TV?’

‘So it seems.’

‘But wouldn’t that—?’

‘Tie in with Shanker’s story, about a bigshot with people to do his bidding? It would, yeah,’

‘And how does she know we’re investigating the body?’

‘That, to me, is far more interesting than the dimensions of Dangerous Dick de Lion, which you can look up for yourself if you’re interested.’

‘And why write a note? She could have just emailed us anonymously.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want to leave a cyber footprint. She might think we employ computer whizz-kids who can track her down. The note looked like she’d tried to make sure her handwriting wouldn’t be identifiable, which might explain the cipher, although another name for pigpen cipher is the masonic cipher.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Robin, with a glance at Murphy, who still had his back to her.

‘I don’t know whether this is all bullshit or not,’ said Strike, ‘but going forwards, we take precautions. I want to know where you are at all times, and if it’s a question of going to a badly lit or sparsely populated location, you don’t go alone.’

‘And am I going to know where you are at all times?’ asked Robin.

‘If you want,’ said Strike.

‘But that’s less important?’

‘I’m not looking to get hacked to death and dressed in a masonic sash, but I respectfully suggest they’d find it harder to do that to me than to you. What’s your news?’

‘What?’ said Robin. ‘Oh, yes – a few things. Tyler Powell’s grandmother just called me back. She’s been in hospital. She’d be happy to speak to me, if I come to Ironbridge.’

‘Excellent,’ said Strike. ‘We might be able to pick Dilys and Semple’s wife off in a single round trip.’

‘OK, great,’ said Robin.

‘And the other things?’

‘Midge and Tasha have split up.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘I thought there was something going on. She looked like she was crying when I saw her at the office yesterday.’

‘Right, so try—’

‘Not to be a bastard?’

‘I was going to say “try and cut her a bit of slack”, but not being a bastard works, too.’

‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

‘Well, this might not help,’ said Robin, ‘but I did a deep dive on Facebook and Instagram last night, looking at the accounts of the real Osgood and Oz, and there’s a girl—’

Murphy had turned back, and was now walking towards Robin.

‘Strike, I’ll have to go,’ said Robin hastily. ‘I’ll tell you the rest later, but this is all getting—’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘It is.’

28

At a quarter to two on Monday afternoon, Strike headed out for Holborn to interview Jim Todd, the Ramsay Silver cleaner. Having a pretext to call Robin, he did so, because maximising contact with her fell into the categories of both playing to his strengths and not letting Ryan Murphy change his game plan.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, answering on the second ring. ‘I’ve just found out why we can never get Rupert’s friend Albie at Dino’s. He hasn’t worked there for five months.’

‘Couldn’t they just have bloody told us that?’ said Strike. Robin was also walking somewhere with heavy traffic, and he had his free forefinger in his opposite ear, so as to be able to hear her.

‘No, because according to the waitress I just waylaid in the street, they aren’t allowed to give out information about staff over the phone. She says Albie’s gone to work at Harrods, so that’s where I’m heading. Where are you?’

‘Nearly at Leather Lane.’

‘Mucky Ricci’s old place,’ said Robin, referring to an old gangster who’d been a suspect in a previous case.

‘Exactly.’

‘Any particular reason for calling, or just checking the masons haven’t done me in yet?’

‘Yeah, I’ve just heard back from my SIB mate, Hardacre. Semple was definitely SAS and was invalided out in 2015 following a traumatic brain injury that left him in a medically induced coma for three months. No details available, even to the Military Police, which makes me think he was definitely E Squadron.’

‘So Lawrence must be MI5?’

‘I think we have to accept that as a working assumption,’ said Strike. ‘To change the subject completely: what were you going to tell me on Saturday, about Osgood’s Facebook page?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Robin, who in her current state of sleep deprivation had forgotten she hadn’t passed this information on, though she’d put it in the file. ‘Well, the same girl – she’s called Sapphire – appears in the comments on both the real Osgood’s Facebook page, and fake Oz’s Instagram page. I did some digging and I think I’ve found her. Her name’s Sapphire Neagle and here’s the thing: she’s on a missing persons’ website. She stopped posting to social media in November and hasn’t been seen since. I know that might be coincidence, but—’

‘Known online contact with a man who definitely isn’t who he says he is, is suggestive,’ said Strike.

‘Well, exactly,’ said Robin. ‘I’m not saying she’s with Oz, or that he’s done away with her, God forbid, but it’s got to be a possibility. I was thinking of calling the charity to see what they can tell me. What d’you think?’

‘Can’t hurt. We should touch a police contact, find out whether they know what happened to her, as well. Incidentally, did the Land Rover get through its MOT?’

‘No,’ sighed Robin. ‘They rang ten minutes ago. They say it’d need more money spent on it than it’d be worth in scrap,’ she said, trying not to sound as sad as she felt. She had a sentimental attachment to the old car she’d have found hard to explain to anyone who didn’t know how much she associated it with her escape from her first husband, who’d never liked it, and with the career that meant so much to her.

‘You could charge part of a new one against the business,’ said Strike. ‘Another Land Rover would be useful. It’s good, having a car that works for the country as well, that doesn’t stick out in rural areas. Gives us options. Well, let me know how you get on in Harrods. Got to go, I’m at Leather Lane.’

Call finished, Strike proceeded down the narrow street lined with shops, fast food restaurants and market stalls, thinking about Robin’s defunct Land Rover, now destined for the scrapyard. While not as attached to the car as Robin was, it seemed somehow to mark the end of an era, and it occurred to him that his Christmas present to Robin might need rethinking, in light of the news of the car’s demise.

The Craft Beer Co, the pub Todd had chosen for this interview, stood on a corner, was decorated with hanging baskets and a three-dimensional model of the royal standard over the door. Strike glanced up at the harp, the lion rampant, and the three lions passant as he entered the wooden-floored space.

Strike recognised Jim Todd, not by his face, because the quality of Ramsay’s camera footage was so poor, but by his shape. The cleaner was sitting on a leather bench with a full pint on the table in front of him. Short and very rotund, Todd had small hands and feet, tiny blue eyes, a wide, thin-lipped mouth, and patches of fluffy greyish hair around his ears, though he was otherwise bald. He was wearing old trousers, a grubby-looking jacket, and his pinprick eyes were fixed on a young woman in a very short skirt who was standing by the bar.

‘Cameron, is it?’ said Todd, when Strike joined him, half a pint of IPA in his hand.

‘Cormoran, but I answer to both,’ said Strike, taking the chair opposite. ‘Thanks for meeting me, I appreciate it. This your local?’

‘Kinda. I’m just up the road. Got a little room, ’andy for me jobs. Me an’ a bunch of Pakistanis, packed in over a Lebanese restaurant, hahaha.’

‘Yeah, London housing’s no joke,’ said Strike, pulling out his notebook. ‘You clean for a few different businesses, right?’

‘’S’right.’

‘All in the same area?’

‘Holborn, Covent Garden, yeah. Word of mouf. I do a good job,’ said Todd, still smiling, but with a faint suggestion of defiance.

‘Well, as I said on the phone, this is really just for background. How many hours a week do you do at Ramsay Silver?’

‘Monday an’ Fursday mornings, regular, an’ a bit of overtime, polishin’ stock an’ stuff.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Two years now.’

‘Did you answer an ad, or…?’

‘’Novver bloke I clean for mentioned me to Ken Ramsay, an’ Ken took me on.’

‘Did you have a lot to do with William Wright?’

‘Saw ’im a bit, yeah. But you mean Knowles, not Wright, dontcha?’ said Todd, grinning more broadly, as though he’d caught Strike out.

‘The police still haven’t got a firm ID,’ said Strike.

‘Fort they ’ad?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘But you’re confident it was Knowles, are you?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Todd, still grinning. ‘No, it was Knowles. We all agreed, me, Ken and Pamela.’

‘Pamela’s got difficulties with her sight, though, hasn’t she?’

‘What? Yeah, but she ain’t blind.’

‘Did the police show you any pictures, other than Jason Knowles’?’

‘Showed us a couple, yeah,’ said Todd.

‘Can you remember the names of the men concerned?’

‘One of ’em was a soldier.’

Strike made a note before saying,

‘Was Knowles’ picture a mugshot?’

‘Yeah,’ said Todd, and answering the unasked question he said, ‘it weren’ just that. ’E looked like Wright.’

‘Wright was pretty well disguised, from what I’ve seen on the shop’s security footage.’

‘Well… yeah,’ admitted Todd.

‘Looked like he was one of those men who can grow a thick beard,’ said Strike.

‘It was fick, yeah,’ conceded Todd. ‘Some blokes can do that, can’ they? Go from ’ere’ – Todd tapped a stubby forefinger at a point two inches beneath his eye – ‘to ’alfway down yer neck. Pamela told ’im to tidy it up a bit, but Wright told me ’e ’ad acne scarring. Wanted to keep it ’idden.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, and he made another note before saying, ‘I’ve got a few pictures here, if you wouldn’t mind having a look. I think you’ll have seen at least one of them before.

Sure enough, when Todd laid eyes on the pictures of Niall Semple, he said,

‘Yeah, that’s ’im, that’s the soldier.’

He passed over the picture of Tyler Powell with a slight shake of the head, but lingered, grinning again, over the photo of the man Strike had no choice but to call Dick de Lion, until they found out his real name. In the least lewd picture of him Strike had managed to find online, de Lion was shirtless.

‘Woss ’e – a stripper?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Strike.

‘Mind, ’e was that colour, Wright.’

‘Fake tanned?’

‘Yeah. Could of bin ’im, maybe…’

Todd squinted, and Strike assumed he was trying to visualise the blond Dick de Lion with dark hair, a full beard and glasses. De Lion had brown eyes and very white teeth, although these had possibly been enhanced in the photograph.

‘Could of bin ’im,’ said Todd.

‘How sure are you? Out of ten?’

‘Dunno… five? But it could of bin ’im – Wright was a bit—’

Instead of finishing the sentence, Todd raised his right hand and let it hang, limply, from his wrist.

‘What?’ said Strike. ‘Camp?’

‘Poncey. Yeah.’

Todd turned from the picture of de Lion to that of Rupert Fleetwood.

‘Nah,’ he said, ‘don’ fink so.’

He handed the pictures back.

‘Did you have much to do with Wright, at the shop?’ Strike asked.

‘A bit.’

‘Talk to him at all?’

‘A bit,’ repeated Todd.

‘What was his accent like? Did he sound like he was from Doncaster?’

‘Wouldn’ know ’ow that sounded,’ said Todd.

‘He couldn’t have been Scottish, and faking an English accent?’

‘Don’t fink so.’

‘Or trying to sound more working class than he was?’

‘One of them’s posh, is ’e?’ said Todd, gesturing towards Strike’s pictures.

Strike ignored the question.

‘What did you and Wright talk about?’

‘Freemasons,’ said Todd promptly, grinning again. ‘’E asked questions about ’em, all the bloody time.’

‘Are you one?’ asked Strike.

‘Hahaha,’ said Todd. ‘Not me, guv.’

He buried his face in his pint and drank a couple of inches before setting it down again.

‘D’you think he got interested in Freemasons after starting work at the shop, or was this something he’d been interested in before he was hired?’

‘Dunno. ’E was def’nitely into it all, though. Wen’ an’ looked round Freemasons’ ’All, in ’is lunch hour.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘Oh, yeah. I was walkin’ down Great Queen Street, just goin’ to one of me ovver jobs, an’ I seen Wright goin’ in there. I says to ’im, next time I seen ’im, “find any sacrificial goats?” Hahaha.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Said ’e wanted to see Temple Seventeen.’

‘Why?’

‘Dunno, ’e wouldn’t say. Just said “I wan’ed to see it”. After I found out ’e was Knowles, though, I fort, “Temple Seventeen my arse, ’e was up to sumfing to do wiv the silver ’e was gonna nick”. They’ve got a museum in there, in Freemasons’ ’All, an’ a shop, wiv books in it. I fort, “’e was lookin’ stuff up. Tryina find out what it was all worf, that Whatsit silver.”’

‘Did you tell the police Wright had visited Freemasons’ Hall?’

‘Yeah, ’course,’ said Todd smugly.

‘Did Wright ever tell you someone might come looking for him?’

‘No,’ said Todd, ‘opposite.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I fort there was a guy watching the shop. I seen ’im ’angin’ around a few times. After I seen ’im the fird time, I told Wright, keep an’ eye out for ’im. Big guy, same kinda size as you. Just ’angin’ around. But when I told ’im, Wright said ’e’d seen ’im, an’ ’e worked at the Connaught Rooms. Didn’ give a toss. After, I fort, “accomplice, wannit”.’

‘Did you tell Pamela or Kenneth about this man?’

‘Didn’ wanna worry ’em. Anyway, it was Wright’s job, ’e was s’posed to be security.’

‘What about the police, did you tell them about this guy?’

‘Yeah, I fink I did. Yeah,’ said Todd, and he took another gulp of beer.

‘Did this man have dark curly hair?’

‘What? No. Straight ’air. ’Oo’s got dark curly ’air?’

Strike ignored this question, too.

‘So Wright never told you he was on the run, or needed to go into hiding, or that he’d been wrongly accused of anything?’

‘Like wha’?’ said Todd.

‘I don’t know,’ said Strike, ‘but he visited a website called Abused and Accused, on the Ramsay Silver computer.’

‘I know abou’ that website, police asked us about it,’ said Todd. He was no longer grinning. ‘They asked me if I’d ever bin on it. ’Course I ’adn’t. I never ’ad the password to the fucking computer. It’s on ’er if the silly tit was messin’ around on there.’

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Strike.

‘’Cause she was out, wan’ she? Pamela. The day that bloody Whatsit silver arrived, she pissed off early, an’ all.’

‘It’d be helpful if you could run me through what happened that afternoon,’ said Strike. ‘You were at another job when the silver arrived, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah. I said to Pamela, Fursday, “I’ll give you an ’and if you need it.” For overtime,’ he added, ‘’cause I knew one of the fings was massive. Kennef showed us it all, in ’is catalogue. I said, I’ll ’elp, if you need it.’

‘Wouldn’t the Gibsons man be expected to carry the silver downstairs?’

‘You seen them stairs?’ said Todd. Ever since the mention of the Abused and Accused website, his manner had been prickly, and he was now scowling.

‘I have, yeah,’ said Strike.

‘You fink people ’oo don’t ’ave to wanna risk breakin’ their necks? I was there before when a deliv’ry man wouldn’ carry stuff down there. ’Ealf an’ safety, innit? I said to Pamela the firs’ time, gimme a tenner an’ I’ll carry it down, ’cause that was before they got Wright.’

‘Was the previous delivery man who wouldn’t carry stuff down the stairs Larry McGee?’

‘’Oo?’ said Todd. He picked up his pint glass and drank again.

‘McGee delivered the Murdoch silver.’

‘Oh. No. I dunno, I never saw ’im, did I?’

‘So you’d recognise Larry McGee?’

‘No,’ said Todd. ‘’Oo was ’e?’

‘I just told you. The delivery man from Gibsons.’

‘Never ’eard of ’im.’

‘So when did Pamela phone you about the Murdoch silver, can you remember?’

‘Round free. I ’ad to wait till I could leave discreetly, ’cause I was at me ovver job.’

‘So you got there, when?’

‘’Bout ’alf an hour later, an’ Wright ’ad got most of it down wivvout me. It was jus’ the big crate ’e needed me for. Me ’an ’im carried it down.’

‘Did you go back to the Kingsway job after you’d put the crate in the vault?’

‘No, because then Pamela yells upstairs there’s bin a mix-up, and she tells Wright to go an’ get the fing what’d been delivered to ’er place, Bullen & Co, an’ she says to me, “you’ll ’ave to stay, an’ ’elp ’im get it dahnstairs when ’e’s got it.” An’ I says, “I’ve gotta go, I fort this was gonna be a five-minute job,” and she says, “you’ve gotta stay,” an’ I didn’ wanna, because of the ovver job, but she kinda, you know, guilted me into it.’

‘How did she do that?’ asked Strike.

‘Ah, you know, Ken an’ ’is wife an’ their son – you know their son died?’

‘I do, yes,’ said Strike.

‘So, yeah, I said I’d stay. ’E’s a good guy, Ken, I didn’t wanna let ’im down. So Wright gets back an’ we carry the fing dahn to the vault, an’ Pamela says, “Jim, bring me up my ’andbag,” an’ I did, an’ I fink I’m done, but then Pamela tells me I’ve gotta stay in the shop till Wright comes back upstairs, ’cause ’e’s down there ’eavin’ the fucking candelabra or wha’ever it was out the box. An’ then she bogged off, an’ I’m left stuck there, manning the shop.’

‘So you never saw what was in that last crate? The one that should have contained the Oriental Centrepiece?’

‘No. An’ then Wright comes back upstairs, an’ I says to ’im, “I gotta go, I gotta finish my ovver job” an’ ’e says, “’ow’m I supposed to set the alarm an’ all the rest of it?” an’ I said, “tha’s not my problem,” an’ I left. Fakin’,’ said Todd, ‘wannee? Saw ’is chance. Leave the door unlocked, leave the safe door open. It’s on ’er it ’appened.’

Todd’s interpretation might be open to question, but his account of what had actually taken place tallied exactly with what Strike had seen on the security footage, so he asked no further questions about Friday, but turned a page in his notebook.

‘You weren’t at Ramsay Silver over the weekend?’

‘No, I told you, I on’y do Mondays an’ Fursdays.’

‘Did you have keys to the shop, or the alarm code?’

‘No, never.’

‘The police will have asked you where you were on Friday night, I suppose?’

‘Yeah, I was playin’ cards wiv four ovver blokes at my place, an’ they all told the police that, an’ there’s CCTV on our corner showin’ I was back at my flat when—’

‘I assumed the police would have asked you,’ said Strike. ‘Can we talk about the Monday when the body and the theft were discovered? You were down in the basement when Kenneth opened the vault door, is that right?’

‘Yeah, I’d been cleanin’ the staff area downstairs. I was doin’ the bog at the time.’

‘What can you remember about the discovery of the body?’

‘I was in the bog,’ said Todd again. ‘I ’ad the door closed, ’cause if you leave it open it gets in the way of the stairs an’ the vault. I ’eard Kennef open up the vault. Then I ’eard ’im shout. I says, “you all right, Ken?” Pamela yelled somefing down the stairs, then I ’eard ’er comin’ down. Then she made a weird noise an’ all, so I says, “what’s goin’ on?” and I wen’ out to see.’

Todd took a sip of his pint before continuing.

‘Fuckin’… they did a proper job on ’im. Stuff carved on ’im, an’ ’ands gone, an’ then, when they flipped ’im over… terrible business.’

‘Who turned him over?’ said Strike.

‘Police. They come, an’ then we weren’ allowed to leave the shop. Copper on the front door, keepin’ the public out. We was stuck there, nearly all day. They brung us sandwiches. Forensics come, takin’ photos, an’ they turned ’im over, f’r us to see… Pamela nearly puked. They’d cut ’is eyes out, smashed in ’is face an’ ’is dick was gone.’

‘His penis had been cut off?’

‘Yeah… fuckin’ terrible… then they bagged ’im up an’ took ’im out, an’ we was allowed to go ’ome.’

‘Did anyone tell the police John Auclair had been there, right after the body was discovered?’

‘Yeah, I fink Ken did.’

Strike made another note, then said,

‘Would you happen to know anything about how Wright was hired? There was a disagreement about how he got shortlisted for interview, wasn’t there?’

‘Know about that, do ya? Yeah, I ’eard ’em arguin’ about it.’

‘Kenneth and Pamela?’

‘Bofe of ’em blamin’ the ovver one for puttin’ Wright’s email down instead of some ovver bloke’s.’

‘Who would you say that was most like?’ asked Strike.

‘What d’you mean?’ said Todd, frowning.

‘Which of them would you say would be most likely to put the wrong email down by mistake? Pamela or Kenneth?’

‘I dunno,’ said Todd, but then he added, ‘Ken, probably.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘’Cause… I dunno, ’e can be a bit careless. ’E’s a good guy, though, Ken,’ said Todd, as though Strike had been suggesting the contrary. ‘There’s nuffing wrong wiv Ken.’

‘But you think he could have made a mistake?’

‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ said Todd.

‘True,’ said Strike. ‘Would you happen to know anything about an unsigned email sent from Ramsay Silver to a man called Calvin “Oz” Osgood?’

‘No,’ said Todd, looking Strike fixedly in the eyes. ‘Why?’

‘Ever used the computer there yourself?’

‘No, I already told you that,’ said Todd, still unblinking. ‘I’m the cleaner. What would I be doing on the bloody computer?’

‘Not a crime, is it, using a computer?’ said Strike. ‘You don’t know a man called Osgood, then? Or “Oz”?’

‘No,’ said Todd pugnaciously. ‘I don’t.’

‘Nothing else you remember about Wright? Anything he might’ve let slip?’

‘He wasn’ gonna let anyfing slip, was ’e?’ said Todd.

‘But he told you he’d gone to look at Temple Seventeen.’

‘Lyin’, probably,’ said Todd. ‘Wan’ed to look up all abou’ silver.’

‘Well, this has been very helpful, thanks,’ said Strike. ‘Just a couple of things—’ He flicked back a page in his notebook. ‘Why did you call William Wright a “silly tit” earlier?’

‘What?’ said Todd.

‘You said “it’s on her” – Pamela – “if the silly tit was using the computer”.’

‘Well, what was she upta, always leavin’ Wright in charge while she naffs off?’ said Todd. ‘Silly mare. ’Oo buggers off an’ leaves a fief in charge?’

‘But why “silly tit”?’ said Strike.

‘Well – bloody stupid to go lookin’ up stuff like that, at work.’

‘Stuff like what?’

‘Like… wha’ever that website was. What was it?’

‘Abused and Accused,’ said Strike.

‘Just silly, tellin’ your employer you bin up to somefing.’

‘The people on that website all claim to be innocent,’ said Strike.

Todd’s only response to that was a faint ‘huh’.

‘And you said “who was he?” earlier,’ said Strike, turning another page, ‘with regard to Larry McGee.’

‘So?’

‘“Who was he?” as opposed to “who is he?”’

Todd stared at him.

‘Larry McGee’s dead,’ said Strike. ‘Did you already know that?’

‘No. ’Ow would I know? ’Oo was ’e, ’oo is ’e – same diff’rence.’

‘Always lived in this part of London?’ Strike asked, as he slipped his notebook back into his pocket.

‘’Ereabouts,’ said Todd, who now seemed definitely aggressive.

‘And always cleaning?’

‘Done diff’rent fings,’ said Todd. ‘’Andyman… diff’rent stuff.’

Strike judged Todd to be in his mid-sixties, and therefore soon to qualify, or just qualified, for his state pension. He wore no wedding ring. The man’s desire for piecemeal work that might well be hidden from the taxman, and the uncomfortable living conditions he’d just described, suggested he had neither savings nor family, but it might point to other things, too.

Had Strike only been back in the SIB, and Todd a soldier, he would have had immediate access to the man’s date of birth, prior addresses and any previous misdemeanours. His feeling that there was something not quite right about the cleaner had increased as the interview proceeded, even though he hadn’t caught Todd in any lies; on the contrary, the checkable information he’d provided had been entirely accurate. Yet that slip of the tongue about Larry McGee, and his clear discomfort at the mention of the Abused and Accused website, were interesting.

‘Well, thanks for meeting me,’ said Strike, getting to his feet.

‘Pleasure,’ said Jim Todd, but his tone contradicted the word.

Strike walked back up Leather Lane, thinking about the man he’d just left: getting on in years and grubbing for money where he could. The willingness of a variety of business owners to give Todd work at retirement age interested Strike, as did the fact that said businesses were all in central London, rather than out at some shabby periphery.

Respectable landlords were often unwilling to rent to certain kinds of men, Strike knew, and those same men might also have limited options even when it came to social housing. Into this category fell those recently released from prison, especially if they’d committed particular kinds of crimes. Such men needed friends if they were to survive with any degree of comfort in the outside world, and it seemed to Cormoran Strike that, unenviable though Todd’s life might appear, he was being given an unusual degree of quiet assistance that neither his personality nor his talents seemed to justify.

29

Harrods stood in massive red brick splendour in the heart of Knightsbridge, outlined in the dull mid-afternoon with golden lightbulbs, its green and gold awnings stretching over windows full of clothing, handbags and jewellery Robin could never have afforded. She’d only ever entered the department store twice before: once with her ex-husband, shortly after they’d arrived in London and purely for sight-seeing purposes, the second time with her mother, for identical reasons.

Today, Harrods’ windows were displaying the usual range of designer goods in snowy settings and, on stepping inside, Robin found herself immersed in a sumptuous Christmas fantasy where, if you walked the halls long enough, with their lavish, twinkling decorations, you might be tempted to believe that you, too, could stage a holiday of high glamour and luxury for your loved ones, at least until you started checking price tags.

The place was so large it was disorientating, and Robin couldn’t blame the various shop assistants she importuned for assistance for being impatient; they were overwhelmed by the Christmas crowds, and some were understandably suspicious of her desire to locate a brother whose department she couldn’t remember. Floor by floor Robin ascended the Egyptian staircase, which had golden ankhs, pharaohs and constellations on its walls and ceiling, and scanned enormous rooms full of merchandise, looking for the young man whose photographs she’d studied on Facebook.

At long last, after two and a half hours of solid searching, Robin found Albie Simpson-White in the sports department on the fourth floor, where he was standing close to a life-size fibreglass horse, assisting a mother and her teenaged daughter to find the correct size of riding breeches.

He looked incredibly young to Robin, who knew from his Facebook page that he was twenty-four: tall, blond and baby-faced, with a complexion many women would have envied. She lurked among the Aertex shirts until Albie had finished with his customers, then, before anyone else could corner him, she approached the counter.

‘Albie?’

He looked slightly surprised to be addressed by name, even though it was displayed on a badge on his suit lapel.

‘I’m Robin Ellacott and I’m a private detective.’ She slid her card across the counter. ‘I’d really like to talk to you about Rupert Fleetwood. Not here, obviously, but if you get a break, or after work. We could have a coffee, or a drink?’

He looked down at her card, blinked at it for a few seconds, then said,

‘Has – who – has Decima hired you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Robin.

Albie glanced around, then said in a low voice,

‘I told her, I don’t know where he’s gone! I’ve told her! She kept calling me. I don’t know where he is!’

‘I’d be very grateful for a quick chat,’ said Robin. ‘Just for background. Decima’s incredibly worried about Rupert.’

‘There’s no need for her to be worried!’

‘How do you know? Are you in touch with him?’

‘No,’ said Albie, colour mounting in his boyish face, ‘but I’m sure he’s fine!’

‘We could really use all the background we can—’

‘Who told you I was here?’

‘I spoke to a friend of yours from Dino’s, Lina.’

Albie glanced at a suited man also wearing a name tag standing some ten yards away, then back at Robin. She could tell that, like the majority of people unexpectedly confronted by a private detective, Albie was as scared of refusing to talk as he was of speaking to her. What did she know? What might be the consequences of sending her away?

‘All right,’ he said nervously, ‘I’ll meet you at the staff entrance at eight.’

‘Where’s the staff entrance?’

‘Twenty-eight Basil Street.’

‘Thanks very much, Albie,’ said Robin. ‘You can keep my card, just in case you need my mobile number.’

Albie pocketed it quickly, then turned to a customer waiting to pay for a pair of trainers.

Robin returned to the ground floor to while away the time before her interview, postponing a return to the icy street. She had just entered one of the food halls when her phone buzzed. She took it out and saw that her mother had texted her a picture with the caption ‘say hello to Betty’ and an eye-roll emoji. The picture showed Robin’s father, Michael, holding a jet black Labrador puppy in his arms.

Robin returned the phone to her bag without responding and set off again, with a vague idea of buying some chocolates or biscuits to take home to Masham. However, it was almost impossible to walk more than a few feet unimpeded, and she was buffeted constantly by shoppers both irate and aimless. Since leaving the cult where she’d worked undercover, Robin had found no enjoyment in finding herself in a mass of bodies, especially in windowless spaces.

Just as she was thinking she’d rather wait out on the chilly pavement after all, her eye fell on a clear plastic tube full of festively coloured jelly beans: red, green and white. She was reminded of the tube William Wright had claimed was a blood sample. Perhaps her niece, Annabel, would like the jelly beans? Robin reached out for them—

A large hand closed painfully around the back of her neck, holding her so tightly that she couldn’t turn her head or cry out, the strong fingers tight on her carotid artery, and Robin was so shocked she couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening, or even raise her arms, and the shoppers kept shuffling all around her—

The man holding her – she knew it was a man, by the size and strength of the hand compressing her neck – was forcing something small and rubbery into her own left hand, and she closed her hand into a fist, fighting to draw breath to shout, but he squeezed her neck more tightly, and she knew she must open her hand, if that’s what he wanted, and did so, and he pressed what felt like a small lump of rubber into her grasp, then hissed in her ear,

‘It’ll ’appen again unless you fuckin’ give this up.’

He released but simultaneously pushed her so hard in the back that she toppled forwards into a woman who was carrying a toddler; the former shrieked at the impact and dropped the jar of brandy butter she’d been holding, which cracked open on the floor.

‘Watch what you’re doing!’ shouted the woman, staggering to regain her balance, and the toddler began to cry, and heads turned.

‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry – someone pushed me—’

Neck still throbbing, Robin turned and stood on tiptoe, and thought she saw a slight disturbance at a distant doorway, as though someone was forcing their way out of the food hall at speed, but it was impossible to see her assailant through the forest of heads.

Now trembling, Robin looked down at the object he’d forced into her hand. It was a small rubber model of a gorilla.

For several long seconds she stared at it, trying to tell herself the man had been mentally ill, that she’d been a random recipient of a nonsensical gift, that he’d mistaken her for someone in the crush, that this didn’t mean what she was terrified it meant.

It’ll ’appen again unless you fuckin’ give this up.

The rapist who had ended her university career and ruined her fallopian tubes had worn a rubber gorilla mask to attack her and six other girls, two of whom had died from strangulation. He’d been sentenced to life and was still in jail, all applications for parole refused. Robin’s identity had been hidden from the press when she gave evidence in court, aged nineteen.

How could a stranger know she’d been Witness G?

‘Excuse me!’ said a cross voice, and a tall, patrician-looking man reached past Robin to seize a boxed Christmas cake.

Robin moved out of the way, the small rubber gorilla still clutched in her left hand, and blundered out of the food hall, looking for a way outside, fruitlessly scanning the face of every man she passed. She wanted to drop the gorilla, throw it away somewhere, but her assailant’s hand had been bare, so it might have his DNA on it, like the rubber mask of her serial rapist, which had been found hidden beneath the floorboards in the ‘study’ his wife had never been permitted to enter. Robin stuffed it into her handbag.

Heading in what she thought must be the direction of Brompton Road, passing cosmetic counters and struggling through more dense crowds, she imagined telling Murphy what had just happened. He’d be outraged. He’d demand to know what measures she was taking to protect herself. And, just as suddenly as she’d imagined telling her boyfriend, she knew she wouldn’t do it.

She had to tell Strike, though. Had she ever told her partner that her almost-killer had worn a gorilla mask? She didn’t think she had.

The cold had deepened outside and night was rapidly falling. Robin moved to stand beside one of the brightly lit windows, out of the way of the shopping hordes, her breath rising frostily before her. Strike answered his mobile within a couple of rings.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, trying to sound casual. ‘How was Todd?’

‘Interesting,’ said Strike. ‘Any luck on Albie Simpson-White?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘he’s meeting me after work.’

‘Great.’

‘Yes… I’m actually calling because something strange just happened,’ said Robin, doing her best to sound mildly interested, as opposed to profoundly shaken.

When she’d related the incident, Strike said incredulously,

‘He put a toy gorilla in your hand?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘And the thing is… the man who – you know – when I was nineteen – the reason I left uni – he wore a latex gorilla mask, during the… attack.’

Robin suddenly realised that she was very close to tears, and mentally crossed her fingers that Strike wasn’t about to react angrily, to chastise her for not having taken more care, or not been quick enough to spot the man who’d done it.

‘OK,’ said Strike, and to her relief, while he sounded serious, he didn’t sound angry. ‘Where are you speaking to Simpson-White?’

‘I thought somewhere round here, in a pub or something.’

‘D’you want me to come and pick you up afterwards?’

‘What?’ said Robin, with a half-laugh. ‘No, of course not. The middle of town’s packed. I’ll just—’

‘What are you doing afterwards?’

‘Meeting Ryan,’ said Robin.

‘Take a taxi,’ said Strike.

‘There’s no—’

‘Take a bloody taxi.’

‘All right, all right, I’ll take a taxi,’ said Robin. She checked the time, and started walking towards the staff entrance where she was supposed to be meeting Albie. ‘Maybe,’ she said, striving for a calm, objective tone, ‘it was – I don’t know, a coincidence or—’

‘It wasn’t a coincidence.’

‘No,’ said Robin, as double-deckers rushed past her, the faces of passers-by illuminated by the golden glow of Harrods’ windows. ‘I don’t think it was either.’

Tears stung her eyes, and for a few seconds, she wanted to run. But run where? Home to Masham, as she’d done after the rape? Back to Murphy, who she knew she wasn’t going to tell?

‘Just be vigilant,’ said Strike, and she could tell he was exerting maximum self-restraint not to say it more forcefully, ‘all right?’

‘I will,’ said Robin. ‘I promise.’

30

Albie emerged from the staff entrance shortly after eight. His eyes sought Robin’s over the crowd of staff now hurrying homewards.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, and shaken though she was, she managed to sound perfectly cheerful, ‘d’you want to get something to eat? It’s on me. We could get a burger or something?’

Having three brothers, two of them younger than herself, Robin knew the importance of food to young men.

‘Er… yeah, all right,’ he said, and Robin thought she read in his expression, nervous though it was, a certain satisfaction at the fact that there was something in this for him.

‘D’you know the Alfred Tennyson pub?’ said Robin, who’d looked the place up while waiting. ‘It’s ten minutes up the road, but the food’s good.’

In fact, she’d never eaten there, but everything nearer looked even more expensive, and there was a limit to what she thought she could persuade their accountant into accepting as a legitimate business expense.

They walked through the chill evening, through throngs of passers-by, Robin making banal chitchat. They discussed the staff discount Albie received at Harrods, and what a good deal he’d got on most of his Christmas shopping. She learned that he’d recently ‘buggered his knee’ playing football, and that ‘people always think I’m posher than I am’, because of his double-barrelled name, which was really the result of his feminist mother demanding equal billing on his birth certificate. Albie seemed an amiable young man, bright though not academic (‘I can’t see the point of university, you’re just wasting time when you could be earning money’), and she was slightly puzzled to know why Rupert Fleetwood, whose behaviour – regarding the stolen nef, and towards his pregnant girlfriend – suggested fecklessness and unkindness, should have been good friends with a young man who seemed decent, hard-working and responsible.

The Alfred Tennyson was crowded, but they were able to secure a table for two in the restaurant area. Robin slid into the seat with her back to the wall; nobody else was going to approach her from behind, unseen, if she could help it. Albie, who seemed torn between pleasure at the prospect of a decent hot meal after a long day at work and worry about what was coming, ordered a burger and a pint, then sat, slightly hunched, with his hands between his knees.

‘So,’ said Robin, when the waitress had left, ‘as I said before, Albie, I’m really just looking for background. We don’t know much about Rupert, except that he and Decima were in a relationship, and that he was brought up in Switzerland by his aunt and uncle.’

‘OK,’ said Albie, looking nervous.

‘When did you first meet him?’

‘Last year. Early – like, February, I think. When he started work at Dino’s.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘Two years in all. Bit over.’

‘Did you like it?’

Albie’s pint arrived, and he took a large sip before saying,

‘It was OK. Some of it. Have you spoken to Mr Longcaster?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘But I know about the nef.’

‘You don’t want to judge him by that,’ said Albie quickly.

‘Judge who? Rupert?’

‘Yeah,’ said Albie.

Robin could feel the table vibrating slightly; one of Albie’s long legs seemed to be jumping up and down.

‘You liked Rupert, though? You were friends?’

‘Yeah,’ said Albie, with a slight smile. ‘He’s a good guy. Kind of… old soul, you know? Steady. The kind of bloke everyone tells their problems to.’

This didn’t tally remotely with the idea Robin had formed of Rupert Fleetwood, who she’d been picturing as just another of the wealthy, well-born young male Londoners she’d come across during her detective career. They existed like tourists in their own city, taking the best of what it had to offer and never needing to dirty their feet where regular people trod, unless they hit some personal crisis; usually a sudden drop in funds caused either by an allowance-withholding parent or an out-of-control drug habit.

‘What d’you know about Rupert’s ex-housemate, Zac?’

‘He tried to stiff a drug dealer for payment, then fucked off and let Rupe and Tish take the heat,’ said Albie darkly.

‘Who’s Tish?’

‘Zac’s ex-girlfriend. The dealer was threatening her as well as Rupe. Trying to get to Zac through them.’

‘What’s Tish’s full name?’

‘I never knew her surname. I only met her once.’

Albie’s burger now arrived and he started eating immediately, clearly very hungry.

‘Rupert didn’t have much money, did he?’ asked Robin.

‘No. He sounds posh, but there’s nothing left in his trust fund. All the money went on paying for his boarding school in Switzerland. Rupe needs to work if he wants to eat. Have you spoken to his aunt?’

‘My partner has.’

‘Rupe can’t stand her. He had a bad childhood. He was really unhappy at his boarding school and he didn’t like his aunt and uncle. He told me he never felt like he belonged with them. He wanted to get back to England and his mum’s side of the family. He really liked his Uncle Ned, but he died just after Rupe came back to the UK.’

‘What did Rupert do before he worked at Dino’s?’

‘Worked for an estate agents, then he was front of house at some restaurant in Soho, and then Sacha – you know Rupe’s Sacha Legard’s cousin?’

‘I did, yes,’ said Robin. ‘Are they friendly?’

‘I don’t think Sacha wants to get too friendly.’

‘Why not?’

‘In case Rupe wants things from him,’ said Albie owlishly.

‘What kinds of things?’

‘Dunno. Money? Premiere tickets? Hang out with his famous friends?’

‘Would Rupert want those things from Sacha?’

‘No,’ said Albie. ‘All he really wants is family. Sacha was the one who suggested Rupe went and worked at Dino’s, though. Sacha’s a member there. He said, if Rupe wanted a better job than the restaurant, he should ask Mr Longcaster, seeing as he was his godfather and everything.’

‘Did Rupert have much to do with Mr Longcaster before he went to work for him?’

‘He never even knew Mr Longcaster was his godfather before Sacha told him. Rupe’s aunt doesn’t like Mr Longcaster, but Rupe didn’t care what she thought about anything any more, so he went to the club and Mr Longcaster said, “oh, you’re Veronica and Peter’s boy?” and said he’d try him out for a bit.’

‘Mr Longcaster hadn’t been a very involved godfather, then?’

‘I think he’d forgotten all about Rupert until he turned up at the club.’

‘And did Rupert like working there?’ asked Robin.

She was moving the conversation gradually closer to Decima, but didn’t want to arrive there too quickly.

‘He thought the same as me,’ said Albie. ‘Bits of it are cool. You see some really famous people in there, and at first that’s interesting, but after you’ve been there a while you realise they’re just people. Some of them are OK and some are twats, you know?’

‘And that’s how Rupert felt about it, too?’

‘Yeah… you haven’t spoken to Mr Longcaster?’ Albie asked again.

‘No,’ said Robin, but this time she added, ‘why?’

‘He’s… I hate him,’ said Albie, with sudden, surprising vehemence. ‘I hate all of them – except Decima. She’s OK. She’s the only decent one.’

‘When you say “all of them”, you mean—’

‘The Longcasters. Him and his wife, she’s a real bitch, and his other kids. Valentine – I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire,’ said Albie savagely. ‘He’s a shit, he acts like it’s his club, he treats the staff like dirt. And Cosima, she’s the youngest, and she’s a spoiled brat. Decima’s the only decent one, she always treated the staff well. Well, she kind of was staff herself, for a bit, working on the menus. Mr Longcaster asked her to help out. She’s a really good chef… but I think her restaurant’s in trouble. I saw online.’

Robin thought she heard a trace of guilt, but Albie went on quickly,

‘Anyway, she doesn’t fit in with her family. Same as Rupe. I heard the two of them discussing it, once.’

‘So you saw Rupert and Decima’s relationship up close?’

‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ said Albie.

Their client’s prohibition on mentioning her baby was highly inconvenient; Robin sensed that Albie might be amenable to a little emotional blackmail.

‘So, did you think Rupert and Decima were a good fit, or—?’

‘Why’re you asking that, if you work for her?’ said Albie.

‘Because,’ said Robin, looking Albie straight in the eye, ‘I think it’d be kinder for her in the long run to know the truth, rather than be told lies, and left wondering why, if Rupert was supposed to genuinely care about her, he disappeared.’

Albie looked down at his plate, ate another couple of chips, then said,

‘She thinks he was that body in the silver shop, doesn’t she?’

‘She told you that, did she?’

‘Yeah, but’ – Albie laughed uncomfortably – ‘that’s mad. Why the hell would Rupert have gone to work there?’

‘You’ve just told me why,’ said Robin. ‘He had to work if he wanted to eat. He’d run off with Mr Longcaster’s nef, so he had reason to hide, didn’t he? But you don’t strike me as the kind of person who’d encourage him to ditch his girlfriend without a word.’

She watched as a flush spread over Albie’s face.

‘I’m not,’ he mumbled.

‘Did Rupert want to end things with Decima?’

Albie opened his mouth, shut it, then said,

‘Not really.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know… her brother was really against it, he thought Rupe was way too young for her – and probably not rich enough, knowing Valentine.’

‘Rupert decided to split up with her, because Valentine disapproved?’

‘No,’ said Albie. ‘He didn’t want to end it, but he had—’

He cut himself off.

‘“Had to?”’ said Robin. ‘Why would he have to? Because he was afraid of Valentine, or Mr Longcaster?’

‘Not “had to”, I wasn’t going to say that,’ said Albie, still red in the face. ‘He just – you know, with that drug dealer and everything. He didn’t want Decima targeted as well.’

‘Albie, that’s a nice story,’ said Robin, ‘but why would he break all contact with her, if he was doing it to protect her? And why steal the nef from her father, if he cared about her? That caused her trouble too, didn’t it?’

‘The nef wasn’t – he didn’t – you don’t know what went on,’ said Albie.

‘I’m here to find out what went on,’ said Robin.

Albie took a deep breath, then said in a low voice,

‘Look – Mr Longcaster’s a bully. He hardly likes anyone except his daughter Cosima, and that’s only because she’s thin and blonde and good-looking. Even Valentine’s scared of his father. Mr Longcaster was a shit to Decima, even though she came to help him out at the club, and she’s talented, she really is, she’s a good chef. But it’s all surface with Mr Longcaster, you’ve got to look right, it’s all about being beautiful and stylish – being a bit plump or whatever, or not knowing how to dress, that’s, like, I dunno, a – a sin. And Decima and Rupe, they don’t look the way Mr Longcaster wants people in his club and his family to look. You think I’m exaggerating, but that’s how he lives, everything’s got to be perfect, the way the napkins are folded, how chilled the cocktails are, how thin the waitresses are – I’m not kidding – he finds a way of forcing girls out if he decides they don’t look right. He wants to live in this – this completely controlled world… Rupe burned his hand really badly in the kitchen, a couple of days before he left, and Mr Longcaster was just angry. Said he didn’t want his waiters wearing bandages, that they didn’t look smart.

‘And he used to call Rupe “the jellyfish”. Any time he did anything wrong – and Rupe’s a hard worker, it was only small mistakes – he’d call him the jellyfish and he worked up a comedy bit about it.’ Albie looked truly angry now. ‘“Blob of brainless, semi-sentient matter”, stuff like that. “Invasive species, fundamentally pointless.” And he talked about Rupe’s father.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That Rupe was just like him. “A drip off the old blob”, that was his favourite. And once, Rupe was serving Mr Longcaster and his friends a private dinner in Dostoevsky – that’s one of the rooms, they’re all named after famous gamblers – and Mr Longcaster pointed out the nef to one of his friends in front of Rupert, and said he’d won it off his waiter’s father, and then he said Peter Fleetwood was “even worse at backgammon than he was at skiing”. And that’s how Rupe’s parents died,’ said Albie, and he was no longer red, but rather white. ‘Skiing.’

‘That sounds incredibly cruel,’ said Robin.

‘I’m not even giving you all of it,’ said Albie in a low voice. ‘Being a shit to Rupe was like his new hobby. And then Mr Longcaster found out about Rupe and Decima – I think Valentine noticed something was up, and told his father – and it was open season on both of them. Rupe just cracked. That’s what the nef was about. One day, he saw red, and he took the nef, and left for good.’

‘When was the last time you saw him, Albie?’

‘Well… then. When he took the nef. That day. Earlier that day.’

‘You haven’t seen him since?’

‘No.’

‘But you were clearly good friends.’

‘Yeah,’ said Albie.

‘You really haven’t seen him since the day he took the nef?’

‘No.’

Robin was certain he was lying. The fluency with which he’d discussed Dino Longcaster’s bullying had been replaced by a distinct shiftiness.

‘Has he called or texted you?’

‘Er… maybe a couple of times.’

‘How recently?’

‘Probably… not recently. Like, a few days after he left Dino’s. Nothing since then.’

Just as Strike had with Jim Todd, Robin now felt to the full the disadvantage of having no official power to demand sight of Albie’s texts, to compel his cooperation. Albie’s plate was nearly empty; Robin knew her time was almost up.

‘Were you aware that the silver shop where the body was found – the body that Decima thinks was Rupert – is masonic?’ she asked.

‘Er… yeah, I think I saw that,’ he said.

‘Was Rupert interested in the Freemasons? Did he have any connection with them?’

‘No,’ said Albie. ‘I never heard him say anything about masons.’

‘Did Rupert know a man called Osgood, or “Oz”?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Albie.

‘Aren’t you worried about him?’ Robin asked.

‘Who – Rupert? Why would I be worried?’ said Albie, now sounding slightly scared.

‘Well, he was under a huge amount of stress, wasn’t he? He had the police and a drug dealer after him, no family support – and maybe other things that were panicking him, that he didn’t feel able to cope with?’

It was the closest Robin dared go on the subject of Decima’s baby.

‘Rupe wouldn’t’ve killed himself,’ Albie said. ‘He’d never have done that. I’m sure he’s fine. I need to go, I’m meeting some people.’

‘I’ll get the bill,’ said Robin, and as she’d hoped, Albie’s good manners held him in his seat while she raised her hand for the waiter. ‘Why did you leave Dino’s?’ she asked, having mimed writing in mid-air.

‘I’d had enough, after how Mr Longcaster treated Rupe. I didn’t want to stay any more. A few other people said they were going to leave because of it, as well, but they didn’t,’ Albie said scathingly. ‘It was easier to stay. The money’s good.’

Five minutes later, the bill paid, they emerged together onto the crowded pavement, where drinkers were thronged.

‘Thanks for talking to me, Albie,’ said Robin. ‘I do appreciate it.’

She held out her hand, but when Albie shook it, she didn’t release it.

‘I think you know more than you’re telling me. I think you know where Rupert is.’

‘I don’t!’ said Albie. ‘Seriously, I don’t!’

‘Then you’re in touch with him.’

Albie pulled his hand free.

‘I’m not!’

She expected him to turn and hurry away, but now that she wasn’t physically restraining him, he seemed pinned to the spot by his own good nature.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘tell Decima – tell her he really loved her.’

Even in the darkness, Robin could see that Albie had turned pink again.

‘If he loved her, why would he walk out and leave her without a word?’

‘Maybe he had no choice,’ said Albie.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I mean, he must’ve had no choice,’ said Albie quickly, ‘because he really did love her. It wasn’t for her money or anything, whatever Valentine thought. Rupe was really… he was mad about her.’

‘Why are you talking in the past tense?’ said Robin. ‘What changed?’

‘Nothing. I mean – he must’ve just decided it wouldn’t work. She’s a lot older and – and everything.’

‘Albie, I think you know more than you’re telling me.’

‘Sometimes you’re better off not knowing things,’ blurted Albie, as though the words had been wrung from him. ‘I’ve got to go. Thanks for the burger.’

He turned and strode away on his long legs, vanishing into the crowds.

Robin watched him disappear, then glanced nervously around. Nobody was watching her; there were no men lurking in the shadows, ready to spring.

She set off in the opposite direction from Albie, keeping an eye out for a vacant taxi, thinking about all Albie had just said, but also checking regularly over her shoulder.