The Hallmarked Man

57

Cormoran Strike had been called many things by the women in his life, but ‘stupid’ had never been one of them. Robin’s bald announcement that she and Murphy were setting up home together, the icy tone of her email and the terse work-related texts they exchanged over the following forty-eight hours all told him as plainly as if she’d shouted it in his face that he’d now been issued the unvarnished rebuff he’d been alert for all these months, but which, until now, had never materialised.

Something had changed, but he didn’t know what. Had her anger at his refusal to put surveillance on Albie Simpson-White mounted to white-hot rage since their coffee at Bar Italia? Had Murphy raised objections to their trip north, asking (with some justification) why two of them needed to travel to Scotland to interview a lone woman? Had Strike been oblivious to an accumulation of smaller grievances, symbolised by Robin’s angry reference to his removal of Reata Lindvall from the noticeboard?

He’d called Robin after arriving at the office and hearing the new threatening message, left by the unknown man with the rasping voice, but the call had gone to voicemail. Robin had responded with a brief text, telling him that she was taking all possible precautions. The tone of this message made him wonder whether to try and force a conversation, to send a facile ‘is everything all right?’ text, but long experience of women who were angry at him made him suspect the most he’d get in return was a passive-aggressive ‘fine’. The sordid Bijou business was weighing on his conscience, but Robin couldn’t know anything about that, could she? Ilsa had promised not to tell her, and if Kim had blabbed, Robin would surely have asked him about it? He certainly wasn’t going to tell her about it unforced: he didn’t want to look any more of a feckless, philandering bastard than he already did.

He cancelled his booking at the Lake District hotel, because he was damned if he was going to stare out at Windermere on his own, and at half past eleven on Monday evening, in spite of the self-discipline that usually prevented him drinking alone, Strike clambered aboard the Caledonian Sleeper with two pints of Doom Bar already inside him, and a bottle of Scotch nestling in the holdall he’d packed for his overnight journey to Glasgow.

His cabin was small and overheated. Without taking off his coat, Strike sat down on the lower bunk and downed a plastic cup of neat whisky. The Scotsmen next door were talking so loudly Strike could make out some of the words, mainly ‘ya cunt’ and ‘ya bastard’. It was impossible to tell whether they were bantering or arguing.

Self-disgust and a bleak fatalism had Strike in their grip tonight. It seemed far more likely than it had three days previously that he was, in fact, the father of Bijou’s child. The insurmountable distance between himself and the only woman he wanted was going to be counterbalanced by a tightening of the unwanted bond with a woman he’d never even liked. Wouldn’t that be a fucking funny cosmic joke? He, with his lifelong resentment of a father who’d begotten him accidentally, who’d had to be forced into the most perfunctory parental obligations by a DNA test, now shackled to his own unwanted kid?

Seven years of missed opportunities with Robin; he’d be tallying them up for ever, as a miser counts his pennies. He’d fucked it all up, and it was over: she was going to move in with Murphy, and marry him, and have his kids, and leave the agency, and he, like the gigantic prick that he was, would have to live with it, because he’d been too late to act, too late to recognise what was bloody obvious, and he deserved this misery, deserved the hopelessness engulfing him, because he’d been an arrogant fuckwit who thought she was there for the taking if he chose…

At a quarter to midnight the train lurched off, taking Strike towards an interview he’d arranged purely to have an excuse for dinner with Robin. A second whisky didn’t do much except make him sweat. He struggled out of his coat and wrenched open the cabin window, then lay down on the lower bunk, balancing a plastic cup of whisky on his chest, and thinking about the email in which Robin had finally acknowledged she and Murphy were moving in together, which he was well on the way to knowing off by heart.

He couldn’t, as far as he could see, do much, right this moment, to improve relations – not that he imagined there was any chance of resuscitating what had always perhaps been a futile hope of romance, but he didn’t want to lose her as a business partner or, worse, a friend. If it was his refusal to put surveillance on Albie Simpson-White that had angered her, he couldn’t do anything about it tonight, because there was nobody available to follow the man. He was similarly stymied if the root cause of her sudden coldness was that Murphy had had an outbreak of jealousy. On the other hand, if the problem had been him removing that bloody bit of paper from the noticeboard, he could pretend he was taking seriously the possibility that ‘Rita Linda’ had been Reata Lindvall. He therefore took another swig of whisky and Googled the woman, finally alighting on an account of her murder on a Belgian website, which offered a translation into bad English.

Reata had been born in Sweden in 1972 to an unwed mother and an unknown father, and was left orphaned at the age of ten when her alcoholic mother died. She’d then bounced between foster homes until running away in 1988. Having travelled to Switzerland with a friend, where the two of them had been employed as ‘chalet cleaner girls’, she’d given birth to her own daughter, Jolanda, in 1993 with, as the website put it, ‘again the father unknown’.

Repeated mention of accidentally conceived daughters was doing nothing to raise Strike’s spirits. However, he read on.

Reata had intended to put her baby up for adoption, but changed her mind when the little girl was born. Shortly after giving birth, she’d met Belgian Elias Maes, who was thirty-nine. The pair began a relationship and Reata and Jolanda had moved to Liège, to live with Maes.

The relationship with Maes was violent and difficult and both partners were large alcohol drinkers. Maes accused Lindvall of being a mother neglectful and both were accusing the others of infidelities. Neighbours said Maes complained about Jolanda’s behaving and could be unkind to Jolanda. Lindvall and Maes parted for six months in 1998, then were reunited.

On 20th June 1998 Reata and Jolanda disappeared. Concerned friends have contacted the police. Maes, who was absent for business, was arrested when he returned, on suspicion of their abduction or killing. He was released later without charges.

In spite of appeals public, no sign is found of Lindvall or her daughter. Maes was still covered in suspicion and in 1999 he relocated to Antwerp.

In early 2000, police received a tip and searched the woods close to the Lac d’Ougrée. Fragments of human bone and old clothings were recovered. Analysis DNA proved human remains belonged to Reata and Jolanda.

Maes was arrested again. Belgian feminist groups campaigned outside the courtroom for the duration of the criminal trial. In March 2001, Maes was found guilty of the murders of Reata and Jolanda Lindvall, and given two life sentences.

Strike slugged more whisky and considered texting Robin with some anodyne comment or question about Lindvall to show he wasn’t dismissing her out of hand, but he still couldn’t see how the dead Swedish woman could be relevant to their inquiry, and felt masochistically certain that Robin, at this very moment, was shagging Murphy and thoroughly enjoying it.

The Scotsmen next door were still bantering or arguing, and Strike suddenly wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, other than this rattling sardine tin. Still clutching his bottle of whisky, he rose off his bunk, wrenched open the cabin door, and set off down the train.

The cramped bar compartment was harshly lit, none too clean, and hardly less depressing than his cabin. A small knot of men were standing at the far end, all, by the sounds of them, Scottish. Strike sat down at the only table and poured another large measure of Scotch into his plastic beaker, then stared blankly through the window at passing pylons and lit windows.

His mobile buzzed. He hoped it might be Robin, but naturally it was from Kim.

Guessing you’re not asleep yet if you’re on the sleeper. Isn’t this the woman we met at the Dorchester?!

Strike pressed the link to the press story she’d attached, and there, sure enough, was the Honourable Nina Lascelles in a wedding dress, beside the same blond man she’d pointed out on the dancefloor whose name, it transpired, was Percy, and whose wedding was newsworthy because he was a promising young Labour MP. Strike stared at the picture for nearly a minute, wondering why one of the bridesmaids looked vaguely familiar. Then he realised the dark and surly-looking woman was a prior investigative target. Midge had caught the married woman visiting her lover, which explained Nina’s furious ‘you really fucked up a friend of mine’s life’ at the Dorchester.

He scrolled down. Beneath the Nina story was another article by Dominic Culpepper, and with an unpleasant lurch in his guts, Strike saw Charlotte’s name.

The piece detailed the ‘unconventional marriage’ of Charlotte’s mother, Tara, and her fourth husband, one Lord Jenson. The couple lived apart, Jenson retaining the large house in Mayfair in which he’d lived with his late wife, Tara (‘of the wealthy Clairmont family, who founded the Clairmont hotel chain’) continuing to preside over her son’s inherited mansion, Heberley House, which ‘suits Sacha’, according to Tara, ‘because he’s away filming such a lot, and who’s going to look after Heberley better than me?’

Naturally, there was also mention of Tara’s daughter’s ‘tragic’ suicide.

‘The hell are you doing here?’ said a rumbling voice.

Strike looked up. A short, thickset and almost entirely bald man, who was vigorously chewing gum, had detached himself from the group at the bar and was looking down at the detective: Fergus Robertson, the journalist who’d recently taken Strike’s statement on the Candy story.

‘Work,’ said Strike. ‘You?’

‘Same,’ said Robertson, dropping without invitation into the seat opposite Strike. ‘Gonna get Nicola Sturgeon’s reaction to Theresa May’s speech on Brexit tomorrow. Paper’s blagged me an interview.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

‘Didn’t want to enrich British Rail, I see,’ said Robertson, eyes on Strike’s Scotch.

‘Help yourself,’ said Strike, pushing the bottle towards the journalist, who poured a generous measure into his own plastic cup.

Strike felt so depressed he could barely muster interest in Robertson’s conversation, yet it was a slight distraction to be sitting opposite the journalist. When Robertson handed back the bottle, he poured himself another triple Scotch.

‘Funny, bumping into you here,’ said Robertson. ‘I was going to give you a call when I got back from Edinburgh.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, without much interest. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Ever heard of the Winston Churchill Masonic Lodge?’

‘Why d’you ask?’ said Strike, who knew perfectly well that this was DCI Malcolm Truman’s lodge.

‘You asked me whether Oliver Branfoot’s a Freemason.’

‘Yeah, and you said you didn’t know.’

Robertson shoved more nicotine gum into his mouth, then said, watching Strike closely,

‘Dodgy Freemasons are always news.’

‘I’d imagine so,’ said Strike, not yet so drunk that he was going to unintentionally hand Robertson a story that might lay both of them open to being sued.

‘Rumour is, the membership of the Winston Churchill Lodge skews heavily towards police.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I got talking to a journo mate who was covering the masons in ’99,’ said Robertson, dropping his voice still lower. ‘When the Home Affairs Committee produced their report into Freemasonry in public life, remember that?’

‘No,’ said Strike, who’d spent a good deal of 1999 in Kosovo. ‘What did it say?’

‘That there’s a lot of unjustifiable paranoia about Freemasons, but they don’t help themselves by being so secretive, and there were cases where allegations of masonic influence might be justified. The forensic scientist involved in the Birmingham Six investigation was a Freemason, as was uncovered by the Home Affairs Select Committee’s investigation into masonic influence. “As regards the forensic scientist we conclude that freemasonry could have been a factor in the close and unprofessional relationship he enjoyed with the police.”

‘Anyway,’ said Robertson, dropping his voice still lower, and still watching Strike for his reaction, ‘I was talking to this guy the other day, and I slipped Branfoot’s name into the conversation, and he said, yeah, Branfoot’s a mason, and he heard Branfoot changed lodges a couple of years ago. Apparently he used to be in one of the ones that are packed with aristos. Then, according to my source, he moved to the Winston Churchill.’

When Strike didn’t speak, Robertson said in a half-jocular growl,

‘C’mon. You’ve got something on Branfoot.’

‘He jumped on Culpepper’s anti-me bandwagon and I wanted to know why, that’s all.’

Strike had just been handed a plum bit of intelligence, but felt too anaesthetised by misery and alcohol to take much pleasure in it. The bar full of male voices and laughter, the pimply young barman in his polyester waistcoat, the smell of cheap whisky and the sight of Robertson’s vigorous chewing was suddenly even more intolerable than his cramped compartment.

‘Need some sleep,’ he informed the journalist as he stood up.

‘You’ll keep me posted,’ said Robertson, ‘right?’

‘Sure,’ said Strike.

He grabbed his whisky bottle by the neck and set back off along the train, swaying with its motion.

Back on his lower bunk, he considered texting Robin to tell her about Branfoot attending the same lodge as Malcolm Truman, but what was the fucking point? She’d be enjoying a post-coital laugh with her CID boyfriend right now. The news could keep until Ironbridge. However, one vindictive thought brought a kind of cold comfort.

He had a bloody good reason, now, for digging deeper into Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Truman, who so coincidentally happened to share a masonic lodge with Lord Oliver Branfoot, and anyone who didn’t like Strike going after a member of the Met – Ryan Fucking Murphy, to take just one example – could stick their objections right up their arse.

58

Robin, who’d spent much of the weekend pretending to be excited about the house she and Murphy were going to view on Thursday evening, was glad to have an excuse to get up before her boyfriend on Monday. She wanted to be waiting outside Juniper Hill High School in Finsbury Park before the first students arrived, so as to maximise her chances of waylaying Tia Thompson, friend of the missing Sapphire Neagle.

Standing on the opposite pavement to the entrance of the large, ugly grey comprehensive, watching the first pupils enter the school in their red sweatshirts, Robin was attempting, but failing, to block out thoughts of Strike.

He hadn’t called over the weekend – not that she’d ordinarily have expected him to – but you’d have thought he’d have rung her to ask why her email was so unfriendly, and why she was dropping out of the Scotland part of the trip, and to tell her there’d be plenty of other opportunities to speak to Tia Thompson and Valentine Longcaster, wouldn’t you? But no. So much for friendship…

Maybe I should leave, Robin thought. Maybe I should just find another job.

But this was a form of mental blood-letting: she didn’t really have the slightest intention of resigning. Walk out on everything she’d helped build? Walk away from nearly seven years of sacrifice, and risk, and hard, relentless work? Throw away the job she loved, just because Cormoran Strike was a lying, manipulative bastard? Because he was manipulative, she saw that now: his offer to buy her a new Land Rover, and his Christmas gift, and the repeated mentions of Charlotte’s suicide note, all designed to keep her bound to him and the business, while he was off impregnating Bijou bloody Watkins, and, for all Robin knew, sleeping with a few more women on the side… well, good luck, Bijou, you picked a hell of a father for your baby…

The red sweatshirt-ed throng was growing and Robin scanned the faces of every black girl she could see. Most students were arriving in groups, but when at last Robin spotted and identified Tia, the girl was walking along alone, reading something off her phone while vaping. So intent was she on her screen that as she made to cross the road, twenty yards short of where Robin was standing, the latter shouted out:

‘Tia, be careful!’

Tia started and jumped backwards as a bus trundled past.

‘The hell do you know my name?’ the girl demanded, as Robin hurried towards her.

‘I was hoping to talk to you,’ said Robin, unable to stop herself adding, ‘you shouldn’t be looking at Snapchat when you’re crossing roads.’

‘For your information,’ said Tia, showing Robin her screen, ‘I’m reading a fucking book.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘Well, even so… I was hoping to talk to you about Sapphire Neagle.’

‘Why?’

‘My name’s Robin Ellacott. I’m a private detective. Sapphire’s missing and I’m trying to find out what happened to her.’

Robin handed Tia her card. The girl scrutinised it, frowning.

‘I’d just like to ask a couple of questions,’ said Robin. ‘If you don’t know the answers, fine.’

Tia looked understandably wary.

‘You can look me up online,’ said Robin. ‘I’m a genuine private detective, and I’m worried about Sapphire. Nothing you say’s going to end up in court, or anything like that. I’m just trying to find her.’

‘All right,’ said Tia slowly, ‘but hurry up. I don’t wanna miss English.’

‘D’you know anything about a man – an older man – Sapphire might have met before she disappeared?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia. ‘I told ’em about him.’

‘Told who?’

‘Police,’ said Tia. She took another deep drag on her vape and exhaled. Robin smelled candyfloss.

‘What did you tell them?’ asked Robin.

‘He said he was gonna get her a job as a backing singer. Said she could go on tour. With Ellie Goulding.’

‘Did you ever see her with this man?’

Tia shook her head.

‘Did anyone?’

‘Dunno. Don’t think so.’

‘How did Sapphire meet him?’

‘Up the road, in Jimmy’s,’ said Tia, nodding in the direction of the corner.

‘What’s Jimmy’s?’

‘Café,’ said Tia.

‘So she didn’t meet him online?’

‘I’ve just told you,’ said Tia, ‘she met him in Jimmy’s. She bunked off one afternoon and she got talking to the guy in there. He bought her a coffee. She said she’d looked him up online, so she knew he was for real.’

‘“For real” in what sense?’

‘He worked in the music industry or something.’

‘Did she tell you his name?’

‘Nah, she stopped telling me anything about him because I said he was full of shit and she went off on one and hit me round the face.’

‘She hit you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, with a wry smile. ‘Didn’t hurt, really. She’s tall but she’s really skinny… some of the boys used to call her Olive Oyl.’

‘But you were friends with her?’

‘Not really,’ said Tia, with a slight shrug. ‘I was her “buddy”. If you’re a good student, you get to look after people, if they’re new…’

‘You had to take care of her?’

‘Kinda, yeah… she was always fighting, though. Spent most of her time in special ed when she was here.’

‘What else do you know about her?’

‘Know her dad and uncle were abusing her until she went into care when she was seven,’ said Tia, a pronouncement more shocking for being said in such a matter-of-fact tone.

‘How awful,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia unemotionally. ‘She put it about a lot. Girls like her, they think they’ll get over it by letting boys do it to ’em again. Telling themselves it’s no big deal.’

Tia’s thickly lashed eyes looked too old and world-weary for her youthful, rounded face. Robin didn’t think the girl’s unshockability was a pose. Perhaps she’d been ‘buddies’ with too many troubled students to remain ignorant of the uglier facts of life.

‘D’you think Sapphire was sleeping with this so-called music producer?’

‘Probably,’ said Tia, taking another drag on her vape.

‘Can you remember her saying anything else about him?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, ‘he give her a necklace. She told me it was rubies.’

In spite of her general misery, a shiver of excitement shot through Robin at this.

‘Rubies,’ sneered Tia. ‘It was just beads. My auntie’s got a ruby ring, I know the difference.’

‘Do you remember anything else she said about him?’

‘Nah,’ said Tia, and as she said it, a bell sounded in the distance, and Robin saw the red sweatshirt-ed hordes swarming into the ugly grey building. ‘I gotta go.’

Robin watched the girl cross the road, but Tia had barely reached the school gate when she suddenly wheeled around and dashed back to Robin.

‘Jus’ remembered. He told her she reminded him of a Swedish girl he used to know. When he said she had the right look for the backing singer job.’

‘A Swedish girl,’ repeated Robin, her heart suddenly racing.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia.

‘Thanks, Tia,’ said Robin. ‘This is a big help. Shouldn’t you hide that?’ she added, looking at the vape still clutched in the girl’s hand.

‘Oh. Yeah,’ said Tia, smiling for the first time. She plunged it into her backpack, then turned, sprinted back across the road and into the rapidly emptying yard.

59

Ever since limping off the train at Glasgow Central at six that morning, the end of his stump sweaty and sore because he’d fallen asleep fully clothed with his prosthesis still on, Strike had felt atrocious: poorly rested, queasy and with a headache throbbing behind his temples.

Fully aware that with nearly a bottle of Johnnie Walker inside him he was still over the alcohol limit, he picked up his hired automatic Audi A1 and set off north through yet more pelting rain, stopping on the way at a fast food van at the side of the road to buy and eat a fried bacon and egg roll, because he’d been in no condition to eat the plastic-smelling breakfast he’d been offered on the train. For the next half an hour, he drove in constant uncertainty as to whether he ought to stop the car again to throw up.

Shortly before eleven o’clock, thick rain still falling, stomach churning, head pounding, Strike entered the small Perthshire town of Crieff where Niall Semple’s abandoned wife continued to live, and deposited his Audi in a car park off the High Street. The Semples’ house had appeared a short walk away on the map, but what Strike hadn’t noticed was that Comrie Road, up which he had to walk to get there, was on a steep incline. Head down, inwardly cursing the weather, the hill and his own whisky consumption, he set off up the street, passing small shops set in Victorian buildings of stained stone.

His mobile rang and he answered, taking inadequate shelter in a doorway.

‘Hi Pat, what’s up?’ he croaked.

‘You ill?’

‘No, I’m great,’ said Strike, while rain trickled down the back of his neck.

‘Might’ve found your Hussein Mohamed,’ said Pat. ‘There’s a local news story about a nine-year-old Syrian refugee called Hafsa Mohamed, who’s in a wheelchair. Says here: “Her father Hussein says proudly that although he and his wife had a little English when they arrived in London, Hafsa had to start from scratch. She’s now fluent in the language and flourishing at her primary school in Forest Gate.” Forest Gate, that’s still in Newham. Looks like they stayed in the area they knew.’

‘Sounds promising,’ said Strike. ‘Could you get on to the paper and see whether you can get contact details for the family?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Pat, making a note.

‘Better go, I’m heading for an interview,’ said Strike.

As he put his phone back into his pocket he turned his face upwards to allow rain to fall directly onto his face, hoping it might make him feel less ill. A familiar symbol caught his eye, directly overhead: the iron square and compasses, protruding discreetly over the nondescript blue door outside which he was sheltering.

He moved back onto the pavement, contemplating the masonic lodge, which was no larger than a two-up, two-down house, then walked on up the hill, wondering – while trying to maintain balance on the slippery pavement and ignore his broiling guts and his pulsing headache – how many masons met in the tiny temple behind him. He ought to have stopped for painkillers. He shouldn’t have sunk nearly an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. He really wished he hadn’t had that fucking roll.

The Semples’ house was large, square, detached and made of grey stone, with a well-tended front garden. As he knew from Jade’s texts, this was the house in which her husband had grown up, and which he’d inherited upon his mother’s death.

When he rang the bell, the front door opened to reveal the tiny wife of Niall Semple who, to Strike’s surprise, was dressed in a hooded bright yellow raincoat and accompanied by a dog on a lead that, to Strike, looked as though someone had shoved a fox into a tumble dryer. It was small, orange and covered in thick, long hair that stood out all around its body, and began yapping vociferously at the sight of him.

‘Cameron?’ said Jade loudly, over the noise of the dog barking.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, who couldn’t be bothered to correct her.

‘I dunno what I’ve said yes to this for,’ she said, with what seemed to be a combination of irritability and foreboding, ‘bu’ we can talk while I’m walkin’ Pom Pom. I ’aven’t got long.’

Strike, who’d been very much looking forward to sitting down rather than taking a rainy walk, said,

‘OK.’

In the hall behind Jade, a short ginger-haired man with the kind of moustache Strike associated with World War Two pilots emerged from a door holding a coffee, then ducked back out of sight. Unaware Strike had seen her guest, Jade said, ‘C’mon then,’ stepped outside, closed the door, and walked past him down the garden path, leaving Strike with no option but to follow.

He had a hunch he’d just seen the man who’d called Jade Semple ‘babe’ and advised her Strike was probably working for a newspaper. He also suspected that Jade might be a fellow hangover sufferer, a conclusion he drew not only from Jade’s habit of texting him when she appeared to be unable to see her phone or use her fingers very well, but from her pallor, the puffiness of her face and the fact that her heavy fake lashes had been applied crookedly. She was elfin-looking, barely five feet tall, with large brown eyes and a small, pointed nose, and smelled strongly of a heavy oriental perfume that reminded him of a friend of his Aunt Joan’s in the eighties, whose scent had been powerful enough to overwhelm barbecue smoke. In this case (unless he was judging her by himself, because he was certain he was giving off a reek of whisky) he suspected she was trying to cover up the fact that she’d slept too late to shower. The small amount of blue-black hair he could see from beneath the raincoat hood looked unbrushed, and there was a deep crease in her left cheek that looked as though it had been made by a pillow. Strike’s best guess was that Ginger Moustache had kept her up late.

‘We’ll go up MacRosty Park,’ said Jade. ‘But, look, I definitely don’t fink it was Niall in that vault now, all righ’? Tha’ was jus’ before I realised what was really goin’ on. I don’ know why I said I’d do this,’ she repeated distractedly.

‘What made you think it was Niall in the first place?’ Strike asked, eyes screwed up against the rain and trying not to limp. He could feel the end of his stump chafing.

‘’Cause of it being a masonic shop, an’ the body sounded a bit like ’im, and righ’ blood group an’ everyfing, an’ because ’e went a bit funny about the masons, after ’is ’ead injury. Did you know ’e’s a mason?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘D’you know what degree he was?’

‘Knight of somefing, I can’ remember.’

‘Not Prince?’

‘No, “knight”… all the men in ’is family were masons. ’E was never weird abou’ it ’til ’e got injured, though, it was jus’, like, a social fing, but then ’e wen’ funny, readin’ all the time, so that made me fink, when I seen it was a masonic shop… an’ there was the name, “William Wright”.’

‘He had a connection with that name, did he?’

‘Yeah, kinda. Wright was a famous what-d’you-call-it – botanist – an’ he was born in Crieff, like, two ’undred years ago or somefing.’

‘Niall’s interested in local history, is he?’

‘No, but ’is dad was. ’E self-published a book on masonic ’istory in Perthshire an’ ’e put an ’ole chapter about this William Wright in there, finkin’ ’e was a Freemason, but then it turned out ’e’d never been a mason, so ’e ’ad to cut them pages out of the book. When I seen that bloke at the silver shop was callin’ ’imself “William Wright”, I fort, wasn’t that that guy old Mr Semple got it all wrong abou’? An’ I looked ’im up an’ I was right.’

She crossed the road towards a rainswept park and Strike followed, hoping to God he wasn’t about to be asked to walk across slippery grass, which was the worst of all possible surfaces for his prosthesis.

‘Bu’ then I found ou’ abou’ the woman,’ said Jade bitterly, ‘so I knew wha’ was really goin’ on. I’m only stayin’ ’ere in Crieff because ’e’s gonna ’ave to come back some time. I’m not movin’ back to Colchester so ’e can move some ovver woman in. I’m not makin’ it fuckin’ easy for ’im, after what ’e done. ’E can fuckin’ well come ’ome an’ tell me to my face ’e wants a divorce.’

To Strike’s relief, they entered the park via a smooth, tarmacked path. It was still raining hard, but the cold, fresh air was making him feel less queasy, he could barely smell Jade’s perfume in the stiff breeze, and her loud voice was less deafening in the open. A deserted children’s play area lay to their right.

‘You think he’s with the woman you texted me about, do you? The one who used his credit card, after the body in the vault turned up?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Have the police traced her?’

‘Not yet, but they showed me a picture of ’er, at a cashpoint, usin’ ’is card. Bank security camera. She looks a real skank,’ said Jade savagely. ‘Blonde. ’E always told me ’e din’ like blondes. I din’ even know abou’ that bank account they were bofe usin’. ’E was keepin’ it ’id from me.’

‘He was withdrawing money you didn’t know about?’

‘Yeah. Nobody’ll tell me ’ow much was in there, or wevver it’s all gone now. They jus’ come to me wiv a picture of the woman an’ asked if I recognised ’er, an’ I never seen ’er before in my life. Tattoo on ’er face,’ said Jade bitterly. ‘Classy.’

She bent down and let the Pomeranian off its lead; it bounded away onto the grass while Strike and Jade kept walking along the path.

‘What kind of tattoo did this woman have?’

‘You couldn’ see clear, it was under ’er eye. I shoulda known. I ’eard ’im on the phone to a woman, back at the ’ouse, abou’ a week before ’e buggered off. ’E was sayin’ “meet me at the Engineer”. I walked in the room an’ ’e looked fuckin’ guilty and ’ung up. We ’ad a row. I said, “’oo’re you meetin’? Wha’ Engineer?” ’E said ’e din’t know what I was talkin’ abou’. Fuckin’ liar. I know wha’ the fuckin’ Engineer is, I wen’ an’ looked it up. ’S a pub in Camden. Coincidence. Righ’ by where ’e was takin’ out money from ’is secret bank account.’

‘Are you sure it was a woman he was talking to?’

‘Yeah, I could ’ear ’er, squawkin’ on the other end of the phone,’ said Jade. ‘I was listenin’, froo the door, from the ’all.’

‘You told the police this?’

‘Yeah, an’ they say nobody at the pub remembers seein’ ’im at the Engineer, but so wha’? Crowded. I shoulda known. We on’y ’ad a monf, married, but we’ve bin togevver a lot longer’n tha’, and ’e played around on me – well, I played around on ’im, too – bu’ when we go’ married we bofe said, tha’ was it now, jus’ each ovver, y’know?’

‘Right,’ said Strike.

‘POM POM, NO!’ Jade bellowed, making Strike wince. The dog had picked up something Jade didn’t want it to eat. She strode away across the wet grass while Strike waited where he was in the heavy rain, watching her trying to wrestle whatever it was out of the Pomeranian’s mouth.

Jade reminded Strike of his oldest friend’s wife, Penny Polworth, not in looks – Jade was prettier, notwithstanding the crooked false eyelashes and bed hair – but in the way she spoke about her vanished husband. The Polworths had always seemed to Strike to live in a state of mutual animosity they appeared to consider the only natural condition for a man and a woman living together. Both seemed happiest on the occasions when they’d got their own way over the wishes of the other, and they constantly griped about each other, whether together or apart. Strike well remembered Polworth’s frank explanation of the reason he’d proposed (I thought of the money I’ve spent chasing gash, and the hassle, and whether I want to be watching porn alone at forty, and I thought, this is the whole point. What marriage is for. Am I going to do better than Penny? Am I enjoying talking shit to women in bars? Penny and me get on all right. I could do a hell of a lot worse. She’s not bad-looking. I’d have my hole already at home, waiting for me, wouldn’t I?). Strike had been best man at the wedding, and he seemed to remember both Polworths seeming happy enough on the day, but never, even once, had he envied their relationship; indeed, he couldn’t remember envying any marriage, except perhaps (he recognised it with an inward pang, never having really considered the matter before) that of Ted and Joan, who’d seemed to like each other just as much as they loved each other.

‘We’ll go this way,’ Jade called to Strike, beckoning him across the grass.

Rather than explain about his leg, Strike gritted his teeth and hobbled across the slippery grass to Jade and the Pomeranian, which had started yapping again, having been deprived of whatever rancid object it had been trying to swallow.

‘We can go over by the trees,’ said Jade, setting off again. ‘More shel’ered.’

As they walked, Strike pulled out his vape pen.

‘I ’ad one just like that,’ said Jade, squinting up at Strike, ‘but ’e fuckin’ took it off me.’

‘Who did, Niall?’ asked Strike, most of whose concentration was now given over to not stumbling.

‘Yeah, said ’e didn’ want me vaping. Fuck’s sake, I give up smoking for ’im, an’ going out anywhere, and bein’ stuck up in fuckin’ Crieff in the cold. I could at least ’ave a vape, couldn’ I?’

‘Can’t see why not,’ said Strike tactfully. ‘What did you mean when you said Niall was “a bit funny” about the masons, post-injury?’

‘’E was readin’ about ’em all the time, an’ not talkin’ for hours. An’ one day ’e went on a run an’ went all the way to fuckin’ Dunkeld.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Twenny-odd miles away. An’ ’e was stuck on the bridge.’

‘What d’you mean, “stuck”?’

‘Scared to go over it. ’E freaked out. It’s masonic, as well, that bridge. Built by some old Freemason. There’s s’posed to be a masonic mark on it or somefing, I dunno. I ’ad to go pick ’im up in the car – wish I’d left ’im there, now,’ she said bitterly.

‘Did Niall have any connection with Camden, that you know of?’

‘No, but turns ou’ I didn’t know a ton of stuff, doesn’ it?’

‘Did he know Freemasons’ Hall, at all?’

‘I dunno.’

‘What about old silver?’

‘No. Why would ’e know abou’ about old silver?’

Strike thought, immediately, of a glass case full of gleaming Rhodesian silver in Hereford, situated in the best fortified army base in the UK, where the fences were topped with barbed wire, cameras watched the perimeter, within which photography and sketching were forbidden, and where the nature of what happened behind some of the closed doors was covered by the Official Secrets Act.

‘What kind of thing was Niall reading, before he disappeared?’ he asked.

‘I dunno. Old books.’

‘Did he take them with him, when he left?’

‘Maybe. ’E ’ad a briefcase wiv ’im, when ’e was filmed at the cashpoint.’

‘Yeah, I saw that,’ said Strike. ‘A metal case. Had you ever seen it before?’

‘No.’

‘It looked to me as though he might have it handcuffed to him.’

‘Yeah, the police fort that, too.’

They were under the canopy of trees now. Strike would have been more grateful for respite from the rain if the ground hadn’t been muddy. Still giving half his attention to not falling on his arse, he said,

‘What can you tell me about when Niall left?’

There was a short silence. Strike decided it was polite (and certainly easier) to pretend he hadn’t noticed she’d started to cry. He had an excuse; the tears now trickling down her face might be rain, but why couldn’t Robin have been here? Why did he have to deal with so many crying women on his own?

‘Ev’ryone finks I’m a bitch for goin’ away when ’e wasn’ right,’ said Jade huskily, ‘but it was our firtief – me an’ my twin’s. I’d been sittin’ in the ’ospital wiv ’im for free monfs straight. Then we come up ’ere to stay in ’is mum’s old ’ouse, an’ ’e was barely talkin’ to me, jus’ readin’ abou’ the fuckin’ masons an’ goin’ on runs. I said to ’im, “I wanna ’ave a birfday party”, an’ ’e didn’ wanna go, so – in the end – I said, “fine, I’ll go alone then”. I ’adn’t seen my family for ages. An’ tha’s when ’e left, while I was down in Colchester for the weekend.’

‘Didn’t he leave a note or anything?’

‘Yeah – well, no’ a proper note,’ said Jade in a choked voice. ‘Jus’ a bit of paper wiv some mad shit on it. Didn’ even ’ave my name on it, but ’e left it on my pillow.’

‘Where’s that piece of paper now?’

‘I give it to the bloke ’oo come to see me, after Niall left.’

‘What bloke?’

‘Lawrence or somefing – army or Ministry of Defence – I dunno, I was in such a state at the time – but ’e seemed to know all abou’ Niall, said they was tryna find ’im. I never saw or ’eard of ’im again.’

‘Lawrence showed you ID, though, did he?’

‘I can’ remember,’ said Jade. ‘Probably. ’E wan’ed to know where I fort Niall would’ve gone, an’ this is all before I found out abou’ that blonde woman, so I said I fort ’e must be livin’ rough or somefing, ’cause I knew ’e adn’t touched our joint account. I was worried sick,’ she said, with a sob that even Strike couldn’t credibly claim not to have heard.

‘I’m sorry, this must be very difficult for you,’ he said. ‘I know it’s—’

His false leg skidded out from under him; for a moment he was entirely airborne, then he fell with a crash on his back into a patch of mud. The Pomeranian set up a volley of yapping, as though Strike’s yell of pain had been an invitation to fight.

‘Oh my God,’ said Jade in panic, looking at the metal rod revealed by his trouser leg, ‘Pom Pom, shut up – you ’aven’t got a leg! Why din’ you say?’

‘I’ve got a leg,’ said Strike stupidly, while the dog continued to skitter around him, barking. ‘No,’ he added, as Jade stretched out a hand to try and help him; he could no sooner use a woman that small to bear his weight than he could haul himself up on a dangling leaf. After several attempts, covering both hands in mud in the process, he managed to get himself upright again, his right knee now excruciatingly painful and the end of his stump burning. Wanting neither pity nor discussions about his missing right foot, he said with forced cheerfulness,

‘All good. Let’s keep going.’

‘You should’ve told me… we’ll go back on the path,’ said Jade. Her manner had changed. While still tearful, she watched with some concern as the now extremely muddy Strike struggled onwards, no longer able to conceal his limp.

‘Was Niall’s brain injury the only one he suffered?’ the detective asked.

‘No,’ said Jade, ‘’e ’ad burns on ’is back as well as a sort of dent on the back of ’is ’ead. I never knew ’ow it ’appened because he never told me what ’e was doin’ on operations. But ’is best friend in the Regiment, Ben, got killed same time Niall got injured. They ’ad to keep tellin’ Niall before ’e took it in. “Where’s Ben?” “’Ow’s Ben?” Ben was Niall’s bes’ man,’ said Jade, with another sob. ‘Everyfing went wrong… I go’ pregnant, an’ then we go’ married, an’ then I lost it, and then, like a monf later, ’e was injured. When ’e come out the coma – after Ben dyin’ – I felt so fuckin’ lucky… and then ’e fuckin’ disappeared…’

‘I’m sorry,’ Strike repeated.

Accidental pregnancies, miscarriages: he was again unwillingly reminded of Bijou Watkins, and of Charlotte, who, in the dying days of their relationship, had claimed to have lost a baby he’d never been certain existed.

They walked slowly back to Jade’s house, making desultory talk, the mud-covered Strike in mounting pain. As they approached her front door she paused and said awkwardly,

‘I’d ask you in, but I’ve gotta go ou’ in a minute.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Strike, who was certain this was a lie, and that she didn’t want him meeting Ginger Moustache. ‘I’ve got a car, I’ll clean up at my hotel. Thanks for meeting me.’

He couldn’t offer her his hand, because it was covered in mud, so made a vague salute and turned away. He’d been limping for thirty seconds or so when he heard a shout behind him.

‘Hey, Cameron!’

She’d caught up with him, her mobile in her hand.

‘I took a picture of tha’ note Niall left me, on my pillow. If you wan’ it, you can ’ave it. I’ll text it you.’

‘That’d be great,’ said Strike, ‘thanks very much.’

‘OK, well… good luck findin’ out ’oo that body was,’ she said, then turned, walked back to her husband’s house, and the new man who was waiting for her there.

60

Four hundred and fifty miles away, Robin was standing in an industrial estate in Walthamstow, watching the entrance of a large storage unit that housed God’s Own Junkyard. This was a combination of shop, hire service and museum containing hundreds of neon signs, some reclaimed from old businesses, others made to order. Robin had got a glimpse of the blazing Technicolor interior while the models, photographer, make-up artist and assorted underlings had been taking in racks of clothes and accessories. She’d also caught a brief glimpse of stylist Valentine Longcaster, who she recognised from the pictures she’d found online. He had dirty blond hair with a long fringe and was wearing black jeans, a red shirt and a multicoloured waistcoat. Valentine had posted a few arty shots of neon signs on his Instagram the previous week, and, in response to a question from somebody who seemed to be a friend, had said he was ‘prepping for photoshoot Tues’.

Robin’s excitement about what she’d found out that morning from Tia Thompson had somewhat dissipated, and not only because it was bitingly cold, and awkward to be standing amid pallets and parked vans while curious car mechanics passed her, one of them scratching the two inches of buttock visible above the waistband of his sagging jeans. No, the main reason for Robin’s increased misery was that she’d recognised one of the models who’d entered the storage unit: Ciara Porter, tall and angular-looking, with milk-white skin and white blonde hair. The papers never failed to remind readers of gossip columns that Ciara had a degree in English from Cambridge, but to Robin, she’d forever be one of the women Cormoran Strike had slept with. London was littered with them, apparently: possibly she’d sat opposite one of them on the bus just now, or been served coffee by another before boarding it…

Stop obsessing about him, for God’s sake, you need to get over this.

Robin doubted she was going to get anything at all out of these hours of surveillance in the cold. She couldn’t enter God’s Own Junkyard, because it was closed to the public for the photoshoot, and when Valentine eventually emerged, all he had to do was get into a car and drive away from her; she had no way of forcing him to talk to her about Rupert Fleetwood. However, she was still glad – if this resentment and misery could be called gladness – to have found a pretext to avoid that damn Lake District hotel.

There was a mechanic a short distance away, tinkering with a car. He was wearing a bandana over the lower half of his face, like a bandit. Robin wished she had one, too, even if it might look odd. She could no longer feel her lips or toes.

Her phone rang: Murphy.

‘Hi, Ryan.’

‘I need to ask you something,’ he said, sounding angry.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Robin, turning to walk a short distance away. It was about time she changed position, anyway.

‘Has your agency been trying to get hold of photos of William Wright’s body?’

Oh, shit.

‘What – why are you asking me that?’ said Robin.

‘Answer the bloody question!’

‘Ryan, I – Strike and I didn’t try and get them, but – yes, Kim Cochran managed to get copies.’

‘For FUCK’s sake, Robin!’

Robin removed the phone a couple of inches from her ear.

‘D’you realise – I fucking told you how sensitive that whole case is!’

Apparently the news that the Met no longer believed Jason Knowles to have been the body in the vault hadn’t yet reached Murphy.

‘Kim did it on her own initiative,’ said Robin. ‘We didn’t ask her to do it. How did—?’

‘The stupid fucker she got them from was seen making copies, and then he was seen drinking with her, and now he’s been fucking suspended without pay. D’you realise—?’

‘I realise you’re blaming me for something I haven’t done,’ said Robin, temper now rising. ‘I’ve just told you, we didn’t ask her to do it, she thought she was being help—’

‘Well, it’s not fucking helpful to me when you start undermining a fucking police investig—’

‘What have we undermined? We looked at a few pictures!’

‘Why would bloody Cochran think pictures would help with finding Fleetwood?’

‘Well, the client thinks Fleetwood was the body, so obviously—’

‘You need to stop fucking stringing that woman along and tell her it was Knowles!’

‘Maybe you should go and talk to the team working the case, if you want to know how likely they think it was Knowles,’ said Robin angrily. ‘I’ve got to go.’

She hung up, now torn between rage and misery on account of Murphy as well as Strike. It was just as well she hadn’t told him that MI5 had warned them off investigating Niall Semple, wasn’t it? Or about DCI Malcom Truman’s alleged membership of the masonic lodge? Or the rubber gorilla hidden in her sock drawer?

The man with his face covered like a bandit was still watching her.

61

Two and a half hours after leaving Crieff, Strike broke his journey south in the small Scottish town of Moffat, where a café in the market square supplied him with a coffee and a burger and a welcome chance to rest his right knee. The mud on his coat and trousers had dried and the rain had eased off, but the mid-afternoon sky was already darkening. He supposed many would find Moffat picturesque, but Strike saw everything with the jaundiced eye of the hungover and miserable. His knee was swollen and sore, and the statue of a ram standing atop a pile of rocks, visible through the café window, darkened his mood still further. Sheep, even when cast in bronze, had a tendency to remind him of Robin’s father, the professor of sheep medicine, and of the evening he and Robin had spent at the Ritz together, when she’d first given Strike this information.

Taking out his phone, he brought up the photograph Jade had texted to him, of the note Niall Semple had left behind when he’d disappeared.

All Strike understood of this note was the Latin, which in English read: everything lies veiled in numbers.

He looked up ‘botanist William Wright’ on his phone, and saw that the man had indeed been born in Crieff, and was buried in Edinburgh. He Googled Dunkeld, and saw that the bridge there had been built by Freemason Thomas Telford, and learned furthermore that a bridge over the River Dee had been built by the equally masonic Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Remembering that Semple had wanted to meet an unknown woman in a pub called the Engineer, he wondered vaguely whether masonry appealed particularly to engineers, or vice versa.

He looked up the masonic degrees, and learned that there were no fewer than nine called ‘knight’. He opened Truth About Freemasons again, and searched the site for anything involving the SAS or the armed forces.

He found only two vaguely relevant threads. The first, dated 2015, was discussing how many decorated soldiers were Freemasons. K of the East: Paddy Mayne, one of the founder members of the SAS, definitely was. Died in a collision with a parked tractor in Ireland, after a masonic dinner. Jeroboam9: Pretty sure Austin ‘Fuzz’ Hussey (also SAS, Battle of Mirbat) was a mason. Harry O’Dim: Not true about Hussey, but Johnson Beharry VC definitely is.

The only other mention of the army Strike could find was a further short exchange. St Geo: Is it true a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret died in Op Toral? DeMolay: Yes St Geo: ‘a combat of two religions, meeting head to head, like two goats of darkness on the bridge of the Infinite’ - Pike

Strike re-read the quotation. Something was nagging at him… bridges…

His mobile rang and he saw the number of his friend and longest-standing police contact, Eric Wardle.

‘Hi,’ he said, answering. ‘What’s up?’

‘You got photos of the silver shop body,’ said Wardle.

‘Ah,’ said Strike. Unlike Robin, his pulse didn’t start racing on learning that the Met knew this. ‘Problem?’

‘Well, the team working the case is seriously fucked off at you,’ said Wardle. ‘Guy who leaked them to you’s been suspended.’

‘For the record, it was done on a subcontractor’s own initiative. Not saying I’m not pleased to have the pictures, though.’

‘She’s a shit-stirrer, that Kim Cochran,’ said Wardle, whose tone was flat. ‘She’s caused trouble on every job she worked, from what I’ve heard. Man-eater.’

Strike chose to pretend he hadn’t heard that.

‘What are they more worried about, that I’ve got the pictures, or that they fucked up, claiming the body was Knowles?’

‘Both. And they probably think you’re about to upstage them. Again.’

‘It’s not them I’d be upstaging if I identify that body, it’d be Malcolm Truman,’ said Strike. ‘Are they going to own the mistake, or keep pretending it was Knowles?’

‘Dunno. Just thought you should know, they’ll be looking for any reason to clobber you, if you get under their feet.’

‘Warning noted,’ said Strike. ‘Any line on what happened to Knowles’ body yet?’

‘No idea. I’m signed off work.’

‘You ill?’ asked Strike.

‘Not really,’ said Wardle. Then, evidently feeling this required explanation, he said, ‘Doctor says it’s depression.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, ‘right.’

Wardle had lost his brother to a hit-and-run a few years previously. Strike knew he’d been trying to act as a surrogate father to his four nephews and nieces ever since. Meanwhile, Wardle’s wife had left him, taking their own three-month-old baby with her.

‘Thinking of getting out, actually,’ said Wardle.

‘Of the Met?’ said Strike, keen to clarify what Wardle meant. Men sometimes took a different way out. He’d known a couple.

‘Yeah,’ said Wardle. ‘I’m just… fucking tired.’

‘Job at the agency, any time you fancy taking it,’ said Strike. ‘Change of pace. Friendly team – if you don’t count me, obviously.’

‘Huh,’ said Wardle, in a forced laugh.

‘Fancy a pint when I get back to London?’

‘Yeah, all right. Where are you?’

‘Scotland,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll call you when I get back to town.’

‘Right,’ said Wardle, though he didn’t sound enthusiastic.

Call finished, Strike looked out of the window, feeling even more depressed. The rain was falling more thickly outside. He pulled out his vape, caught the censorious eye of the waitress, put it back in his pocket and ordered a second coffee.

62

It was half past six and dark on the industrial estate. Most of the people moving in and out of the units surrounding God’s Own Junkyard had disappeared, though a few stragglers remained, for which Robin was grateful, because it made her own presence seem less odd.

Finally, the door of Unit Twelve opened, and Robin saw the neon blaze of the interior again, and watched as the three models exited, talking and lighting cigarettes as they reached fresh air, each wrapped in a coat. At last, when the racks of clothes had been rolled into one van, and the photographer and his assistant had packed away their equipment, Valentine Longcaster emerged, pausing to light a cigarette and chat with the models. Feeling it was now or never, and so cold she no longer really cared if she met a rebuff, Robin approached the group.

‘Mr Longcaster?’

Valentine turned.

‘My name’s Robin Ellacott. I’m a private detective and I wondered whether I could have a word with you about Rupert Fleetwood.’

Robin was very aware of four pairs of eyes fixed on her. Ciara Porter in particular – so pale she seemed illuminated in the dark – was goggling at her, and one of the other models, who had a short black pixie cut, gave a little gasp and said in an audible whisper to Ciara:

‘Wait… is this PP?’

‘I think it must be, yeah,’ drawled Valentine, exhaling smoke.

Convinced he was going to refuse to talk, Robin was taken aback when he said,

‘OK. Let’s talk about Rupert fucking Fleetwood.’

The model with the pixie cut laughed.

‘There’s a restaurant not far from here,’ said Robin, who certainly wasn’t going to interview Valentine in front of an audience. ‘We could talk there, if you like?’

‘Doubt there’s anything to “like” in Walthamstow,’ said Valentine. ‘Fine. I’ll follow you in my car.’

‘I didn’t come in a car,’ said Robin. ‘It’s a short walk. Just a couple of minutes.’

‘Then I’ll see you there,’ said Valentine. ‘What’s it called?’

‘Arte e Pasta,’ said Robin. ‘It’s just round the—’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll wait for you there, then.’

She turned and walked away. Behind her, she heard Valentine make some unintelligible comment, and a burst of laughter.

The small restaurant, which lay three minutes’ walk away, had a mural painted on the outer wall. Robin was far too cold to wait for Valentine outside, so headed indoors and secured a table for two beneath a high ceiling that was partly corrugated iron. Coloured lanterns hung from iron bars above the tables and children’s drawings were pinned up on the wall. Robin doubted it was Valentine Longcaster’s kind of place.

Twenty minutes passed with no sign of Longcaster. Robin ordered herself a mineral water and checked her email. Pat had sent a message to both Robin and Strike saying that the local paper had refused to give contact details for the Mohamed family, which made no sense to Robin until she saw the attachment about Hafsa, the nine-year-old Syrian refugee. Hafsa’s picture showed a little girl with a sweet, heart-shaped face and enormous, thick-lashed eyes. Robin was still examining this when she sensed someone looming over her and looked up to see Valentine.

While silhouetted by the neon glow of God’s Own Junkyard, Valentine could have passed for twenty-five, because he was thin and moved energetically. His thick dirty-blond hair was cropped at the sides but with a floppy, boyish fringe, and his clothes were quirky and youthful. However, when he sat down opposite Robin, she thought he looked his full forty years. There was a softness at the chin, bags beneath the bloodshot eyes, of which the pupils were so dilated his blue eyes looked almost black. There was also a cluster of small yellowish pimples at the corner of his mouth, which he’d attempted to conceal with make-up.

‘So,’ he said, shrugging off his black jacket, ‘where’s Decima?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin.

‘Uh huh,’ said Valentine sarcastically. ‘I s’pose she thinks if she stays in hiding long enough, Fleetwood’ll get worried she’s done herself a mischief and come back?’

A young waitress appeared at their table.

‘What’s safe to drink?’ drawled Valentine, looking up at the girl.

‘Oh, well, we’ve got—’

‘Peroni,’ he said.

‘I’m fine with this water,’ Robin said, before the waitress could ask.

The waitress departed to fetch Valentine’s beer. Robin took out her notebook.

‘So, could I ask when you last saw Rupert?’ she asked.

‘You could,’ said Valentine. ‘Are you going to?’

‘OK,’ said Robin. ‘When did you last—?’

‘On May the twenty-first last year, as you already know, because Sacha told Corporal Brokeby.’

Robin chose to ignore the insulting nickname for Strike.

‘And you haven’t had any contact with him since?’

‘Of course I bloody haven’t.’

‘Why “of course”?’

‘You can drop the Miss Marple thing, you’re not going to catch me out.’

‘What d’you—?’

‘Decima’s already told you I think Fleetwood’s a conniving little shit on the make, I’m sure. The family’s glad to see the back of him.’

Robin’s mobile rang. She pulled it out of her pocket, saw her mother’s number, and refused the call.

‘You argued with Rupert on the twenty-first of May, right?’ she said to Valentine. ‘What was that about?’

‘He’d gatecrashed Sacha’s party, and I don’t like freeloaders.’

‘Why did Rupert turn up there, do you know? He’d stolen that nef from your father, so it seems odd—’

‘Well, he’s thick as shit, you see,’ said Valentine. He raked his hair out of his eyes, glaring at Robin through the huge black pupils. ‘He didn’t believe my father would call the police, because of publicity, but my father doesn’t give a shit what the press say about him and he certainly wouldn’t care what they write about Fleetwood. I told him at the party my father had rung the police as soon as he realised the nef had gone, so he panicked and fucked off again. Decima ought to have paid him what the nef was worth, to make him give it back. Apparently she hasn’t learned her lesson.’

‘What lesson?’

‘That if you want to turn a gigolo into a permanent fixture, you need to keep coughing up,’ said Valentine. ‘She married another leech in her twenties, did she mention that?’

‘No,’ said Robin.

‘Well, she did, so the family’s been here before. Mullins was a better-looking Fleetwood. Shitty business ideas, trying to make everyone invest, then bolt for someone better-looking once he realised Decima wasn’t actually a cashpoint, just shaped like one.’

The waitress arrived with Valentine’s lager. As he clearly wasn’t going to thank her, Robin did it.

‘Are you ready to order?’ asked the waitress.

‘I’m not eating,’ said Valentine.

‘Spaghetti carbonara, please,’ said Robin, who felt one of them should justify taking up a table. The waitress left again, and Robin said,

‘So you think Rupert left your sister for another woman?’

‘It’s what most of her boyfriends do.’

‘Your sister Cosima was upset by what Rupert said to her, at the party, right?’

‘So?’

‘What did he say to upset her?’

‘That’s none of your fucking business.’

‘Well, it is my business,’ said Robin, ‘because I’m being paid to find out why Rupert disappeared.’

‘He hasn’t fucking disappeared, he’s in America.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Sacha told me.’ After a slight hesitation, Valentine said, ‘Fleetwood was rude to Cosima when she told him he shouldn’t have gatecrashed, all right?’

‘She approached him, did she? To tell him he should get out?’

‘No,’ said Valentine, but then, ‘possibly.’

‘Sacha told my partner that Rupert seemed to have come looking for a fight. Who did he want to fight with? Cosima? You?’

Valentine sipped his Peroni.

‘Because I don’t think it adds up,’ Robin persisted, ‘that he went there just for free drink. He was moving out of his house that weekend. That’s always stressful, and hard work. Plus, I spoke to a good friend of Rupert’s, Albie Simpson-White—’

‘Who?’

‘He used to work at your father’s club. The way he described Rupert, gatecrashing that party would be quite out of character.’

‘But he did it,’ said Valentine, ‘so Albie What-ever-the-fuck’s powers of perception don’t seem great, do they?’

‘Sacha said Cosima was in tears. Does she cry that easily, in the middle of a party, just because a gatecrasher’s rude to her?’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ said Valentine, suddenly aggressive, and leaning in.

‘I’m simply—’

‘If you or your fucking partner go anywhere near Cosima—’

‘We won’t need to, if you just tell me—’

‘Did you hear what I just said to you?’

‘Why did you agree to talk to me?’ asked Robin, feigning composure. When he’d leaned in she’d seen the slight residue of white powder around his nostrils; he’d taken cocaine either in the car or just before leaving God’s Own Junkyard. ‘People usually agree to an interview because they want to find out what we already know.’

‘Is this what the great detective’s taught you? Transparent little mind games?’

‘It’s not a mind game, I’m—’

‘D’you sit at Brokeby’s one and a half feet, drinking in his wisdom?’

‘Two feet, one fake. You’re thinking of his legs. But go on.’

‘That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d say, the point-scoring little fucking pedant.’

‘He’s hardly little,’ said Robin.

‘You’d know, of course.’

‘We’re seriously doing penis innuendoes, are we?’ said Robin.

‘Quod si non aliud potest, ruborem ferreo canis exprimamus ore.’

‘You’ll have to translate, I’m afraid. I never did Latin.’

‘Ask your fucking boyfriend to do it.’

‘My boyfriend doesn’t speak Latin, either.’

‘He’ll understand that.’

‘Cormoran Strike isn’t my—’

‘Oh,’ said Valentine. ‘Got bored already, has he? That was quick.’

‘We’re not together, and we never have been,’ said Robin. ‘I’m here—’

Her phone rang again. It was Linda, a second time. Robin refused the call.

‘You two were fucking as soon as he left Charlotte,’ said Valentine.

‘You’ve been misinformed,’ said Robin.

‘It’s you who’s been misinformed, dear.’

‘I think I’m more likely to know who I’m sleeping—’

‘Did you know he knocked her around?’

‘Mr Longcaster, I—’

‘Rather not hear hard facts about your hero?’

‘Cormoran Strike isn’t my hero, he’s my business partner,’ said Robin.

‘Charlotte told me you were pretty fucking starry-eyed whenever he walked in the room.’

‘She saw us together for about a minute and a half, tops,’ said Robin, starting to lose her cool against her will. ‘And as I recall, I was looking at her the whole—’

‘I’ll bet you were. Like what you see?’

‘What’s that supposed—?’

‘Eyeing up the competition? You were no fucking competition, not to her.’

‘As I wasn’t competing, that’s neither—’

‘D’you know what she called you?’

‘I really couldn’t care le—’

‘“PP”,’ said Valentine. ‘Want to know what that stands for?’

‘I think we’re done here,’ said Robin, but with execrable timing, the waitress now returned and put a plate of spaghetti in front of her.

‘Thank you,’ muttered Robin.

‘Parmesan?’

‘No, thank you.’

The waitress walked away.

‘I think we’re done,’ Robin repeated to Valentine, but he didn’t move.

‘If Corporal Brokeby had come to me with that “what if Fleetwood’s killed himself?” bullshit he pulled on Sacha, I’d’ve given him what he deserves,’ said Valentine. ‘He wants to talk suicide, I’m more than fucking ready to talk suicide.’

‘Well, you had your chance,’ said Robin, ‘and you refused to speak to him.’

‘It’s on him Charlotte’s dead.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Robin.

‘He fucking destroyed her.’

‘They split up six years before she did it.’

‘That’s what he told you, is it?’

Robin felt a creeping sensation in her stomach. Had Strike hidden that, too? Had he continued to meet Charlotte, and sleep with her, through those years he’d pretended they’d split up?’

‘PP stands for the pit pony,’ said Valentine remorselessly. ‘Cormoran Strike’s scruffy little Yorkshire helper.’

‘Charming,’ said Robin. ‘If you’ve quite—’

‘He screwed around when he was supposed to be with her, he knocked her about, and she still fucking loved him, and the night she died, he said stuff to her—’

‘My information is, he didn’t pick up the phone,’ said Robin.

‘Then you need a better source of fucking information,’ said Valentine.

He got to his feet, looking down at her.

‘You are a fucking pit pony. He drags you along in the dark like some dumb fucking animal. Now fuck off away from my family. I don’t want to see you, ever again.’

He strode away, jacket over his shoulder, swearing at a woman who was too slow to move aside from the door.

63

Robin didn’t have the slightest appetite for her spaghetti now. Just as she was thinking of calling the waitress over to say she’d like the bill, her mobile rang for a third time. Seeing her mother was calling again, she took a deep breath, put a finger in her free ear to block out the noise of the restaurant, and answered.

‘Hi Mum, sorry I didn’t answer earlier, I was on a job. Is everything OK?’

‘Carmen’s had the baby,’ said Linda.

‘Wait – what? I thought she wasn’t due ’til—’

‘He’s a month early,’ said Linda, ‘and it was a bad birth, and they think there’s something wrong.’

A chill ran through Robin.

‘With the baby?’

‘Yes,’ said Linda. ‘We’re waiting to hear, we’re at the hospital.’

‘What—?’

‘He’s not moving an arm properly or something, I don’t know, nobody’s giving us full information. They think it’s a birth injury, torn nerves, or – nobody seems to know.’

‘Oh no,’ said Robin, who felt completely helpless. ‘I – what can I do?’

‘Nothing, nothing, I just needed to let you kn – Robin, that’s the doctor – I’ll call you back.’

She hung up.

‘Everything all right with your spaghetti?’ said the young waitress, reappearing at the table.

‘Fine,’ said Robin, looking up. ‘Could I have the bill, please?’

‘Are you sure there’s nothing—?’

‘No, please – please just get me the bill.’

Five minutes later, Robin emerged into the icy night, and set off in the direction of the nearest station. Finally, unable to bear her anxiety alone, she tugged off her gloves and called Ilsa.

‘Hi, how’re you?’ said the latter, answering on the third ring.

‘I’m really sorry to do this to you again, Ilsa, I just need to talk to someone. Well, to you.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘I – my brother’s girlfriend’s just had her baby a month early, and there’s something wrong with him, I just heard—’

‘Oh no, Robin, I’m so sorry—’

‘It’s not that, I can’t do anything about that tonight,’ said Robin distractedly. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t care about this right now, but Ilsa, I just need to know, was Strike violent to Charlotte Campbell?’

‘What?’

‘I just met a man called Valentine Longcaster, and—’

‘Him,’ said Ilsa, her tone scathing. ‘Oh, I know him. We met him a couple of times. There was a bloody terrible party on a barge, and some dinner in Belgravia. How on earth did you meet him?’

‘It’s complicated,’ said Robin. ‘Anyway, he told me Strike knocked Charlotte around, and Ilsa, if he did—’

‘Did he hell,’ said Ilsa.

‘Are you sure?’ said Robin, and even as she said it, she knew nobody could give her the total assurance she craved. Who knew what happened when a man and a woman were alone together, unwatched, unheard? ‘I can’t work with him if – I can’t take this, on top of everything else—’

‘Robin, she injured him. She threw things, clawed his face—’

‘How d’you know it wasn’t self-defence?’

‘Well, for a start: the night on the houseboat, she got hammered and grabbed a knife and was waving it around. We all left, but Nick had left his favourite bloody sunglasses there, so he went back. He saw it through the window, she was threatening to stab Corm, or herself, and he disarmed her, and she slipped – we never told Corm Nick had seen it, but ages later Corm told Nick she was accusing him of throwing her across the boat or some such rubbish. If he was so violent, why was he the one constantly walking out with split lips, and why was she always begging him to come back?’

Robin wanted to believe Ilsa, but given recent events, she wasn’t sure she could be certain of anything relating to Cormoran Strike.

‘Look, nine times out of ten women are telling the truth about being beaten,’ said Ilsa, ‘and I should know, I’ve prosecuted enough domestic abuse cases, but Corm’s not an abuser. Robin, he’s not. Listen, I had a really terrible case, five years ago: a woman who was trying to get sole custody of her young daughter…’

Robin heard footsteps behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, but the man was fifty yards away. She didn’t like being followed, not after Harrods, and the incident that had left her with an eight-inch scar up her right forearm – not that this man was following her, of course, he was simply walking in the same direction, in the dark. Anyway, this was a residential street: lit windows everywhere, plenty of people to hear her scream…

‘… own history of violence, so the only way she was going to get custody was to paint him as even worse. She said he’d attacked them with broken bottles and used ligatures…’

Was it Robin’s imagination, or was the man behind her speeding up? She looked back again. Yes, he was definitely closer, and one hand seemed to be inside his jacket.

‘… just fell apart on the stand. It couldn’t have happened the way she claimed. Meanwhile, her partner had been seen covered in abrasions and bruises…’

The man behind Robin passed beneath a street light. He was wearing a latex gorilla mask.

‘Ilsa,’ Robin shouted, ‘I’m on Shernhall Street, heading towards Wood Street station and I’m being followed, and I’m about to film him and describe him to you.’

‘Wh—?’

‘If anything happens, call the police!’

He was striding straight for her; Robin raised her phone, as though she was filming him, and said loudly,

‘He’s wearing a gorilla mask, about five nine, dark hair, green jacket, black gloves—’

The man slowed. She could see his eyes glinting behind the small holes in the mask.

‘You need to stop,’ he said in a low voice, advancing on her as she walked backwards. ‘Stop. Just stop.’

From beneath his jacket, he drew a dagger.

‘ILSA,’ said Robin, now screaming, ‘HE’S GOT A KNIFE—’

64

‘You need to stop,’ the man repeated, from behind the mask. ‘All right? You need to leave it. Then you won’t get hurt. Stop.’

Before Robin could say or do anything else, he threw the dagger at her feet, turned, and sprinted away.

Ilsa was still shouting on the other end of the phone. Too stunned to compute what had just happened, Robin stared at the dagger lying on the pavement, then crouched down to look at it.

‘ARE YOU THERE? ROBIN!’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, raising the phone to her ear again. Her heart seemed to be thudding in her throat. ‘I’m here. I’m fine. It’s OK. He ran away.’

‘JESUS CHRIST, ROBIN!’

‘It’s all right, I’m OK. He didn’t do any—’

‘You all right?’ said a man in slippers, who’d just emerged from the nearest house. ‘I heard a scream.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, while Ilsa gabbled from the phone she’d lowered to answer him. ‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine. A man was following me, but he’s gone.’

‘You sure you’re all right?’

He was elderly, and as he drew nearer to the street light she saw his look of concern.

‘Yes, really, I’m fine, but thank you – thank you so much for checking.’

The man retreated inside his house. Robin raised the phone to her ear yet again.

‘It’s all fine, Ilsa, he just threw the knife at me.’

‘He what?’

‘I know,’ said Robin, gaining a perverse strength from Ilsa’s panic. ‘Some attacker.’

‘He threw the knife at you?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, staring at the dagger lying on the ground. Its nine-inch blade looked blunt. It had a black handle and a brass crosspiece, on which a familiar symbol was engraved. Robin pulled her gloves back out of her pocket, put them on with her phone held between ear and shoulder, and picked it up. Ilsa was still talking.

‘Sorry, what?’ said Robin, straightening up, weighing the dagger in her hand. It was fifteen inches long, weighty and very clearly ceremonial rather than a genuine weapon. Even so, it would make a decent bludgeon.

‘I said, call the police!’

‘I doubt they’ll get him,’ said Robin, now examining the compass and square symbol on the hilt. ‘It’s dark and he was wearing a mask. No cameras… anyway, I’m not hurt. He just wanted to frighten me.’

‘That’s hardly the bloody—!’

‘Where did he follow me from?’ said Robin, talking more to herself than to Ilsa, now.

‘Robin, you’re scaring the crap out of me—’

‘I’m all right, I’m fine… now I just need to find a way of hiding this dagger so I don’t get arrested on the Tube.’

Robin’s phone began bleeping.

‘Ilsa, I’m really sorry, that’s Mum, I’ll have to take it.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll call you back.’

A man walking his dog appeared out of the darkness ahead. Robin thrust the masonic dagger inside her coat, tightened her belt so it wouldn’t fall out and accepted her mother’s call.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Oh, Robin, what a nightmare,’ said Linda, who was clearly crying.

‘What is?’ said Robin, in alarm.

‘Martin just threatened to hit the doctor—’

‘What?’

‘It turns out Carmen’s got an android pelvis—’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s harder for the baby to get through, they think that’s why he was injured coming out, if he’d been full term they’d probably have done a C-section – Martin’s blaming them for not realising and acting sooner, she was in labour for nineteen hours and now he’s been escorted out of the hospital…’

Robin walked on, her mother sobbing in her ear, and could think of nothing to say except,

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘He’s gone after Martin, he’s trying to calm him down…’

‘Mum, I’m so sorry,’ said Robin. ‘I wish I could do something…’

‘Oh, Lord, hang on, Stephen’s just arrived…’ Linda’s voice became muffled. ‘It’s Robin, Stephen, I’m just telling her… I’m back,’ said Linda into the phone again.

‘But what’s wrong with the baby? You said his arm’s not moving.’

‘They say it’s torn nerves, something palsy – they need to investigate. They say it might resolve, if that’s what it is, but they seem worried…’

‘Mum, I—’ But Robin couldn’t think of anything to say that would help. ‘Please… just send Carmen my love, and say I’m really looking forward to meeting – has he got a name yet?’

‘They’re saying they’re going to call him Dirk,’ said Linda. ‘I don’t care… I just want him to be all right… you’re OK, are you?’ Linda added, clearly feeling she should check.

‘Me?’ said Robin, pausing to tighten her belt, as the dagger was slipping. ‘I’m great. Don’t worry about me.’

Now hyper-alert, Robin hurried home, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder. Once in her flat, she placed the dagger engraved with the compass and set square inside a new freezer bag, then hid it in her underwear drawer, alongside the small rubber gorilla that had been forced into her hand at Harrods.

Had they been the same man? Had she – the thought was irresistible – just come face to face with Oz?

Before she drew the sitting room curtains she peered down into the street to be sure no lurker was watching. She told herself there’d been a comic aspect to her menacer’s methodology; throwing the dagger at her had been ludicrously anticlimactic, the kind of thing a child would do. But the gorilla mask had upset her, far more than the knife; that had been vile, personal, intended to invoke atavistic terror. She returned to her front door three times in the twenty minutes after arriving home, rechecking that she’d bolted it, and that she’d set her alarm.

The more Robin thought about it, the more certain she was that the man must have followed her from her flat that morning, taken the bus with her, then lurked on that industrial estate, and now she thought about it, the man with the bandana who’d been hanging around had the same dark green jacket as the one wearing the gorilla mask. He’d pretended to be just another worker moving around the industrial units, waiting for a chance to frighten her with his mask and dagger and deliver his message. She felt humiliated: she, who’d undertaken training in surveillance and counter-surveillance, was supposed to know better than this. She knew all the tricks because she used them herself: taking her jacket on and off, subtly changing her appearance, concealing her face, constantly switching position. He hadn’t even been very good: she’d noticed him earlier, staring at her.

She knew exactly why she’d been so careless, of course. Relieved at being alone, and not having to fake cheeriness for Murphy, she’d sunk back into brooding about Strike and Bijou Watkins, then been distracted by the presence at the shoot of Ciara Porter.

Nervy, angry at herself, and in spite of the fact she’d eaten barely anything all day, Robin took only two bites of the sandwich she made herself, then threw the rest in the bin. She debated calling her boyfriend, but decided against it, still angry about the way he’d spoken to her earlier. In any case, she couldn’t tell him about the man with the dagger; he’d overreact, and the last thing she needed right now was the burden of his concern, or renewed insistence that she shouldn’t be investigating the body in the vault.

No, the only person she could tell – the only person she had to tell – was Strike. She picked up her phone again and contemplated calling him, then decided she’d tell him the following day when they were in Ironbridge.

The man upstairs was probably out, because no music was pounding through the ceiling. This was good: Robin would be able to hear movement on her landing, have advance warning of anyone trying to get inside her flat. She went to run herself a bath. Twice, she hurriedly turned off the taps, convinced she’d heard a sound outside the front door.

Nobody’s going to break in. Calm down, for God’s sake.

She got into the bath, trying to enjoy the feeling of hot water, to relax. She needed to be able to sleep: she’d be up at five the following morning to pick up the hire car in which she’d be driving to Ironbridge, to interview Tyler Powell’s grandmother.

The gorilla mask swam into her mind’s eye, the pupils glinting in the street light. He was the third man who’d come at her, out of the dark: she remembered the hands throttling her in the stairwell, the scream of her rape alarm, the knife slicing her flesh…

Charlotte Campbell brandishing a knife on a barge; it’s on him Charlotte’s dead; a premature baby with an injured arm; fifty-five per cent chance of a live birth; the box at Chapman Farm; you don’t know what it’s like, to worry yourself sick about your daughter; a bracelet, a dagger and a rubber gorilla, hidden from the man she was house-hunting with; when you start undermining a fucking police investigation… We’re just trying to find Rupert Fleetwood… I’m really disappointed we didn’t get the house… Me? I’m great. Don’t worry about me…

She couldn’t tell the people who were supposed to love her the truth, because they didn’t want the truth, they wanted her to be the person whose lies weren’t lies.

The bath wasn’t helping. Charlotte Campbell had bled out in a tub like this…

Robin got out and pulled out the plug as though she could drain her dark thoughts with the water, dried herself and put on pyjamas. For the very first time since moving into this flat, she wished she didn’t live alone, and at once she remembered the night Strike had come to stay, when he’d snored on the sofa bed and she’d found the sound reassuring, because their office had just been destroyed by an explosive device…

Why was she thinking about Strike, not Murphy? She turned on the TV, then turned it off almost at once. She wanted to be able to hear footsteps.

You are a fucking pit pony. Getting dragged along in the dark, like some dumb animal.

You need to leave it. Then you won’t get hurt. Stop.

65

Strike had used the retractable walking stick he carried with him for emergencies to enter and leave the Travelodge in Penrith, and slathered the end of his stump in its usual moisturising cream before sleeping. Unfortunately, neither measure had ameliorated the pain in his right knee, which remained swollen and continued to resent the slightest amount of weight-bearing or movement.

The drive to Ironbridge the following morning was therefore uncomfortable even though the Audi was an automatic. The rain lifted as he drove south, but the intermittent sunlight didn’t do much to cheer him. He ought to have been driving away from the Lake District hotel with Robin at his side, either ecstatic that his declaration of love had been reciprocated and (even better) consummated, or – and in his current glum state of mind, he didn’t doubt that this had been more likely, all along – in extreme mutual embarrassment, because she’d turned him down. But he’d have swapped even that for this state of flat depression. There was no dishonour in losing after venturing everything; he’d have coped, and he’d have known, at least, that he’d tried, but to be gunned down before you’d even left your trench was ignominious defeat indeed.

The small town of Ironbridge was beautiful, which Strike hadn’t expected. A dramatic arching iron bridge spanned the sludge-green River Severn, which was bordered by thick trees and foliage. Buildings seemed to tumble down the steep hill on the north bank, where the High Street, parallel with the river, was bordered with shops, cafés and pubs that had a quaintly 1950s appearance, their signs illuminated by the wintry sunlight. Strike took no pleasure in the scene; he’d have preferred to be pulling up among graffitied tower blocks and broken glass, which would have better chimed with his mood.

He left his Audi in the car park of the Swan Taphouse, and was about to text Robin his position when he spotted her a hundred yards away, getting out of her own hire car. He resented having to use the stick to walk towards her, because it felt like asking for pity.

Robin, who’d had only a couple of hours’ sleep the night before, which had been punctuated by dreams of oversleeping to pick up the hire car, and of the box at Chapman Farm, and of Murphy shouting at her, had spent much of the journey resolving to be completely natural with Strike when she saw him. Murphy had called her during her drive north, apologising for being so angry about the photographs of the body in the vault, and they’d reaffirmed their intention to look over the two-bedroomed house in Walthamstow the following day. She hadn’t, of course, told her boyfriend about being threatened with a masonic dagger.

Approaching each other from a distance, both self-conscious, each was struck by very different thoughts. Strike thought Robin looked far from her best. She still hadn’t regained all the weight she’d lost at Chapman Farm, and in this bright winter light looked slightly gaunt and very tired. She also had a smudge of something black beneath her right eye. But none of it mattered: he wanted her as he’d never wanted any woman in his life, and it was too late.

Meanwhile, Robin saw Strike limping towards her, and she hated herself for recognising how attractive she found him, dishevelled and badly shaven as he was. It had taken Robin a long time to see what other women seemed to find so sexy about this broken-nosed, overweight, bear-like man, and it was extremely upsetting to find him physically appealing now, of all possible times, and she needed to readjust her sight again, to focus exclusively on Murphy (who’s the Paul Newman lookalike?) because Strike was a liar who hid both girlfriends and babies from his business partner.

‘Hi,’ said Strike, when they’d covered the last few yards separating them, each trying to look at anything but the other. ‘We’ve got half an hour before Dilys, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Want to get a coffee or something?’

‘OK,’ said Robin. ‘I think that hotel’s open.’

In spite of her resolution to be natural, she heard the unfriendliness in her voice as she pointed towards the Tontine Hotel, a large Georgian building with pea-green shutters that overlooked the iron bridge.

They crossed the road in silence. Robin might have asked about the fact that her partner was walking with a stick, but as he usually disliked enquiries about his leg, she decided not to. Strike, meanwhile, was perversely wondering why she couldn’t at least ask about his leg.

Once sitting in the window at the hotel bar, each with a coffee, Strike told Robin about his interview with Jade Semple, omitting to mention either his crashing hangover or the fact that he’d fallen on his arse in the mud mid-interview, because his reputation as a detective was about the only thing he currently had going for him and he was damned if he was going to give that up, too.

‘If Niall was in such a poor mental state he was scared of crossing a bridge,’ said Robin, once Strike had finished, ‘is it likely he was in a fit state to run away with a girlfriend? Wouldn’t that woman be worried about him? Would she want the responsibility?’

‘No idea,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ll be honest, I don’t think the Semples’ marriage was a meeting of minds. She’s from Colchester, which means she probably met him when he was still 3 Para, as it’s where they’ve got their base. To be blunt about it, men in those kinds of regiments are warned against local girls looking for a ticket out of small-town life. She’s good-looking enough, but I can’t see that they’d have had a hell of a lot in common. Semple passed SAS selection, so he’ll be very intelligent, and she said herself they were both unfaithful before they got married. I think she got pregnant, he felt cornered and thought he was doing the right thing, marrying her.’

Severely aggravated by Strike’s gall in talking so casually about accidental pregnancy, and his implicit criticism of Niall Semple for getting entangled with a woman with whom he had nothing in common, Robin said,

‘Did you ask her about Reata Lindvall and Belgium?’

Shit. He’d completely forgotten.

‘Yeah. No connection,’ said Strike.

‘Did you ask whether he knew a man called Oz?’

Fuck. He hadn’t asked that, either.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘She didn’t think so.’

‘So,’ said Robin, striving to sound coolly professional, ‘how likely d’you think it is that Niall Semple was the man in the vault?’

‘On balance, slightly more likely than Fleetwood,’ said Strike, ‘because he’s a mason and, from what Jade says, he got a bit obsessive about Freemasonry, post-injury. Plus, there’s a connection with the name William Wright. On the other hand, would he have been capable of all the subterfuge involved in pretending to be Wright, with a brain injury? And why was he going on twenty-mile runs? That suggests to me he was training for something, or thought he was. I can’t help wondering whether he hasn’t left the country, tried to get back to a battlefield, find or avenge his best mate.’

‘But we’d know if he’d left the UK.’

‘You think the SAS always travel on their own passports?’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, to whom this hadn’t occurred.

‘We’re talking about the kind of bloke who can navigate by the stars, scale buildings without ropes, learn Arabic in two weeks flat – they’re the best of the best, the SAS. I struggle to see why a man like that would think it important to go undercover in a silver shop in London.’

‘Maybe the brain injury made him abnormally interested in the Murdoch silver?’

‘Oh yeah, and she gave me a picture of the note he left for her,’ said Strike, pulling out his phone, and Robin’s anger at him burned a little hotter for him ignoring her suggestion. Nevertheless, she took the mobile and read the strange message.

‘“RL knows where”,’ she read aloud. ‘Any idea what that means?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

Only now did it occur to him that these were Reata Lindvall’s initials, but as they were millions of other people’s initials, too, he didn’t find the fact of overwhelming relevance.

‘The other thing I found out was that he’d handcuffed his briefcase to him. I thought it looked like that, when I saw the photo in the press.’

‘You think he had something valuable in there?’

‘That would seem the obvious explanation, but if so, he must’ve got hold of the valuable thing between leaving Crieff on the twenty-seventh of May and visiting a cashpoint on the fourth of June. Jade says he didn’t take anything valuable with him. Maybe some old masonic books.’

‘Well, I managed to speak to Tia Thompson, Sapphire’s friend, yesterday,’ said Robin, handing Strike back his phone and making sure their fingers didn’t touch.

‘Ah, good work,’ said Strike, trying to curry favour, but she didn’t smile. After giving Strike a concise summary of all Tia had told her, she concluded,

‘… and the last thing she told me was, this mysterious man in the music business told Sapphire she reminded him of a Swedish girl he’d once known.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Strike, choosing not to voice his opinion that ‘you look Swedish’ was a fairly easy line to toss at a young blonde Brit you were trying to flatter. Nevertheless, still trying to ingratiate himself, he said, ‘Well, we aren’t exactly swamped with candidates for Rita Linda, so we should definitely bear Lindvall in mind… speaking of schoolkids, Pat thinks she’s found Hussein Mohamed – or his daughter, anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘she emailed me.’

‘With the photo of the kid that was in the paper, we could—’

‘Hang around primary schools in Forest Gate and tail her home?’ said Robin.

‘It worked with Tia Thompson.’

‘I didn’t tail her home, and Tia’s sixteen. Do you seriously think that’s the same thing as stalking a child in a wheelchair who’s just escaped a civil war?’

‘I’m not talking about stalk – OK, forget it, it was just an idea,’ said Strike.

‘We’d better pay for our coffees,’ said Robin. ‘We haven’t got long now.’

‘I’ll get it,’ said Strike, reaching for his wallet.

‘I need the bathroom,’ said Robin, standing up. ‘Er – Dilys’s house is up quite a steep road, I’ve just seen the sign. If your leg’s bad—’

‘It’s fine,’ said Strike shortly.

Sod you, then, thought Robin, walking away in search of the Ladies.

Strike asked for the bill then stared gloomily out of the window at the huge iron bridge. Suddenly, his subconscious decided to throw up the thing that had been nagging at him in the café in Moffat. The unknown Scottish woman who’d twice called the office to beg for his help, and asked him to meet her in the Golden Fleece, had said: It’s all hid under the bridge.

Meanwhile Robin, who was washing her hands at the sink, looked into the mirror over it and noticed not only how pale and exhausted she looked, but also the large black smudge of mascara under her right eye. Strike could have told her about it, she thought furiously, as she wiped it away.

66

Robin hadn’t been lying about the steepness of New Road, which made Comrie Road in Crieff look like a gentle incline. It wound its way up the hill behind the High Street and the gradient was such that, in spite of the cold, Strike was soon sweating from pure pain, and, against his will, having to stop every few yards.

‘Listen,’ said Robin, sympathy temporarily dampening down her resentment, ‘I can easily interview Dilys alone.’

‘No,’ panted Strike, ‘I’m coming.’

A mixture of pride, stubbornness and some sad residue of his determination to spend as much time with Robin as possible forced him onwards. Murphy, he thought, while his knee screamed for mercy, would doubtless be gambolling up the hill like a fucking gazelle.

The houses on both sides of the narrow road faced the river below, so that those on the right showed their back view. All were detached and well maintained, some built of brick, others painted and cottagey, with trailing plants around the doors. Robin, who’d been trying to match her speed to Strike’s without dawdling too obviously, suddenly stopped of her own accord, staring at a circular blue plaque on a house in a short terrace.

‘Strike.’

‘What?’

She pointed. He followed her finger and read:

‘Christ,’ muttered Strike, glad of a chance to stop walking, and trying not to look as though the stick was bearing half his weight. ‘Billy Wright… that should’ve occurred to me… never think of him as William…’

‘And Tyler’s grandmother lives just there,’ said Robin. She was pointing at a house that was rather smaller than those that flanked it, and painted a muddy shade of orange.

‘Just there’, Strike thought, was a relative term. It took him a further five minutes of agony to reach the wooden front door of Dilys Powell.

Robin knocked, then knocked again. They waited.

‘Oh no,’ said Robin. ‘She sounded pretty vague both times I spoke to her… maybe she forgot we were coming?’

Strike barely refrained from swearing. Robin peered in through the dusty window, past the plastic flowers in a jug on the window sill, to an old lady-ish room of armchairs bearing antimacassars, bits of inexpensive china and a patterned purple carpet.

‘Tyler’s parents’ house is a bit further on,’ said Robin. ‘We could try there?’

‘Fine,’ said Strike, trying to look as though this would require no effort whatsoever.

They set off again, Strike now bent sideways, trying to use the stick as a back-up leg.

At the crest of the hill stood a white house larger than Dilys’s, outside which was a For Sale sign. Robin knocked. Nobody answered. She went to peer through a window. The downstairs room was devoid of furniture.

‘Oi!’

The detectives turned. A short and extremely belligerent-looking man with longish dark hair had emerged from the back door of the house opposite. He was wearing a Steely Dan T-shirt and holding an acoustic guitar by the neck and as he hurried towards them, he did precisely what Strike had been trying to avoid for the last fifteen minutes: slipped on his back lawn and tripped. However, he recovered his balance with the aid of his guitar and, hobbling and slightly pigeon-toed, he advanced on them, shouting:

‘What d’you want? Bloody press, is it?’

‘No,’ said Strike, interested in this assumption. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card. ‘We’re private detectives.’

Robin assumed the man was Tyler’s neighbour Ian Griffiths, because he’d just emerged from the house she knew Ian Griffiths owned. Robin had grown up in a tall family – the only person in it who was of average height was her mother, and all her brothers were around six feet tall – and she felt slightly guilty (was there such a thing as sizeism?) that the first thing she’d noticed about Ian Griffiths was that he wasn’t much over five feet tall. She had to admire his courage, though, because he was facing up to Strike as though more than willing to challenge him physically, in spite of the height difference between them of over a foot, and the fact that Strike was considerably broader. Possibly, she thought, Griffiths intended using the guitar as a weapon. He all but snatched the card out of Strike’s hand.

‘Detectives?’ Griffiths snarled, reading the card. ‘Shropshire bloody Star, is it?’

‘No,’ said Robin, before Strike could answer; she sensed some placation might be necessary, and Strike’s gifts in that area were variable. ‘Dilys Powell invited us here to talk about her grandson Tyler, but she doesn’t seem to be at home.’

‘Dilys hired you?’ said Griffiths, in clear disbelief.

‘No, we’re working for a different client,’ said Robin.

‘Faber bloody Whitehead, is it?’ said Griffiths, looking still more incensed.

‘I don’t know anyone called Whitehead,’ said Robin mildly. ‘Dilys thinks Tyler might have been the man found dead in a silver shop in London last June. That’s why she wanted to talk to us.’

‘Oh,’ said Griffiths. Some of the wind appeared to have been taken out of his sails. ‘Yeah. She mentioned something about that…’

‘You wouldn’t happen to know where Dilys is?’ asked Robin.

‘No,’ said Griffiths, looking down the road in the direction of Dilys’s house. ‘She’s probably forgotten you’re coming. She’s on a lot of medication. She had a bad fall a couple of months ago. Lethal, this hill, when it’s icy.’

His belligerence seemed to be turning into embarrassment. He looked in his mid-forties; dark, with hazel eyes and a dimple in his chin, quite a handsome man. Now he glanced down at the guitar as though surprised to find himself holding it.

‘You’ll know Tyler Powell, I suppose?’ said Robin. ‘Living opposite his parents?’

‘Yeah, I know him,’ said Griffiths, who seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. He squinted back up at Strike, who he seemed to find particularly suspicious. ‘You’re definitely not working for the Whiteheads?’

‘Never heard of them,’ said Strike.

‘OK, well… you can come in here and wait for Dilys, if you want. She won’t have gone far. Have a cup of tea. It’s bloody cold.’

‘Very good of you,’ said Strike, grateful for the chance to take the weight off his right knee. ‘Thanks.’

‘Ian Griffiths,’ said the man, at last holding out a hand, which first Strike, then Robin shook. ‘But everyone calls me Griff.’

Still holding his guitar, Griffiths led Strike and Robin in through his back gate. His back garden was full of whimsical sculptures, including a gargoyle.

Strike, who’d dropped out of university at the end of his first year, had only a vague memory of student accommodation, but in his disapproving view, the interior of Ian Griffiths’ house spoke of someone who’d never aged out of their late teens. Not only did the place stink of joss sticks, to which Strike had a strong aversion, because they’d been one of the signature smells of the various houses to which Leda had dragged him in childhood, but the sitting room into which Griffiths led them was cluttered with kitschy objects that Strike mentally classed as ‘tat’: Day of the Dead figurines, snow globes filled with glitter, a Rastafarian teddy bear, scatter cushions in psychedelic patterns and a framed poster of Jesus smoking a joint were among the objects for which Strike would have had no earthly use. Candles had been stuck in empty wine bottles, ramshackle shelves held a combination of LPs and CDs, and a keyboard and two more guitars stood in the corner, though Strike noted grudgingly that the place seemed basically clean.

There were a lot of framed photographs, the largest of which showed a pretty dark-haired woman in a tie-dyed shirt and beaded necklace who had her arms around an equally pretty little girl. The same child featured in other photographs, in two of which she was wearing school uniform.

Seeing Robin’s eyes on the photographs, Griffiths said,

‘I lost my wife seven years ago. Breast cancer.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Robin.

‘Thanks,’ said Griffiths. ‘We moved to Ironbridge to be near my brother and his wife. Chloe’s all grown up now and interrailing with her boyfriend, so it’s just me at the moment. What d’you take in your tea?’

When they’d given their requests and Griffiths had left to make the drinks, Strike and Robin sat down on the sofa, which was covered in a throw patterned with a mandala. Robin, who knew exactly what Strike’s feelings would be about their host’s taste in décor, might have passed comment, but chose instead to get out her notebook.

‘You question him,’ said Strike in a low voice. ‘I’ll take notes. Think he likes you better than me.’

‘Fine,’ said Robin, returning her notebook to her pocket.

Griffiths returned after five minutes with three mugs of tea and a plate of Tunnock’s Teacakes. Strike thanked him and placed his mug beside him on a rickety wicker tray with legs, which meant shifting aside the gold figurine of a small boy apparently about to take a piss and a large purple candle studded with crystals.

‘You’re a musician, Mr Griffiths?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I give piano and guitar lessons. Play in a band. Bit long in the tooth to get that record deal now, but we do pubs and weddings and stuff.’

He sat down opposite them and started unwrapping a teacake, saying,

‘Sorry I was a bit… there’s been a lot of trouble. About Tyler, I mean.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Robin. Strike’s pen was hovering over his notebook.

‘Dilys didn’t tell you?’

‘No, but we know Tyler did something that made people in Ironbridge unhappy with him,’ said Robin. ‘We saw online that people didn’t want to have to look at him, in photos.’

Griffiths swallowed a large mouthful of teacake, then said,

‘He was hounded out. Lynch mob, that’s what it was.’

‘What happened?’ asked Robin.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘We’d like to hear it, if you wouldn’t mind telling us.’

‘Huh,’ said Griffiths. ‘People round here would say you’re asking the wrong person.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because I’m the only person who’s on Ty’s side, other than his gran… There was a car crash, see… and people blamed Ty for it.’

‘He was driving, was he?’

‘No, that’s what’s so bloody… they just wanted someone to blame.’

Robin waited. Griffiths set down his plate, with its half-eaten teacake, and said,

‘Ty was going out with this girl, Anne-Marie, see. She was a good friend of my Chlo’s, so I knew her. Nice girl. Live wire. Ty was mad about her. Told me he thought she was the one, and all that…

‘But then the bloody Whiteheads moved into a big house up the road, see. Plenty of money. He’s an architect, she’s a yoga teacher. Hot tub out the back, Range Rover in the drive – you know the type. People falling over themselves to get invited to the dinner parties.

‘Well, they had two boys. The younger one, Hugo, was a big mouth, real Flash Harry type. Younger’n Ty, he was twenty or something.

‘Anyway… Anne-Marie fell for Hugo, see. He’s a lovely lad, Ty,’ said Griffiths. ‘He’s never going to set the world alight, brains-wise, but he’s a really nice guy. Worked in a garage over in Dawley, good with his hands. I know him well, I gave him guitar lessons. He talked to me a lot. And he hasn’t had it easy. His parents… well, I say parents,’ said Griffiths, ‘he was adopted, see, but when he was one, his adoptive mum buggered off. Never wanted anything to do with him after that. No idea where she went. His dad married again, but neither of them really gave a toss about Ty. They both like a drink and a party, and when Ty’s stepmother inherited some money, Gill and Ivor buggered off to Florida. That’s where they are now. Sod Ty. He was left squatting in the old house until it was sold.’

‘But it hasn’t sold yet,’ said Robin, glancing through the back window at the Powells’ house.

‘No, because they haven’t had an offer they like, see That’s Ivor. He’s the type who wants to get every penny he can…’

Strike, who was making notes, thought instantly of Greg.

‘Couldn’t Tyler have gone with them to Florida?’ asked Robin.

‘Nah,’ said Griffiths. ‘Ty likes Ironbridge. ’S’all he knows, see. Anyway, they didn’t want him. As far as they were concerned, he was twenty-five, time he was off on his own. So, Anne-Marie’s left Ty for Hugo, and he doesn’t know when he’s going to be homeless – Chlo and me wanted to offer him our spare room, but – well, that was before…’

‘Before?’ Robin prompted him.

‘Argh, it was difficult for Chlo,’ said Griffiths uncomfortably. ‘She an’ Ty were good friends when we first come here, but after what happened happened, people were turning on everyone who stuck up for Ty, so I s’pose… I mean, you can’t blame her, really. But she changed her mind. She didn’t want Ty living here, not after the crash…

‘I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened that night, but basically: there was some concert in Birmingham a group of them wanted to go to, but Hugo couldn’t get a lend of Daddy’s Range Rover, so he asked Ty if he and Anne-Marie could get a lift with him, see. There was nothing in that,’ said Griffiths quickly. ‘Ty’s good-natured, see? He’d do anything for anyone. But at the last minute, Ty says he’s feeling ill, see, but that Hugo can still borrow his car. Ty loves cars. He got this one cheap and did it up. It was his pride and bloody joy, so people are effing deluded thinking…

‘Anyway… Hugo had only just passed his test, and he crashed it. Anne-Marie was killed outright and Hugo was in a coma for three months. Brain dead, but his mother didn’t want to pull the plug.

‘People round here were upset,’ said Griffiths, ‘obviously. Anne-Marie was local, grew up in a flat over a sweet shop on the High Street. Everyone knew her. And Hugo being in the coma, and the Whiteheads being everyone’s flavour of the month…

‘And then the Whiteheads started putting it about that it couldn’t have been Hugo’s driving, see. There must’ve been something up with Ty’s car – it wasn’t roadworthy, or whatever. But then people started saying something had been done to the car. Tampered with. They said Ty fixed the car to crash. Revenge, see, on Hugo and Anne-Marie. Bullshit,’ said Griffiths fiercely. ‘Pure bullshit. But the rumours just went on, and everyone was looking sideways at Ty. Finally he came to me and said he’d had enough, he just wanted to clear – hang on,’ said Griffiths suddenly, getting to his feet and peering out of the window on to New Road. ‘That’s Dilys, she must’ve been up the church. I’ll get her, shall I?’

67

Dilys Powell was a small, saggy-cheeked woman with wispy white hair, who looked frail and ill. She was wearing a thick tartan winter coat and entered the room very slowly, using a walking frame, a large black handbag over one arm.

‘Hello, Mrs Powell,’ said Robin, getting to her feet. ‘I’m Robin Ellacott. We spoke on the phone about your grandson, Tyler?’

Dilys’s only reply was a sniff.

‘She was up the church,’ said Griffiths, guiding Dilys to a chair. ‘It’s where her husband’s buried. I’ve been telling them about the car accident, Dilys,’ he told the old woman, raising his voice. ‘About Hugo and Anne-Marie, and why Tyler left Ironbridge.’

‘He never did nothing to that car,’ mumbled Dilys.

‘That’s what I told them,’ said Griffiths.

‘Never did nothing,’ repeated Dilys. She released the walking frame, then sank, with Griffiths’ aid, into an armchair.

‘We were hoping to ask you some questions, Mrs Powell,’ said Robin, ‘about why you thought the man in the vault could have been Ty—’

‘Took off,’ said Dilys. ‘Never told me where he was going. Told him,’ she said, with an aggrieved glance at Griffiths.

‘Only—’ began Griffiths.

‘Silver,’ said Dilys.

‘What about silver, Mrs Powell?’ asked Robin.

‘He was talking about silver. On the phone.’

‘Tyler was?’

‘Yer.’

‘What did he say about silver?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Who was he talking to? You?’

‘Jones, probably.’

‘Who’s Jones?’ said Robin.

‘His friend,’ said Dilys. ‘Up Higwell Farm, by Apeton.’

‘What’s Jones’ first name?’ asked Robin.

‘Wynn,’ said Dilys, as Strike’s pen moved rapidly across the page.

‘Is Wynn a good friend of Tyler’s?’

‘Yer,’ said Dilys, scowling. ‘I don’t like him.’

‘Why’s that?’ asked Robin.

‘Rude,’ said Dilys. She turned to look at Griffiths. ‘I need the loo.’

‘Right ho,’ said Griffiths, getting up again. He helped Dilys out of the armchair and guided her hands back on to the walking frame. ‘First on the left, down the hall.’

Dilys left the room slowly. Once she was out of earshot, Griffiths said quietly,

‘She’s gone downhill a lot since Ty left. He was good to her, did her shopping and that. She took it hard, him leaving, ’specially after his parents left for Florida. Ivor’s Dilys’s son. We all offer to help her, but Dilys likes her independence.’

‘There’s a great-niece, isn’t there?’ asked Robin. ‘I spoke to her before Christmas.’

‘She doesn’t live round here, she’s back at uni,’ said Ian. ‘I wouldn’t mention her. Dilys’s cat, that she was supposed to be feeding, died when Dilys was in hospital. The cat was ancient, but Dilys hasn’t forgiven the girl, and when Dilys loses her temper, believe me, you know it. She’s been worse since she slipped on the ice last autumn. Knocked herself out, going down the hill. She was lying out there in the dark for a couple of hours and nobody realised. She was in hospital a month and – shit,’ said Griffiths, jumping up as a muffled thump issued from somewhere out of sight. He left the room. They heard another couple of thumps, Dilys saying, ‘That wasn’t me! I can do it!’ then the sound of a closing door. Griffiths re-entered the room.

‘’S’all right, she just hit the hall table,’ he said.

‘So Tyler never mentioned silver to you?’ asked Robin.

‘No, he just told me he’d got a job in a pub, somewhere down south. Dilys was angry I never told her that, see, but I thought she knew. Anyway, I dunno if Ty was telling the truth. He didn’t give me the name of the pub or anything. He might just’ve wanted me to think he had a plan.’

They heard a distant flush.

‘You’ve been to Belgium,’ Strike said to Griffiths.

‘What?’ said Griffiths.

Strike lifted the small gold figurine from the table beside which he was sitting. ‘This is the Manneken Pis, isn’t it? Copy of the Belgian statue?’

‘Oh – Chlo sent me that, from interrailing. Family joke. Find the tackiest souvenir you can, wherever you go.’

‘Ah, right,’ said Strike, setting the thing down again. He supposed that explained the glittery Virgin Mary and the neon pink Thai elephant on the shelf over Griffiths’ head.

‘Mrs Powell was interviewed by the police, wasn’t she?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Griffiths, ‘but I don’t think it went anywhere. Ty took all his stuff with him when he took off, see, so there was no ruling him out on DNA. Like I say, he was kind of squatting in the house after Gill and Ivor went to Florida. They got rid of most of the furniture before they put the place up for sale.’

‘Have they been in touch with Tyler, do you know?’ asked Robin.

‘No idea, you’d have to ask Dilys, but like I say, they’re not very concerned parents.’

Dilys shuffled back into the room a few minutes later and was again helped down into her armchair by Griffiths. Rather than thanking him, she scowled up at him.

‘Your Chloe stopped talking to Ty, and they was supposed to be friends.’

‘She didn’t, Dilys,’ said Griffiths. ‘She was just off on her trip, so—’

‘Tyler didn’t have nobody on his side,’ said Dilys. ‘Nobody. All of ’em saying he’d done something to the car. He never. He never did.’

She seemed both angry and upset, her hands moving restlessly in her lap.

‘When did Tyler leave Ironbridge?’ asked Robin.

‘Months,’ said Dilys. ‘Months ago.’

‘Must’ve been… May, Dilys?’ said Griffiths. ‘I know it wasn’t long after Chloe’s birthday.’

‘They was supposed to be friends, but she left and never stood up for him,’ said Dilys, for whom this seemed a very sore point.

‘Only because she was off inter—’

‘Looking at his phone, all the time. Defending himself, he said. On the internet. I told him, “stop looking at what they’re saying, you’re only upsetting yourself”.’

‘Have you heard from him since he left, Mrs Powell?’ asked Robin.

‘He whatsitted me,’ she said, gripping and releasing her hands in her lap. ‘But then he stopped.’

‘You mean WhatsApped?’ suggested Robin tentatively.

‘Yer,’ said Dilys.

‘Can you remember when the messages stopped?’

‘What?’ said Dilys, scowling as she raised her hand to her ear.

‘Could I see the messages?’ asked Robin more loudly.

‘What for?’

‘To see the dates,’ said Robin.

Griffiths lifted Dilys’s bag off the floor and gave it to her. Mumbling under her breath, Dilys fumbled in its depths, at last retrieving an old Nokia. Breathing laboriously, she stabbed at the buttons, and after a protracted wait, handed the phone to Robin, who looked down at a short series of messages.

Tyler Powell

Hi gran hope your ok

Dilys Powell

my knees so bad I cant hardly walk

Tyler Powell

I’m sorry can’t you call Doris?

Dilys Powell

I can’t be bothering Doris all the time. when are you coming back?

Dilys Powell

are you ignoring me?

Dilys Powell

Ignorant bastard

Dilys Powell

after all ive done for you

Tyler Powell

Gran I’m not ungrateful but I’m busy Ive got a job

Dilys Powell

so your happy me being a prisoner in my own house

Dilys Powell

I can’t do shopping or nothing

Dilys Powell

you can forget me leaving you my money after this

Dilys Powell

Ungrateful little bastard

Tyler Powell

ok fine im an ungrateful bastard you’ll be better off not hearing from me then

Dilys Powell

Where are you?

Dilys Powell

I need to know where you are

Dilys Powell

Im bad my knees playing up

Dilys Powell

where are you Tyler

Dilys Powell

Ive called the police

Dilys Powell

tell me where you are im worried

The last message from Tyler had been sent on the sixteenth of June the previous year. Dilys’s final message to him had been sent in October.

However, directly above this WhatsApp chat was another, which Robin, seeing the name ‘Tyler’, surreptitiously opened, scrolling back to the first message, which had been sent on July the twelfth of the previous year.

07700 903361

Gran this is my new number

07700 903361

Gran I got rid of my old phone because I was getting people hassling me on it so you need to use this one for me now. Griff can have it but nobody else, ok?

Dilys Powell

Who is this?

07700 903361

It’s Tyler. You need to use this number for me now.

Dilys Powell

Is that you Wynn Jones

07700 903361

No gran it’s me, Tyler. I’m going to call you now all right?

07700 903361

Gran answer the phone it’s me

Tyler

07700 903361

Gran THIS ISN’T WYNN IT’S ME

The last of these messages had been sent shortly before Christmas.

‘Would you mind if I take copies of these, Mrs Powell?’ asked Robin.

‘All right,’ said Dilys, and Robin photographed both chats with her own phone.

‘And would it be all right for me to take the number for Tyler’s father?’ Robin asked, seeing Ivor Powell’s name on an older WhatsApp thread.

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Dilys again.

Robin saved the number, then handed back the Nokia.

‘Have you spoken on the phone to Tyler since he left, Mrs Powell?’

‘No,’ said Dilys. ‘That’s not him. It’s that Jones playing games.’

‘Wynn Jones from Higwell Farm?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You think he’s been calling you, pretending to be Tyler?’

‘What?’

‘You don’t think it’s really Tyler who’s been calling you?’

‘Rude,’ said Dilys. ‘And he was a good boy before all this.’

‘Have you spoken to Tyler since he left, Griff?’ asked Robin.

‘Not since June,’ said Griffiths.

‘He seems to have wanted you to have his new number,’ said Robin.

‘That’s not Tyler, that other one,’ said Dilys mutinously. ‘I can tell the difference.’

‘You called the police in late June, Mrs Powell, did you?’ said Robin, looking down at the messages again. ‘Was that because you saw the news stories about the—?’

‘He said “silver”,’ said Dilys stubbornly. ‘I heard him.’

‘You know the shop where the body was found was masonic?’ asked Robin.

‘What?’

‘It stocks things for the Freemasons. Was Tyler interested in Freemasonry, at all?’

‘Freemasons?’ said Dilys. ‘With the funny handshakes?’

‘Yes, them,’ said Robin.

‘No, he wouldn’t be into all that,’ said Dilys impatiently. ‘He works in a garridge.’

‘Did he know anything about silver?’ asked Robin. ‘Hallmarks, antiques, anything like that?’

‘No,’ said Dilys mistrustfully, ‘but he could learn. He’s not stupid.’

‘What were Tyler’s interests? Mr Griffiths has already told us he liked cars.’

‘Loved his car,’ said Dilys. ‘Did it all up himself. He knew engines.’ As though refuting an unspoken accusation, she said again, ‘He’s not stupid.’

‘Anything else he was interested in?’ asked Robin.

‘Football,’ said Dilys. ‘Wolves. He loves Wolves.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘We’ve just seen the plaque on the wall along the lane. Billy Wright. Did you know the man who was working at the silver shop was calling himself William Wright?’

‘Yer,’ said Dilys, nodding. ‘Billy Wright.’

‘Could I check a few more details?’ asked Robin. ‘How tall was Tyler?’

‘Taller’n him,’ said Dilys, pointing a shaking hand at Griffiths.

‘Not difficult,’ said Griffiths, with a rueful smile. ‘He must be about five six, eh, Dilys?’

‘Did Tyler have any distinguishing marks? Scars, or—’

‘Birthmark,’ said Dilys.

‘Really? Where?’

‘On his back,’ said Dilys.

‘Is he left- or right-handed?’

‘Right-handed,’ said Dilys.

‘D’you know what blood group he is?’

Dilys shook her head.

‘Did he know anything about guns?’

‘Guns? Yer, a bit,’ said Dilys.

‘Really?’ said Robin.

‘Yer,’ said Dilys. ‘He used to have an air rifle. He wanted to join the army, but they wouldn’t take him.’

‘Did he?’ said Griffiths, looking surprised.

‘That was before you moved here,’ said Dilys, who seemed to take some satisfaction in the fact that there was something about Tyler that Griffiths didn’t know. ‘Upset when he didn’t get in. Heart set on it.’

‘Why wouldn’t they take him, Dilys?’ asked Robin.

‘He’s allergic to peanuts,’ said Dilys. ‘Nearly died once, when a kid at school gave him one.’

‘How awful,’ said Robin.

‘I never knew he was allergic to peanuts,’ said Griffiths.

‘Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know,’ said Dilys rudely.

‘Did Tyler work out, at all?’ Robin asked.

‘He worked at a garridge,’ Dilys said again.

‘Did he like to keep fit?’ asked Robin, raising her voice again.

‘Yeah, he was fit.’

‘Lugging tyres around all day,’ said Griffiths.

‘He’s not stupid,’ snapped Dilys again.

‘Did he ever know a girl called Rita?’ asked Robin.

‘Rita who?’ said Dilys. Her hands continued to move restlessly in her lap.

‘We don’t know her surname,’ said Robin. ‘Did he know anyone with the first name Rita?’

‘There’s no Rita round here,’ said Dilys.

‘Did you ever hear Tyler talking about a Rita?’ Robin asked Griffiths. ‘Or a Rita Linda?’

‘No,’ said Griffiths. ‘The only girl I ever heard him talk about was Anne-Marie.’

‘No better’n she should’ve been,’ muttered Dilys. ‘Look at the bloody trouble she caused.’

There were two ways of looking at that statement, Robin thought.

‘Tyler was upset when he split up with Anne-Marie, was he?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t care. Why should he care? She was with everyone, that one.’

‘He was cut up when she died, Dilys,’ said Griffiths reproachfully.

‘Soft-hearted,’ said Dilys. ‘Dead’s dead.’

‘Mr Griffiths was telling us about the Whitehead family,’ said Robin.

‘Them!’ said Dilys, her hands trembling in her lap. ‘Gawn now, after all the trouble they caused.’

‘They moved,’ explained Griffiths. ‘After Hugo died.’

‘Any idea where they went?’ asked Robin.

‘I know they were from the Home Counties orig—’

‘Good riddance. Spreading lies,’ said Dilys. ‘Saying it was Tyler’s fault. And everyone believed it.’

‘I didn’t believe it, Dilys,’ said Griffiths, ‘and nor did—’

‘Your Chloe just buggered off and left him to it. Nobody stuck up for him.’

Dilys pursed her lips, as though to stop herself crying.

‘When you read the news reports about the body in the vault,’ Robin said, as compassionately as she could, ‘what made you—?’

‘’Cause it was like him and he said “silver”,’ said Dilys. ‘I heard him, on the phone.’

‘Did the police come and see you, after you called the helpline?’ asked Robin.

‘Useless,’ said Dilys. ‘Useless.’

‘They interviewed you, did—?’

‘Come see me,’ said Dilys. ‘Useless.’

‘One other thing, Mrs Powell: did Tyler ever talk about a man called Oz, or a man in the music business?’

‘Oz?’ said Dilys. ‘Who’s Oz? What are you, reporters?’

‘No, Mrs Powell, we’re private detectives,’ said Robin. ‘We spoke, on the phone. I asked if we could—’

‘I need to get home,’ said Dilys suddenly. ‘I need to go.’

She seemed overwhelmed and a little confused, batting away Griffiths’ help as she struggled out of her chair. Robin could tell there was no point trying to persuade her to stay. Dilys grasped her walking frame, accepted her bag from Griffiths without thanking him, then set off at a snail’s pace for the back door.

‘I can manage,’ she snapped at Griffiths, when he made to follow her.

‘Sorry,’ said Griffiths quietly, once Dilys was shuffling up the garden path.

‘No, we’re grateful for the tea and the information,’ said Robin, getting to her feet. Beside her, Strike was having some difficulty doing the same: his knee was refusing to cooperate. Robin took her card out of her purse and handed it to Griffiths.

‘If you remember anything else, could you let us know?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ said Griffiths, tucking the card in his jeans pocket. ‘This whole thing – it was an accident and people wanting someone to blame. Small-town gossip. You know what it’s like.’

Robin’s thoughts flew unhelpfully towards Masham, and the fact that her rape had been leaked onto the internet.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do know.’

With a low groan he failed to suppress, Strike succeeded in leaving the sofa.

‘Yeah, cheers,’ he said, trying not to grimace in pain as he held out his hand to Griffiths. ‘Big help.’

68

‘I think we can get back down to the High Street that way,’ said Robin, looking at an almost vertically descending lane just around the corner from Griffiths’ house, which seemed to lead towards the foot of the hill, ‘but—’

‘I’d rather go back the way we came,’ said Strike, which wasn’t entirely true: what he’d rather have done was get into a cable car that would take him painlessly back to his car.

They retraced their steps in silence. The ascent of New Street had been bad enough; the descent was placing so much strain on Strike’s right knee he was afraid at every step it was going to buckle. Dilys hadn’t yet reached her house. She was ambling along very slowly with the aid of the walking frame in the distance, small and squat in her tartan coat, but as Strike and Robin were moving in such dilatory fashion themselves they barely gained on her, and Dilys had let herself into her cottage and closed the door before they drew alongside it.

‘D’you want to eat something while we debrief?’ said Strike when they finally reached the bottom of the street, trying not to wince and hoping it wasn’t obvious how much he was sweating.

‘OK,’ said Robin.

‘There’s a pub where I left my car,’ said Strike, so they headed for the Swan Taphouse, a large, light grey hotel that faced the slow-moving river. Wooden tables were set outside, sheltered by square blue umbrellas. Strike fixed his eyes on the nearest bench until he reached it. Having dropped onto it with relief, he caught Robin’s eye, and remembered that women tended not to share his indifference to cold.

‘If you’d rather go inside—’

‘No,’ said Robin stiffly, torn between irritation that he hadn’t consulted her and reluctant compassion, because she could tell that he was in agony, ‘it’s fine. I’ll get some drinks; what d’you want?’

‘Zero-alcohol beer,’ said Strike. ‘Any kind.’

A barmaid came out of the building shortly after Robin had entered it. Though clearly surprised to find customers who preferred the beer garden to interior seating in January, she handed Strike two paper menus. He took out his notebook, but watched the khaki-coloured water, and people walking along the bank with their dogs, until Robin reappeared with his beer and a tomato juice for herself.

‘So,’ said Strike, when she’d sat down opposite him, ‘thoughts on Powell?’

‘Well, he mentioned silver,’ said Robin, ‘allegedly – but…’

‘He might’ve been talking about a car he was re-spraying at his garage, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Although there must be pubs called the silver something. Think “Silver”’s a surname, too, unless that was just Long John.’

He’d hoped this might raise a flicker of a smile from Robin, but was disappointed.

‘Well, we should definitely speak to this friend of Tyler’s, Wynn Jones,’ Strike continued. ‘We could go and find the farm after we’ve eaten.’

‘I can’t hang around that long. I’m supposed to be watching Fyola Fay’s house first thing tomorrow. You can do Jones alone.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. And you’ve got to go and look at more houses with fucking Murphy, of course.

Both were having difficulty looking the other in the eye. The bench put less space between them than the table in the Tontine Hotel, and Robin, determined to keep talk on work matters, and not to give Strike any pretexts for asking about her coldness, said,

‘Tyler seems a good candidate for visiting Abused and Accused.’

‘Yeah, he does,’ said Strike, while Robin pulled out her phone to examine the pictures she’d taken of the WhatsApp messages between Tyler and Dilys.

‘Tyler’s last message from his old number was just before Wright was murdered. Then he sends her a new number, saying he’s being “hassled” on the old one. She thought Wynn Jones was pretending to be him, for some reason… I’m going to try that number.’

The phone rang a few times and then a pre-recorded message played.

‘This is Tyler, I’m busy, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

‘Hi Tyler,’ said Robin. ‘My name’s Robin Ellacott and I’d really like to talk to you if possible.’ She dictated her own mobile number, then hung up.

‘Coincidental timing, him starting to text from a new number right after Wright was murdered,’ said Strike.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, still examining the messages rather than looking Strike in the eye. ‘Although people were angry with him. In those Instagram comments I found, they were demanding Chloe Griffiths take down her pictures of him, because they didn’t want to look at him. He might well have got sick of getting horrible texts or calls.’

‘True,’ said Strike, whose overriding aim at the moment was to ease the tension between himself and Robin.

‘But the police must have seen these messages,’ said Robin, still looking at the phone rather than her partner, ‘and they didn’t rule him out, so presumably they haven’t got credible evidence he’s still alive.’

‘Or they stopped bothering looking once Truman decided it was Knowles,’ said Strike. ‘Said it before, who cares when young men go missing?’

‘He seems to have tried calling Dilys,’ said Robin, still scanning the messages, ‘but if he really wanted her off his back, why wouldn’t he just tell her where he was?’

‘Might not have trusted her with his whereabouts,’ said Strike. ‘She might’ve blabbed his location or tried to send someone to fetch him back… that said, the whole fake name and disguise thing seems a bit extreme for Powell, and I can’t see why the hell he’d want to work in a masonic silver shop. Good mechanics are always in demand. Why not go and do that somewhere else?’

‘Unless he really did have something to do with that car crash and he was scared he was going to be arrested for it?’ said Robin.

‘I’m struggling to see how him tampering with brake lines or steering before they left for the concert could’ve resulted in a fatal crash on the way back. That’ll’ve been looked into. There’ll have been an inquest.’

‘But there’s a connection with the name William Wright.’

‘True,’ said Strike, scratching his chin. ‘Well, if Powell doesn’t call you back we should have a word with the Whiteheads, if we can find them. If they genuinely think Powell sabotaged the car, they had a motive, so that needs ruling out. Then we’ve got the birthmark on Powell’s back. Was the Salem cross carved into the body to get rid of a distinguishing mark?’

‘And they did the ears, eyes and hands for fun?’

‘You’re forgetting the penis,’ said Strike, which was inaccurate; Robin hadn’t forgotten. ‘Trouble is, you could make a case for the mutilation to be to disguise any of our possible Wrights.’

Both drank their soft drinks, looking at the Severn rather than at each other. Robin was wondering when she was going to tell Strike about the man with the masonic dagger. Before she could speak, the barmaid returned to take their food order. When Strike had ordered beer-battered haddock and Robin, chicken nachos, the former said,

‘On the subject of masonic stuff, I haven’t told you: I ran into Fergus Robertson on the train to Scotland. Turns out Lord Oliver Branfoot is a mason and he’s a member of the Winston Churchill Lodge, which meets in one of the temples at Freemasons’ Hall, and is also the lodge of—’

‘Malcolm Truman,’ said Robin, conscious of an increasingly familiar sinking feeling.

‘Yeah. Apparently Branfoot changed lodges a few years ago, and the Winston Churchill’s full of coppers.’

He’d registered the sudden blankness of Robin’s expression, but before he could continue, she said,

‘There’s something I haven’t told you, either. Last night, after I interviewed Valentine Longcaster—’

‘Oh, he talked to you, did he?’ said Strike, experiencing his own feeling of dread. He’d been expecting, and counting on, Longcaster to tell Robin to get lost.

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Slag me off?’

‘A bit.’

‘What did he say? I knocked Charlotte about? Screwed around? It’s my fault she topped herself?’

‘Something along those lines, but—’

‘I never laid a finger on her in anger, except to stop her hurting herself,’ said Strike.

How many more blows to the gut was he supposed to take? How much more self-respect had to be stripped from him, in front of the person whose good opinion mattered more to him than any other’s?

‘OK,’ said Robin, ‘well, that’s not what I—’

‘Did he have anything useful to say about Fleetwood, or was it wall-to-wall Charlotte as saint and me as bastard?’

‘He didn’t say anything very useful about Fleetwood, no,’ said Robin, keeping her tone measured. ‘But he was definitely twitchy about us going near his sister Cosima, and generally evasive on the subject of why Rupert gatecrashed Legard’s party. But,’ she said, taking a deep breath, ‘that isn’t what I was going to tell you.

‘I was followed when I left the restaurant where I interviewed Longcaster.’ She didn’t want to admit the next bit, but honesty compelled her to do so. ‘I think he tailed me from my flat yesterday morning and I didn’t realise. He was wearing a – well, he was wearing a gorilla mask by the time he caught up with me—’

‘What?’

‘—but I’d noticed him before, on the industrial estate where I was waiting for Longcaster; he was wearing the same green jacket. He didn’t make his move until I was completely alone and there was no one else—’

‘What move?’ said Strike.

‘He pulled out a knife,’ said Robin. ‘And—’

‘He WHAT?’ said Strike, so loudly a woman passing with a Bichon Frisé looked round.

‘I’m trying to tell you “what”,’ said Robin, in a low voice. ‘He pulled out this – well, it was a masonic dagger. I know, because he threw it at me. I’ve got it at home. It was a warning, not an attack,’ she said, because Strike was looking dangerous. ‘He said, “stop, and you won’t get hurt”. He was trying to scare me,’ she said, omitting to mention that her menacer had achieved this objective, ‘there was never any question of him actually—’

‘Why the fuck didn’t you call me after this happened?’

‘What could you have done?’ said Robin coolly. ‘You were in Scotland.’

‘I told you, and you agreed, if you went anywhere alone, you were to tell me. We agreed, after Shanker, after that bloke in Harrods, and with all these fucking phone calls, the last one specifically targeting you—’

‘“Bitch” might have meant Kim or Midge, and I can’t ring you literally every time I’m somewhere alone,’ said Robin, her tone no longer measured. ‘It was a well-lit residential street, and he didn’t actually hurt—’

‘You realise there was a fucking “G” painted on the street door on New Year’s Eve?’

‘What? No, I didn’t! Why didn’t you tell—?’

‘And this bloke said “stop”?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me a “G” was painted on the door?’

‘Somebody’s clearly decided you’re the weak link—’

The moment the words had left his mouth he wished them unspoken. Robin had blanched in anger. Kim’s jibes about her lack of police training and her own awareness that she should have spotted her tail the previous day were doing battle with her desire to point out Strike’s sheer audacity in suggesting she was the person letting the agency down, when his shenanigans with women were drawing down so much negative press—

‘I didn’t mean “weak link” in terms of – I mean,’ Strike blustered, ‘you’re a woman, aren’t you, and Branfoot knows he’s got something his goons can scare you with—’

‘We haven’t got a shred of evidence Branfoot’s got anything to do with those men,’ said Robin furiously.

‘Who else connected to this case has got a bunch of thugs to do his bidding? “Or he might send someone,” Wright said. You’re the one who spotted Branfoot’s pal from Ramsay Silver in the paper. Branfoot’s at the same fucking lodge as the senior investigating officer—’

‘I know that, I’m capable of retaining information you told me two minutes ago! But as I’m not the one who’s given Branfoot an excuse to slag us off in the tabloids—’

Stung on the raw, Strike now lost his cool himself.

‘Sure it’s bad press worrying you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Don’t want us investigating a masonic lodge full of Met officers?’

‘This has got nothing to do with Ryan!’ said Robin, angrily and untruthfully. ‘I know the lodge thing’s a bit fishy, but we haven’t got—’

‘“A bit fishy”? It stinks like a fucking prawn trawler! Why did Branfoot move lodges? Why did he decide to go where the police were?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Don’t give me that, we know he’s dodgy as fuck. Jimmy Savile was cosying up to his local police force for years, having them over every Friday for drinks.’

‘You seriously think Truman knew Branfoot was behind the murder and agreed to cover it up?’ said Robin scornfully.

‘It doesn’t have to be that crude! I’m not claiming Truman knows Branfoot put out the hit—’

‘Why would Branfoot have someone killed in a masonic silver shop?’

‘Because he was mates with a bunch of masonic policemen who literally meet next door, he knew they’d be predisposed to hushing anything up that looked masonic, and he’d be able to exert maximum influence over the investigation! Branfoot either lucked out, and his mate Truman was put in charge, or Truman pulled his own masonic strings to make sure he got the job!’

‘And why would Branfoot have ordered a sash be put on the body, and a masonic hallmark carved into it?’

‘What if it was meant to be overkill, to look like somebody trying to frame the masons, and Truman fell right into the trap, and rushed to deny any connection, egged on by Branfoot?’

‘So Truman risked his entire career to keep Branfoot happy?’

‘Listen to what I’m saying – it doesn’t have to have been done for Branfoot specifically! Truman might’ve risked his career because masonry is his big thing, the centre of his emotional and social life! It means that, to some men! But if you’re going to look me in the eye and tell me there aren’t men who’re flattered by association with the aristocracy, and wouldn’t get an ego thrill from chumming around with Lord Oliver Branfoot off the telly—’

‘I’m not saying that, but—’

‘—then you’ll concede that Truman might’ve been easily influenced by Branfoot pushing the idea that someone was trying to frame the masons, in which case, the Knowles thing would’ve been manna from heaven to Truman. He paid a professional price for getting it wrong, but he’s still trotting along to Freemasons’ Hall every month, which should tell you something about his priorities in life!’

‘We’ve pieced together a story about Branfoot and we haven’t got a shred of proof it’s true,’ said Robin hotly. ‘The cipher note and Branfoot’s friend shopping in Ramsay Silver and Branfoot bashing private detectives and Dick de Lion – they could all be completely unconnected!’

‘This, from the person who’s been urging me to make enquiries about a Belgian woman whose name vaguely resembles Rita Linda,’ said Strike, and instantly regretted it, as Robin’s face flooded with colour.

‘I said from the start she might not be relevant, and for the record, she was Swedish, not Belgian—’

‘My point—’

‘I understand your point, thanks, weak leak though I am, and if we’re talking about missing the point: has it occurred to you that both times I’ve been threatened, I’ve been trying to talk to people about Rupert Fleetwood?’

‘Both times you were threatened, it was in places it was easy to get to you without getting caught,’ said Strike. ‘How would the men following you have known who you were off to speak to? You’ve just told me gorilla mask guy tailed you from your flat!’

‘OK,’ said Robin, returning to the offensive, ‘explain this: why would a porn star go and work in a masonic silver shop?’

‘Set up,’ said Strike.

‘Set up, how? By who?’

‘What if what was meant to have happened to Knowles genuinely happened to de Lion? What if he thought he was going to help nick a load of silver? Just because Branfoot’s a shit doesn’t mean de Lion was an angel. We know nothing about him, he could be a crook himself. What if Oz and Medina lured de Lion to Ramsay Silver, telling him he’d be able to make a hundred grand off the back of it? Then the taking of the Murdoch silver makes sense – it was to make this look like a burglary and incidental murder, when in fact it was a murder and incidental robbery.’

‘And where’s the silver now?’

‘I don’t bloody know, anywhere! Buried in the woods. Some anonymous lock up. Branfoot’s minted, he doesn’t need it.’

‘I can’t help noticing,’ said Robin, her tone now steely, ‘that your attitude to the Met and your attitude to the SAS are somewhat different.’

‘What?’ said Strike, thrown.

‘Freemason Niall Semple couldn’t possibly be involved in a theft of masonic silver, because he’s the best of the best, speaks fluent Arabic and navigates by the stars, whereas Freemason Malcolm Truman—’

‘Truman and Branfoot are in the same fucking lodge! Why’s Branfoot after us? Why the sudden interest in the private detective business?’

‘Maybe his wife’s having him tailed and he found out! Maybe the papers are sniffing around him, because of all the rumours about his sex life!’

‘You told me, at the beginning of this case, it didn’t matter if Murphy—’

‘This isn’t about Ryan!’ Robin said, her anger fuelled by the knowledge that she was at least partly lying. ‘What’s it going to do to our Met contacts, if we start trying to discredit policemen?’

‘The Met’ve already put Truman on gardening leave, they’d probably be delighted to have a reason to bloody sack him! If you think Wardle, Layborn and Ekwensi would stop talking to us because we helped the force get rid of a proper wrong ’un, you’ve got a lower opinion of them than I have!’

‘It’s your attitude I’m talking about – totally prepared to believe the worst of the police, whereas—’

‘There are plenty of cunts in the army, as I should know, because I was bloody in it—’

‘You said you were going to “go in hard” on Branfoot – you think he’ll keep his mouth shut, if you start insinuating—?’

‘Murphy know we’ve got pictures of the body, by any chance?’ asked Strike. ‘Hacked off about it, is he?’

Robin felt the blood rush to her face again.

‘That’s not—’

‘Oh, isn’t it?’

Incensed, Robin got to her feet.

‘I need to get back down the road. I’m tired and I need time to prepare for Fyola Fay.’

‘You’re not going to wait for your food?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ snapped Robin, drawing her car keys out of her pocket, the sight of which made Strike say,

‘I’m buying a new fucking Land Rover.’

‘What?’

‘Plain English, isn’t it? We need a new Land Rover. You can’t keep hiring cars, the business can’t—’

‘I’ll get something else, I just haven’t found anything I can aff—’

‘Which is why—’

‘I can’t take a loan of that size from you,’ said Robin.

‘Then don’t,’ said Strike. ‘The business will own the Land Rover, but you’ll be driving it, so find something appropriate and send me the details.’

‘Fine,’ said Robin, her voice icy.

She turned and walked away, but before Strike could begin to process what had just happened, Robin had turned again and was striding back to the table.

‘I forgot,’ she said, which was a far bigger lie than the claim she wasn’t hungry. ‘There’s another thing.’

‘What?’

‘Dev told me Bijou Watkins called the office. What did she want?’

For a split second, Strike looked just as stunned as she’d expected. Then he said,

‘She wanted some advice.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Robin, glaring down at him. ‘Advice on…?’

‘She thinks Honbold’s playing around on her,’ invented Strike.

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah. I told her to contact someone else. Said I didn’t want the job.’

‘So I can tell Dev there won’t be any more bad press about you and women?’

‘I’ll tell him myself,’ said Strike.

‘Great,’ said Robin, ‘because we don’t want to lose Dev. See you at the office.’

She walked away and this time, didn’t turn or look back.

The barmaid now reappeared with two large plates of food.

‘Oh,’ she said, watching Robin marching away up the street. ‘Do you—?’

‘I’ll eat them both,’ growled Strike, shifting his notebook out of the way.