Page 100 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

And long we try in vain to speak and act

Our hidden self, and what we say and do

Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

Matthew Arnold The Buried Life

‘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.