Page 105 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Wardle. ‘They had a good grope in the pub a while back.’

‘How long ago was this?’ asked Strike, trying to sound casual.

‘Back when he was splitting up with his wife,’ said Wardle, and the tiny shoot of – not exactly hope, but something resembling it – withered and died inside Strike.

‘I told you before, he was a proper arsehole when he was drinking, nothing in a skirt was safe. He’s been in a bloody bad mood lately, apparently.

Iverson says, if she didn’t know better, she’d think he was drinking again. Mind, he’d have good reason.’

Much as Strike would have liked to believe Murphy had fallen off the wagon he thought that was too much to hope for.

‘Why’d he have good reason?’ he asked.

‘He was on that gangland shooting, with the kids.’

‘So I heard.’

‘Well, he was the one who fucked it up. He arrested the mother’s boyfriend, who’s admittedly a violent, vengeful fucker with a record, but Murphy had sod all evidence.’

Strike, who assumed Robin already knew all this, knew that even if she didn’t, he’d only make himself look like a prick if he brought any of it up, so he didn’t pursue the subject.

‘Anyway, I checked out that Calvin Osgood’s alibi for you,’ said Wardle. ‘It’s sound. He really was in Manchester when he said he was.’

‘Thought so, but wanted it confirmed,’ said Strike, shoving one of the plastic containers towards Wardle. ‘Have some, it’s good.’

The policeman helped himself to chicken Madras.

He looked as though he’d lost weight recently, and, unlike Strike, he hadn’t had much to spare in the first place.

Wardle had been boyishly good-looking when he and Strike first met, but he seemed to have aged far more than the seven years that had passed since, and was now very grey around the temples.

‘This Iverson,’ said Strike, ‘has she looked at Oz’s Instagram account? Because Robin found out a missing girl was in communication with him, name of Sapphire Neagle.’

‘Dunno,’ said Wardle. ‘She probably thinks I’m too matey with you to give me much. I know the team’s seriously fucked off at Truman, though. Did you know he’s a Freemason?’

‘I did, yeah,’ said Strike, glad Robin wasn’t present to hear this.

‘There’s a lot of muttering that Truman wanted that body to be Knowles, to turn attention away from where the killing happened. Nobody needs a bloody Freemasonry-in-the-Met story… Did you know they’ve ruled out those four blokes in Wild Court?’

‘I did, yeah.’

‘So now they’re trying to work out how Wright and his killer got to the shop, because there doesn’t seem to be camera footage of them anywhere.’

‘A Peugeot was involved, wasn’t it?’

‘That the silver car they think picked up the killer at three in the morning?’

‘Yeah. I assume they’ve tried to trace it?’

‘Yeah, but no dice. They’re combing through camera footage, but it disappeared into a residential area and got lost.’

Strike had just picked up his knife and fork again when his mobile rang and, seeing that it was Robin calling, answered at once.

‘Hi, are you free to talk?’ she said. Cheered by the fact that she’d called him instead of emailing, Strike said,

‘Yeah, of course, give me a minute.’

He got up from the table and pointed at the front door, signalling to Wardle that he needed privacy for this conversation.

‘Right,’ said Strike, who’d now let himself onto the landing outside Wardle’s flat, ‘fire away.’

‘I’m in casualty – I’m fine,’ she added quickly. ‘Plug’s here, with his son. The son’s been injured, badly, on his face. Bitten. Strike, I think I know what’s going on.’

‘What?’

‘Dogs. Dangerous dogs. The boy was bitten in that house in Carnival Street where they put whatever animal was in that allotment shed. They were both unmarked when they went in. Twenty minutes later, Plug half-carried his son out, with blood all over his face.’

‘Fuck,’ said Strike, thinking of the compound outside Ipswich. ‘Dog fights. That’s it, isn’t it? The cash is for bets, or buying dogs… OK, good work, now we know what we’re dealing with. With luck, a doctor might call in the police once they see what the injury is.’

‘Plug looks absolutely furious. I’ll bet you anything he’s going to pressure the boy not to say what really happened – say it was a stray dog, or something.’

‘Yeah, he probably will, in which case it’ll be on us to nail him. Easier now we know what we’re trying to prove. Have you done anything about that Land Rover, by the way?’ Strike asked, keen to keep fostering this slightly more amicable atmosphere.

‘Yes, I’ve made an appointment to go and see it Sunday afternoon. I’d better go, the boy’s been taken away to get stitched up.’

‘OK, bye,’ said Strike, and he returned to Wardle, who was opening his second lager.

‘Robin,’ Strike said.

‘Ah,’ said Wardle.

‘Listen, I’m grateful for the info,’ Strike said, sitting down again. ‘Good to know there’s still someone in the Met who doesn’t think I’m an arsehole.’

‘They’ve got their own share of arseholes,’ said Wardle, and Strike noticed the use of ‘they’, as opposed to ‘we’.

‘Were you serious,’ he asked, ‘about leaving?’

Wardle drank more lager before answering.

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘My mum’s just died.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike, who’d had no idea of this. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah. Last month. She was never right, after my brother,’ said Wardle. ‘Broke her heart.’

His words were coming as though each adhered to his throat, and needed to be pulled up, with effort.

‘She chose not to go for a second round of chemo… raised us both as a single mum. We were her life. Terry dying half-killed her, and then April left me, and she didn’t see nearly as much of Liam any more.’

‘Liam?’

‘My son,’ said Wardle, with a faint smile. ‘The kid you just saw me put to bed.’

‘Oh, yeah, of course.’

‘Anyway… Mum left a lot more money than I expected. She came into an inheritance herself, right before she died… never got to enjoy it. Before she went, I kept telling myself I’d be mad not to hang on at work for the pension, but with what she left, I could still see Liam right.’

The policeman sighed, then said,

‘Shall we go and sit on better chairs? I spend all night in here on my laptop, sometimes, getting a numb arse…’

The sitting room held a three-piece suite, a television and little else. As Strike passed over the threshold, a distant wail of ‘ Daddy! ’ was heard.

‘Shit,’ muttered Wardle, and he left for the spare bedroom.

Strike sat down on the sofa, lager in hand, eyes on the television screen, thinking of that wailed word, ‘daddy’.

He’d never used the word to address any man in his life, because the nearest thing he’d ever had to a father had been Ted.

A very long time ago, as a boy, he’d longed to be able to say it to Rokeby, to be able to talk about him as ‘dad’, but he never had.

Strike had been a stickler for accuracy, even as a child.

You didn’t call a man you’d met for ten minutes your dad.

He imagined the baby girl to whom Bijou had recently given birth calling him ‘daddy’, and drank more lager.

The cartoon Wardle’s son had been watching had finished. Some kind of comedy news quiz had taken its place, and Strike suddenly realised he was looking at Lord Oliver Branfoot, who sat hunched behind a lit-up podium beside a young comedian.

Large, overweight and round-shouldered, Branfoot was wearing a suit that looked as though he’d slept in it. His dark hair was either badly cut or messed up to seem that way, while his large, fleshy nose and droopy eyes gave him the droll look of a giant garden gnome.

The quiz host was speaking.

‘Of what did President Trump say this week, “the enemies keep saying it’s terrible”?’

Branfoot hit the buzzer first.

‘His hair?’ he said, in a plummy voice, which got an easy round of laughter. ‘Weally,’ said Branfoot, straight-faced, blinking at the studio audience as though surprised by their reaction. ‘Sewiously. It must be that.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ said the comedian sitting next to Branfoot, which earned another round of cheap laughter.

‘I’m afwaid I take sewious offence at that wemark,’ said Branfoot, mock-dignified.

He always seemed to step up his usage of words with ‘r’s in them when on television, milking the comedy value of his speech impediment.

‘I may not be Wichard Gere, but I don’t walk about with what appears to be Shwedded Wheat on my head. ’

‘The answer,’ said the host, over the audience’s renewed mirth, ‘is his Twitter account.’

‘’S’all right, he just called out in his sleep,’ said Wardle, reappearing in the room. ‘Oh Christ, not that Branfoot prick. Why do they keep inviting him on these things?’

‘Because he’s happy to play the jackass,’ said Strike.

‘I’m not sure that’s an act,’ said Wardle.

‘It’s a great act,’ said Strike, staring stonily at the screen. ‘That fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.’