Page 107 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… we made a league together, notwithstanding that my gods were not thine; because we were brethren in the sacred mysteries…

Albert Pike The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Unbeknownst to Robin, Strike was currently preoccupied with an investigative problem he considered even more pressing than the identity of the body in the silver vault.

Having racked his brains for the best way to throw off the surveillance under which Bijou’s former lover had placed her, and for a discreet venue suitable for the provision of DNA swabs, he’d decided to call again on his extensive knowledge of London’s five-star hotels.

On the same cold, damp morning he’d arranged to meet his old friend Graham Hardacre for a tour of Freemasons’ Hall, Strike hung around in his attic flat until ten past nine, by which point he thought it reasonable to suppose that Bijou would be awake but still at home, without eavesdroppers or passers-by to listen in.

He reached for Ted’s fisherman’s priest and sat weighing it in his hand as he waited for her to answer, which she did within a few rings.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve got a plan for the DNA test.’

‘Oh, thank God,’ said Bijou fervently. ‘Today?’

‘Day after tomorrow,’ said Strike. ‘But you cannot tell anyone —’

‘I won’t!’ said Bijou shrilly. ‘For God’s sake, do you think I want people knowing?’

‘Right, well, I’ve booked a room at the Savoy,’ said Strike.

‘The hotel?’

‘No, the cabbage,’ said Strike irritably. ‘Of course the bloody hotel.’

‘We can’t meet at a hotel, that’ll look—’

‘ Listen, ’ said Strike, who’d anticipated her quibbles and was in no mood to humour them.

‘It’s the hardest bloody hotel in London to find your way around, it’s a maze in there.

It’s got two entrances, front and back, and three different lifts going to different parts of the building.

They’re discreet and professional, and they’re used to celebrities, so they won’t let themselves get tricked into giving out any booking information.

Nobody’ll be able to tail you to the room, or prove who you met or what you did in there, as long as you follow my instructions. ’

‘But—’

‘What’s the likelihood of us meeting to fuck in an expensive hotel, in the city where both of us have flats, when you’ve got a baby with you?

You’re there to meet an old American friend who’s only in town for twenty-four hours, on business, but wants to meet the baby.

You’re having coffee in her room at four o’clock.

That’s what you say, if you need a story. ’

‘OK,’ said Bijou uncertainly.

‘Have you got a pen?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and he heard her rummaging. ‘Go on.’

‘You’re going in the front. No furtiveness, you’ve got nothing to hide. Go straight through the lobby, down the steps, turn left and then right. That takes you to the red lift.’

‘Red lift,’ repeated Bijou, who was clearly making notes.

‘If anyone’s following you, it’ll be obvious, because they’ll have no choice but to get into the lift with you.

If anyone does get in – and I don’t care how innocent they look – get out.

Fake having forgotten something, or realising you’re at the wrong lift – there’s a green and blue one, too.

If whoever got in the lift with you gets out when you do, you stop dead and make it clear you think their behaviour’s odd. ’

‘How?’

‘Stare at them. Make it clear you’re suspicious. They need to know they’ve blown their cover, that they’re risking you confronting them or reporting them to a hotel worker for following you.’

‘What if they ask where I’m going? What if they confront me ?’

‘Then you either tell the story you’re meeting an American girlfriend upstairs, or ask why that’s any of their business. Do not get in a lift with anyone, all right?’

‘All right,’ said Bijou.

‘Once you’re in the lift alone, press the sixth-floor button.

That’s not where you’re getting out, but we want them scurrying up to the top while you’re going back down to the fourth.

I’ll already be in the room waiting for you.

We do the swabs, and I leave immediately via the back of the hotel.

You stay in the room for at least a couple of hours, to make the coffee with the friend story stick.

Then you go back out through the lobby at the front. ’

‘All right,’ said Bijou, ‘but it’s going to be really expensive, taking a room at the Savoy, and I’m not getting paid at the—’

‘It’s fine, I’ve already paid for it,’ said Strike.

‘Oh,’ said Bijou. ‘Well, I’ll pay half, if you—’

‘There’s no need. I just want this sorted out.’

Having given her the room number, Strike hung up.

He replaced the priest on the windowsill and got to his feet, trying not to think about the likely press massacre should Dominic Culpepper realise there was a story combining Strike, a gorgeous brunette, an accidentally conceived baby and a well-known barrister who was the scourge of the tabloids, nor to imagine that story’s effects on Robin and the rest of the agency.

Strike had detected a definite lack of warmth in his recent interactions with Shah, and had a nasty feeling this might be because Shah knew Bijou had called the office.

He was heading downstairs without intending to enter the office, because he wanted to be in good time to meet Hardacre, when Pat, seeing him pass, called out to him from behind the glass-panelled door.

‘What’s up?’ asked Strike, looking in.

‘That Scottish Gateshead’s just called again,’ she said, looking cross. ‘Bloody rude.’

‘The woman who wants to meet me in the Golden Fleece?’ said Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Pat. ‘Very angry you haven’t called her back. Swearing.’

‘I haven’t got her number,’ said Strike. ‘What was she saying this time?’

‘Something about an engineer and people are out to get her. Swearing her head off.’

‘OK, well, if she calls again, try and get contact details.’

He was about to set off downstairs again when he changed his mind and walked through into the inner office instead, where he made a note and pinned it on the corkboard beneath the picture of Niall Semple. Scottish woman. Engineer. People out to get her.

‘If that woman does call back,’ he told Pat on his way back to the glass door, ‘ask if she’s blonde and has got anything tattooed on her face.’

‘On her face ?’ said Pat.

‘Yeah, you know, the thing on the front of your head,’ said Strike, and left.

Hardacre had suggested meeting in a pub called the Freemasons’ Arms, which lay a short distance from Freemasons’ Hall, because, as he’d told Strike by text, ‘we might as well do the thing properly’.

However, as Strike saw when he entered, the pub was disappointingly free of masonic emblems, placing an emphasis instead on old football photographs.

Hardacre was already at the bar. Barely five foot eight, the SIB man had become tubbier since Strike had last seen him, and lost more of his mousy hair, though his amiable, nondescript face was far less lined than Wardle’s. The pair exchanged their usual half-hug, half-handshake.

‘You’re thinner, Oggy.’

‘Not thin enough,’ said Strike, whose knee and hamstring had resented the ten-minute walk. ‘You look well. How’s the family?’

‘All good, yeah,’ said Hardacre. ‘Quick pint before we get you initiated?’

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Strike. ‘But they take all money and metal off you first, don’t they?’

‘Been reading up?’ said Hardacre, with a grin.

‘Just wondering whether alcohol’s a good idea when I’m about to be hopping around in the dark,’ said Strike.

‘Think they’d make an exception for your leg, unless you habitually use it as a weapon.’

‘Not often,’ said Strike, ‘but it’s been known.’

They took their pints to a table near the window.

‘So,’ said Hardacre, ‘what’re we looking for?’

‘Museum and Temple Seventeen,’ said Strike.

‘Museum won’t be a problem, but they don’t usually let the public into temples, other than the Grand Temple. Why’re we interested in number Seventeen?’

‘William Wright was interested in it, or so my informant says,’ said Strike.

‘Very specific, wanting to see just one temple.’

‘Said informant isn’t overly trustworthy. I’m checking it out on the off-chance. Don’t suppose you’ve got anything else on Niall Semple for me?’

‘A bit,’ said Hardacre, dropping his voice, ‘but you need to keep this on the down low, Oggy. I’ll be deep in the shit if they find out I’ve passed it to you.’

‘There’ll be no publicity,’ said Strike, considerably more sympathetic to this request than he’d been to the almost identical one made by Ryan Fucking Murphy.

‘Name Ben Liddell familiar to you?’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but I know Semple’s best mate was called Ben and I know he got killed in the same operation where Semple sustained his traumatic brain injury.’

‘That’s him. Well, Semple seems to have been very fucking angry about that, and from what I heard – I shouldn’t know any of this, Oggy – he showed extreme animosity to the Regiment once he was compos mentis again and even made noises about press exposure regarding the botched operation where Liddell died. ’

‘That’d explain a lot,’ said Strike, thinking of Ralph Lawrence, the alleged MI5 operative, and his obvious preference for Strike giving up attempts to find Semple. ‘What d’you know about the operation?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hardacre, ‘and frankly, I don’t want to know.’

‘Has this Ben Liddell got any next of kin?’

‘No idea.’

‘OK… can I ask you a couple of masonic questions?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘Wouldn’t happen to know what gow-too is, would you?’

‘Gow-too?’ said Hardacre. ‘How’re you spelling it? G – A – O – T – U?’

‘Haven’t seen it written down,’ said Strike. ‘What would it mean if it’s that?’

‘Masonic acronym. Great Architect Of The Universe.’

‘God, in other words?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘We’ve got an anonymous caller who’s allegedly got GAOTU on their side. I thought Freemasonry wasn’t supposed to be a religion?’

‘It’s not,’ said Hardacre.

‘But you believe in God.’