Page 112 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Thus minded then, two parties mean to meet

And make each other happy.

Robert Browning Half-Rome

Robin was standing outside the Longcaster house in Belgravia the next day when Strike called her.

‘News,’ he announced baldly. ‘Kenneth Ramsay just called to tell me Jim Todd’s disappeared.

He didn’t turn up to work at Ramsay Silver on Thursday, didn’t go to the Kingsway office on Friday, isn’t answering his phone and nobody’s answering the door at his flat.

I’m wondering whether he recognised you on the Tube and got the wind up.

There are pictures of you online. He could’ve connected you to me. ’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, with a sinking feeling. She really didn’t want to be the reason Todd had disappeared. She could just imagine the witticisms Kim would make about that.

‘S’pose he might’ve quietly snuffed it in his flat, like McGee, but if he has, that seems a major coincidence. I’m going to try and speak to Todd’s neighbours when I’ve got time.’

When Strike had hung up, Robin was left feeling professionally inadequate, in addition to all her other worries. Todd gone, possibly because of her; Albie Simpson-White hadn’t led them any closer to Rupert Fleetwood; and her efforts to speak to Cosima Longcaster still hadn’t borne results.

Cosima, as Robin had already discovered, wasn’t an easy person to engage in conversation.

The twenty-one-year-old lived with her parents in a large house in Belgravia, five minutes’ walk from her father’s club, Dino’s.

Judging by Cosima’s Instagram account, which had twenty thousand followers, her primary occupation was socialising and taking selfies, with occasional modelling jobs on the side.

Thin, with long, baby-fine blonde hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion and colt-like legs, Cosima posted pictures to her Instagram at least twice a day, sometimes trying on different outfits in her walk-in wardrobe, but usually posing with friends in various trendy restaurants and clubs. She also spent a lot of time at Dino’s.

The primary difficulty in getting within questioning distance of Cosima was the thick cordon of people constantly surrounding her.

The girl was either at home, surrounded by uniformed staff, or amusing herself with large groups of friends in places where entrance required a great deal of money, or membership.

When she travelled, it was by Uber or in one of the family’s cars, with a chauffeur, so she was free to drink.

She never seemed to walk anywhere, unlike her father, whose invariable routine was to leave his house at precisely midday, stride briskly to Dino’s for lunch, and stay there until the early hours of the following morning.

Dino Longcaster was a tall, heavy man, always impeccably suited, with a dark complexion and pronounced eyebags.

His unusually large, round head, with its slicked-back dark grey hair, resembled a cannonball, and his default expression was one of boredom bordering on disdain.

Knowing how he’d bullied Rupert Fleetwood, Robin found it almost pleasurable to dislike the man to whom she’d never spoken, seeing superciliousness in everything from the cast of his face to his perfectly knotted half-Windsor.

Robin spent the next few hours waiting for Cosima to emerge, but was finally forced to leave without having glimpsed her, for her evening off with Murphy.

He’d booked them a table at his favourite gastropub in Wanstead, the Duke, which at least meant Robin didn’t need to go home first to change.

She touched up her make-up on the Tube, and emerged into the chilly night, checking regularly behind her that she wasn’t being followed, as she now did every time she was alone in the dark.

She’d gone only twenty yards when her mobile rang. It was her mother again. Robin suspected she was about to hear news that wouldn’t cheer her up.

‘Hi Mum.’

‘Oh, Robin,’ groaned Linda.

‘What’s happened?’ said Robin in panic.

‘We think they’ve split up. Martin and Carmen. He won’t talk about it, but he’s slept here the last three nights.’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin, again glancing over her shoulder; the street was empty. ‘So Carmen’s alone at home with an ill baby?’

‘He’s not really ill , but yes, she’s all alone with him. I don’t know what to do. She’s never seemed very keen on us, and I called this afternoon to offer help, but she didn’t pick up.’

There was nothing Robin could say or do to fix this situation, but she listened patiently until a beeping in her ear told her another caller was waiting.

‘Mum, I’m really sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll ring tomorrow.’

Switching calls, she said,

‘Robin Ellacott.’

‘Hello,’ said a timid, girlish voice. ‘This is Zeta.’

For a few steps, the exhausted Robin couldn’t for the life of her recall who Zeta was.

‘I… I don’t understand how you got my number,’ said the girl.

‘Oh,’ said Robin, as the realisation hit her: Zeta, the girl to whom Tyler Powell had allegedly done some harmful thing in Ironbridge. ‘Your friend Chloe Griffiths gave it to me.’

‘Oh,’ squeaked Zeta. ‘I… I wish she hadn’t.’

‘I was only calling for background,’ said Robin, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Nothing you tell me will be passed on.’

‘What do you want to know?’ Zeta asked in trepidation.

‘Chloe told me you’d had a bad experience with Tyler,’ said Robin.

‘I don’t want you to tell the police!’

‘I won’t,’ Robin reassured her hastily.

‘Because I haven’t got any proof! He’ll just say he didn’t!’

‘I understand. I’d still like to know what happened.’

‘Well… I was really drunk in the Jockey she needed to be honest with him, at least wherever honesty was practicable.

‘Kim Cochran told us the team working the case had ruled him out. I didn’t tell you because I know you didn’t want us to investigate the body in the first place, and you said that thing about “showing up the Met”, so I felt awkward about mentioning it. ’

‘Right,’ said Murphy. ‘So, d’you know who it was, in the vault?’

‘No,’ said Robin, with a slight ripple of guilt as she thought, again, of Dick de Lion and Lord Oliver Branfoot.

‘Would you tell me if you did?’

‘Ryan, come on. You think we’d hide information like that from the police?’

‘No,’ said Murphy, ‘I don’t think you’d hide it from the police , but I wondered whether you’d tell me , specifically.’

‘Well, of c—’

‘Because I know I’ve been an arsehole about it,’ said Murphy.

Robin reached for his hand and squeezed it.