Page 121 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘And our men – well, they’re Sark, and there’s more’n a bit of the devil in them.’

John Oxenham A Maid of the Silver Sea

‘Not too bad,’ said Strike, forty-five minutes later.

‘No,’ said Robin, although in fact she hadn’t found the movement of the old ferry very pleasant and had indeed spent the last twenty minutes staring out at the horizon without talking.

‘Careful on the steps,’ called a young ferryman behind them. ‘They’re slippery.’

Cursing himself anew for forgetting his stick, Strike moved at a snail-like pace up the steep stone steps of the harbour, which were indeed dangerously slimy, even though the rain had now passed off.

At last, leg throbbing, he reached the top of the flight to see three tractors, one of which was pulling open-sided passenger trailers that were already almost full of people, and two of which were being loaded with luggage.

‘Squeeze on,’ shouted the ticket collector, beckoning Strike and Robin forwards. ‘Gawn, there’s room!’

Robin found a narrow strip of seat beside a large man in a paint-stained beanie hat, while Strike crammed himself in beside two women who had shopping bags perched in their laps.

Robin couldn’t see how the vehicle could possibly hold any more people, but the last two ferry passengers, both male and clearly local, judging by the greetings they threw the tractor drivers, ambled up and, seeing no seat space, simply climbed onto the edge of a trailer, unconcerned, remaining standing while clinging on to the metal poles holding up the roof.

The tractor driver started up the engine, and towed the line of trailers through a short tunnel in the hillside, then up a very steep road, Robin worrying unnecessarily about the standing men, who seemed oblivious to any danger.

A couple of minutes later, the tractor arrived at the top of the hill and came to a halt outside a cream-painted pub, the Bel Air, over which both the Sark flag and Union Jack fluttered.

All passengers disembarked and set off in different directions on foot, leaving Strike and Robin alone to take stock of their surroundings, while the tractor bearing their green-tagged luggage disappeared from view.

Ahead stretched something in the nature of a high street, though to people used to London it had a very strange appearance: no cars, single-storey buildings, and a thoroughly sleepy air.

‘Right,’ said Strike, ‘de Leon’s mother lives on Rue des Laches, which is supposed to be close.’

He was wearing the pinched expression that told Robin he was already in a lot of pain.

They headed a short distance up the road, which was really a dirt track, level though puddled, with stones protruding here and there.

Only now did Robin fully appreciate the implications of a total lack of buses or taxis; they had a lot of walking ahead, because they’d arrived on the east of the island and their B&B lay to the south.

To her relief, the first wooden signpost they reached pointed them left, towards the Rue des Laches. They proceeded along a second track, with fields on one side and houses on the other, until Strike said,

‘That’s it, there.’

The low-roofed house was painted pale blue and looked rather shabby. A couple of bare-branched apple trees stood in the front garden. As Strike and Robin walked up the front path, a burly, bearded man rounded the corner of the building, pushing a wheelbarrow full of logs.

‘Morning,’ called Strike. ‘My name’s Cormoran Strike, this is Robin Ellacott, and we’re looking for Mrs de Leon.’

‘She’s gone over to St Peter Port,’ said the man suspiciously. ‘What d’you want with her?’

‘To ask her about her son, Danny.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said the man, setting down the handles of the wheelbarrow. His expression had hardened. ‘Why?’

‘Can I ask who—?’

‘I’m his brother,’ said the man. ‘Older brother. Richard de Leon.’

To Robin’s alarm, Richard now picked up one of the short logs in his wheelbarrow and, holding it in the grip of one hand, advanced on them slowly.

She was reminded of Ian Griffiths bursting angrily out of his house in Ironbridge clutching his guitar, but the elder de Leon brother presented a very different calibre of threat.

While shorter than Strike, his forearms were massive, and the broken veins in his face suggested long days of hard labour, out of doors.

‘What’s Danny to you?’ he said.

‘Just wanted to know whether you or your mother have heard from him lately,’ said Strike.

‘No,’ said Richard. ‘We haven’t.’

‘He hasn’t come home to Sark, then?’

‘No,’ said Richard. ‘He hasn’t.’

‘Have you heard from him lately?’

‘No,’ said Richard, for the third time. ‘He’s not here. Haven’t seen him, haven’t heard from him.’

‘For how long?’ asked Strike.

‘What d’you wanna know that for?’

‘We’re investigating an unidentified body,’ said Strike, reaching a hand into his pocket, but keeping his eyes on the log in Richard’s hand. ‘Friends of Danny’s in London are worried it was him. This is my card.’

De Leon all but snatched it from Strike’s hand and glared at it suspiciously.

‘“Private detective”?’ he said, with a snort, as though Strike had handed him a joke item.

‘That’s right,’ said Strike.

De Leon looked up at the detective with dark, bloodshot eyes. The resemblance between him and the fake-tanned, blond man who adorned the office corkboard was slight.

‘What’re you really after?’

‘I’ve just told you,’ said Strike. ‘If you say Danny’s not here—’

‘Not a matter of me saying it, he’s not,’ said Richard loudly. ‘You calling me a liar?’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘I’m saying—’

‘He’s in London,’ said Richard. ‘All right? He went to London.’

‘And how long has it been since you heard from him?’

‘How’s that any of your business?’

‘Because if you’ve heard from him since last June, he can’t be the dead man we’re trying to identify,’ said Strike.

Richard de Leon glared up at Strike for several seconds before saying,

‘No. We ain’t heard from him since June.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, thank—’

‘You stay away from my mother,’ said de Leon, and now Robin remembered Valentine Longcaster issuing a similar implied threat, about his younger sister. ‘You don’t go fucking near our mother, you hear me?’

‘I’d be hard put to go anywhere near her, seeing as she’s in Guernsey and I don’t know what she looks like,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for your help, though.’

He wasn’t certain the log in de Leon’s hand wouldn’t be deployed once they turned their backs, so Strike gestured at Robin to go first. Both regained the road without sustaining any injury from flung wood, but Richard de Leon continued to glare at them until they passed out of sight.

‘D’you believe him?’ said Robin quietly, as they headed back up the Rue de Laches.

‘Not sure,’ said Strike. ‘There were odd features about that conversation.’

‘I’d have expected a bit more concern, wouldn’t you? After hearing there’s a body out there that might be Danny?’

‘I would, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Didn’t blink, did he? Just wanted us to piss off.’

‘Maybe he and Danny don’t get on? Maybe he doesn’t care whether Danny’s alive or dead?’

‘Or he knows exactly where Danny is, and thinks we’re after him.’

‘Assassins sent by Oliver Branfoot?’

‘If that’s what he’s worried about, it means Danny and his brother are in each other’s complete confidence – which they might be, I s’pose,’ said Strike. ‘I tend to forget there are siblings who actually tell each other everything.’

‘Don’t you?’ said Robin.

‘Christ, no,’ said Strike. ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ admitted Robin, thinking of her disastrous Christmas.

‘Fancy something to eat while we plan next steps?’

They walked back to the Bel Air pub, which seemed the most likely place to find food, Strike’s limp becoming ever more pronounced. As Robin paused to pat the Golden Retriever that exited a small ice cream shop to greet them, she said,

‘Actually, I’ll see you in there. Something I forgot to bring – want to see if I can buy one.’

Wondering whether she was going to call Murphy, Strike proceeded alone past the pub’s bathrooms, which lay on the opposite side of a small yard, and were labelled Men/Hommes and Women/Femmes, and entered the Bel Air.

A few locals were watching horse-racing on the large flatscreen in the front room, which was carpeted in red.

The pub made Strike think of his old Cornish local, the Victory, having a distinctly nautical air that extended, in the second of two rooms, to a bar fashioned out of a wooden rowing boat.

He bought himself a pint, enquired about food, was informed that pizzas were all that were on offer, ordered two, then went and sat down, with relief, at a table in the corner, beside a wall full of framed old music posters, featuring not only the Beatles and Bowie, but his father’s band, the Deadbeats.

Robin, meanwhile, was walking up the main street, the Avenue.

Barring a shop selling silver jewellery, nearly everything was closed, but at last she spotted a kind of general store, which was open and which seemed to provide everything from basic household goods to greetings cards and toys.

She was just about to enter when, glancing left, she saw a large figure walking towards her, and recognised Richard de Leon.

Catching sight of Robin, he turned hastily and strode back towards the Rue des Laches.

Robin carried her purchase, a walking stick with a rubber handle, back to the pub. Drawing level with the Rue des Laches she looked down the lane, but Richard de Leon appeared to have retreated back into his mother’s house.

She found Strike in the back room of the Bel Air, where she handed him the stick.

‘Yes, you do need it,’ she said in exasperation, as Strike opened his mouth to remonstrate. ‘We’ve got to walk to the B&B after this. Strike, come on, I even got it in army green so nobody’ll think you’re a big girl’s blouse.’

Strike grinned, though reluctantly, because he could just imagine Murphy striding, unimpeded, over the island, possibly with his bloody gym bag and water bottle.

‘Should’ve brought one with me,’ he admitted. ‘Thanks. I’ve ordered you a pizza, it was all they had.’

‘Great,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve just run into Richard de Leon again, by the way. He wasn’t threatening,’ she added, forestalling Strike’s question. ‘He didn’t say anything at all, just spotted me and turned back the way he’d come.’

‘Strange,’ said Strike, as a group of people settled at a neighbouring table.

He took a sip of his zero-alcohol beer, then said, in a lower voice, ‘I was going to tell you this before I fell asleep on the plane. That Scottish Gateshead I thought might be Niall Semple’s dead best mate’s sister?

I think I’ve found a few traces of her online over the weekend.

She’s started and abandoned two different Twitter accounts and a Facebook page over the last seven years. See for yourself.’

Robin flicked through the pictures on Strike’s phone.

Rena Liddell’s posts were often cryptic and occasionally garbled.

She seemed fond of random pictures of clouds, doorways and blurry shots of the backs of passers-by, but not of selfies.

Her profile picture on all three accounts was a cartoon picture of a purple and blue bat.

‘Zubat,’ said Robin.

‘What?’ said Strike.

‘Her avi, it’s a Pokémon called Zubat. My brother Jon was mad about Pokémon when he was a kid. But she’s calling herself @Mirbat, not @Zubat.’

‘That’s one of the things that made me almost certain it was her.’

‘ You like Pokémon?’ said Robin, laughing as she looked up.

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘Mirbat’s a coastal town in Oman. There was a battle there in 1972: nine SAS guys versus two hundred and fifty Communist rebels. The SAS won.’

‘ Nine against two hundred and fifty? ’

‘Best of the best,’ said Strike, just as he had in Ironbridge. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if Rena heard about the battle from her brother, hence the name.’

Robin scrolled down through Rena’s chaotic and garbled output.

A preoccupation with Muslims and the danger Rena felt they posed to the UK were very evident throughout her posts.

A few of her tweets had been reported and taken down.

Judging by those that remained, Robin suspected they’d been extremely Islamophobic.

‘I think we’re talking serious mental illness, addiction or both,’ said Strike. ‘She posts in spurts, with hiatuses for months, but she’s been writing less and becoming more incoherent lately. However, if you look back to 2015, she managed to say something when she might’ve been on the right meds…’

Robin scrolled backwards and saw:

there telling me my brother\s dead I don’t think hes really dead. don’t believe it.

‘’Course,’ said Strike, ‘if Richard de Leon’s telling the truth and he hasn’t heard from Danny since June the eighteenth last year, Rena Liddell becomes irrelev—’

Strike’s mobile rang in Robin’s hand.

‘Wardle,’ she said, handing it back.

‘I’ll take it outside,’ said Strike, with a glance at the group at the next table.

The walking stick, Strike had to grudgingly admit, was helpful and enabled him to get out into the courtyard more speedily than he would have done without it.

‘What’s up?’ he asked Wardle.

‘Hi,’ said the policeman. ‘Nothing urgent. I just wanted to ask… were you serious about a job at the agency?’

‘Yeah, of course. We probably couldn’t match the salary you’re on, though.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Wardle. ‘I’m thinking about it. Like I said, with Mum dying, I can still see Liam right.’

‘We could use you as soon as you want to work,’ said Strike, although it occurred to him as he said it that he hadn’t yet discussed this with his detective partner.

Absent-mindedly turning to face the high street, he saw Richard de Leon exit the Rue des Laches, glance around, spot Strike watching him, and beat a hasty retreat back down the track from which he’d just emerged.

Meanwhile, in the pub, a barman had just arrived at Robin’s table with two pizzas.

‘On holiday?’ he asked, as he set them down.

‘Not really,’ said Robin. ‘We’re looking for a man called Danny de Leon.’

‘Danny?’ said the barman cheerfully. ‘He’s up at Helen Platt’s, just seen him. Clos de Camille, on Rue de La Seigneurie. He’s doing her garden.’