Page 123 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘You don’t know our Sark men… They do things first and are sorry after…’

John Oxenham A Maid of the Silver Sea

Danny de Leon had swung his spade so forcefully at Strike’s head that it had knocked the latter over. From his suddenly prone position in the wet grass, Strike saw the panicked young man drop his weapon and begin to run towards the house, while Robin sprinted towards them.

‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ Strike yelled, afraid de Leon would employ violence on Robin, too, but Robin, bracing herself, and given an advantage by the fact that de Leon had looked back at Strike when he’d shouted, bent low and tackled him around the waist, hooking her leg around one of his and causing both of them to topple over, though Robin got the worst of it, hitting the ground hard with de Leon on top of her.

‘We’re detectives, we’re not after you,’ she managed to gasp, in spite of being winded. ‘We came to Sark to find out whether you were OK!’

He was trying to fight free of her while she clung with all her might to his yellow jacket.

Strike, meanwhile, had managed to get to his feet and, forgetting the walking stick, hobbled ill-advisedly towards the struggling pair, slipping on grass as he came, almost falling again, reaching them just in time to seize de Leon before he could break free from Robin, and drag him into a standing position.

The fake tan and the peroxided hair were no more.

De Leon’s hair was what looked like its natural dark brown, and the perfect teeth for which Lord Oliver Branfoot had paid stood out, very white, against a face that was now naturally weather-beaten as opposed to fake tanned.

He was short, strongly built and handsome, and continued to struggle with Strike until the latter shook him and bellowed,

‘FUCKING GIVE IT UP, WE’RE NOT HERE TO KILL YOU!’

‘We were worried you’d been murdered,’ panted the dishevelled and grass-stained Robin, clambering back onto her feet. ‘We thought you were a body—’

‘In a safe,’ said Danny, and immediately looked as though he wished he hadn’t. He’d stopped resisting but seemed both angry and scared. Raising his hands to his ears he said,

‘My earbuds—’

‘Forget your fucking earbuds,’ said Strike, whose jaw was bleeding and rapidly swelling. ‘We want to talk to you.’

Danny looked as though he’d have liked to refuse, but looking up at Strike, some of the fight seemed to go out of him.

‘Fine,’ he muttered. ‘We can go in the house.’

‘What about the owner?’ said Strike.

‘She’s out. She’s gone shopping on Guernsey with my mum.’

‘I’ll get your stick,’ Robin told Strike. ‘I’ll see you in there.’

So Strike stumbled off in the direction of the house, jaw throbbing, knee extremely painful for his run over slippery grass, and still holding on to Danny’s jacket in case he made a break for it, while Robin headed for the end of the lawn where she picked up Strike’s walking stick and found Danny’s earbuds, one of which had been crushed by a man’s foot.

The back door of Clos de Camille led directly into a neat kitchen with pale pink walls, hung with small seascapes that reminded Strike of Ted and Joan’s house in St Mawes. Danny had just sat down at the pine table when Robin entered with Strike’s stick.

‘You need to clean that,’ she said, looking at Strike’s face, where a livid cut had been made by the spade. ‘It’s bleeding and filthy.’

Strike moved to the sink and busied himself with soap and water, while Robin opened the door of the fridge freezer and found a packet of frozen peas. She handed the packet to Strike, who muttered thanks while drying his face with kitchen roll.

Now a fourth person arrived via the back door: Richard de Leon.

‘Oh Christ, what d’ you want?’ cried Danny.

‘The fuck’s going on?’ demanded Richard.

‘Your brother just smacked me in the face with a spade,’ said Strike, the bag of frozen peas clutched to his jaw.

‘ Why weren’t you answering your fucking phone? ’ Richard demanded of his younger brother.

‘I was listening to music, all right?’

‘As we’ve already told you, Mr de Leon,’ said Robin, trying to defuse the situation, because both de Leon brothers looked on the verge of outbursts, possibly of physical violence, ‘we were worried your brother was dead.’

‘Well, he’s not, is he?’ said Richard.

‘Thanks for that,’ said Strike, frozen peas still pressed to his face. ‘We weren’t sure.’

‘Well, why’re you after him, if he’s not—?’

‘This isn’t complicated,’ said Strike, who now lowered himself onto a chair at the kitchen table, his knee excruciatingly painful, and more than willing to vent his own temper on anyone who presented a target.

‘A man was murdered, we got tipped off it was your brother, we look for your brother, he’s alive, it wasn’t him. I’ll draw it for you, if you want.’

‘You’re not helping, all right?’ Danny said resentfully to Richard. ‘Just fuck off out of it !’

‘Will I, fuck?’ asked Richard, and then, rounding on Robin again, who he seemed to feel was most likely to give him a rational response, ‘All right, you know he’s alive – why’re you still here?’

‘Because we’d like to ask him some questions about Oliver Branfoot,’ said Robin.

Richard looked from Robin to Danny and back to Robin again.

‘It’s real?’ he said, now looking more shocked than angry. ‘This Branfoot thing? It’s for real?’

‘I told you it fucking was!’ said Danny.

‘Yeah, but you talk a lot of shit, don’t you?’

‘Why don’t you just f—?’

‘It’s real,’ said Robin.

‘How do we know you’re not working for him?’ said Richard.

‘Is it likely we’d mention his name, if we were?’ snarled Strike. He could tell he was going to have a hugely swollen face when they arrived at the B&B.

‘Danny,’ said Robin, ‘how d’you know Lord Branfoot thinks you were the man in the safe?’

‘I was told,’ said Danny.

‘Who by?’

‘I’m not telling you that, no chance. They’ll be in for it next.’

‘You tell us, fuckwit,’ said Richard, who now dragged a third chair out from the table and sat down.

‘What’s it matter who tipped me off?’

‘Was it another actor in Branfoot’s private films?’ asked Robin.

‘I just told you, I’m not – how d’you even know about any of this? ’

‘Your friend Fiona put an anonymous note through our office door,’ said Robin. ‘Her boyfriend told her you were the body in the vault, and she believed him. She’s very worried about you.’

‘I know, she kept calling me,’ said Danny, ‘but I couldn’t tell her I was all right, could I, because fucking Craig woulda told Branfoot, if he’d known where I was!’

‘She says Lord Branfoot threatened you, after he paid for you to get your teeth fixed.’

‘He paid for your fucking teeth ?’ cried Richard.

‘Yeah,’ said Danny, ‘so what?’

‘ Why couldn’t you pay for your own fucking teeth? ’

‘He offered, OK?’

‘This is the fucking problem!’ said Richard, jabbing a thick forefinger at Danny. ‘You always want something for fucking nothing!’

‘Branfoot got plenty out of me back, don’t you fucking worry!’

‘What made you come back to Sark, Danny?’ asked Robin.

‘I was – never mind,’ muttered Danny.

‘ You tell the fucking truth! ’ roared Richard.

‘I was getting a bad vibe!’ shouted Danny. ‘All right?’

‘What fucking bad vibe?’

‘From Branfoot?’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Danny.

‘What happened?’ said Robin, trying to forestall Richard.

‘I was… walking home one night,’ said Danny haltingly, ‘’n I was followed.

Big geezer. I sped up, he sped up. I started to run, so did he.

Taxi come along and I flagged it down. I looked back, the bloke was running off in the opposite direction…

Branfoot knows people, rough people through his – you know – his bullshit charity stuff.

Blokes who’ve been in jail and are up for a bit of cash…

he told me once he’s the only man in London who knows as many pigs as criminals…

I stayed home for a few days after I was followed but then I saw the geezer again.

He was hanging round in the street, looking up at my windows. ’

‘Is that when you decided to come home?’ asked Robin.

‘Not straight away. But then this mate of mine called and said fucking Craig was going around talking about how I was gonna be “taken care of”. So – yeah – I packed a bag, waited till the bloke hanging around left for the night, called a taxi and went straight to the airport.’

‘The friend who tipped you off that Branfoot was going to “take care of you”,’ said Robin, ‘is this the same person who told you Branfoot thinks you were the body in the silver shop?’

‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘The bloke who was meant to kill me must’ve told Branfoot that was me.’

It was apparent to Robin from Richard’s expression that he’d previously taken Danny’s account of what had made him flee London as either exaggerated, or complete fiction.

The arrival of two strangers in pursuit of his brother had clearly come as a shock, but Robin could tell that listening to Danny repeating his story to a third party, especially a third party who was providing confirmation of it, had tipped Richard into a state of alarm he’d hitherto escaped.

‘Well, Branfoot’s not gonna think that body was you for ever, is he?’ Richard said hotly. Pointing at Strike and Robin he said, ‘If they found out, so can bloody Branfoot! How long d’you think it’ll take for him to work out you just came home to Mum?’

‘Look, just fuck off out of this, it’s got nothing to do with you!’ said Danny angrily, standing up so quickly his chair fell over backwards.

‘Danny, please sit down,’ said Robin. ‘ Please. We want to help.’

She looked at Strike, inviting his agreement, but as Strike currently wanted little more than to thump Danny himself, he said nothing.

‘ You , help?’ Danny said to Robin, and she heard the fear beneath his aggression. ‘How can you bloody help? You’re making it bloody worse! I’m safe as long as he thinks I was the body in the vault, and here’s you trying to prove it wasn’t me!’

‘Well, the obvious way to remove the threat would be to—’