Page 136 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand’s mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays—
You do despise me…
Robert Browning Bishop Blougram’s Apology
Strike’s professional life had more often seen him as interrogator rather than interrogated, but in recent years he’d found himself on the uncomfortable end of a police interview far more often than he’d have liked.
Admittedly, there’d been occasions when he’d been there as a victim – the previous year he and Robin had been shot at, and the year before that an explosive device had been sent to their office – but this was the third occasion on which Strike had turned up a corpse in London, and that was without taking into account the two that Robin had found.
Considering the matter impersonally, he could understand why the Met might be getting touchy about what was starting to look like a predilection, rather than happenstance.
He drove himself to the local police station, accompanied by a uniformed officer, and gave a statement, waiving his right to a lawyer.
After listening to Strike’s account of how he’d come to find the two dead Jamesons, which included the fact that he’d been hired to identify the body in the Ramsay Silver vault, his interlocutor, an older man with a squint, demanded that Strike hand over his skeleton keys, which didn’t bother him, because he had several sets.
The officer then left the room muttering about needing to make some calls.
The detective remained alone at the scratched grey table for nearly an hour, vaping until told not to by an irate female officer who’d brought him a tepid cup of tea.
When the officer with the squint finally returned, it was to announce that Strike was going to be taken to Scotland Yard. When Strike asked whether he could drive his own car again, he was told ‘no’, and then, almost as an afterthought, placed under arrest.
‘What for?’ he asked, sure of the answer, but wanting confirmation.
‘Breaking and entering,’ said the sergeant with the squint.
It was almost midnight by the time Strike got out of the police car at Scotland Yard. The last time Strike had been here, he’d been genuinely, as opposed to euphemistically, assisting the Met with their enquiries. He was taken to a new interview room on an upper floor and, again, left alone.
Bearing in mind Wardle’s warning that he’d seriously pissed off the murder investigation team he assumed he was about to meet, Strike was intending to be honest as far as was practicable, while maintaining a sensible level of self-preservation.
A jury might forgive his ingress into Mrs Jameson’s flat if convinced that he’d thought the two people on the floor might have been saved, so he intended to stick stubbornly to the story of which he’d laid foundations back in Magdalen Court.
Should he find the investigative team intransigent, he was holding in reserve a serviceable metaphorical stick and a tempting informational carrot, and was confident both could be deployed to good effect.
He therefore took out his vape pen and resumed his quiet enjoyment of nicotine until, at shortly before one o’clock in the morning, two plainclothes officers entered the room: a flabby-looking white man of around fifty, who wore a cheap-looking suit and a constipated expression, and a woman in her mid-thirties who had shoulder-length red hair.
If forced to give an opinion, Strike would have called this woman prettyish.
She had a large mole on her cheek, teeth with large gaps between them, but a good complexion and attractive green eyes.
He had a feeling this might be Murphy’s contact: the woman called Iverson with whom Robin’s boyfriend had once had a drunken grope.
Strike wondered whether the pair been summoned from their beds to interview him, or were pulling all-nighters.
The man’s uptight expression might have been explained by either.
He switched on the recording device and introduced himself as DCI Northmore and, confirming Strike’s guess, the redhead as DCI Iverson.
Northmore gave the date and time, revealing himself to have extremely bad breath, which Strike could smell from four feet away.
Northmore invited Strike to state his name and address, asked him to confirm that he’d waived his right to a lawyer, then informed him that Iverson was investigating the silver vault murder, whereas he was enquiring into the murder of Sofia Medina.
Strike was interested in this last piece of information: the Met had evidently reconsidered their opinion that the man and woman seen in St George’s Avenue were figments of Mandy’s imagination.
Northmore consulted the written notes the uniformed officer from Harlesden had handed over, then said,
‘You say you’ve been hired to identify the body that was found at Ramsay Silver on the twentieth of June last year.’
‘That’s right,’ said Strike.
‘Who’s hired you?’
‘Can’t tell you that, sorry.’
‘You understand you’re under arrest?’ said Northmore, who had large grey pouches under his bloodshot blue eyes.
‘Yep, grasped that,’ said Strike.
‘You’ve forfeited the right to remain silent.’
‘I’ve signed a legally binding contract with my client, who wants confidentiality.’
‘Those rules don’t apply when it’s law enforcement asking the questions, Mr Strike.’
‘Nothing I did this evening has anything to do with my client. I entered Mrs Jameson’s flat,’ Strike continued – he might as well get this bit out of the way – ‘because when I looked through her window I not only saw two people lying on the floor, but signs of movement. I thought at least one of them might’ve been alive, and possibly in urgent need of medical attention. ’
‘You can’t have seen any movement,’ said Northmore, and another powerful gust of gingivitis washed over Strike. ‘Unless you’re claiming you spotted maggots through the window,’ he added, with a slight sneer.
‘There was a cat in the room,’ said Strike. ‘The lads who came upstairs with me saw it scarper when I went in. The net curtains were filthy. I couldn’t tell it was an animal moving. I thought it was one of the bodies.’
‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance, if you thought there were two injured people lying on the floor?’
‘Didn’t want to waste the emergency services’ time if they were lying there alive for some reason of their own.’
‘You’ve just said they weren’t answering the door.’
‘Which is why I thought someone needed to get inside urgently and see what was going on.’
They were both, Strike knew, performing for the tape.
These exchanges were preliminaries to the important business before them.
Northmore was reminding Strike how much trouble he was already in; Strike was laying out the defence he intended to mount, if they really wanted to charge him. The game hadn’t truly begun.
Iverson now spoke, revealing herself, unexpectedly, to be Welsh.
‘Has your client had a baby recently? Or been pregnant, over the last year?’
Strike sincerely hoped his expression hadn’t betrayed him, but the question had come as a shock.
‘Why’re you—?’
‘Wright told one of his upstairs neighbours he had a pregnant girlfriend,’ said Iverson, watching for Strike’s reaction. ‘He said he was saving up for an engagement ring.’
‘The neighbour in question being one of the Mohamed family?’ said Strike.
‘Yes,’ said Iverson.
‘I can’t disclose details about my client,’ said Strike, though the information that Wright had claimed to have a pregnant girlfriend had rattled him.
‘Where did you get the tip-off that Knowles wasn’t the man found in the silver vault?’ asked Iverson.
Noting that they were now acknowledging that they’d been well aware before tonight that Strike was investigating the body in the vault, he replied,
‘A contact.’
‘Same guy who’s previously given you tips on organised crime?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘People might think an informant like that would do more good working with the police, than for a private detective,’ said Northmore. The man’s breath really stank; Strike was trying not to breathe through his nose. ‘Or d’you pay him well enough to make sure you’re the only one who gets tips?’
‘Not a question of money,’ said Strike, and Northmore let out a small, derisive snort, which irritated the detective, though he tried not to show it. ‘This particular contact would collaborate with the Met when hell freezes over.’
‘But we’re to take it on his say so that Knowles went to “Barnaby’s”?’
‘No need to take it on his say so, if I can point you to exactly what and where Barnaby’s is,’ said Strike, deciding it was time to hint at his valuable informational carrot.
As he’d expected, a further silence ensued.
‘You know where it is, do you?’ said Iverson.
‘I do, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Found out this evening, as a matter of fact.’
‘Convenient,’ said Northmore.
‘Coincidental,’ said Strike.
‘You don’t seem to feel much compunction about complicating or impeding police investigations, Mr Strike,’ said Northmore.
‘When’ve I done that?’ asked Strike.
‘You entered a murder scene without authority just a couple of hours ago.’
‘Nobody knew it was a murder scene before I got in there.’
‘You’ve been interviewing people connected to two open murder inquiries.’
‘The William Wright inquiry was closed when my agency took the case,’ said Strike. ‘You’d identified him as Knowles. I’ve passed on every bit of information that could’ve been useful to you, since we started investigating. Haven’t hidden anything.’
‘Except Barnaby’s,’ said Northmore.
‘Just told you: I only found out what Barnaby’s is this evening.’
‘How much information has DCI Ryan Murphy been feeding you?’ asked Northmore.
Out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw a stiffening of Iverson’s expression. He was surprised they’d named Murphy, on tape. Could the man be under some kind of cloud? Might he even be under investigation?