Page 140 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
‘I think so, yeah. He knew Todd might’ve made himself of interest to the police again, and I imagine one of the last things Oz would want is Todd in an interview room. What if Todd decided to give up Oz in some kind of plea deal?’
‘Todd must have been implicated in the murder of Wright himself, then?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and I think the police are leaning that way too; they’ve connected the dots on Todd and McGee, though I don’t think they know much more than we do. They asked me why they both went to Dalston at the same time.’
‘But Todd had a cast-iron alibi for the actual killing.’
‘He did, yeah, but I’d lay odds Todd wrote Wright’s CV and coached him to scrape through the interview.
And another thought occurred to me after I left the police.
If Todd found that shithole room in St George’s Avenue for Wright, he might’ve had keys at some point.
Could have had spares cut and passed them to Oz.
As for all the stuff he fed me about a man in sunglasses watching the shop and Temple Seventeen, and Wright being camp, I think it was all bullshit and attempted misdirection. ’
‘So… Oz,’ said Robin. ‘We’re looking at a violent sex offender who kills people who become dangerous to him?’
‘A violent sex offender who shows no mercy to accomplices who can’t refrain from sex offending, even though all the evidence shows his self-restraint could use some work.’
‘He hasn’t been caught for any of these murders, though,’ said Robin, ‘which suggests brains.’
‘Agreed,’ said Strike. ‘Brains, and what I suspect is practice. A genuinely unhinged man might erupt into a sudden killing spree, but Oz isn’t unhinged. He’s methodical and controlled – except where girls are concerned. But even there, he hasn’t been caught yet.’
‘And you say four murders in eight months,’ said Robin, ‘but it might be five. We still don’t know what’s happened to Sapphire Neagle.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on finding out, because the police are playing catch-up where Oz is concerned,’ said Strike.
‘I don’t think they connected Medina’s murder and Neagle’s disappearance until I mentioned it this morning and they didn’t seem to know the real Osgood was emailed by a stranger about a van, from which I deduce that they haven’t been back to the real Osgood or tried to retrieve the mystery messages he’s received.
On the other hand, they’ve clearly reconsidered their position that the Oz and Medina sightings in St George’s Avenue were made up by Mandy for money—’
‘Finding out the silver Peugeot visited Newham twice probably did that,’ said Robin.
‘My thoughts exactly. They seemed thoroughly pissed off we know Malcolm Truman’s a mason, and even more pissed off at my suggestion that he refused to consider evidence that the body might not be Jason Knowles, which, needless to say, I made sure I said on tape.’
A yawn overtook Strike. When he’d finished, he raised his hand to the waiter to request more coffee.
‘I imagine you’ve noticed,’ he said, once his mug had been topped up, ‘there’ve been no press stories about Lord Oliver Branfoot’s private porn movies? The de Leon brothers aren’t upholding their side of the bargain.’
‘It’s only been a few days. We did agree they could prepare their mother first.’
‘I want Branfoot neutralised,’ said Strike. ‘We’re vulnerable in more ways than one while he’s skulking around, sending thugs to intimidate us. “We think you might have a flat where you make dirty films” isn’t a solid enough basis for a counter-attack. We need proof. An address.’
‘You still think the man who threatened me was Branfoot’s?’
‘Nobody else connected to this case has got blokes at their fingertips who’d be happy to break the law in exchange for a wad of cash, and while the fucker’s got a hotline to Culpepper, we’re still at risk of more bullshit press stories.
I got a snide remark from DCI Northmore about the way I conduct business.
I’d say he’d be fucking delighted to see me done over in the tabloids again.
It’d help a lot if we could rule out Powell or Semple. How was Wynn Jones?’
Robin gave a short summary of her talk with Jones, concluding,
‘If I had to bet, I’d say he knows where Tyler is, and has promised not to tell.
He claims to be convinced Tyler didn’t tamper with the car, but Tyler’s alibi for that night is really feeble – feeling ill and staying at home in his parents’ empty house.
But on the other hand, it really does stretch credulity that Tyler followed them all the way to Birmingham to fiddle with the ABS in the car park. ’
‘It does, yeah,’ said Strike. He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, then said, ‘Did you believe Jones, when he said Powell never mentioned silver to him?’
‘He kind of scoffed at the idea,’ said Robin. ‘Maybe they were talking about Sylvain Deslandes. Do we keep Pat calling all pubs called the Silver Something? We’re running up a lot of man hours for Decima to pay.’
‘Yeah, but as we’ve got fuck-all else on Powell…
incidentally, I finally made direct contact with the Scottish Gateshead on Thursday.
When I asked whether she was Rena Liddell she yelled “don’t say my name” or words to that effect and hung up, so I think it’s safe to assume she is.
I’ve left messages on all her old social media accounts, asking her to get back in touch.
Christ knows where she is. Not London, from what she’s said.
I thought she might’ve gone back to Scotland, but I had a look overnight and I can’t find a single Scottish pub called the Golden Fleece.
Unless I’ve missed one, it’s a name that only appeals to the English and Welsh…
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m going to visit Holborn Library this morning.’
‘To find out why Scots don’t have pubs called “the Golden Fleece”?’ said Robin, nonplussed.
‘No, because I want to see if they’ve got any old plans of Freemasons’ Hall and Wild Court. I can’t find anything online, but the library might have old stuff in a file.’
‘What d’you want plans of Wild Court for?’
‘Because I still can’t fathom how Wright and Oz got to the shop that night.
You said before there must be CCTV footage of them heading towards the shop, but if the police had found it, they’d have released it by now.
The only people spotted going into Wild Court around the right time were those four students they’ve ruled out.
So how the hell did two men manage to materialise in Wild Court without being seen by anyone, or captured on camera? ’
‘I don’t know, but how would plans—? Wait,’ said Robin, unsure whether to be amused or not. ‘You’re not suggesting some kind of—?’
‘Secret passage between the hall and the shop it backs on to? I grant you it sounds far-fetched, but I want to check when that shop was built, and find out whether any part of the hall was converted to make it. If there’s a connection between the two buildings, we’d potentially be looking for two men who entered Freemasons’ Hall on the evening after Wright got on the Tube at Covent Garden. ’
‘But the hall would be closed – oh. You mean to attend a masonic meeting?’
‘Possibly. I’m trying to find out which lodges met there that night. If Oz and Wright were both masons, it might explain Wright trusting Oz, even though he knew someone might be coming for him.’
‘But if Wright trusted Oz because they were both masons, Oz could have lured him anywhere ,’ said Robin. ‘Why meet him at Freemasons’ Hall, with loads of fellow masons as witnesses, then lead him away from the meeting just so he could be killed at Ramsay Silver?’
‘Why did it have to be done in the vault,’ said Strike, frowning. ‘Yeah. Right back where we started.’