Page 146 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Lovers’ ills are all to buy:

The wan look, the hollow tone,

The hung head, the sunken eye,

You can have them for your own.

A. E. Housman VI, A Shropshire Lad

‘I’m sure she hasn’t clocked me,’ said Wardle, who sounded worried.

Strike turned off Tom Waits, headed out of the inner office, closing the dividing door behind him so as to conceal the whisky, the books and the plans of Wild Court.

‘How did she get here?’ he asked.

‘Cab,’ said Wardle. ‘Got out on Charing Cross Road – I thought it might be coincidence, but—’

The doorbell rang a second time.

‘I might need you to follow her after she’s left,’ said Strike, ‘so hang around.’

He ended the call, then pressed the button on the intercom.

‘Strike,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said a female voice. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘buzzing you in now.’

He turned on the light in the outer office. While waiting for his unexpected guest to appear, Strike saw movement out of the corner of his eye: the ugly black goldfish with the knobbly growth on its head was floating at the water’s surface, flapping its fins helplessly, belly upwards.

The silhouette of Mrs Two-Times appeared on the landing. Strike opened the glass door.

‘Have a seat,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ she said in a tight voice, walking past him and sitting down on the sofa.

As might have been expected from a woman who spent most of her days shopping for clothes, having manicures and blow dries, she was immaculately dressed and groomed, wearing a coat made of what looked like satin, a form-fitting cream dress and high, strappy black heels.

Yet she wasn’t quite as good-looking up close as she appeared at a distance.

Her features were small and undistinguished, but she was living testimony to what money, skill and good taste can do for a woman’s appearance: her figure disciplined through diet, her expensively streaked, caramel-coloured hair flattering her skin, her eyes expertly made up to appear twice their natural size.

‘I found out this morning he’s paying you to follow me,’ she said, still in a tight little voice. ‘I recognised the bank account number.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, who could tell denials would be pointless. ‘How?’

‘I used to be his PA. He made me check the standing order to you, once. I made a note of the bank account number. That was when he was with that foreign girl.’

‘The Russian,’ said Strike. ‘Yes.’

‘I wondered whether he’d do it to me, too. Does he really think I’m playing around?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Strike, which was true, as far as it went. He wasn’t about to mention his theory about her husband’s sexual peculiarities. ‘I’ve assured him you haven’t given any sign of infidelity.’

‘Hm,’ she said, her eyes travelling over the office before coming back to rest on Strike, her gaze calculating. ‘OK, well, I’ve been trying to think what to do.’

Strike, who detected a threatening undertone in these words, moved behind Pat’s desk and sat down in her computer chair.

‘I know he’s playing around on me,’ said Mrs Two-Times.

‘Ah,’ said Strike.

‘Escorts,’ she said. ‘I recognise that bank account, too. There’s a place he’s always liked; he’s been using it for years. That’s why he’s always happy for me to go out with my friends.’

The question of why she’d married such a man had barely surfaced in Strike’s mind before he answered it himself. The designer clothes, the immaculate hair, the long lunches, the giggling exchanges with handsome waiters: presumably these sweetened the strange deal she’d made.

‘He’s kind of well known in his field,’ she said, now examining her perfectly manicured nails. ‘I could cause a lot of trouble for him, if I dragged you into it. It’d mean loads of publicity and he wouldn’t be able to use you to spy on his girlfriends any more, would he?’

Strike’s feeling of foreboding intensified.

‘Or,’ she said, looking up, ‘you could start watching him for me , instead. Get proof of the escorts. I wouldn’t tell him I’d used you and I quite like the idea of him footing the bills for me to get evidence for a nice fat divorce settlement.’

‘That’d certainly be a neat solution,’ said Strike.

‘You agree, then?’ she said.

‘Yeah, I think we could shake on that.’

She got up, took a pen out of the pot on Pat’s desk and wrote her mobile number on a Post-it note.

‘I’d like weekly updates,’ she said, tearing it off and handing it to him.

‘Fine,’ said Strike.

They shook hands. Hers was cold.

‘I didn’t think it’d last,’ she said. ‘Men don’t change, do they?’

‘Well… not often,’ said Strike.

She glanced over at the aquarium.

‘I think your fish is dying.’

Strike waited on the landing until he heard the street door open and close, then called Wardle.

‘Let her go,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’s smarter than him, that’s all. Come up and have a drink if you want one, I’ve got whisky open.’

Five minutes later, Wardle arrived in the outer office, to which Strike had already brought his bottle of Arran Single Malt.

‘Does that happen often?’ Wardle asked, when Strike had told him what Mrs Two-Times had said.

‘First time for me,’ said Strike.

‘Nah, I won’t,’ said Wardle, waving away the offer of whisky as Strike raised the bottle. ‘I was doing a bit too much of that, alone, a few months back. I’ve knocked it on the head for a while.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, pouring himself a treble. ‘Good for you.’

‘Is that fish all right?’ said Wardle, looking at the gasping black lump at the surface of the tank.

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘Mash up a pea,’ said Wardle.

‘What?’

‘It’s probably gulped down too much air at the top. Greedy little bastards, goldfish. Scoop it out and feed it a mashed pea. Sometimes works.’

‘The hell d’you know that?’

‘My niece keeps fish. Three different tanks in her bedroom. Just got on to Bettas.’

Having no idea what Bettas were, and zero interest, Strike sat back down in Pat’s computer chair and said,

‘So how long’ve you been off the booze?’

‘Since the night after you came over for that curry. Funnily enough, it was you mentioning me working here. Made me think about… you know… making some changes. I could do a coffee, though,’ said Wardle. ‘Got any decaff?’

‘If we have, it’ll be in one of those cupboards,’ said Strike, who’d never knowingly drunk decaffeinated coffee in his life. As he gulped down more whisky, his mobile buzzed and he looked down to see a text from Midge.

Plug’s gone home. No stabbing tonight.

‘What?’ he said, under the vague impression that Wardle had just said something.

‘I said, “did you hear Murphy’s fallen off the wagon?”’

Wardle had found some decaffeinated coffee and was now making it. Strike, whose heart rate had just increased as though he’d broken into a sprint, said, trying to mask the interest in his voice,

‘You told me someone thought he might be drinking again.’

‘Yeah, well, they were right, he is. He was caught necking vodka at his desk. He’s in a shitload of trouble, one way or another. Probably smarm his way out of it, though,’ said Wardle with a curling lip. ‘Iverson still thinks he’s fucking misunderstood.’

‘Iverson,’ repeated Strike. His brain felt sluggish.

‘The woman on the silver vault case. The one he groped a few years back.’

‘Oh. Yeah. I met her. Redhead.’

‘Yeah,’ said Wardle, as the kettle came to a boil. ‘What’re you going to say if Murphy gets kicked out and wants to come and work here?’

‘Cross that bridge when I get to it,’ said Strike.

‘Probably try and persuade Robin to leave and set up Ellacott and Murphy, Inc with him, if you don’t take him on,’ said Wardle, his back still to Strike. ‘Or Murphy and Murphy, if he gets his way.’

‘What?’ said Strike again.

Wardle headed back to the sofa holding his coffee.

‘He’s gonna propose.’

‘That a guess?’ said Strike sharply. ‘Or d’you know?’

‘He told Iverson the other week, and she told me, when I told her I was starting work here,’ said Wardle. ‘He probably told her he was going to pop the question to get her to back off. Looked like she was gonna cry when she told me.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, who felt as though he’d turned to ice from the neck downwards. ‘Ring bought and everything, is it?’

‘Dunno,’ said Wardle, taking a sip of coffee.

Mainly because he was afraid his expression might give away his thoughts, Strike turned back to his phone. Midge had texted a second time.

got pictures of his co-conspirators

Strike, who had a blank whine in his ears, typed back great , then had to say ‘what?’ again, because Wardle had definitely just spoken.

‘That Kim Cochran. Heard something very interesting about her the other day. Reason she left the force.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, still thinking about Murphy and Robin. ‘Well, she’s not my concern any more.’

Whether because Wardle had noticed his colleague’s abstraction or not, he said,

‘So what d’you want me to do, start following Two-Times tomorrow?’

‘Need to think it through,’ said Strike, forcing himself to concentrate. ‘We’ll have to maintain a pretence of following the wife, because he’ll ask me if he doesn’t see anyone around when he joins her.’

They discussed the ramifications of this double-agent job until Wardle, coffee finished, said he might as well get an early night. Strike, desperate to be alone, told him to leave his mug; he’d wash it with his whisky glass.

When Wardle had left, Strike remained sitting where he was. As he was now forced to recognise, he’d retained a slender hope that in spite of Robin’s talk of egg freezing, something might yet happen to prise her and Murphy apart. But if a proposal was in the offing…

He remembered the sapphire ring that had adorned Robin’s third finger when she’d first started work for him, when she’d occupied the space Pat did now.

The ring had represented a hard, blue full stop: nothing doing.

She’d married Matthew, in spite of his previous infidelity and what Strike privately thought of as his general cuntery, and it had taken a second, still more blatant, infidelity to blow the marriage apart, but Murphy, alas, seemed faithful…

he’s been great… I can’t fault him… he wants me, whether or not I can have kids…

he’s been really kind since it happened…

Strike got to his feet, realising he wasn’t quite steady on them any more, and returned to the inner office. In shutting down various open tabs on his computer he accidentally turned Waits back on.

Nobody, nobody

Will love you the way that I could

Cause nobody, nobody’s that strong…

He slapped the music off, shut down his computer, turned out the light, then returned to the outer office, where he washed Wardle’s mug and his own glass.

He was on the point of turning out the second light when his eye fell again on the gasping black goldfish at the top of the tank, flailing and gulping pathetically, belly up, its sufferings, if Wardle was to be believed, entirely self-inflicted.

Finger on the light switch, swaying slightly where he stood, Strike stared at it, imagining finding it dead and motionless in the morning, floating where it was now fighting for life.

Its two tank mates, one silver, one gold, drifted serenely below, indifferent to its plight.

The black fish was exceptionally ugly; close to an abomination.

It was an added insult that it bore his name.

‘Fine, you stupid little fucker,’ he muttered, and he headed none too steadily towards the stairway to the attic, unsure whether he had any frozen peas, but prepared – nonplussed to find himself doing it, yet with a vague desire to set something to rights, even as everything else turned to shit around him – to check.