Page 15 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

If two lives join, there is oft a scar,

They are one and one, with a shadowy third…

Robert Browning By the Fire-Side

Once the subcontractors had finished their cake and departed for their various jobs, Strike and Robin moved into the inner office, where the window was misted with fine rain. As Robin closed the door on Pat, Strike said,

‘Midge hasn’t exactly been a ray of sunshine lately.’

‘Kim talked over her,’ Robin pointed out.

‘I don’t just mean that. She’s been in a foul mood all this week.’

‘She and Tasha aren’t doing so well,’ said Robin, who’d heard the full story of Midge’s relationship troubles the last time she and Midge handed over surveillance on Mrs A. ‘Tasha’s away filming and Midge thinks she might be up to something with her leading man.’

Strike made an indeterminate noise. His subcontractors’ difficult love lives were of minimal interest to him; his own was giving him quite enough grief.

‘Ryan’s managed to get some information for us, on the body in the vault,’ Robin continued. ‘He knows someone who was on the case.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Great.’

He didn’t like having to be obliged to Murphy for it, but information was still information.

‘I know it’s your birthday, so you’ve probably got plans,’ Robin went on, ‘but if you were free to come over to my place tonight, you could hear what he’s got directly from him. He doesn’t want to text it. Apparently it’s very sensitive.’

‘Yeah, I could do that,’ said Strike, whose plans for the evening had comprised lying on his bed drinking beer while watching Arsenal play Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, which wasn’t what he’d told Lucy, who thought he was being taken out to dinner by his friends Nick and Ilsa.

Robin picked up a photo lying on the desk.

‘Is this what you wanted to show me?’

‘No, but you should see it anyway,’ said Strike. ‘That’s Rupert Fleetwood.’

While Robin was examining Rupert Fleetwood’s round face and broad shoulders, and his waiter’s uniform of burgundy bow tie and waistcoat, Strike said,

‘I called Shanker last night, to see if he’s heard of a big-time coke dealer who might go by the name of “Dredge”.’

Shanker, as Robin knew, was the name of a career criminal Strike had known since the age of seventeen. She had a fondness for him Strike felt was at least partially ill-advised.

‘And?’ asked Robin.

‘He knew who I was talking about. Fleetwood’s idiot housemate definitely tangled with the wrong bloke. I’ve asked Shanker to have a sniff around for me, find out whether this Dredge might’ve bumped off any ex-public schoolboys lately. Usual rates,’ Strike added.

Friends though they were, Shanker wasn’t a man who performed services for free.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Robin. ‘I read your email about Rupert’s aunt, by the way. She doesn’t sound exactly cosy.’

‘Old-school dragon,’ said Strike. ‘Zero affection or concern. Mind you, we don’t know the backstory. Maybe he robbed her blind before leaving Switzerland for England.’

‘But she said he’s in New York?’

‘Yeah, but refused to tell me whether she’s heard from him since the twenty-fifth of May.

Must admit, I can’t help wondering how hard the police would look for a man whose next of kin insist he’s not missing.

Decima isn’t married to him and they weren’t living together, so she hasn’t got much standing in terms of triggering a search. ’

‘I had a look through all the news coverage of the murder, while I was off,’ said Robin. ‘People talking about the masonic legend of Hiram Abiff. Had you ever heard of him?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Most skilful artificer of Solomon’s temple, murdered for refusing to divulge the Master Mason’s secrets. I will keep a worthy brother Master Mason’s secrets inviolable, when communicated to and received by me as such, murder and treason excepted, ’ he intoned.

Robin stared at him.

‘What?’ said Strike.

‘You’re never a Freemason?’

‘Course I’m bloody not,’ said Strike, with a snort.

‘Well, I might not know! It’s a secret society, isn’t it?’

‘“A society with secrets”, that’s the line. No, a mate of mine in the military was one. Graham Hardacre. I used to call him Hiram occasionally, for piss-taking purposes. Mind you, he only joined up to get a hot meal.’

‘What?’

‘His wife doesn’t cook. They live off sandwiches. Masonic dinners were a way he could legitimately get hold of some steak.’

‘Couldn’t he learn to cook?’

‘If that’s ever occurred to him, he’ll have dismissed it as the product of a diseased mind. He’s a funny bloke, Hardy, in both the odd and ha-ha senses. Good investigator, though.’

As he said it, Strike remembered that Hardacre had sent him an email several months previously which he, busy with both work and personal matters, had neglected to answer.

Their paths had diverged dramatically since Strike had left the army for a London-based life, while Hardacre remained in the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.

Hardacre had done Strike a couple of favours in the early days of the agency, but it now occurred to Strike that they hadn’t met face to face for five years.

‘Well, it’ll be interesting to hear from Murphy how much truth there was in the Abiff rumours,’ said Strike.

‘Why do men do it?’ asked Robin.

‘What, murder people?’

‘No, why are they so keen on closed societies with rituals and things? Women don’t go in for that kind of thing as much.’

‘Dunno,’ said Strike, but after a few seconds’ thought he added, ‘Think we might like the hierarchical thing more than you do. And we tend to need a reason to meet. Go out and do something or watch something, together. We don’t hang around in each other’s houses a lot, unless there are women involved. ’

‘So Freemasonry’s like five-a-side football?’

‘Except that there’s not as much emphasis on funny handshakes in five-a-side football and you don’t often hear players asking each other how old their grandmothers are.’

‘What?’ said Robin, utterly confused.

‘It’s how masons ask each other what lodge they belong to. The lodges are all numbered. “How old’s your grandmother?” “Two thousand and fifty-three.”’

‘Did Hardacre tell you all this?’

‘Some of it. You can look most of it up. From what I gleaned from Hardacre, you’re supposed to help out the needy – with an emphasis on fellow masons – and generally be a model citizen. And you’ve got your duty of admonishment.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No public exposure. Just a quiet brotherly word in the ear.’

‘Would that extend to something criminal?’ asked Robin curiously.

‘“Murder and treason excepted”,’ quoted Strike. ‘There are bits of it that aren’t for public consumption. Hardacre wouldn’t tell me the big stuff.’

Robin checked her watch, then said reluctantly, because she was interested in the conversation,

‘I’d better go, I’m taking over from Midge for a couple of hours. Does seven tonight suit you? I’ll order some pizza or something.’

‘Yeah, great,’ said Strike. ‘See you then.’

Robin headed off, leaving Strike to wonder what an evening spent in her and Murphy’s company was going to be like, because it would be the first time he’d ever been with them, alone, as a couple. Possibly, he thought, he’d be able to find a way to make Murphy look like a prick.

On this undoubtedly puerile but satisfying thought, he turned back to his computer to type out an update for Mr A.