Page 164 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Who can patch union here? What can there be

But everlasting horror ’twixt us two,

Gulfs of estranging blood? Across that chasm

Who can extend their hands?

Matthew Arnold Merope: A Tragedy

The large, twisted trees lining the road and the stretches of prime farmland were like a landscape seen in a half-forgotten dream.

Strike tried to take consolation from the magnificent indifference of nature to all human concerns, but the strategy was so ineffective it was almost a relief to turn up the side road leading to Heberley, and focus his mind on what needed to be done.

The tall wrought-iron gates loomed up before him, set between stone pillars on top of which were carved salmon in tribute to the Legard family arms and, perhaps, the River Tyne, which flowed past the house.

Strike got out of the car and approached an intercom, which was new: the old one, he remembered, had been rusty.

He pressed the bell, and a woman with an Eastern European accent answered.

‘Who is, please?’

‘Cartier,’ said Strike into the intercom, and by the time he’d got back to his car, the iron gates were slowly opening.

Rhododendrons lined the drive, but it was too early in the year for them to be in flower; instead they formed a dense, glossy dark green guard of honour as he drove up an incline.

When the BMW crested the top of the hill, Heberley House came into view in the distance: an enormous rectangular block of reddish ashlar, with long windows and pillars in the Greek Doric style.

Strike still had half a mile to cover, the track running through the deer park, where vast mature trees spread welcome pools of shade on sunny days, and the Legard family, if sober enough, had enjoyed the occasional picnic lunch, which wasn’t a matter of scratchy blankets, Tupperware and hard-boiled eggs, as Strike had experienced with Ted and Joan, but involved staff setting up trestle tables with snowy cloths, and carrying silverware across the lawn.

He parked on the gravel forecourt and as he approached the front door it opened to reveal the woman he assumed was a housekeeper: short, thin, light-haired and wearing a black dress.

He didn’t recognise her, but hadn’t expected to.

If there had ever been aged family retainers at Heberley House, they’d all peeled away since the arrival of Tara, who was notorious for an inability to hold on to staff who had to interact with her regularly.

‘You have necklace?’ said the housekeeper curiously, eyeing Strike’s empty hands.

‘It’s locked in my car,’ he said, pointing at the BMW. ‘I’m not supposed to get it out until Lady Jenson’s present.’

This implausible story seemed to satisfy the housekeeper, who turned to lead him into the marble-floored hall, which had changed very little since Strike had last been here.

More carved salmon served as finials at the bottom of the wide staircase, and the eighteenth-century chairs he remembered were still set in front of an enormous stone fireplace.

Strike waited until she’d disappeared from sight, then, as stealthily as he could manage, headed firstly towards the drawing room door, which he opened so he could cast a sweeping look over the interior, before crossing the hall to look in on the dining room.

He’d just seen what he’d come for when he heard footsteps again, and returned to stand beside the fireplace.

Tara was descending the staircase and talking as she came.

‘I thought you must be delivering something from my son, but—’

She stopped mid-sentence, still six stairs from the floor, staring at Strike.

Once as dark and breathtakingly beautiful as her dead daughter, Tara’s hair was now dyed blonde.

Her face had been lifted, probably more than once, so that she had odd horizontal creases on either side of her mouth where the skin had been stretched upwards.

Filler distorted the proportions of her face.

She was as thin as she’d always been, wearing her expensive interpretation of country clothing, which in this case meant a silk blouse and tweed trousers.

Had she been able to move her face properly, Strike knew it would have been wearing an expression of fury.

‘What the fuck are you doing here? Why did you let him in? ’ she demanded of the housekeeper, who’d just returned to the hall, possibly to offer refreshments.

‘He said he from Cartier,’ said the housekeeper, looking terrified.

‘Did you ask to see his ID?’

‘No,’ said the housekeeper, looking as though she might cry.

‘It’s not her fault,’ said Strike.

‘ You shut up,’ snapped Tara. ‘In fact, get out. Fucking get out, now , or I’ll get one of the groundsmen to drag you out.’

‘Unless you want to see Sacha plastered all over the papers for receiving stolen goods, I’d advise against doing that,’ said Strike. ‘And before you pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve just seen it on the sideboard in the dining room.’

For a few seconds Tara glared at him, then she barked ‘coffee!’ at the housekeeper, who scuttled away.

Tara descended the stairs without looking at Strike, swung around in exactly the same way Charlotte, when drunk, had turned her back on those who were annoying or boring her, and strode into the drawing room.

Strike followed and was in time to see Tara take a cigarette out of an ivory box, light it, then drop into a low brocade armchair.

The room had been redecorated at some point in the nine years since Strike had last been in it, when the walls had been of a pale, silvery blue.

Now they were dark green and some of the pictures had been rearranged, although the same Augustus John portrait of Sacha Legard’s bored-looking great-grandmother hung over the mantelpiece.

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the fucking balls to walk in here,’ sneered Tara.

‘Why’s that?’ said Strike, sitting down without invitation on the sofa.

‘You know fucking well why not. After what you did. ’

‘I’ve done a lot of things,’ said Strike, stretching out the leg bearing the prosthesis, which was cramping again, after the long drive. ‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘ It’s your bloody fault she killed herself! ’ shouted Tara.

Strike wasn’t remotely surprised that they’d arrived within seconds at this grotesque accusation, which to most people would have made sense only as the culmination of a vicious row.

Tara’s tactic in arguments had always been to reach for the most damaging thing she could throw at her opponent before the latter had time to collect their wits.

Charlotte had been forever branded with her mother’s opening salvos.

I wish I’d never fucking had you. Go overdose again, whining attention-seeker.

God, you’re a tedious, ugly little shit.

‘So whose fault were the two suicide attempts before I ever met her?’ asked Strike.

‘ Fuck you! ’

‘Eloquent as ever,’ said Strike. ‘Anyway, back to the sideboard.’

‘It’s none of your fucking business what’s on my sideboard!’

‘It’s not your sideboard, it’s your son’s, and he’s going to be royally fucked when the press find out where Dino Longcaster’s silver ship went, isn’t he?’

‘Sacha knows it’s here and he doesn’t care!

’ said Tara, with what Strike was certain was gross mendacity.

If Sacha knew what his mother had done, he’d be extremely nervous about anyone else finding out about it, most of all journalists.

‘I read Charlotte’s suicide note,’ she added loudly. ‘ I know what you did to her. ’

‘The worst I can be accused of with regards to Charlotte is not reconfiguring my entire life around her death wish,’ said Strike.

‘You were unfaithful, you were—’

‘I picked up the fucking pieces until there was no putting her back together any more,’ said Strike, ‘and I’m looking at the reason she was never going to make old bones.’

‘ Bastard, ’ said Tara. ‘And I mean that literally , of course.’

‘I’d say I’m a fairly good advert for having an unmarried mother, if you and Charlotte are the control,’ said Strike. ‘Back to the nef.’

‘If you think I’m going to explain anything to the thug who as good as killed my daughter—’

‘Fine,’ said Strike, getting up. ‘I’ll go to the press, tell them Sacha’s got the stolen ship and, trust me, I’ll enjoy it.’

‘Don’t you dare – come back here!’ shrieked Tara, as Strike made for the door. Before he could reach it, it opened to reveal the frightened-looking housekeeper.

‘Get out ,’ Tara shouted at her, ‘this is priv—!’

The housekeeper checked, holding her tray. Tara made a noise of exasperation.

‘Bring the coffee in first, ’ she said. ‘ Then leave. Come back here!’ she yelled at Strike. ‘Come back !’

‘We’ve got nothing else to say to each other,’ said Strike, turning to look at her as the housekeeper set her tray down on the coffee table and poured Tara a cup with a quivering hand.

‘Yes, we have,’ said Tara furiously. ‘Sit down. Sit down. ’

Strike didn’t move. It was liberating to be able to treat her as he considered she deserved; in the past, he’d always had to remember that Charlotte would pay the price if he permitted himself to lose his temper with Tara, but Charlotte was in Brompton Cemetery, finally beyond suffering, unlike the scrawny flesh and blood woman with the distorted, carefully made-up face and a lipstick-stained cigarette in her claw-like hand.

Having poured Tara’s coffee, the housekeeper scurried out of the room and closed the door while Strike remained standing.

‘Sit down,’ Tara said again. ‘ Sit. ’

‘I’m not a fucking dog,’ said Strike. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’

‘Yes,’ said Tara impatiently. ‘Sit down. ’

Before returning to the sofa, Strike helped himself to coffee. Then he said,

‘I’m assuming you didn’t ask Fleetwood to steal the nef. He nicked it, then brought it here because he couldn’t think where else he might be able to offload it, right?’

He took Tara’s silence for assent.

‘How much did you give him for it?’

‘That’s none of your business. You can tell fucking Dino—’

‘He’s not my client,’ said Strike.

‘Don’t lie to me, I’m not stupid, and he hasn’t told you the full story, but you can tell him I’ve got the witnesses. Lottie Hazlerigg and Angus Lyall told me all about it!’

‘All about what?’

‘Dino cheated . He always coveted that nef, and Peter Fleetwood was so pissed the night he bet it, he was probably seeing two backgammon boards. Lottie and Angus were there and they saw it happen, they know what Dino did, but nobody wanted to challenge him, because he can turn bloody nasty, as I well know. He dislocated my bloody shoulder when—’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard the story about your shoulder,’ said Strike. ‘I remember the overturned table and the burns to your leg, I know you found him in bed with a teenager hired to serve at a party. I’m only interested in the nef.’

‘I’m telling you about it!’ she snapped. ‘Dino always bullied Peter, treated him as though he was still his fag at Eton, even when I was married to him. So you can go right back to that piece of shit and tell him from me—’

‘I’ve just told you, he’s not my client. I’m working for his daughter, Decima.’

‘Why does she care about the bloody ship?’

‘She doesn’t. She’s only interested in the whereabouts of Rupert Fleetwood. Did Rupert mention Decima when he came to see you?’

‘No.’

‘So how much was it worth to you, to get one over on Dino?’

‘I’ve just told you, that’s none of your bloody busi—’

‘It is my business, because if you gave Fleetwood fifty grand he’ll have been able to hide himself far more efficiently than if you gave him a tenner.’

Tara glared at him, took another drag on her cigarette, then said through a cloud of smoke,

‘I gave him six grand. There. Happy?’

‘I think you gave him something else, as well.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a job abroad, at a Clairmont hotel.’

‘I’m not in charge of hiring and firing.’

‘I doubt anyone on the board’s going to turn down the only surviving Clairmont if they say they want their nephew by marriage given a job in a restaurant or a kitchen.

I doubt they’d even protest too much if you leaned on them to offer a brand consultant job to the only other person who knew where the nef had gone. ’

‘Well,’ said Tara, eyes narrowed over her coffee cup, ‘aren’t you clever?’

‘The evidence points that way, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Which hotel is Fleetwood hiding out in?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tara. ‘I told them to find him something, and they did. I don’t know where he went. He wrote me a thank you card, though. Nice manners. I don’t remember any thank you letters from you .’

‘What the fuck would I thank you for?’ said Strike.

She was old, no longer the beauty who’d enchanted blue bloods and rock stars in the early seventies before marrying the safe bet: Sir Anthony Campbell, with his solid family money behind him, and his castle on Arran, but the way Tara was sparring with him held a spark of her vanished allure.

Her fearlessness, her arrogance, her casual cruelty, in combination with her staggering beauty, had once held men captive, but Strike had been inoculated against that faint whisper of dangerous charm through prolonged contact with the daughter who’d so resembled her.

Strike and Charlotte had once wondered whether their mothers had ever met; there was a photograph of Tara with Jonny Rokeby, after some concert or other: had he screwed her, too?

‘Maybe we’re brother and sister,’ Charlotte had said, an idea Strike found repulsive rather than exciting.

‘Did Rupert tell you why he wanted to go abroad?’

‘Because Dino was after him, obviously.’

‘Did he tell you he’d been at Sacha’s birthday party?’

Tara took another drag on her cigarette.

‘ He didn’t, but Sacha told me he’d gatecrashed.’

‘Did Sacha say why?’

‘Presumably because he doesn’t often get to hang out with the beautiful people,’ said Tara.

‘Not good-looking enough for a front-of-house job, then? Dish washing, is he?’

‘I’ve just told you, I don’t know where he is and I don’t know what he’s doing.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I won’t trouble you any longer. Mind if I have a slash before I go?’

‘Yes,’ snarled Tara.

‘No need to get up,’ said Strike, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘I remember where the bog is.’