Page 17 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘My contact didn’t have a lot to say about that – maybe they shoved it in backpacks.

They think one of them got into a getaway car that arrived on Wild Street around the right time, but the nearest camera was out of commission.

According to my source, a car with fake plates and a lone driver had passed an earlier camera shortly after three a.m. When it passed the next couple of cameras, there were two people in it. ’

‘What make was the car?’ asked Strike.

‘Contact didn’t say,’ said Murphy, not bothering to look up this time. ‘As I say, Saturday, the shop was closed, so the body lay undisturbed until Monday, when the owner opened up the vault.’

‘The body was mutilated, right?’ said Strike.

‘Yeah, but the people working there recognised it as Wright from hair, height, build et cetera. DNA from the body matched DNA found in the shop, including hair in the U-bend of the sink. The corpse had been dressed in something weird, but my contact wouldn’t tell me what.

I got the impression it was done to send a message, maybe to humiliate him. ’

Murphy took another swig of water, then said,

‘The next bit is what you can’t talk about.’

‘We won’t,’ Robin assured him.

‘It explains why there’s been no absolute confirmation Wright was really Jason Knowles, but if you talk—’

‘Ryan, we won’t.’

‘All right,’ said Murphy and he continued: ‘Jason Knowles was very well connected, underworld-wise. Most of his family are cons, and his uncle’s a serious player. Knowles himself wasn’t a big fish, though, just a thief.

‘The National Crime Agency’s had a plainclothes plant in Knowles’ uncle’s circle for the past six months, because the uncle’s dealing guns.

The NCA guy heard the same story from two separate sources: Jason was lured into an ambush in the belief he and his killers were doing a job together, and his body had been left unidentifiable.

The rumour was, his uncle personally gave the order to kill him, suspecting he was the one leaking info to the police. ’

‘Jesus,’ said Robin quietly.

‘Everything about the silver job fitted. Corpse matched Knowles in height and build, and when the cops showed the photograph of Knowles to the people working at the shop, they thought it was him. They said they couldn’t be a hundred per cent, because Wright had a beard, which Knowles didn’t in his pictures, nor did Knowles wear glasses, as Wright did, nor was Knowles usually fake tanned.

Wright’s hair was darker than Knowles’, as well, but the corpse’s hair was found to be dyed.

Knowles had also been boasting that his next job would be all over the papers, and the silver that was stolen was historically important. ’

‘Fingerprints?’ said Strike.

‘That was a problem.’

‘Knowles’s must’ve been on record?’

‘They were, but the body’s hands were missing, which obviously implies the killer knew the fingerprints would identify the body.’

‘Weren’t Wright’s prints all over the shop?’

‘The assistants wear gloves to handle all the silver and open the glass cabinets, and unfortunately, the cleaner did a very thorough job on the shop, the staff area and the toilet on Monday morning, right before the body was found.’

‘Who’s the cleaner?’ asked Strike.

Murphy flipped over a page.

‘Bloke called Todd.’

‘Male cleaner?’ said Strike.

‘Men can clean, I’ve heard,’ said Robin.

‘Thought that was an urban myth,’ said Strike.

Acting as though he hadn’t heard this exchange, Murphy continued,

‘The NCA plant was obviously going to be in danger if the Met started pursuing DNA identification of Knowles, so the NCA asked the Met to fudge it – keep appealing for information until they’d wrapped up the gun trafficking case and Knowles’ relatives could be safely tested.

‘Unfortunately, the guy in charge of the vault case, Malcolm Truman, then went rogue, and announced the Met were certain the body was Knowles.’

‘The fuck did he do that for?’ asked Strike, genuinely perplexed.

‘Journalists were running with the Freemasonry angle, and Truman didn’t want to look like a bloke who didn’t have any leads.

My source says he’s an arrogant tit who didn’t want to look clueless in the press.

He was suspended after he talked. The team working the case tried to undo the damage, but the papers lost interest once they heard Wright had been a crim and the Freemasonry angle was bullshit.

Bottom line,’ said Murphy, ‘William Wright was Jason Knowles, but they can’t prove it yet. ’

Murphy now set down his water and reached for a slice of pizza.

‘I take it the people who worked at the shop are in the clear?’ asked Strike.

‘Yeah, they all had rock-solid alibis,’ said Murphy through a mouthful of pizza.

‘Todd the cleaner was playing cards into the small hours with a regular poker group who confirmed he was with them. The manager, name of Pamela, spent the weekend in Grantham, attending a family wedding, set off at eight on Friday evening. The owner, Ramsay, is a part-time carer for his wife; they had friends staying over the weekend who confirmed he only left the house for a pub lunch with them on Saturday.’

The three ate in silence for a minute. Robin wanted to ask Strike what he thought, but didn’t want to do so in front of Murphy.

Strike, meanwhile, was musing on the fact that the CID man clearly didn’t want the agency to take this case, and even though he’d been averse to taking it himself until this moment, Strike suddenly wondered whether he wasn’t being offered a spectacular opportunity to drive a wedge between Robin and her boyfriend.

‘You mentioned other possible contenders for Wright,’ Robin said to Murphy.

‘Yeah, there were a couple,’ said Murphy. He picked up his notebook again and turned a page. ‘Nearly all of them were ruled out. There were two blokes who couldn’t be excluded, because they couldn’t get DNA.

‘One was called Tyler Powell. His grandmother called the helpline. Apparently he got himself into some kind of trouble at home in the Midlands and told Gran he’d got himself a job down south. He was the right height and in the right age range, but there’s no other reason to suppose it was him.’

‘Couldn’t they swab the grandmother to check the DNA?’ asked Strike.

‘Powell’s adopted.’

‘Who was the other possibility?’ asked Robin.

‘Man called Niall Semple. He’s been in the press, because he was an ex-paratrooper with mental health problems who vanished from his house in Scotland and cut all contact.

Again, no blood relatives. They’d just cremated his mother when he disappeared.

His wife contacted the police. He was the right height and blood group, but otherwise nothing to say it was him. ’

‘And nobody thought Wright might be Rupert Fleetwood?’ asked Robin.

‘My source only mentioned Powell and Semple,’ said Murphy.

‘And that male prostitute thing…’ said Robin.

‘What’s this?’ said Strike, looking up from his notebook.

‘Just a bad joke that snowballed,’ said Murphy. ‘The body was naked, that’s where it started.’

‘This might be an odd question,’ said Robin, ‘but was anything carved onto the body’s back?’

‘How the fuck d’you know about that?’ said Murphy sharply.

‘I saw it online,’ said Robin, nettled by his tone, especially in front of Strike. ‘Someone commenting on the story said he had the letter “G” carved onto him.’

‘My contact told me it was a hallmark.’ Murphy closed his notebook. ‘And that’s all I’ve got.’

‘Well, thanks, Ryan,’ said Robin. ‘This has—’

‘So now what?’ said Murphy. He was looking at Strike rather than Robin.

‘We wanted to find out whether the Met had a definite ID,’ said Strike, ‘and now we know. They don’t.’

‘You can’t go fucking around with the Knowles family,’ said Murphy.

‘Not intending to. We haven’t got forensic labs, we can’t analyse DNA.’

‘So you won’t be taking the case?’ said Murphy.

‘Robin and I will have to discuss that,’ said Strike.

‘Does anyone want more—?’ Robin began.

‘It’s Knowles,’ said Murphy, glaring at Strike. ‘You’d just be stringing this woman along, pretending there’s a chance it’s her toyboy.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Strike, deliberately calm.

Let Robin watch Murphy getting aggressive and trying to dictate what the agency investigated.

‘There are a lot of similarities between Rupert Fleetwood and the body, he had good reasons for wanting to lie low for a while, and he had a valuable bit of silver to sell.’

Robin, who knew perfectly well Strike didn’t believe Rupert Fleetwood had been William Wright, assumed he was saying this because he’d been as aggravated by Murphy’s dictatorial tone as she was.

‘Anyway,’ said Strike, setting down his plate and getting to his feet, ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Already?’ said Robin, disconcerted. ‘There’s more pizza. And pudding.’

‘I’m meeting Bijou,’ said Strike, looking Robin straight in the eye. Though she’d have given anything not to, Robin felt herself turn red. ‘Thanks, though,’ Strike added, looking down at the clearly fuming Murphy. ‘This has been extremely helpful.’