Page 171 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘I’m not after it,’ Strike assured her. ‘I was just interested, because you told me about it.’

‘Ah nivver.’

‘Must’ve imagined that, then,’ he said placatingly. ‘Come on, let’s walk a bit. We can come back here. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Ye’re not workin’ fer the fuckin’ security service fuckers now, are ye?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘They aren’t happy with me. They don’t want me meeting you.’

‘Aye, Ah know tha’ ,’ she said. ‘’Cause o’ what Ah might say.’

‘It’s getting cold. Why don’t we walk a bit?’

She picked disconsolately at her thumbnail for a moment or two, then said,

‘Aye, all righ’.’

She got up and hauled up her rucksack, too.

‘D’you want me to carry that?’ Strike asked as she swung it over her shoulders.

‘Naw… ye’ve only go’ one leg, have ye?’

‘One and a half,’ said Strike, and he raised his right trouser leg to show Rena the metal rod that served as his ankle.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Have ye got any fags?’

‘No,’ said Strike, as they set off along the canal bank. ‘I’m vaping these days.’

‘Whut’re they like, them things?’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Not as good as smoking.’

‘Huh,’ said Rena, in what seemed to be mild amusement.

‘Did you meet Niall in the Engineer?’ Strike asked.

‘Aye.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘He jus’ told me he was off tae make up fur Ben. Find him.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘Aye. Tha’s why them fuckers dunnae want me tae talk. They left mah bruther over there wi’ no way o’ gettin’ back an’ they don’ wan’ annyone to know it.’

Night was falling rapidly now. Strike wasn’t finding the towpath particularly easy on his right leg.

‘Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?’ he asked.

She looked sideways at him through the gloaming.

‘Aye, all righ’.’ she said.

She seemed to have left her hostility beneath the shadowy bridge, a state of affairs Strike hoped would last. They returned to the steps down which he’d descended and climbed up to the street together, Strike’s knee and hamstring aching, then entered the Engineer.

He thought he saw misgivings on the face of the bar staff when he entered with the very smelly and dirty Rena, but nobody prevented the pair taking a table beside the window in the red-walled room, although a middle-aged couple wrinkled their noses ostentatiously as Rena passed them.

‘Ah cannae remember anything before Ah was six,’ Rena announced once seated, apropos of nothing.

‘Really?’ said Strike. He had long experience of random, disconnected statements from the mentally fragile.

‘Aye,’ said Rena, picking at her fingers again. ‘Tha’s when our parents died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Strike. ‘How did they die?’

‘In an earthquake, in Turkey, when they wuz on holiday. Izmit. ’Cept Ah dunnae think they were mah real parents. Ah can remember a blonde woman, an’ the woman that died wuz dark.’

Strike wondered whether the earthquake story was true.

Repeated traumatic losses might well account for Rena’s mental problems, but he was also reminded of a woman he hadn’t thought about in years, whom he’d met as a child in one of the grimmer squats to which his mother had dragged him and Lucy.

She’d had broken teeth and a manic glare, and had told anyone who’d listen she was the illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret and her first paramour, Peter Townsend, that she could prove it with times, dates and her earliest memories, which included a woman in a tiara sobbing over her crib.

They both ordered a drink, Rena requesting a pint of beer.

‘See,’ said Rena, once again without prompting, and ignoring the menu the barmaid had set in front of her, ‘he give me this.’

She groped under her layers of dirty clothing and freed a silver necklace. It bore an odd pendant: a chequerboard square.

‘Niall gave that to you, did he?’ said Strike, eyeing the thing.

‘Aye. He said it wuz magic,’ said Rena. ‘Fur protection. He give it me when we met. An’ he wuz gonnae give me more. He told me. At the bridge.’

‘He was going to give you more silver jewellery?’

‘Aye, yeah, Ah think so. He’s hid it, at the bridge.’

‘At the bridge where I met you?’

‘Aye, Ah think so. Or maybe the one next tae it. Ah dunno.’

‘Did Niall have a briefcase with him when he met you?’

‘Aye,’ said Rena, ‘an’ it was really heavy. Ah think there was more in there.’

‘More silver?’

‘Aye.’

Rena’s beer arrived and she gulped half of it down with relish. Strike wondered how well lager mixed with clonazepam, the drug she’d told him she was on.

‘So Niall told you he was off to get Ben, when he met you?’

‘Aye,’ she said, with a sudden resurgence of anger, ‘’cause no other fucker’s gonnae get him, are they?’

‘Did you and Ben grow up together, after your parents died?’

‘Naw. Ah hadtae go an’ live with mah gran an’ he wen’ with our uncle. Our uncle isnae married, an’ Ben was older. He didnae wanna little girl.’

Strike was reminded immediately of his mother, and her forcible separation from Ted at the age of two. Would Leda’s life have been better had she been able to remain with her brother? Would Rena’s?

‘Ah think he’s mah brother,’ said Rena restlessly. ‘Ah think he is.’

‘Where were you living, when Niall got in touch with you last year?’ asked Strike. ‘Still with your grandmother?’

He judged her to be in her mid to late twenties, although it was hard to be sure. She might be younger than her lined and hollow face suggested.

‘Naw,’ said Rena, ‘she’s long gone. Ah wiz in a Place.’

The inflection on the word suggested Rena might have been in a psychiatric facility, or perhaps a drug dependency unit.

‘Did Niall tell you how he knew where you were?’

‘Ah think Ben mighta told him,’ said Rena vaguely.

‘So you and Ben kept in touch?’

‘Sometimes. He told me,’ she said, with sudden animation, ‘aboot a battle on mah birthday, nineteenth July, an’ they wouldnae give this big guy who got killed, who was, like, really fuckin’ brave, an’ he wasnae from Britain, he wiz from Fuji or somewhere, Ah dunnaw where, an’ they never give him a proper medal ’cause nobody was s’posed tae know they were there, so that’s the kind of fuckin’ shit they get up tae in the army. ’

‘Talaiasi Labalaba,’ said Strike. ‘Battle of Mirbat.’

‘How d’ye know that?’ asked Rena, half-excited, half-unnerved.

‘There’s a statue of him at the SAS base in Hereford,’ said Strike.

He’d just remembered why the username ‘Austin H’ had put the word ‘Fuzz’ into his mind, back in the Goring Bar with Robin. He’d seen it on Truth About Freemasons:

Pretty sure Austin ‘Fuzz’ Hussey (also SAS, Battle of Mirbat) was a mason.