Page 172 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
‘And many and long must the trials be
Thou shalt victoriously endure,
If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
Like a jewel-finder’s fierce assay
Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb—
Let once the vindicating ray
Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
And steel and fire have done their part
And the prize falls on its finder’s heart…’
Robert Browning The Flight of the Duchess
Robin was at home, alone. Night had fallen, her curtains were closed, her door double-locked, her alarm on, and the dining room chair was still propped beneath the handle of the front door.
The television news was muted and she’d turned on subtitles to find out more about the Westminster Bridge attack.
The dead terrorist hadn’t been named, but his physical description suggested he might be a Muslim.
She knew it wasn’t doing her anxiety much good, staring at pictures of the carnage, but she didn’t seem able to look away.
Her phone rang, making her jump.
‘Hi,’ said Midge, who sounded triumphant. ‘Got what you wanted off Hussein Mohamed. Poor bastard came home from work early. “It’s a bad day to be a Muslim driving a car in London.” I’m going to send you the audio file now, so you can hear it for yourself.’
‘The weights?’ said Robin, with a surge of anticipation. ‘Did he mention—?’
‘Just listen to it,’ said Midge, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘You won’t be disappointed. Start seven minutes in.’
So Robin hung up and did as she was told, opening the audio file and turning the volume on her phone up to maximum.
‘… don’t recognise any of these photos?’
‘The hall was so dark, you see,’ said a male voice with a Syrian accent. ‘We never saw him very clearly, and with the beard and the glasses…’
‘But you spoke to him?’
‘Me personally, only a couple of times. The first time, he’d offered to help us with Hafsa’s wheelchair.
It was difficult, living on the top floor.
We said we’d manage – anything to get out of the detention centre.
We invited him inside for coffee, but he said he had things to do… he definitely wasn’t the thief?’
‘No,’ said Midge. ‘Why?’
‘Because it seemed to make sense of some things, if he was a thief. He didn’t ever want us to see inside his room. He would wait till we’d gone past, to open the door, even.’
‘He told you his girlfriend was expecting a baby, didn’t he?’
‘Not me, he told my wife one day, when I was out and he was helping her with Hafsa again. He said he hoped for a little girl. She said to him, “most men want a son”. He told her men cause most of the trouble in the world, and he didn’t want to add another one…
My wife asked why his girlfriend wasn’t with him, if she was expecting his baby, and he said she’d be arriving soon.
He said her family disapproved of him, so it was difficult.
We thought, after he was killed, maybe the girlfriend’s family had something to do with it – but maybe that was all a lie, what he told her. ’
‘Did you ever speak to him again?’
‘One time only.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Lions,’ said Mohamed.
‘ Lions? ’
‘Yes. My wife and I and Hafsa had been out all day. We were expecting a parcel. The man on the bottom floor said he’d seen William taking boxes up to his flat.
I wondered whether he was keeping ours for us, so I knocked on his door.
He took a while to answer the door. He’d drawn the curtains and there was only a lamp on, so it was dark and he’d done something strange.
He’d thrown a sheet over his weights but it slid off while I was standing there.
He went and threw it back over them. I could tell he didn’t want me to see them – at the time, I didn’t know why.
I didn’t understand it. But if he’d stolen them, that made sense.
Maybe they came from a house he’d burgled? ’
‘Can you remember anything about the weights?’ asked Midge, while Robin’s heart rate accelerated almost painfully.
‘Yes, they were yellow, with the face of a black lion on them, or maybe a lioness, drawn like a cartoon. I only saw them for a second. He looked at me strangely when he’d covered them again.
Guilty, you know? But he knew I’d seen, so I said – to show I didn’t care, to be friendly – “ah, the lion is my lucky animal. Hafsa’s name means lioness cub”.
I told him that. And he smiled and said “but don’t they call al-Assad the lion of Syria?
” which is true, and not something everyone knows, so I said, “but that’s not the fault of lions” and he laughed.
He gave me my package, and that was all – no,’ said Mohammed, ‘not all. There was a suit and he was ironing it. He told me he was starting a new job on the Monday. He seemed pleased about it.’
‘Did you tell the police about the yellow weights you saw in Wright’s room?’
‘No. They’ll have seen them for themselves, won’t they, when they went in there?’
‘Did you know two people – a man and a woman – went into William’s flat twice, before and after his murder, and removed things?’
‘I heard they’d been there, but not that they took anything. The woman on the ground floor asked me if I’d seen them, but I hadn’t. They stole, you say? They robbed the flat?’
‘Yeah, we think so. Can you remember anything else William said to you or your wife? Like friends, co-workers, anyone else he knew in London?’
‘No… except, he told us about a foodbank in… Stone Road, I think it was.’
‘Had Wright used it?’
‘I think so. He told us he didn’t have much money.’
‘Stone Road, yeah?’
‘Yes. My wife and I went there a few times, after he told us.’
Robin texted her gratitude to Midge, then noticed she’d received a WhatsApp response from Chloe Griffiths.
No I don’t know why Tyler left, he was hardly talking to me before I went interrailing and my boyfriend was getting angry if I even said hello to him in the street after he gave me that crappy birth flower bracelet thing.
Why are you still pestering me? I DON’T KNOW WHERE TYLER POWELL IS AND I DON’T FUCKING CARE.
Robin sent a fresh WhatsApp message.
Out of interest, where were you, the night that Hugo and Anne-Marie crashed?
She had a hunch that Chloe might want to do some thinking before she answered that one.
Robin now looked up Stone Road in Newham, where William Wright had visited a foodbank. They needed just one person who hadn’t been drunk, drugged, or suffering visual problems when viewing Wright by daylight; just one, who’d look at a photograph and say, with conviction, it was him …
Mohamed had, understandably, mistaken the name of the street where the foodbank was situated: it was ‘Strone’, not Stone. Robin made a note of this, remembering as she did so Wynn Jones’ smug correction of herself: on Wellsey Road – Wesley Road…
Words that were easily mistaken for each other… things that looked as you expected them to look. A sheaf of corn, or a tree. A black lion on a yellow background…
Names… William Wright was a wholesale manufacturer of catering silverware, or an eighteenth-century Scottish botanist, or a famous English football player, or a Freemason who’d drowned in the First World War… the meaning of names…
Struck by a random idea, Robin looked up the meaning of a name on Google.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
With shaking hands, she opened Instagram yet again. She had to be sure, before she contacted Strike. She must be absolutely certain.
An hour passed, and for the first time since she’d been attacked outside the Whiteheads’ house, Robin forgot her fear.
She neither jumped at small night-time noises, nor did she get up from her table to re-check that the door was locked.
It didn’t occur to her to cross to the window to stare down into Blackhorse Road, in case Wade King was watching her windows.
All she cared about was proving the shocking theory that had leapt out at her, from the meaning of a name.
At last, she reached for the mobile beside her and called her partner’s number.
Strike answered almost immediately.
‘Where are you?’ asked Robin.
‘Just left Rena Liddell in a Travelodge,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve paid for her to stay there a couple of nights. How’re you?’
‘Strike, I think I’ve got something important – really important.’
‘Funnily enough,’ said Strike, who was limping towards to his BMW, ‘so have I.’