Page 179 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

We intuitively understand what justice is, better than we can depict it. What it is in a given case depends so much on circumstances, that definitions of it are wholly deceitful.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Griffiths stopped resisting once Wardle had got the handcuffs on him.

Strike was pleased to see he’d broken Griffiths’ nose, which was spread across his face and bleeding profusely, although nowhere near as copiously as the wound to Strike’s left ear, which was causing him excruciating pain.

He could feel a weird coldness, as though flesh that had never been exposed to fresh air was meeting it for the first time, and this contrasted unpleasantly with the continuing flow of warm blood.

‘You need a hospital,’ Wardle told Strike, as they manoeuvred Griffiths up the ladder Barclay had replaced at the hatch. ‘Fast.’

‘Later,’ said Strike.

He wasn’t in such agony that he failed to noticed Griffiths’ pigeon-toed walk as they dragged him alone, a peculiarity Strike had attributed to Griffiths’ trip over his guitar the first time they’d come face to face.

This small, extra confirmation of his theory was enough to make Strike determined to see the thing through himself, because he was worried that Ian Griffiths might yet get away with the murder of Tyler Powell.

‘Not proven’ was the verdict he feared. Even if the killings of Sofia Medina, Jim Todd and Todd’s mother could be pinned on Griffiths, even if the man was rightly sentenced to multiple life sentences, that wouldn’t be enough for Strike.

He wanted justice, even vengeance, for Tyler Powell: a young man who’d suffered an inordinate amount of bad luck while living, and who most certainly hadn’t deserved the fate he’d met at Griffiths’ hands.

The ingenious, complicated and outlandish nature of his murder might yet prevent a jury believing it could have happened as Strike was certain it had, but Powell had become real to him lately: a little lost, as Robin had said, but brave, resourceful and determined, not the fool people might have thought him; a young man who, Strike believed, had been ‘proper good’, and whose biggest mistake had been to believe that a man who held out a helping hand was doing so out of kindness.

The sitting room was in disarray. A keyboard had been upended and the poster of the pot-smoking Jesus had been knocked askew.

Strike kicked aside the Rastafarian teddy bear lying face down on the carpet.

It was a room tailor-made for a man who liked drawing in teenagers and young women, a room that spoke disingenuously of an offbeat charmer who remained young at heart. Strike despised it.

Two men were sitting on the floor, cuffed back to back. One was a scrawny youth whose mouth was hanging open, revealing very bad teeth. The other was a middle-aged man with a heavy beard, who was sobbing.

‘Get the other one up here,’ Strike told Wardle, as he shoved Griffiths down onto the mandala-covered sofa. ‘If he gives you any trouble, Barclay’ll help.’

‘Strike—’

‘ Get fucking Jones, I want him here for the interrogation! ’

‘You could fuck up the whole prosecution,’ said Wardle in a low voice. ‘We’ve got to call the police now so they can see what we saw, and you need a hosp—’

‘He could still fucking weasel his way out of the silver vault,’ said Strike. ‘You said it yourself: the footprint’s not enough. Get fucking Jones! ’

With clear reluctance, Wardle left the room.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Strike growled at the sobbing bearded man, who subsided into whimpers.

In addition to being angry at Wardle for having intimated Strike might be endangering their case in front of the captives, Strike was having difficulty hearing, because his left ear was full of blood; he inserted his index finger into it to clear it, which was so painful he nearly threw up.

From what he’d just felt, he suspected Barclay hadn’t been joking when he’d said it was hanging off.

Griffiths was sitting silently on the sofa, his nose still swelling and breathing through his mouth.

Strike didn’t doubt the man had come to believe himself untouchable, which was why he’d permitted himself so many risks, to gamble for such high stakes, to play with naked flames, and Strike suspected Griffiths hadn’t quite lost faith in his own invincibility, even now, with his nose so discoloured and swollen it was looking increasingly like a beetroot, and drenched in the blood of the man he’d just slashed.

Wardle reappeared with a truculent-looking though still faintly dazed Jones, with his huge red forehead, double chin and mismatched eyes.

Wardle forced Jones down onto the floor and cuffed him to the two already sitting there.

A large lump was burgeoning on Jones’ forehead, where he’d headbutted the edge of the hole in the floor before falling into the basement.

‘Pretty sure he’s still concussed,’ said Wardle.

‘Skull thick as his, he’ll be fine,’ said Strike.

‘You need—’

‘Can you get me something for this fucking ear?’ asked Strike, keen to get rid of the ex-policeman. Wardle grudgingly left the room again.

Strike dragged the chair in which Dilys had sat months previously into the middle of the room, and dropped into it, which was a relief; his head spun slightly less, sitting. Distant clanging and Barclay’s voice reached the room.

‘Right,’ Strike said to Griffiths. ‘Where’s your daughter, Chloe?’

‘You haven’t got the right to ask us questions,’ said Griffiths in a nasal voice. ‘You’ve broken the law, you broke in, you’ve assaulted us—’

‘That’s not how I remember it,’ said Strike.

‘I knocked on your door, you opened it, some of your friends scarpered, you tried to stab me in the face, which led me to suspect you had a guilty conscience, a theory confirmed when I lifted the trapdoor in your hall. That’s how my friends will remember it, too.

You don’t want to take Wardle too seriously.

He’s only just left the police. Still got old-fashioned ideas about procedure and not using extreme violence on suspects. Where’s Chloe? ’

After a brief pause, Griffiths said,

‘Interrailing with her boyfriend.’

‘Is she fuck, that Instagram account of hers is as fake as your Oz one. You’ve just pasted her and some random guy in front of landmarks.’

Agony though Strike was in, he took satisfaction in the whitening of Griffiths’ face.

‘I’ve done nothing. I’ve done nothing,’ whimpered the bearded man on the floor.

‘Shut up,’ Strike told him. ‘You—’ He pointed at the youth with the bad teeth. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Darren Pratt,’ the youth whispered.

‘And him?’ said Strike.

‘Wynn Jones.’

‘And him?’ he asked, pointing at the bearded man.

‘Mickey Edwar—’

‘Don’t tell him!’ squealed Edwards.

‘If you’re Mickey, you were definitely about to do something, you cunt,’ said Strike, ‘and I’d bet both my bollocks you’ve done it before.’

‘Please… please… I’m married, I’ve got kids…’

‘Then they’d probably do best to move well away from Ironbridge and change their surnames,’ said Strike. ‘They’re not going to have a lot of fun in the playground once I’m done with you. Any of you know where Chloe is?’ he asked the three men on the floor.

‘Interrailin’,’ said Jones in a low voice. ‘Griff just fuckin’ told you.’

‘You don’t have to answer his fucking questions!’ said Griffiths.

‘They do if they want to keep their teeth,’ said Strike, and addressing Pratt again, he said,

‘Tyler gave Chloe a bracelet for her birthday, right?’

Pratt glanced at Griffiths and kept silent.

‘Scared the shit out of you, that bracelet, didn’t it?’ Strike said to Griffiths. ‘And we both know why Chloe went berserk in the pub when people wouldn’t stop banging on about it, don’t we? Purple. Violets. We’ll be coming back to that.’

Wardle re-entered the room holding what looked like a clean bedsheet, which he held out to Strike. The latter took it and pressed it to the left side of his head, which was only marginally less agonising than sticking his finger in his ear had been.

‘Well,’ said Strike, addressing the four handcuffed men with the sheet pressed to his head wound and wishing he felt less sick, ‘you’re all going to be done for the rape of the girl in the basement: that’s a given.

The real question is how complicit you are in the other things your friendly neighbourhood pimp has been up to.

Were you aware you’ve been palling around with a killer, as well as a sex trafficker? ’

‘She ain’t trafficked!’ snarled Jones, peering malevolently up at Strike. ‘She’s up for it!’

‘Is that right?’

‘She’s a runaway,’ said Griffiths. ‘I gave her a place to stay. So she likes sex, so what?’

‘Why’s she chained to a fucking pipe?’

‘ Fifty Shades ,’ said Griffiths. ‘They like it that way, young girls these days. Ask her. She’ll tell you.’

‘I thought she was consenting!’ sobbed Edwards.

‘Ever stick it in Chloe, Mickey?’ Strike asked. ‘Before she got moved out and Sapphire was moved in?’

‘Never,’ squealed Edwards.

‘Wardle,’ said Strike, ‘get Barclay to pass you up my skeleton keys out of my coat pocket and go and check the house opposite, see whether there’s another girl tied up in there.’

‘You need—’

‘ Just go and check the bloody house. ’

Wardle left. Strike turned back to the men on the floor.

‘I’m about to do you three a favour.’