Page 181 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘What are you, my fucking wife? Cheers,’ Strike added, as Barclay handed him two mobiles, then left, pliers in hand. ‘Don’t fucking loom over me,’ Strike told Wardle tetchily. ‘Take a seat, if you’re staying.’

Wardle sat down beside Griffiths on the sofa, looking thoroughly disapproving.

‘You look like you’re about to pass out,’ he told Strike.

‘I’m fine,’ said Strike, taking a second, larger swig of whisky. ‘Anyway,’ he continued to Jones and Pratt, ‘Tyler had an EpiPen, right? Because of his peanut allergy?’

‘Yeah,’ said Pratt cautiously.

‘He dropped it in front of witnesses,’ Strike told Griffiths. ‘Lied, tried to cover it up, but they’ll know exactly what it was once they see one.’

Even though he was able to hear out of only one ear, Strike distinctly detected the sound of a distant siren.

‘You called the police?’ he demanded of Wardle.

‘No,’ said Wardle, and, looking confused, he got up again and left the room.

Afraid Wardle was lying, and even more afraid that he wouldn’t be able to finish what he’d started, Strike said to Griffiths:

‘This whole plan was predicated on you being a fucking pygmy, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Griffiths.

‘You didn’t stand a chance in hell of taking on Powell face to face, so you and Todd cooked up a weaselly little plan, didn’t you?

You and him did good business back in the nineties, right?

Moving girls between brothels and private houses?

Gettin’ to rape and abuse with impunity whenever you fancied it?

But you managed to slither off before the ring got busted in Belgium, didn’t you? ’

‘I’ve never been to Belgium,’ said Griffiths. ‘Ever.’

‘The internet,’ said Strike, ‘tells a different story.’

But when he put his hand in his trouser pocket for his phone, he remembered that it was still in the coat now covering Sapphire in the basement. He picked up one of the phones in his lap instead, which Barclay had taken from Pratt and Jones.

‘Whose is this and what’s the code? Don’t make me fucking get up,’ Strike warned them, ‘because I won’t be sitting down again until I’ve knocked you fucking senseless. Code. Now.’

‘Sixty-nine sixty-nine,’ mumbled Wynn Jones.

‘Of course it fucking is,’ muttered Strike, opening the phone and Googling the picture he needed while his ear throbbed so badly he wondered whether he was going to puke.

‘There,’ he said at last, holding out the phone and picture to show Griffiths.

‘That’s you on stage in Belgium, playing your poxy guitar in a cellar club.

My partner found this. Funnily enough, your mate Wade King – seen here playing bass – has been trying to scare off the right person all along.

Robin’s the one who really broke this case. ’

‘That’s not me,’ whispered Griffiths, ‘and I don’t know the man on the b—’

‘It is you,’ said Strike. ‘My partner’s done a bit of research, and your poxy pan-European band did a bit of travelling around on the continent in the nineties, didn’t it?’

Wardle now reappeared in the room.

‘There’s something going on, down by the bridge. Police and ambulance are there, I can see the lights from the front windows.’

‘Too busy for us, then,’ said Strike.

‘They fucking won’t be,’ said Wardle with determination. He left the room yet again, and Strike heard the back door slam.

‘He’s like a Mountie,’ he told Griffiths. ‘Always gets his man.’

While Strike was unfamiliar with fainting, he had a dim idea that this swimming sensation might be something a person felt right before they did so, so he didn’t turn his head when he heard more movement behind him.

‘Got her free,’ announced Barclay, moving into Strike’s line of vision, pliers still in hand. ‘She’s in the kitchen, eatin’. Needs it,’ he said, with a menacing look at Griffiths. ‘Any o’ these need roughin’ up? Ah’m in the mood.’

‘Possibly,’ said Strike. ‘We’re still in the information-gathering stage.’

‘Great,’ said Barclay, slapping the pliers into his palm. ‘Where’ve we got tae?’

‘To the way Tyler was lured to Ramsay Silver,’ said Strike, turning back to Griffiths.

‘Todd advises Tyler to pick a new name and disguise himself, even pretend to be left-handed, to hide from his girlfriend’s dangerous, murdering father, and to get a job nobody would expect him to do, so he can earn enough to keep him and his girlfriend when she runs away, too – but in reality to make it as hard as possible for him to be identified after his death. ’

‘I don’t know anything about any of this!’ whimpered the bearded man on the floor.

‘Which one’s he?’ Barclay asked Strike.

‘Mickey Edwards.’

Barclay took two strides across the room and kicked Edwards so hard in the side of the head the man was knocked over onto his side, dragging Jones and Pratt with him.

‘She’s fuckin’ told me about you,’ said Barclay, standing over the heap of gasping, spluttering men.

‘You can’t do this,’ shouted a wild-eyed Griffiths from the sofa.

‘Yeah, don’t do it,’ Strike told Barclay, taking another swig of whisky, ‘in front of Wardle.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘There’s something happening at the bridge, he’s gone to investigate.

Anyway,’ Strike said, his head still swimming as he turned back to Griffiths, ‘you could persuade Tyler to play a part at work, but you couldn’t police him at home, could you?

Where did you dump his Wolverhampton Wanderers weights?

And his hands, his eyes, his dick and his ears? Petts Wood?’

Griffiths looked greyer than ever, but he said,

‘I don’t know what you’re—’

‘Petts Wood, where you and Medina drove after you’d visited Wright’s room in the early hours of the morning,’ said Strike. ‘If Powell’s ears, or his dick, or his weights, turn up there, that’ll be a sizeable bit of evidence. That’s more’n a footprint.’

Strike heard himself slurring, but didn’t think it could be the whisky; he hadn’t had enough. Possibly it was blood loss? His light-headedness was intensifying. He took another large swig of Teacher’s.

‘You enjoyed mutilating that body, didn’t you?

’ he said. ‘Masonic misdirection, yeah, but you fucking enjoyed it. Tyler Powell saw you. He knew what you were. He wanted to get Chloe to safety, so you carved him into pieces. But it was all too ’laborate.

Yeah, Ramsays had shit security, an’ a vault with no camera…

Medina upstairs, keepin’ Pamela busy… Todd lets you out and you hide – where?

Bog? Cupboard? Stay hid till Todd coughs to tell you the coast’s clear.

’N then you sneak up behind Tyler, and you slam him over the back of the head with a fucking maul and keep beating it till you’ve smashed his skull in. ’

Strike heard the back door open. Wardle returned to the now crowded room.

‘One of your mates has just thrown himself off the iron bridge,’ he informed the handcuffed men. ‘Didn’t want to take the rap.’

Strike tried to say ‘that’s a coincidence’, but the words wouldn’t come. In any case, nobody in the room would have understood. Edwards burst into tears again.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ snarled Barclay, ‘or Ah’ll fuckin’ make ye.’

‘Someone’s coming up here,’ said Wardle to Strike. ‘Police. I’ve told them we’ve found a kidnapped girl. They’ll be here any minute. We need to get the cuffs off this lot.’

‘Fair ’nough,’ said Strike. He tried to stand, but fell backwards into the seat.

‘Stay where ye are, fer fuck’s sake,’ said Barclay. ‘Ah’m callin’ an ambulance.’

Possibly combining heavy blood loss and neat whisky hadn’t been the very best idea, Strike was prepared to concede that now, but he had to keep talking, because he wanted the man to know he knew. While Wardle was busy uncuffing the men on the floor, Strike said,

‘You killed him, and stepped in the blood round his head. And you didn’t notice – too panicky.

You needed to get upstairs, with your fake fucking beard, in your suit and glasses, with y’bloodstained trainers in a Ramsays bag, but wearing his shoes, to pretend to be William Wright, and fake him leaving the shop, and head into Covent Garden station.

‘An’ you tripped,’ said Strike, ‘because your tiny fuckin’ feet couldn’t fill his size nines.’

‘Strike, stop fucking talking,’ said Wardle’s impatient voice. ‘Let it go.’

‘You wen’ back t’the shop to mutilate the body.

Couldn’ turn on the light… so you didn’ notice that footprint…

it had dried… didn’t smudge… proves killing happened well before the mut’lation…

but Todd wouldn’ help ’less it looked like the murder h’pened at night…

’cause he was done for Belgium, an’ you got away scot-free…

an’ don’t you fuckin’ tell me you never been to Belgium… ’

Strike brandished Jones’ mobile at Griffiths.

‘That picture… your f’kin gig… see th’blonde in the picture?

Thass Reata Lindvall, who died two months later…

her daughter dis’ppeared… useful prop, little girl…

f’r a man who wants to ’tract young women…

an’ she grew up an’ she was useful, too, wasn’ she?

In d’ffrent way… “Jolanda” means “violet” or “purple”…

Chloe told ’im her real name… when they take ’part your computer… find a Google search on name Jolanda…’

‘Where is she? Wha’ve you done with ’er?’

‘He told me she’s under the concrete floor,’ whispered a childish voice.

Still wearing Strike’s overcoat, Sapphire stood, ghost-white, in the doorway.

Griffiths made to run for it, but he’d gone barely three paces when Barclay brought him down with a loud and satisfying bang.

‘Hard evidence,’ said Strike, opening the contacts on Jones’ phone. ‘Here we go…’

The number was stored under ‘LUGS NEW’. Strike pressed it.

Somewhere in another room, they heard the ringtone: Steely Dan’s ‘Do It Again’.

In the mornin’ you go gunnin’…

‘There y’are,’ Strike told Jones. ‘You’ve been played. He murdered your mate.’

Strike foolishly assumed standing up might make him feel better. The last thing he saw before his eyes rolled backward in his head and he passed out, was Jesus, smoking a joint.