Page 2 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… I have lost him, for he does not come,

And I sit stupidly… Oh Heaven, break up

This worse than anguish, this mad apathy,

By any means or any messenger!

Robert Browning Bells and Pomegranates No. 5 A Blot in the ’Scutcheon

The house to which Strike had driven wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

Far from being a country manor, Delamore Lodge was a small, run-down dwelling of dark stone that resembled an abandoned chapel, set in a wild garden that looked as though it hadn’t been touched in years.

As Strike parked, he noticed that one of the Gothic windows had several cracked panes which had been covered from the inside with what looked like a black bin bag.

Some of the roof tiles were missing. Viewed against an ominous November sky and through driving rain, Delamore Lodge was the kind of place local children might easily believe to be inhabited by a witch.

Placing his fake foot carefully, because sodden leaves from a few bare trees had formed a slimy carpet on the uneven path, Strike approached the oak front door and knocked. It opened seconds later.

Strike’s mental image of Decima Mullins as a well-groomed blonde in tailored tweed could hardly have been wider of the mark.

He found himself facing a pale, dumpy woman whose long, straggly brown hair had greying roots and which looked as though it hadn’t been cut in a long time.

She was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a thick black woollen poncho.

In conjunction with the wild garden and the ramshackle house, her outfit made Strike wonder whether he was looking at an upper-class eccentric who’d turned her back on society to paint bad pictures or throw wonky pots.

It was a type he failed to find endearing.

‘Miss Mullins?’

‘Yes. You’re Cormoran?’

‘That’s me,’ said Strike, noticing that she got his first name right. Most people said ‘Cameron’.

‘Could I see some ID?’

Given how unlikely it was that a roving burglar had decided to turn up at her house by daylight in a BMW, at exactly the same time she was expecting a detective she’d summoned into Kent, Strike resented having to stand in the downpour while fumbling in his pocket for his driving licence.

Once he’d shown it to her, she moved aside to let him enter a cramped hall, which seemed unusually full of umbrella stands and shoe racks, as though successive owners had added their own without removing the older ones.

Strike, who’d endured too much squalor in his childhood, was unsympathetic to untidiness and dirtiness in those capable of tackling them, and his negative impression of this dowdy upper-class woman intensified.

Possibly some of his disapproval showed in his expression because Decima said,

‘This used to be my great-aunt’s house. It was tenanted until a few months ago and they didn’t look after the place. I’m going to do it up and sell it.’

There were, however, no signs of redecoration or renovation. The wallpaper in the hall had torn in places and one of the overhead lamps was lacking a bulb.

Strike followed Decima into a poky kitchen, which had an old-fashioned range and worn flagstones that looked as though they’d been there hundreds of years.

A wooden table was surrounded by mismatched chairs.

Possibly, Strike thought, eyes on a red leather notebook lying on the table, his hostess was an aspiring poet.

This, in his view, was a step down even from pottery.

‘Before we start,’ said Decima, turning to look up at Strike, ‘I need you to promise me something.’

‘OK,’ said Strike.

The light from the old-fashioned lamp hanging overhead didn’t flatter her round, rather flat face.

If better groomed, she might have attained a mild prettiness, but the overall impression was one of neglectful indifference to her appearance.

She’d made no attempt to conceal her purple eyebags or what looked like a nasty case of rosacea on both nose and cheeks.

‘You keep things confidential for clients, don’t you?’

‘There’s a standard contract,’ said Strike, unsure what he was being asked.

‘Yes, I know there’d be a contract, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want anyone to know where I’m living. ’

‘I can’t see why I’d need—’

‘I want an assurance you won’t tell anyone where I am.’

‘OK,’ said Strike again. He suspected it might not take much for Decima Mullins to start shouting or (and after the last ten days, he’d find this even less palatable) crying.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘D’you want coffee?’

‘That’d be great, thanks.’

‘You can sit down.’

She proceeded to the range, on which a pewter pot was sitting.

The chair creaked under Strike’s weight, the rain drummed on the intact windows, and the black bin bag stuck over the cracked panes with gaffer tape rustled in the wind.

Apart from themselves, the house seemed to be deserted.

Strike noticed that Decima’s poncho was stained in places, as though she’d been wearing it for days.

The back of her hair was also matted in places.

Watching her make heavy work of brewing coffee, opening and closing cupboards as though she kept forgetting where things were, and muttering under her breath, Strike’s opinion of her shifted again.

There were three kinds of people he was unusually good at identifying on short acquaintance: liars, addicts and the mentally ill.

He had a hunch Decima Mullins might belong in the third category, and while this might excuse her ill-kempt appearance, it made him no keener to take her case.

At last she carried two mugs of coffee and a jug of milk over to the table, then, for no obvious reason, sat down extremely slowly as though she thought she might do herself an injury by hitting the chair too hard.

‘So,’ said Strike, pulling out his notebook and pen, more eager than ever to get this interview over with, ‘you said on the phone you want something proven, one way or another?’

‘Yes, but I need to say something else first.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, for the third time, and he tried to look receptive.

‘I wanted you because I know you’re the best,’ said Decima Mullins, ‘but I was in two minds about hiring you, because we know people in common.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. My brother’s Valentine Longcaster. I know you don’t like each other much.’

This information came as such a surprise that Strike was temporarily lost for words.

Valentine, whom he’d met infrequently and always reluctantly over a certain period of his life, was a good-looking, floppy-haired, extravagantly dressed man who worked as a stylist for various arty glossy magazines.

He’d also been one of the closest friends of the late Charlotte Campbell, Strike’s sometime fiancée, who’d died by suicide a few months previously.

‘So “Mullins” is…?’

‘My married name, from when I was in my twenties.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Right.’

Could she be telling the truth? He couldn’t remember Valentine mentioning a sister, but then, Strike had always paid as little attention as possible to anything Valentine said.

If they were indeed brother and sister, Strike had rarely met a pair of siblings who resembled each other less, although in some ways that might add credence to Decima’s story: it would have been perfectly in character for Valentine to hush up this squat, grubby-looking woman, because he was a man who placed a very high premium on looks and stylishness.

‘It’s especially important you don’t tell Valentine where I am, or – or anything else I might ask you to keep private,’ said Decima.

‘OK,’ said Strike, for the fourth time.

‘And you know Sacha Legard, too, don’t you?’

Now starting to feel as though some personal devil had decided to devote its day to kicking him repeatedly in the balls, because Sacha was Charlotte’s half-brother, Strike said,

‘You’re related to him, too, are you?’

‘No,’ said Decima, ‘but he’s involved in… in what I want you to investigate. I never really knew Charlotte Campbell, though. I only met her a couple of times.’

Some might have considered her flat tone insensitive, given Charlotte’s recent death in a blood-filled bathtub, but as Strike was more than happy to dispense with prurient questions or faux sympathy, he said,

‘Right, well, why don’t you explain what it is you want me to do?’

‘I need you to find out who a body was,’ said Decima, eyeing him with a mixture of wariness and defiance.

‘A body,’ repeated Strike.

‘Yes. You probably read about it in the papers. It was the man they found in the vault of a silver shop, in June.’

Five months previously, Strike had been almost entirely focused on a complex case the agency had been investigating, and had had little attention to spare for much else, but he remembered this news story, which had generated a short but intense burst of media coverage.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘If it’s the one I’m thinking of,’ (though God knew why he was saying this, because how many men were found dead in silver vaults, on average, per month, in London?) ‘the police identified him quite quickly.’

‘No, they didn’t,’ said Decima, her tone brooking no contradiction.

‘I thought,’ said Strike, though what he really meant was, ‘as I accurately recall’, ‘he turned out to be a convicted thief?’

‘No,’ said Decima, shaking her head, ‘he wasn’t that thief. Not definitely.’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s what I read,’ said Strike, tugging his phone out of his pocket.

He was hopeful, now, he’d be able to get out of here within ten minutes, because she was giving him a cast-iron reason for refusing a case he definitely didn’t want.

‘Yeah, see here?’ said Strike, having typed a few words into Google.

‘“… the dead man, who posed as salesman William Wright during his two weeks’ employment at Ramsay Silver, has now been identified as convicted armed robber Jason Knowles, 28, of Haringey.”’

‘It wasn’t definite,’ insisted Decima. ‘I know a policeman, and he told me so.’