Page 25 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… this wild girl (whom I recognise

Scarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit,

Eccentric speech and variable mirth,

Not very wise perhaps and somewhat bold

Yet suitable, the whole night’s work being strange)

—May still be right…

Robert Browning In a Balcony

Strike returned to the office in a far worse mood than he’d left it.

It might be the height of hypocrisy for him to feel aggrieved that Robin (as he saw it) had hidden the fact that she was house-hunting with Murphy – how much had he concealed about his own private life, throughout their friendship?

– but this in no way lessened his resentment.

Stick to the game plan. He went into the inner office, opened the rota and identified Monday as the best day for him and Robin to visit St George’s Avenue together, blocking out enough time not only to identify William Wright’s former residence and, hopefully, interrogate his neighbours, but also to have another drink with Robin, ostensibly to debrief.

Having made the necessary adjustments, Strike turned his attention to Niall Semple, the ex-paratrooper who’d now been missing for six months.

As Strike had told Robin, there’d been a light smattering of press about Semple when he disappeared, though interest seemed to have died fairly quickly.

Strike now opened an article he hadn’t yet read, in which Semple’s wife, Jade, pleaded for information on her husband’s whereabouts.

The story contained three pictures: one of a clean-shaven Semple in the dress uniform of a paratrooper, the second, of the Semples’ wedding day and the third, the last known sighting of him, at a cashpoint in Camden.

Thick of neck, with high cheekbones, Semple was a handsome man with short blond hair and bright blue eyes, who resembled the physical type most often cast as a young Nazi in films, although his smile was engaging in the clean-shaven picture.

However, in the photograph of his wedding he was wearing a full beard – a most unusual choice for a soldier in the British army – and looked stern rather than happy.

His wife, Jade, resembled an over-painted doll.

Strike wasn’t a fan of the fashion for thickly pencilled, angular eyebrows, which Jade had embraced whole-heartedly.

Her thick hair, which was dyed a blueish-black, was pulled back in a semi-beehive, with locks left loose over her shoulders, and the bodice of her wedding dress was partly sheer, and had been constructed to make the most of her cleavage.

She looked small even standing beside Semple, who, according to the article, was five foot seven.

Strike didn’t find Jade Semple attractive, but he could imagine that to men who liked that sort of thing, who enjoyed feeling large and masculine beside girlish women of tiny proportions, she’d be something of a catch.

The last picture, of Semple at the cashpoint in Camden on June the fourth of the previous year, showed a scruffy man with an unkempt beard who, rather incongruously, was holding a metal briefcase.

Strike squinted at the hand gripping the briefcase.

Either Semple was wearing a heavy metal watch, or he’d handcuffed it to himself.

He skim-read the article and learned that Semple had undergone brain surgery in 2014 and subsequently been discharged from the army, unfit for service. He’d disappeared from his family home in Crieff, Scotland, on the twenty-seventh of May, days after his mother’s funeral.

‘I’m desperate,’ says Jade Semple. ‘I’m so worried, I can’t sleep or eat, I just want Niall to get in touch and if anybody’s seen him, to please, please call the helpline. I’m really scared he’s living rough or in some kind of bad situation.’

Strike sat back in his computer chair, thinking not so much about what the article contained, but what it didn’t.

The lack of detail on the incident that had left Semple so severely injured it had ended his military career was particularly interesting to him.

He opened Facebook, found Jade Semple’s account easily enough and scrolled back to the date her husband had disappeared.

A clutch of photos from the twenty-sixth of May all featured a fancy dress party.

Jade was an identical twin: he couldn’t tell whether she was the one dressed as Princess Peach from the Nintendo franchise, or the one dressed as Rosalina.

There was no sign of her husband in any of the party photos.

From that day onwards, Jade had posted only requests for information on her missing husband and links to news stories about his disappearance. The very last picture posted showed Jade holding a small orange puffball of a puppy, captioned #NewFurBaby.

Strike sent Jade a private message explaining who he was, that he’d been hired to look into the body found in the silver vault and giving her his mobile number.

He then opened email and began searching for the message he’d received months previously from his former SIB colleague and friend Graham Hardacre, which he’d neglected to acknowledge or answer.

He’d just found it when a text from Kim arrived.

Where do you want to meet this evening? Kx

Strike noticed the casually attached kiss and didn’t much like it. He texted back:

Outside Dorchester, 7

He’d only just sent this when his mobile rang with a call from Barclay.

‘There’s somethin’ up,’ said the Scot in a low voice, before Strike could speak. ‘Plug’s visiting some kinda compound, wi’ two men.’

‘What d’you mean, “compound”?’

‘Waste ground, high fences, sheds… we’re a good way north of Ipswich. Middle o’ nowhere. Ah can hear guard dogs. There’s somethin’ up,’ repeated Barclay. ‘If Ah stick around till after dark, Ah might be able to get in there.’

‘What about the dogs?’

‘Ah’ll change out o’ my sausage trousers.’

‘OK, but for fuck’s sake don’t get caught. Last time Midge trespassed on private land, she got chased off by a bloke with a riding whip.’

‘Aye, but that was the aristocracy,’ said Barclay. ‘The look o’ this lot, it’ll be knives.’

‘We haven’t got health insurance, Barclay.’

‘Ach, I used tae drink in Barlanark in the nineties,’ said Barclay. ‘No evenin’ complete wi’out a bit o’ light stabbin’. Talk later.’

When Barclay had hung up, Strike returned to his email to Hardacre, over which he took some care, remembering to ask after Hardacre’s wife and two sons, whose names he managed, with a significant degree of effort, to recall.

At half past five, he locked up the office and went upstairs to shower, eat a sandwich and change, prior to heading out to the Dorchester.

His bad mood was worsened by the fact that he considered the evening’s activities – infiltrating a gala dinner in benefit of a children’s charity – entirely pointless.

Mrs A was to be in attendance, and the client was insistent that his wife should be kept under surveillance there, even though Dominic Culpepper was currently in Lancashire.

Mr A thought his ex might ‘talk about shagging him, when she’s got her guard down’.

Showered and changed into his dinner suit, Strike debated whether to walk to the Dorchester in the interests of counterbalancing his earlier fish and chips or get a cab, because his leg was still aching, and compromised by setting out on foot and waiting for a cab to present itself, which happened on Shaftesbury Avenue.

The night was chilly and the combination of London’s gaudy Christmas illuminations and the cheery end-of-working-week revellers thronging the dark pavements seemed to mock Strike’s mood.

As the cab slowed in front of the Dorchester, which was decorated with much greenery and thousands of twinkling ruby-red lights, he saw Kim Cochran standing alone beside the steps in a clinging crimson dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, through which her nipples were clearly visible. She was very obviously braless.

He got out of the cab and paid the male driver, who, understandably, was staring at Kim rather than at the large, bent-nosed man shoving fivers into his outstretched palm.

‘Evening,’ said Strike, when he reached Kim.

‘Wow, you brush up well,’ said Kim, smiling.

‘Likewise,’ said Strike, out of politeness.

Many other men in black tie were making their way through the twin revolving doors at the front of the hotel, accompanied by thickly made-up women in silk and sequins.

As Kim moved ahead of Strike to enter via the revolving door, he saw that the dress was backless; it revealed a long expanse of smooth skin and a single mole, slightly to the right of her spine.

‘There’s a place up there we can sit for a bit,’ said Kim, pointing up the long marble-floored lobby.

‘And I’ve recced the bathroom the women at the event will be using, so I’ll make sure I’m in and out of it regularly, in case she lets anything slip during girl talk.

God , I could use a drink. I’ve had a very weird couple of hours. ’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, as they reached the seating area. ‘Why’s that?’

‘First of all, get this – I got a call from Farah Navabi.’

Strike was immediately interested. Farah Navabi was an extremely good-looking, though not particularly competent, detective who’d been employed by his sometime nemesis Mitch Patterson.

‘What did she want?’

‘To hire me. She’s starting her own agency.’

‘The fuck’s she going to manage that? She planted the effing bug for Patterson. She’s going to be doing time right along with him.’

‘She’s confident she won’t,’ said Kim. ‘You don’t know Farah like I do. That woman could wriggle her way out of anything. God , I could use a drink.’

‘So what did you say?’ asked Strike.

‘Told her to get stuffed, obviously. I’m happy where I am and – oh, here she comes,’ Kim added in an undertone.