Page 32 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
‘She hasn’t been saying anything,’ said Strike. He remembered Robin telling him Midge’s romance might be on the rocks, but he didn’t much appreciate her tone. ‘We’ve had an anonymous call to the office and I wondered whether it could’ve been him or one of his mates.’
‘Oh,’ said Midge, looking somewhat abashed.
‘Right. Well, he did something fookin’ weird last night.
Left his mum’s at midnight, jumped in his van, and drove to an allotment up the road.
He goes into the shed with a torch, stays five minutes, comes out, locks it up again, and drives home.
I waited ’til he was safe in the house, then went back to the allotment.
Long story short, nearly bust my knee climbing over the fence, and there’s something alive in there. ’
‘What, in the shed?’
‘Yeah. It’s animal, not human – unless they’re deaf, I s’pose. I said “knock twice if you can hear me” and nobody did. Whatever it is sounds big, but it wasn’t moving a lot. The windows are blacked out and there’s a massive chain and padlock on the door.’
Strike heard Pat’s gruff ‘afternoon’ in the outer office and knew Robin must have arrived. He followed Midge into the outer office, where Robin was hanging up her coat and Pat was making more coffee.
‘Oh, are we getting—?’ began Robin, looking at the fish tank, but Strike interrupted,
‘How was Mrs Two-Times?’
‘Dull,’ said Robin. ‘All she seems to do is shop and meet her girlfriends for lunch. I just handed over to Dev in Harvey Nichols.’
Strike, Robin noticed, was wearing a blue shirt she’d never seen before.
‘We’ve had a threatening phone call,’ he informed her. Pat played Robin the second of the two messages the agency had received overnight.
‘“Leave it and you won’t get hurt?”’ Robin repeated. She’d once unwrapped a severed leg in this very office, so a non-specific whisper seemed fairly tame in comparison, but all the same, she didn’t fancy further unwanted packages. ‘What’s “it”?’
‘Christ knows.’
The two partners retired to the inner office.
‘Don’t mention fish,’ Strike told her, as he closed the office door. ‘The tank was supposed to be a birthday present for her great-granddaughter, but a rival grandmother beat Pat to it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Robin. ‘Well, they’ll brighten the place up.’
‘Yeah, be a real morale-raiser, fish carking it and Pat blaming me,’ said Strike.
Robin laughed, then, noticing a few additions to the noticeboard since she’d last examined it, moved closer to look at them.
On the lower part of the board was Strike’s new note about ‘Oz’, and beside it a card headed ‘Wright’ bearing a summary of the notes Strike had made about the man who’d lived for a month in St George’s Avenue, and worked at Ramsay Silver for a fortnight.
5’6/7 – blood group A+ – left-handed – mid-twenties–early thirties – fake tan, worked out, weights – dope smoker – has handled gun professionally/recreationally?
– faking accent? Not from Doncaster? – knows about ‘Rita Linda’.
This will be/has been in papers? – girlfriend coming to live with him?
– associates/enemies may include man with dark curly hair and light-brown skinned, long black haired girl (possibly South Asian).
These had keys to Wright’s house and room.
TBD: Call Jim Todd, Ramsay Silver cleaner 07335 854042
Call Pamela Bullen-Driscoll, Ramsay Silver manager
07194 241267
At the very bottom of the board was a new photograph, showing a man with dark hair, a pronounced widow’s peak and a thick moustache. Beside this Strike had written:
TBC: DCI Malcolm Truman, allegedly member of Winston Churchill Lodge
Next meeting Freemasons’ Hall Dec 23rd 18.30
Evidently, Robin thought, with a slight sinking feeling, Strike had found the online allegation that Malcolm Truman was a Freemason. Her gaze moved back up the board to the new note about ‘Oz’.
‘So that Osgood man’s a victim of identity theft?’ she said.
‘So he claims,’ said Strike. ‘He’s none too chuffed he’s been dragged into a murder investigation.’
‘Hardly surprising.’
‘He claims he was in Manchester when Wright was killed. I’ll check that out, but I suspect it’s true and the police concluded he was irrelevant. ’Course, the police weren’t aware a man with curly hair entered Wright’s room the morning after Wright was murdered.’
‘You think that might have been this “Oz” person?’
‘Got to be a possibility,’ said Strike, ‘but I’m keeping an open mind.’
‘Have you told Wardle about the curly-haired man and the South Asian girl?’
‘I have, yeah, and he’s passed the information to the team handling the case. I’ve also contacted the cleaner and the shop manager, Jim Todd and Pamela Bullen-Driscoll. Interesting responses.’
‘Really?’ said Robin, sitting down as Pat entered the room, holding two mugs of coffee, which she set down beside each partner.
‘Cheers, Pat,’ said Strike.
‘Biscuit?’ she asked.
‘No, thanks. Trying to be good.’
‘I won’t, either,’ said Robin. ‘Christmas coming.’
‘A biscuit won’t hurt you ,’ said Pat.
‘You can close the door behind you, Pat,’ said Strike.
The office manager left, now smirking.
‘Go on, about Pamela and Todd,’ said Robin.
‘Todd’s happy to meet, but can’t till the nineteenth. Pamela Bullen-Driscoll all but told me to fuck off.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Very genteel,’ said Strike, ‘and very cold. “Ay’ve said all Ay’ve got to say to the police, Mister Strike.”’
‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘I got your email about Jade Semple, by the way.’
‘Yeah, another one who’s not keen on talking to me. I’ve sent her screenshots of my bona fides and no response whatsoever. Maybe she’s not as keen on finding her husband as she claimed to the press. There was a fairly shirty man with her when we spoke.
‘But I’ve been all through the Ramsay Silver camera footage for the relevant days,’ said Strike. ‘If you come round here, I’ll show you the edited highlights.’
So Robin picked up her coffee and rolled her chair around to sit beside Strike, and he smelled a trace of the perfume he’d bought her.
‘Right,’ he said, opening his notebook to a page on which were listed many different times, so he knew where to stop the footage. He pressed play and, immediately, fast forward.
‘Oh dear,’ said Robin.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
The quality of the black and white film was very poor, the outlines of the cabinets, tables and silverware in the empty shop fuzzy.
‘Knew that camera was a pile of shit. Right,’ said Strike, watching the minutes pass rapidly on the small digital clock in the corner of the screen. ‘Twenty to nine, Pamela Bullen-Driscoll arrives.’
He pressed play. A boxy-looking woman appeared in silhouette behind the door’s glass panel, her facial features indistinguishable. She entered, turned on the lights, then punched in a number on the keypad beside it to turn off the alarm. Strike pressed fast forward again.
‘She opens the warped door to the basement on the third push, and we can deduce she was hanging up her bag and making herself a coffee, because she comes back upstairs minus handbag and plus mug. She raises the blinds,’ said Strike, as Robin watched Pamela wield a metal crank to do so.
‘Note, by the way, that the right-hand one’s damaged.
It doesn’t go fully to the bottom of the window – another supposed bit of security Ramsay hasn’t bothered to fix or replace.
At eight fifty-four, our murder victim arrives.
That,’ he said, pressing play again, ‘is William Wright.’
A suited man as fuzzy and indistinct as Pamela entered the shop.
His dark beard covered a lot of his face, as did his glasses, which had thick frames that were visible even on this poor-quality film, and Robin was reminded of Daz’s comment that Wright had looked like a character from Guess Who?
. Wright raised a hand in greeting to Pamela, who was now sitting at the desk.
Strike pressed fast forward again.
‘Nothing interesting in the morning,’ he said, while Pamela and Wright moved around the shop floor in comically quick fashion. ‘Business is slow. Three browsers, only one of whom buys anything – him,’ said Strike, pointing at an elderly man zooming between glass cabinets.
Strike pressed play again at 11.46, and they watched William Wright write a receipt for the old man.
‘Definitely left-handed,’ said Robin.
‘Exactly,’ said Strike, pressing fast forward again. ‘Then, at three minutes past one, Kenneth Ramsay turns up.’
Sure enough, Ramsay appeared, recognisable to Robin because of his blur of silver hair.
‘Excited,’ said Strike, as the fast-forwarded Ramsay paced and gesticulated, exchanging comments with Pamela and Wright, ‘because he thinks the Murdoch silver’s about to arrive.’
The on-screen Ramsay left the shop three times to look up and down Wild Court in hope of seeing the Gibsons delivery van, but returned disappointed each time.
‘He hangs around till fourteen minutes past two,’ said Strike, ‘decides he can’t stretch out his lunch hour any longer, and leaves. Then, at a quarter past three, the stuff finally shows up.’
He pressed play.
A large delivery man in overalls appeared outside the door, which Wright opened. The man entered, pushing a sack truck loaded with two medium-sized crates and a smaller one.
‘Wright drags the first three crates off the trolley,’ said Strike, as Robin watched this happen on-screen, ‘and goes outside to help the delivery man with the largest crate. They get it off the trolley together – dump it beside the others – now, watch this… the delivery guy’s saying it’s not his job to carry the crates further than the shop floor. ’
Pamela was now gesticulating; the delivery man was shaking his head. Pamela signed a document he offered her. The delivery man departed.
Pamela headed once more for the basement.
‘She’s gone to unlock the vault,’ said Strike. ‘Note that she doesn’t do it in front of Wright.’