Page 34 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Yet my heart forebodes

Danger or death awaits thee on this field.

Fain would I know thee safe and well…

Matthew Arnold Sohrab and Rustum: An Episode

It took Strike forty minutes to reach Clapham Junction station.

By coincidence, the last time he’d been in this part of London, he’d been running surveillance on Two-Times’ first PA-turned-lover.

The area had become progressively more upmarket over Strike’s lifetime; he remembered Clapham Junction when it had been home to pawn shops and dodgy garages turning over stolen cars.

Now there was a Waitrose, wine bars and brisk professionals bustling homewards to houses worth well over a million pounds.

He knew the pub Shanker had designated as their meeting place of old, but the Falcon, too, had been gentrified.

Strike entered to find polished wood, a stained-glass chandelier and freshly upholstered leather benches.

There was something reassuring about spotting Shanker sitting alone, scowling and compulsively clicking his fingers, thereby effortlessly repelling anyone who might consider sitting near him.

Shanker’s beard concealed the deep scar that ran from the middle of his upper lip towards his cheekbone, which, unshaven, would reveal a mouth dragged upwards in a permanent Elvis-style sneer.

His closely cropped head and the tattoos that covered his hands and neck marked him as of a life apart from the polite newcomers to the area, who clustered around the bar, some of them throwing Shanker sideways glances with a mixture of fascination and trepidation.

Shanker, as Strike well knew, was almost entirely amoral, a man raised in conditions most people in the developed world barely understood, where violence was a daily reality, and the only law was self-interest. The place where he and Strike had bonded, against all odds, was in their mutual love of a deeply flawed woman who’d been Strike’s biological, and Shanker’s adoptive, mother.

Leda, who’d scraped the teenaged Shanker off the street after he’d been stabbed, and taken him home to the squat where she was living with her two children, had unwittingly forged a regard between the two teenagers that had survived a divergence of interests that should have been absolute, and they were occasionally useful to each other.

Both would have been sorry to know the other was dead, but months and sometimes years had passed without contact, and it was highly unusual for Shanker to summon Strike to meet him, as he had today.

‘How’re you doing?’ said Strike, once he’d got himself a pint and sat down.

‘I’m lookin’ at firty-six monfs unless me fuckin’ lawyer pulls ’is ’ead out of ’is arse,’ said Shanker, glowering.

‘Yeah? What’s the charge?’ asked Strike, not bothering to act surprised. Shanker had been in and out of prison all his adult life.

‘Obstruction of fuckin’ justice. Load of bollocks. An’ Alyssa’s fuckin’ chucked me out again.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Strike.

It was news to the detective that Shanker’s girlfriend had already decided at least once already that her household would function better without Shanker in it, but it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

‘How’s Angel?’ asked Strike, who knew Alyssa’s older daughter had had leukaemia.

‘Doin’ well,’ said Shanker.

‘That’s good,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Shanker moodily. ‘I love them kids. Fuckin’ love ’er as well, fuckin’ bitch.’

He glugged some beer.

‘This what you wanted to talk about?’ asked Strike. ‘Because I’m not much of a relationship counsellor.’

‘Nah,’ said Shanker. ‘I know what I’m gonna do about fuckin’ Alyssa.’

‘Yeah? What?’ said Strike.

He stood ready to oppose any mooted plan of revenge or intimidation against a single mother whose eldest child had been seriously ill, but Shanker responded,

‘Jewellery.’

‘Jewellery,’ repeated Strike.

‘Got that tip off me old man, before ’e went senile,’ said Shanker. ‘Women never say no to jewellery. Only useful fing ’e ever fuckin’ told me. They don’ chuck it, an’ then they fink about you every time they fuckin’ look at it.’

‘Wise counsel,’ said Strike.

‘You can fuckin’ smirk, but ’e ’ad kids wiv abou’ ten diff’rent women.’

‘By giving them all jewellery?’

‘Well, ’e ’ad a nine-inch cock as well,’ said Shanker, and Strike laughed.

‘So why’m I here?’ he asked. ‘Dredge the drug dealer?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Shanker, as though he’d only just remembered this. ‘Dredge ain’t never killed that boy. He was jus’ tryna put the frighteners on. The kid give ’im a coupla grand in cash, so Dredge backed off.’

‘Wait, what?’ said Strike.

‘That kid,’ said Shanker impatiently, ‘Fleetfing, the geezer you fort might be dead. ’E ain’t. ’E gave Dredge a coupla grand to get ’im off ’is back, an’ Dredge let ’im off. Fleetfing wasn’ the one what done the dir’y on Dredge, was ’e? It was ’is mate, what fucked off to Africa.’

‘You’re positive about this?’ said Strike. ‘Rupert Fleetwood gave Dredge a couple of grand to leave him alone?’

‘Jus’ said that, d’in I?’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

‘Tha’s not why I wan’ed to meet ya, though,’ said Shanker, lowering his voice.

‘Really?’ asked Strike, puzzled. ‘Why’m I here, then?’

‘Doin’ ya a favour.’

Strike took a sip of beer, then waited, interested in what was coming next.

‘You’re diggin’ where you shouldn’t, Bunsen.’

Strike looked at him, perplexed.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meanin’,’ Shanker lowered his voice, ‘body in silver shop.’

Strike was momentarily struck dumb with surprise. He hadn’t told Shanker anything about the body in the silver vault, only that he wanted to find out whether Fleetwood had come to harm at the hands of Dredge.

‘How the hell d’you know I’m investigating that?’

‘For me to know, innit.’

Strike stared at him, before saying,

‘Knowles?’

Shanker raised his eyebrows.

‘It was Knowles,’ said Strike.

Shanker said nothing.

‘Don’t give me that inscrutable shit,’ said Strike impatiently.

‘What’s that?’ said Shanker, mildly interested.

‘ That ,’ said Strike. ‘Raising your fucking eyebrows. “For me to know.”’

Bad temper though he appeared to be in, Shanker grinned.

‘You wanna leave it, Bunsen.’

‘ Was – it – fucking – Knowles? ’

Shanker absent-mindedly clicked his fingers. At last, he spoke.

‘No.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Knowles is still alive?’

‘’Course ’e’s fuckin’ not,’ said Shanker impatiently. ‘’E was a narc. Got what was comin’ to ’im. But he wasn’ in no fucking silver shop.’

Strike stared at him. There were many subjects on which he knew Shanker to be almost impressively ignorant – the geography of anywhere beyond Greater London, how taxation worked, who made laws – but his knowledge of organised crime in London was peerless.

The non-specific warning left on the office phone now took on a slightly different aspect.

‘Why’re you warning me off, if it wasn’t Knowles? Lynden doesn’t want me digging into it?’

‘Bunsen,’ said Shanker, lowering his voice and leaning forwards, ‘Lynden finks it’s funny the pigs fink that was Jason. Why would Lynden put ’im in a fuckin’ safe in a fuckin’ silver shop? Thass way more fuckin’ trouble than ’e fuckin’ deserved.’

‘That thought occurred to me,’ said Strike.

‘Ain’t got shit for brains then, ’ave ya?’ said Shanker.

‘So where’s Knowles now?’

‘Gawn to Barnaby’s,’ said Shanker, with a dark smile.

‘The hell’s “Barnaby’s”?’

‘For me to know,’ repeated Shanker.

‘If it wasn’t Knowles, why’m I getting this warning? Because Lynden Knowles doesn’t want me proving it wasn’t his nephew?’

‘Lynden wouldn’ give a shit eiver way,’ said Shanker, with a shrug. ‘Even if they found what’s left of Jason, they couldn’t pin it on ’im. Thass the ’ole point of Barnaby’s.’

‘Then why—?’

‘’Cause the bloke in the vault’ – Shanker dropped his voice again – ‘was an ’it.’

‘A hit?’

‘Yeah,’ said Shanker, ‘an’ you don’t wanna start fuckin’ wiv the geezer ’oo put out the ’it, awright?’

‘You know who ordered it?’

‘Know enough,’ said Shanker.

‘Who is he?’

‘Don’ know ’im person’ly,’ said Shanker.

‘You know the bloke who carried it out?’

‘We go back a long way, Bunsen, but you keep your side of the street an’ I’ll keep mine, know what I’m sayin’?’

When Strike merely looked at him, Shanker said,

‘Don’ know ’im well. People in common.’

‘And?’

‘’E’s gone to ground. Smart, for ’im.’

‘He’s not usually smart?’

‘’E’s a nutter. Moufy. Still, slick job,’ said Shanker, with professional appreciation. ‘Earned a packet for it, I ’ear.’

‘But he talked, or you wouldn’t know he’d done it.’

‘Well, yeah, ’e’s moufy. Like I said.’

‘So why was the guy in the vault killed?’

Shanker drained his glass, then said,

‘I ’eard he fort ’e could make a fast buck an’ didn’t fuckin’ realise what ’e was up against.’

‘Double cross?’ said Strike. ‘Blackmail?’

‘Ain’t stupid, are ya, Bunsen?’ said Shanker, with a gleam of appreciation.

‘Want another drink?’

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Shanker.

Strike bought two more pints. There were gold baubles strung along the top of the bar. He’d been so absorbed in his conversation he hadn’t noticed the Christmas music playing in the background.

Hither, page, and stand by me,

If thou knowst it, telling

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?

‘How did you know I’m investigating?’ Strike asked, after sitting down again.

‘You was seen,’ said Shanker. ‘Seen where you shouldn’t ’ave been. An’ word got back, an’ the big shot what ordered the ’it ’ain’t ’appy you’re stickin’ your fuckin’ bugle in. S’all I know.’

‘Listen,’ said Strike, ‘if there’s a second Lynden Knowles after me, I need to know. This isn’t just about me, this is Robin and the rest of the agency. What exactly am I looking at here?’

‘Work it aht,’ said Shanker. ‘Where it ’appened.’

They looked at each other. When Shanker neither blinked nor laughed, Strike said,

‘You have to be kidding me. You think I’m going to be done in by the Freemasons?’

‘You know your problem, Bunsen?’ said Shanker, scowling. ‘You’re fuckin’ naive. You fink because some geezer’s got money an’ wears a fuckin’ suit, an’ ’e’s never been done for nuffin’—’

‘I don’t think that, but—’

‘You fink a man ’oo’s got a lot to lose, an’ pays to get rid of some geezer ’oo’s got the goods on ’im, an’ gets away wiv it, is ’appy when ’e ’ears you’re nosin’ around? You gotta name now, Bunsen,’ said Shanker, not without a certain admiration.

‘All right, you’ve told me this much, tell me who this big-shot Freemason is.’

‘Can’t. Toldja. I don’ know ’is name.’

‘You’re not just assuming he was a mason from where the body was found?’

‘No,’ said Shanker, now growing impatient, ‘I’m tellin’ ya, ’e’s a fuckin’ mason. The guy ’oo done the ’it, ’e said so. The bigshot’s a mason, ’e’s got money to burn, ’e’s got people to do ’is shit for ’im.’

Shanker sipped his pint, while Strike recalled Mandy’s words, back in St George’s Avenue: ‘’ E said “someone” might come round lookin’ for ’im, but then ’e said, “or ’e might send someone.” ’

‘You don’t know the mason’s name?’ asked Strike.

‘I’ve fuckin’ toldja, no. ’

‘D’you know who the victim was?’

‘No, I jus’ know ’e ’ad somefing on the mason, so ’e got rubbed aht.’

‘The hitman doesn’t ever go by “Oz”, does he?’ said Strike, taking a shot in the dark.

‘What – like the fuckin’ wizard?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘Not that I ever ’eard.’

Shanker’s gaze swivelled right, towards the door.

‘Time’s up, Bunsen.’

Strike looked around. A large man even more comprehensively tattooed than Shanker had just entered the pub.

‘That’s all you’ve got?’ said Strike.

‘’S’all I’ve got,’ said Shanker, already raising a hand to alert the tattooed man in the doorway to his presence.

‘All right,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

He finished his pint at the bar, then left the Falcon without looking back at Shanker or his business associate.

To his knowledge, Shanker had never intentionally misled him, preferring a straightforward ‘keep the fuck out of it’ if Strike’s questions struck too close to home.

Strike therefore had to take seriously the possibility that he and Robin had indeed stumbled unknowingly on to a crime that had lain undetected until they arrived on the scene to complicate matters.

Strike turned his coat collar up against the cold, then stood for a few moments, vaping and mulling over what his next move should be.

One particular thing his old friend had just said gave rise to an idea.

Slipping his vape pen back into his coat pocket, Strike set off again, not for Denmark Street, but for Wild Court.