Page 35 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

But chiefly the great and troublesome question of ‘Who?’

John Oxenham A Maid of the Silver Sea

Strike phoned Robin at home that evening to inform her that Rupert Fleetwood had somehow scraped together two thousand pounds to buy off the drug dealer with a grudge against his housemate, and to relay Shanker’s warning about the body in the silver vault.

Murphy was there for dinner, and Robin’s flat was far too small for him not to be able to hear everything she was saying unless she locked herself in the bathroom.

As pretending to want a shower immediately after her work partner had called her might give her boyfriend well-justified grounds for suspicion, her responses to Strike were deliberately concise and gave no hint of what they were talking about.

Fortunately for Robin, whose mind was racing post-call, Murphy asked no questions.

He was very obviously low and tired, slumped on the sofa watching the news.

Tuesday’s Mail had run its double-page interview with the mother of the boys who’d been shot in the gang shooting, and this had been followed by stories in other papers, today.

For the first time, Robin, along with the rest of the newspaper-reading public, had learned that the bereaved mother’s estranged boyfriend had been arrested initially, and this, it was alleged, had wasted valuable hours and days in which the true perpetrators had been able to cover their tracks.

Once again, she sensed that Murphy would welcome neither sympathy nor questions, so she hadn’t mentioned the Mail article, or any of the spin-offs, but it was impossible not to suspect that Murphy had personally been involved in some part of what now seemed to have been early mistakes in the case.

Remembering again how kind and understanding he’d been in the aftermath of her long stay at Chapman Farm, not to mention his consideration since she’d been hospitalised, she wanted only to be supportive and give him a respite from his stress and, perhaps, his guilt.

They ate the ready-made lasagne Robin had heated up, and as both needed to be up very early the following morning, they were in bed by half past nine.

They hadn’t had sex since Robin been released from hospital, but Murphy wrapped his arms around her in bed, kissed the top of her head and said,

‘I’m so fucking lucky to have you.’

‘I’m lucky to have you too,’ she said, kissing him back.

But after Murphy’s breathing lengthened, and he rolled away from her, asleep, Robin lay awake in the dark, ruminating on Strike’s call and its possible ramifications.

What she really wanted to do was to slide out of bed and call her detective partner back, but she didn’t want to wake Murphy, so she stayed where she was, finally falling asleep to dream that she and Strike were standing in Ramsay Silver which, for some mysterious reason, had been filled with cuddly toys instead of masonic swords and aprons.

By nine the following morning Robin was back in Camberwell, watching the house where Plug was living with his elderly mother.

She’d glimpsed the old lady through a downstairs window and her heart had ached with pity: she looked worried and seemed to be mumbling to herself.

Then, five minutes after she arrived, Plug’s fourteen-year-old son, who ought to have been at school, burst out of the house looking terrified and set off at a fast walk up the road.

With a split second to decide whether she should keep watching the house or follow the boy, she chose the latter.

Robin felt almost as sorry for Plug’s son as she did for Plug’s mother.

Not only was the boy burdened with his father’s ears and overbite, he seemed lonely, forlorn and often looked scared.

She could well imagine that being uprooted from Haringey to live with his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his verbally abusive father wasn’t fun.

The boy was walking very fast, every now and then breaking into a jog, and Robin had a hunch that whatever he was doing, it was on his father’s orders.

Robin soon had a dull stitch in her side – or perhaps, she thought, the operation site was aching.

This reminded her of the letter from the GP she was still ignoring.

She’d been tailing the boy for fifteen minutes when her mobile rang.

‘Got a moment?’ asked Strike.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, trying not to pant. ‘I’m following Plug Junior on foot. Where are you?’

‘Liberty’s,’ said Strike, and Robin immediately remembered her thirtieth birthday, on which Strike had taken her to the old London store to buy her perfume, before that fatal trip to the bar at the Ritz. ‘Mrs Two-Times is in the hairdressers.’

‘I didn’t know Liberty’s had a hairdressers.’

‘Nor did I, and now I’m stuck hanging around the women’s clothing department looking like a weirdo,’ said Strike, shifting to allow a group of women to examine rows of what, to him, were exceptionally ugly, baggy dresses with large fluorescent flowers printed all over them.

‘It’s Christmas,’ said Robin. ‘Pretend to be buying presents. Actually buy some presents.’

‘Not in here,’ said Strike.

‘Why not?’

‘I just… can’t.’

The music, the bewildering choice, the crowds, his total ignorance of what the women he had to buy for might want: he’d rather face root-canal surgery. At least that would be quiet, and there’d be anaesthetic.

‘You’ll look more natural hanging around in there if you’ve got shopping bags. Who are you buying for, women-wise?’

‘Lucy and Prudence. I wasn’t going to get Prudence anything, but she’s invited me to their Christmas party. I can’t go, but that probably means she’s got me something.’

‘When did Mrs Two-Times start her hair appointment?’

‘Five minutes ago.’

‘Then you’ve got two and a half hours at least.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Because she’s got two different shades of highlights. That takes time.’

‘I called,’ said Strike, ‘to discuss Shanker, and that anonymous phone call to the office, which I’m inclined to take a bit more seriously now.’

‘We can discuss Shanker while you go down to the ground floor,’ said Robin.

‘Why’m I going to the ground floor?’ said Strike, moving off, nevertheless.

‘Handbags,’ said Robin, ‘and scarves. For Lucy and Prudence.’

‘Pretty sure they’ll both have a handbag and a scarf.’

‘God, you’re hopeless,’ said Robin. ‘I think Plug Junior might be going to that same allotment his dad visited the other night,’ she added, eyes on the figure ahead of her.

‘Maybe the crocodile or whatever they’re keeping in the shed’s chewed its way out,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going outside so I can hear myself think and we can discuss Shanker.’

‘All right,’ said Robin, ‘but afterwards—’

‘I’ll buy something, yeah,’ said Strike with a sigh.

He forged his way through the crowded stationery department and at last, with relief, reached the pavement and took out his vape pen.

‘So,’ said Strike, while Robin continued to stride along, the pain in her side becoming ever sharper, ‘I called Decima and told her we’re fairly sure Fleetwood shook off Dredge the drug dealer by giving him cash.

She’s not having it – or, more accurately, she thinks this proves he sold the nef to Kenneth Ramsay, but thinks Dredge killed him anyway, as a warning to Zacharias Lorimer.

‘I’ve also called Wardle and told him our criminal contact is certain that Jason Knowles’ body went to “Barnaby’s”, whoever or whatever that is, and that Knowles wasn’t the corpse in the Ramsay Silver vault.’

‘Great,’ said Robin, who’d been worrying about having information the police ought to have; hopefully Murphy would never find out where this information had come from, either. ‘You didn’t tell Shanker about the plainclothes—?’

‘Fuck’s sake, of course not!’

‘Sorry,’ said Robin quickly. ‘Sorry, of course you didn’t, I don’t know why I…’

But she did know why she’d said it: she was consumed with paranoia about her boyfriend finding out that she and Strike were meddling in matters that didn’t concern them.

Plug Junior had slowed down to take a call on his mobile, so Robin adjusted her pace accordingly. Her lower right side was now throbbing.

‘I really called about this hit business,’ said Strike, ‘and the fact that whoever allegedly ordered it knows we’re investigating – or knows I am. Shanker didn’t mention you.’

‘Where d’you think you were spotted?’

‘It’s got to be Ramsay Silver or St George’s Avenue,’ said Strike.

An ornate clock was set high on an archway to his left, a mechanical Saint George and the dragon above it, a legend in gold beneath it:

No minute gone comes ever back again, Take heed and see ye do nothing in vain.

Back in Camberwell, Plug’s son was unlocking the allotment gate and Robin, with relief, had taken refuge beside a postbox.

‘This is getting bloody strange and murky,’ said Strike.

‘If we accept the premise that a rich, powerful Freemason wanted a man who was blackmailing him dead – and blackmailing victims do tend to want their blackmailers dead – I can’t see any earthly reason why the hit had to be carried out at Ramsay Silver.

In fact, you’d think a murderous Freemason would want to keep the whole thing as far away from a masonic silver shop as possible, and why the fuck he’d have given instructions that the corpse should be draped in a masonic sash… ’

‘And if Wright really was the blackmailer of a wealthy Freemason,’ said Robin, watching Plug Junior hurrying towards the padlocked shed door, ‘why would he go and work for another Freemason?’

‘Well, exactly. The whole thing feels like something dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. It’s like the plot of a B movie.’

‘But Shanker’s not a conspiracy theorist.’

‘You say that,’ said Strike slowly, ‘but get Shanker on to the subject of what powerful people in the law-abiding world get up to and things get fantastical, fast. You’ll never convince him that people who’ve achieved wealth and power legally aren’t really crooks, and he’s a firm believer in secret associations and hidden influence that people like him can’t access – and I know,’ said Strike, guessing what Robin was about to say, ‘unfair advantages and old boys’ networks exist, of course they do, but what Shanker believes goes way beyond that.

If you told him the Prime Minister siphons off half the nation’s taxes and puts them in his own bank account, Shanker would tell you you’re a mug for not thinking he takes three quarters.

At bottom, he thinks everyone’s as bent as he is, and world leaders and billionaires just conspire with each other to get away with it. ’

‘He can’t think everyone’s bent,’ said Robin reasonably. ‘He knows you.’

‘He accepts that freaks of nature like me crop up from time to time, but he’s more credulous than you might think once outside his area of expertise.’

‘So you think Shanker’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick? It’s all rubbish?’

‘He claims to know the actual killer. He says the guy’s been mouthing off, pleased he got away with it. We’ve got to take that seriously. And there was that call to the office, too. It could’ve been a random nutter – but it might not’ve been.’

‘D’you want to drop the case?’ Robin asked, and she was surprised how unhappy she felt at the thought of doing so.

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘I’m getting more and more interested – but it’s not just up to me. That’s why I called.’

‘Well, if Shanker’s right, the risk was there already, wasn’t it?

’ said Robin. ‘Whoever killed Wright was never going to be happy we’re investigating, were they?

I can’t honestly see that we’d be in any less danger if we give up.

It’s not as if we can let them know we’re backing off.

In fact, it’s far better to know they’re on to us. We’re forearmed.’

‘That’s exactly my thinking,’ said Strike. ‘What’s Plug Junior up to now?’

‘He’s inside the shed.’

The pain in Robin’s lower right side was still extremely sharp.

For the first time, she thought she might make that appointment with her GP.

Previous neglect of symptoms had led her directly into the mess she’d recently found herself in; the responsible thing was to get herself checked. Wanting distraction, she said,

‘Have you been following Patterson’s case?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Not exactly riveting so far, is it? I was hoping they’d just call him a cunt and give him ten years.’

‘Maybe it’ll hot up once he’s on the stand. Are you going to get back inside Liberty’s and buy some presents?’

‘Fine,’ Strike sighed, and he returned inside the shop, to be met with a blast of hot air and ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ . ‘How’m I supposed to know what scarves to buy?’

‘Well,’ said Robin, her eyes still on the distant shed, ‘Prudence likes classic colours. Cream, navy blue, black… nothing multicoloured or, you know, hippy. And Lucy looks good in pastels, so go light, and nothing too dramatic or splashy.’

‘How d’you know these things?’ said Strike, in honest amazement.

‘How do I know what looks nice on people?’

‘All of it,’ said Strike, who was now standing in a bewildering array of scarves of different sizes and patterns. ‘Remembering what colours Prudence wears.’

‘The same reason you remember the legend of Hiram Abiff. Listen, I know you’re not going to like this, but I think we ought to get the staff Christmas presents, too.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ groaned Strike.

‘It’s good for morale,’ said Robin, ‘and we’ve got a really great team for once. We ought to be showing our appreciation.’

‘I’m not buying more scarves,’ said Strike firmly.

‘You don’t have to,’ said Robin. ‘I was thinking bottles of booze, or gift tokens. And,’ she added, because she didn’t doubt Strike was as clueless about what to buy her as he was about his sisters, ‘if you’re getting me a scarf, I like blue and green.’

‘Too late, I’ve already chosen your present,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going to have to go, I can’t hear a bloody thing. Speak to you later.’

He hung up, leaving Robin in a state of mild surprise.