Page 40 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
‘You don’t want a reputation for poor security.’
‘Well, exactly. The losses weren’t huge, relatively speaking, but even so… We couldn’t prove McGee had taken the mask, but after that, management asked Charlie to keep a log of every infraction, every instance of lateness or laziness. We just wanted to get rid of McGee.’
‘He’ll have been background checked before he was hired, I suppose?’ Strike asked Carter.
‘He will’ve been, yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but not by me. I inherited ’im from the last Head of Deliveries.’ Turning to Diana he said, ‘Did you tell ’im about the porn?’
‘I hadn’t got to that,’ said Diana.
‘Porn?’ said Strike.
‘McGee was watchin’ it on ’is phone, at work,’ said Carter. ‘Every free minute, pretty much. Not bothered if anyone saw him, either – or he wasn’t till he got a verbal warning for doing it. No, he had quite a little fantasy life going, McGee,’ said Carter.
‘In what way?’
‘Two of the younger lads he went on jobs with told me he was always going on about women, and girls coming on to him.’
‘ Larry McGee thought girls were coming on to him?’ said Diana, with a scornful laugh.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Carter. ‘Drawn to him like flies round – all over ’im, he claimed,’ Carter corrected himself quickly.
‘Teenager living opposite deliberately left her blinds up to undress in front of the window, that sort of thing. Girls sidling up to him asking him for cigarettes and flashing their knickers when they bent over. Anyway, ’e got ’is next warning for ’ow he was behaving to the girls who visited the warehouse. ’
‘We’ve got storage facilities and garaging in Waterloo,’ Diana explained.
‘That’s where McGee was based most of the time.
He was making off-colour jokes about what the younger girls were wearing, and their sex lives.
After we got two complaints we started gearing up for a full disciplinary hearing, but then he handed us a cast-iron reason for firing him, so there was no need. ’
‘What was the final straw?’ asked Strike.
‘Oh, he really f – messed up,’ said Carter, correcting himself smoothly for a second time.
‘With the Murdoch silver delivery. He was with a co-driver as usual, they’d made a couple of drop-offs, then he deliberately ditched the other guy.
Faked having a migraine. Begged the guy to go get him some stuff for it out of Boots, and when the guy come back out, the van was gone. ’
‘Right,’ said Strike, who was now making rapid notes. ‘When did you find out what had happened?’
‘Dave called me immediately,’ said Carter.
‘What time did McGee take off in the van?’
‘Round half twelve,’ said Carter.
‘So the Murdoch silver was still in the back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When I heard that McGee had got rid of his co-driver, I personally called the buyer, Kenneth Ramsay,’ said Diana.
‘He said the silver hadn’t turned up at the shop at the appointed time.
I was extremely worried. I asked him to call me back if and when McGee turned up – I didn’t tell Ramsay what had happened, just that we were concerned about the delay.
Anyway, he did call me back, to say McGee had turned up just after three.
I was worried; I suspected that something would have gone missing again – it was another instance of a lot of items going to a single buyer, so the exact same conditions in which the mask and the dogs had disappeared – but Ramsay put me through to the woman who was in the shop, and she told me everything was there, except that two lots had got mixed up.
A centrepiece had gone to Bullen & Co, and some of Bullen & Co’s items had gone to Ramsay Silver.
I asked her to send photographs of everything she had there, and to contact me when the centrepiece was returned.
I had to be sure we weren’t looking at another theft – although, of all the lots, I couldn’t see why McGee would have chosen that centrepiece to steal.
It was incredibly recognisable and pretty much impossible for anyone but a weightlifter to carry single-handedly. ’
‘And did she send you pictures?’
‘Yes, she took photos of the items and sent them, and they were all present and correct, and called me later to say the centrepiece had arrived, too. Everything was there – it was a huge relief.’
‘She sent a picture of the centrepiece as well, did she?’
Diana frowned, pulled out her iPhone and began scrolling. While she was doing this, Strike said to Carter,
‘Did you ever find out what McGee had done between ditching the other bloke and delivering the Murdoch silver?’
‘He claimed he’d got lost,’ said Carter, ‘but he didn’t expect to be believed. That was just something to say.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He came back to the warehouse after he’d finally delivered the stuff to Ramsays, I called him straight into my office and asked what had happened.
He claimed Dave was taking too much time in the chemists, and he knew they were already late, so he thought he’d better get going, and then he got lost. He knew full well he was about to be sacked.
Didn’t care. Pleased about it, if anything. Smirked as he walked out.’
‘Did you ever tell the police this?’
‘Yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but they took their time coming to see us. Some young copper turned up, just to tick a box, probably. I don’t think they cared about what happened to the silver before it got to Ramsays. Never heard anything back from ’em, anyway.’
‘You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of Larry McGee, would you?’ Strike asked Carter, who pulled his phone out of his overall pocket.
‘Probably got one on here,’ he muttered, and began searching.
‘No,’ said Diana, who was still examining pictures on her own mobile. ‘The woman at Ramsay Silver never sent me a picture of the Oriental Centrepiece – but she did text me to say it had arrived.’
‘That’s McGee,’ said Carter, holding his phone out to Strike. ‘Big guy in the middle. It was Hassan’s stag.’
Strike looked down at a picture of a group of men in a pub. McGee, like Carter, had been in his fifties: tall, overweight, florid of face, with a droopy lower lip that gave him the look of a camel. The little hair remaining to him was grey.
‘Could I take a picture of this on my own phone?’
‘Feel free,’ said Carter.
Strike did so, then flicked over a page in his notebook and asked,
‘Did anyone keep in touch with McGee after he was fired?’
‘Bradley saw a bit of him,’ said Carter. ‘Our security guy. He and McGee both lived in Hounslow. Same local.’
‘Would it be all right to have a quick word with Bradley?’ Strike asked Diana.
A few minutes later, Carter led the security guard into the office, the latter looking intrigued.
‘Yeah, I ran into ’im in the pub a couple of times,’ said Bradley, when asked about his post-sacking contact with McGee.
‘How soon after he was fired?’
‘Er…’ Bradley scratched his goatee. ‘Firs’ time, it was the Saturday night after.’
‘The day following the delivery?’ said Strike. ‘Before the body and the theft were discovered, on the Monday?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bradley. ‘It was before all that was on the news. I jus’ asked ’im why ’e’d ditched Dave an’ buggered off, an’ ’e talked a load of his usual boll—’
Unlike Carter, Bradley was slow at finding a synonym for the word he’d decided not to use in front of Diana. After a tongue-tied pause he substituted, ‘rubbish’.
‘What did he say?’ asked Strike.
‘Told me ’e’d been ’eld up by an “’ot little blonde” who lured him up a side alley,’ said Bradley, with a smirk.
‘Chrissake,’ muttered Carter, with an eye-roll.
‘I told ’im ’e was full of it,’ said Bradley. ‘’E jus’ laughed. Told me ’e wanted to leave Gibsons anyway, and ’e was gonna be coming into a decent bit of cash soon, so it made no odds to him, getting the ’eave ’o.’
‘Any mention of where this cash was coming from?’
‘No,’ said Bradley, ‘I fort ’e meant a will or somefing. We didn’ talk long. I never much liked ’im. ’E just lived up the road, so I sometimes ran into ’im.’
‘Ever see him after that?’
‘Yeah, once. End of October, same pub. ’E’d really let ’imself go.
Looked like ’e’d packed on a coupla stone.
I asked if ’e’d ’ad his windfall yet, and ’e bit my bloody ’ead off, said ’e’d never said ’e was gonna be getting a windfall, and walked out.
Next I ’eard, ’e’d been found dead in his flat, after a neighbour complained about the smell.
It was in the local paper.’ He continued in a self-consciously grave voice, ‘Sad way to go.’
‘In the paper, was it?’ said Strike, who was still writing.
‘Yeah. ’Ounslow ’Erald . Natural causes. Always looked like ’e had ’eart disease. That sorta corned beef skin, y’know? ’S’ow my old man went.’
‘Proper catch for a hot young blonde,’ said Carter, and Bradley sniggered.