Page 41 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… desist!

— The warrior-part of you may, an it list,

Finding real faulchions difficult to poise,

Fling them afar and taste the cream of joys

By wielding such in fancy…

Robert Browning Sordello: Book the Fifth

‘But that’s so… weird ,’ said Robin, on the phone to Strike half an hour later, while he was walking back to the office.

‘It is, yeah,’ said Strike, a finger in his free ear to block out the sounds of traffic. ‘Very weird.’

His leg was paining him again, but, remembering Murphy’s gym bag and water bottle, he was resisting the temptation to hail a cab.

‘McGee seems to have thought he was going to be paid enough to make it worth his while to sacrifice his job,’ said Strike, ‘but paid for what?’

Robin, who was sitting in her Land Rover outside a house in Pimlico that Mrs Two-Times was visiting, didn’t answer immediately. After a short silence, both partners spoke at once.

‘I can only—’

‘I was think – go on,’ said Strike.

‘I was going to say, I can only think of two possibilities,’ said Robin. ‘Either he was doing something completely unrelated to the silver delivery, or he wanted to tamper with the silver in some way – but the silver wasn’t tampered with.’

‘You say that, but something did go wrong with the delivery. The Oriental Centrepiece didn’t go where it was supposed to.’

‘But it ended up at Ramsay Silver in the end. That seems such a pointless thing to do, switch the addresses on two crates, if that’s what he did.’

‘Pamela never saw the centrepiece, though. She dashed out of the shop right after the crate was put in the basement, so she never had an opportunity to photograph it and send the picture to Gibsons. We’ve got no proof it ever ended up there.’

‘You think Wright stole it, on the way back from Bullen she always had a soft spot for handsome men.

‘Mr Strike?’ said the newcomer, in the kind of rich, upper-class voice Strike could imagine declaring a garden fete open. This definitely wasn’t the man who’d called Jade Semple ‘babe’.

‘That’s me.’

‘Ralph Lawrence.’

They shook hands.

‘Want a coffee?’ asked Strike.

‘No, thanks, pressed for time,’ said Lawrence.

‘I could do you a small one,’ said Pat.

‘All right,’ said Lawrence with what Strike thought was a consciously charming smile, ‘a small one, then.’

‘Come through,’ said Strike, standing back to let Lawrence pass.

He noticed the sweeping gaze the man gave the two rooms as he moved through to the partners’ desk, as though he was memorising details.

‘We’ve got an acquaintance in common,’ Lawrence said, sitting down in Robin’s chair as Strike closed the door.

‘Yeah?’ said Strike. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Angela Darwish.’