Page 42 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Strike’s interest in his uninvited guest sharpened considerably.

He and Robin had met Angela Darwish in the context of a previous case, which had involved a far-right terrorist group.

Darwish had been working in conjunction with the Met and had never disclosed either her precise job description or employer, but by the end of the investigation, Strike had known perfectly well she was MI5.

That didn’t mean Lawrence also worked for the security service, of course, but certain suspicions lurking in the back of Strike’s mind about Niall Semple now took more solid form.

‘How can I help?’ he asked, also sitting down.

‘You’re currently trying to identify the body found in the silver vault at Ramsay Silver, yes?’

In the absence of proof that he was speaking to a genuine MI5 operative, Strike answered with a question of his own.

‘Did Semple’s wife tip you off I want to interview her, or are you monitoring private messages on her Facebook page?’

‘Have you spoken to anyone other than Jade yet?’ Lawrence asked.

‘Why d’you ask?’ said Strike, who could play question for question all day.

‘I think a man of your intelligence can probably guess why I’m asking,’ said Lawrence, with a faint smile.

There was a knock on the dividing door and Pat appeared, holding a tray. Childish as he knew it to be, Strike was nevertheless slightly irked that Pat had got out both the milk jug and the sugar bowl for their suave visitor.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Lawrence, smiling at the office manager, and Strike heard the gratification in Pat’s gruff ‘you’re welcome’.

‘Can I be candid?’ said Lawrence, once Pat had closed the door again.

‘I don’t know. Can you?’ said Strike.

He wasn’t being combative just because he was hungry and had only a supermarket salad to look forward to, nor because of Lawrence’s aura of easy assurance; Strike had met plenty of his ilk in the army.

What Strike found offensive was the man’s assumption that he had only to hint he was MI5 for Strike to accept this as fact.

Strike considered that he was owed a little more respect, so sat back in his chair without returning Lawrence’s smile and sipped from the chipped Arsenal mug Pat had deemed appropriate for her boss.

‘People better placed than you are already looking for Niall Semple,’ said Lawrence.

‘Yeah?’ said Strike. ‘My agency’s got a one hundred per cent success rate in tracking people down we’ve tried to find, but if you locate him before we do, give us a shout.’

He’d half-hoped to wipe the smile off Lawrence’s face with that, but no.

‘What d’you know about Semple?’

‘Nobody’s seen him alive since a corpse of his approximate height, weight and age turned up in a vault in Holborn.’

‘Who are you working for? A newspaper?’

‘If you are who you’re hinting you are, you can always hack our computers and find out,’ said Strike.

Lawrence’s smile didn’t flicker. The impression given was that he’d dealt with obstructive dolts like Strike too often to let them anger him.

‘Mr Strike,’ he said, ‘Niall Semple wasn’t the man in the silver vault. You have my personal guarantee on that.’

‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘Bung me the proof and we’ll cross him off our list.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Lawrence, ‘I can’t provide proof without breaking the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Can’t count him out, then, can I?’ said Strike, unimpressed by the hint that he might be endangering national security by identifying a body.

Strike detected a certain chagrin in Lawrence that his appeal to Queen and country hadn’t worked. Lawrence now glanced down at the place where Strike’s prosthetic leg was concealed by the desk.

‘Herrick, yes?’ he said, referring to the British military operation in Afghanistan.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, knowing full well he was supposed to be flattered Lawrence knew this.

‘I understand you may have a – a certain fellow feeling for Semple, being ex-military yourself—’

‘I don’t need to have fellow feeling for a missing person to try and find out whether they’re living or dead,’ said Strike. ‘It’s my job.’

‘You haven’t got the resources we do.’

‘And yet, with all your resources, you haven’t found him.’

‘You’re fond of publicity, Mr Strike, but publicity, in this case, could do harm.’

Strike knew he had the whip hand now; he could tell Lawrence regretted his descent into personal attack immediately, because the man said swiftly,

‘Look – we’re on the same side.’

‘I want to find out whether Niall Semple’s dead. You want to stop me finding out. Those are very different fucking sides. Shall I tell you what I think’s going on here?’

‘Please do,’ said Lawrence, reaching for his coffee.

‘Worried by the possibility of a tabloid leak now I’m looking for Semple, you’ve decided a quiet approach should be made to me, to let the matter drop.

The fact that high-level bureaucrats are trying to warn me off’ – he saw Lawrence’s eyelid flicker, and was pleased to see the man hadn’t liked being described as a bureaucrat – ‘makes me think Semple might have been injured on an operation you don’t want the public to know about.

He’s brain damaged and might be a liability.

Bottom line: it’d suit you if he’s dead, but you’d far rather it hadn’t happened in a newsworthy way. ’

For a moment, they looked, unblinking, into each other’s eyes, Lawrence’s pale blue into Strike’s brown.

‘All right,’ said Lawrence, setting down his coffee and standing up. ‘Thanks for your time. Should you at any point wish to contact me, call that number.’

He took out a flat silver case and laid a thick white business card on the desk. ‘Goodbye.’

He left without a second handshake. Rather than walk him to the door, Strike picked up the card Lawrence had left and examined it, unimpressed.

It bore only the man’s name, which Strike wasn’t necessarily accepting was his real one, and a mobile number.

Strike opened the wings of the noticeboard and pinned the card beneath Semple’s picture, then he turned back to his PC, opened Facebook and sent a new message to Semple’s wife.

I’m not working for a newspaper. I’m just looking for a quick conversation.

If Lawrence really was able to access Jade’s private Facebook messages, Strike hoped he’d enjoy that one.

Sitting back down at the desk and ignoring his salad, because he was already in a bad mood, Strike retrieved the cipher note he’d hidden under his keyboard and set to work, translating the message symbol by symbol. Within minutes, he’d produced a sentence in English written beneath the code:

the | man | in | the| safe | was | dangerous | dick | delion | i | don’t | know | who | had | him | killed | but | he | is | on | TV