Page 49 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

… Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks by the impetus of his own blows.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

This thought had occurred to Robin, too. When she and Strike spoke the following morning by phone, she admitted her fear that the man had been following her for hours.

‘Anyone could miss a tail in Christmas crowds in the middle of London,’ said Strike, keen to keep on Robin’s right side, in spite of his own concern.

‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘but I still feel stupid. I won’t make that mistake again.’

‘I think we have to take that anonymous phone call to the office a bit more seriously now,’ said Strike.

‘“Leave it and you won’t get hurt?”’

‘Exactly.’

‘So “it”’s definitely the silver vault body?’

‘My gut says so.’ Strike vacillated before saying the next thing, well aware of how sensitive a subject it was, yet certain it had to be mentioned. ‘I can’t see how he knew—’

‘That I was Witness G at the rape trial?’ said Robin, who’d steeled herself to discuss this.

‘Yeah.’

‘I think I do,’ said Robin. ‘It’s online. I found out last night.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike. ‘How—?’

‘Local gossip, maybe,’ said Robin, trying to sound unconcerned, although, in fact, when she’d found her name on the website the previous evening it had made her feel physically sick.

‘People in Masham knew what had happened. Friends and family, after I left uni. Anyway, I found it in the comments under – well, it was actually in the comments of that article about you. Some anonymous person said they don’t understand how I can work with you, because I was a victim of a high-profile rapist myself. ’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Strike. ‘I’m—’

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Robin flatly. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Strike was reluctant to voice his next opinion, but even if it led to a row, he decided it had to be said.

‘I’m serious about you keeping me posted on where you are. No lonely streets in the dark, on your own. Someone might’ve decided you’re the soft target.’

‘All right,’ said Robin, but Strike could tell from the tone that he’d barely got away with this.

His partner never took kindly to Strike expressing concern in any manner that implied he didn’t trust her to look after herself.

In truth, while he had good reason for thinking her occasionally reckless – he wouldn’t soon forget her jumping in front of a moving train to try and drag a man she definitely couldn’t have lifted to safety, nor sprinting ahead of him into a house where a known killer was waiting in the dark – he trusted her ability to assess risk more than perhaps she knew.

And of all the members of the agency, her work ethic was the only one that truly matched his.

‘Did you tell Murph—?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Robin, with an edge to her voice, and Strike decided it was safest to drop the subject completely.

But Robin was lying. She’d said precisely nothing to Murphy about the man in Harrods, because she was damned if she was going to take security lectures from more than one man, or have to discuss the rape yet again.

The small rubber gorilla was now wrapped in a freezer bag in her sock drawer at home.

Strike and Robin were due a face-to-face catch-up on December the twenty-second, which would be the last morning Robin spent at work before Christmas.

Strike woke that morning with the alarm, slapped it off, tugged his vape pen loose from its charger, then took a deep drag on it, the chill December air creeping into the flat from his poorly fitted windows as he watched the vapour drifting across his shadowy ceiling.

He’d been asking himself ever since their last conversation whether today might not be as good a time as any to force the discussion with Robin for which he’d as yet found no natural opening.

It wouldn’t, of course, be the way he’d planned it.

He’d hoped for a far-flung pub or restaurant, where wine and laughter might have lowered her guard, but he was worried about the house-hunting, and about Christmas, with the possibility that Murphy might be about to spring a festive proposal.

If Strike declared himself today, before Robin travelled north to Masham, she’d have time and space to think about what she really wanted.

Perhaps this, after all, was the way: on a winter’s day, unromantically, in the office where their friendship had been forged and where Strike, most unwillingly, had fallen in love with her.

He lay, still vaping, trying to frame an opening in his head.

‘Listen, there’s something I want to say.’

‘I need you to know something.’

‘I’ve been looking for a way to tell you this.’

It now occurred to him that this would be only the second time in his life he’d made the first move on a woman.

Every other time (and he could imagine the reactions of other men, should he ever be fool enough to say this out loud) the woman had been the instigator, or had signalled so very clearly that a sexual approach would be welcome that it came to the same thing.

The one exception had been at that student party in Oxford, where he’d swaggered drunkenly up to Charlotte, to whom he’d never spoken before in his life.

She’d been the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, but he’d risked nothing whatsoever: at worst, he knew he’d have had a good anecdote to tell about his audacity in approaching the woman every man at the party was eyeing with equal parts of lust and awe.

This was different. If he laid everything on the line today, he needed to brace for the possible consequences: the business blown up, his most important friendship destroyed, all hope of the one relationship he really wanted, gone.

The unerasable mental image of Robin’s expression as he’d moved to kiss her outside the Ritz rose in his mind’s eye as he lay in bed, listening to the window pane in the kitchen shivering in the wind.

If he were to be met today with that same look…

But he had to speak. He couldn’t live with knowing that he hadn’t at least tried. Thus resolved, he sat up, swung himself off the bed and hopped, using the familiar balancing aids of chair backs and door jambs, towards the bathroom.

He’d just finished breakfast when, at nine o’clock precisely, somebody hammered on the door of his flat. Disconcerted, he opened it to find his office manager on the landing.

‘Have you read it?’ demanded Pat in her baritone.

‘Read what?’

‘You. In the paper. By that Culpepper man.’

‘What – another one?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t realise – they called yesterday, asking for a comment. I thought it was about the last thing. There’s fifteen-odd messages on the answer machine downstairs, and there’s two of ’em hanging around outside.’

Strike strode immediately to the laptop that was charging on his kitchen table, sat down and flicked it open.

‘What d’you want me to do?’ said Pat, watching him.

‘Say “no comment” to anyone who rings.’

He’d just spotted the story. As Pat closed the door behind her, Strike began to read the article.

Jonny Rokeby Son in Sex Worker Abuse Claim

Cormoran Strike, illegitimate son of rock star Jonny Rokeby and wealthy Londoners’ favourite private detective, is alleged to have hired Candy, a 23-year-old sex worker, to entrap a married man and, when the scheme failed, attempted to force her into sex with himself…

‘It was in 2013 and I thought he must be a good guy, he’d caught that strangler who went after working girls… I was kind of excited, actually. I thought I was going to help him do something good…

‘… doesn’t seem fair naming the target, he didn’t want to do anything with me. But when I asked Strike for my money, he said he’d only give it me if I slept with him…’

… this newspaper’s recent report on Cormoran Strike, in which a second woman claimed that she’d been used by the detective to procure information needed in a case…

… son of rock star Jonny Rokeby and 70s super-groupie Leda Strike, who died of a heroin overdose in 1994…

‘This is yet more proof, as if we needed it, that private detectives are operating in an unregulated Wild West that needs urgent legislative attention,’ says Lord Oliver Branfoot ‘… the grubby tactics used by these detectives need to be addressed for the good of the public…’

We asked Cormoran Strike for comment.

Strike sat motionless, staring at the screen, every muscle tensed, a roaring in his ears, his guts full of lava.

Culpepper had crossed over the line into pure invention; this story was entirely without foundation.

Was the girl – her face was pixelated in the two pictures accompanying the story, but her body was clearly visible, in its skimpy red underwear – a chimera, too?

Or had Culpepper paid some real sex worker a fee to become Candy, in print?

Strike looked away from the screen and his eyes fell on the fisherman’s priest which lay quiescent on the windowsill, a worn relic of Ted, a man of whom nobody could ever have believed this kind of sleaze.

Strike then glanced down at his mobile. Nobody had texted him.

Doubtless his friends and his family were wondering whether it could be true, whether this was how he conducted his professional life, whether this was his dirty little secret.

He got to his feet, feeling as though his heart was attempting to knock its way through his ribs, grabbed his keys and left the flat, slamming the door behind him.