Page 57 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
A. E. Housman XV, A Shropshire Lad
Strike had few strong opinions on architecture, but he’d always considered the brutalist building that housed the National Theatre, which resembled a cross between a multi-storey car park and a power station, one of London’s worst eyesores.
Walking towards it at ten to three that afternoon, with the dull grey Thames glimmering in the middle distance, Strike thought it compared unfavourably with the builders’ warehouse where he’d just handed over surveillance to Midge.
A banner hanging close to the door announced that Sacha’s play was called Death Is No Punishment , and featured a headshot of Sacha looking serious and resolute in what appeared to be striped pyjamas.
A timid-looking, bushy-haired young woman in glasses was hovering beside the entrance, a lanyard around her neck.
‘Mr Strike?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m Grace. Sacha asked me to take you up to him. It’s a bit of a confusing building, if you don’t know it.’
‘OK,’ said Strike.
She held the door open for him, and, as they walked together across the vast, brown-carpeted foyer, with its high ceiling patterned like a gigantic concrete waffle, his guide asked Strike whether he’d seen Sacha’s play.
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ she said breathlessly, and she spoke for several minutes about the piece, in which Sacha played the real life Dr Walter Loebner, who’d survived Gestapo torture, escaped from a camp and lived to testify against his tormentors.
Strike resisted the temptation to snort.
There was, of course, no law decreeing that only courageous men should impersonate those who’d survived unspeakable atrocities before effecting death-defying escapes, but he happened to find it supremely incongruous that Sacha Legard should be doing so.
Charlotte and Strike, both of whom possessed physical courage aplenty, had often laughed together about how successfully Tara had inculcated in her adored son her own horror of blemishing nature’s finest handiwork.
Strike knew very well that Sacha fretted about the safety of flying harnesses and the likelihood of sustaining injury during well-rehearsed sword fights, had never progressed past the nursery slopes when skiing, and preferred his stunt doubles to do anything in the nature of diving, horseback riding or jumping off high ledges.
None of this was widely known, of course, because Sacha made such a convincing on-screen daredevil.
‘… go to Broadway, but I don’t think they can imagine anyone except Sacha as Walter, and he’s committed to a film next year…’
Strike and his guide ascended in a lift to the upper floors, and the young woman continued to rhapsodise about Sacha until Strike’s bored expression intimidated her into silence.
She led him at last into a small bar reserved for the cast on the third floor, and there sat Sacha, alone except for the barman.
The actor was wearing jeans and a dark blue shirt, and even in the bar’s unflattering lighting looked astoundingly handsome. Like many of his fellow thespians, he was far slighter in person than he appeared on stage or screen.
‘Cormoran,’ he said warmly, getting to his feet. ‘Last time we saw each other must’ve been at Dad’s funeral.’
‘Must’ve been, yeah,’ said Strike, shaking Sacha’s proffered hand.
‘Thanks, Your Grace,’ said Sacha, smiling at the bespectacled young woman, who turned pink with pleasure at what was evidently a standing joke, and responded with,
‘You’re welcome, My Lord. Shall I get—?’
‘What are you drinking?’ Sacha asked Strike.
‘Coffee, if there is any,’ said the detective, and Grace bustled to fetch it.
‘You’ve done bloody well for yourself since we last met,’ said Sacha heartily.
‘As have you,’ said Strike, with an effort.
‘Ha,’ said Sacha, with a self-deprecating smile , ‘you’re only as good as your last review in this game.’
‘He can afford to say that,’ trilled Grace from the counter, ‘because he “owns the stage”, according to the Independent !’
‘“Owns the stage”,’ said Sacha, with a grin and a slight eye roll, as he sat back down. ‘What does that even mean ?’
Strike had often thought Sacha more natural onstage than off.
When the cameras were on, or the curtain went up, Sacha perfectly aped genuine human emotion.
Offstage he always had a slight air of performing himself, and Strike was currently being given a private performance of Talented Actor, Resting .
‘So, you’re Lord Legard these days,’ said Strike.
‘Oh, Christ, no,’ said Sacha, with a laugh. ‘No, I’m like Dad, I don’t use the title. It’s so bloody outdated, all that.’
But you let underlings know, for joking purposes. Prick.
Approaching the theatre, Strike had wondered whether Sacha would mention Charlotte, whether he’d press Strike’s hand in condolence or reuse his Romeo and Juliet quotation, all of which Strike would have found thoroughly objectionable, but the total absence of comment stuck in his craw even more.
He supposed he should have realised that Sacha would prefer no mention of the past and, perversely, this made Strike determined to make allusion to it when the opportunity arose.
Grace set a coffee in front of Strike, who thanked her. She left the bar.
‘So,’ said Sacha, ‘you want to talk about Rupe?’
‘That’s right,’ said Strike, taking out his notebook.
‘OK, well, I should probably tell you straight off the bat, I’m not going to be much help.
I was shooting in Mexico when all this business with him and Dessie happened – I barely know her, actually – so, honestly, you probably know more than I do about it all.
But obviously, I want to help,’ said Sacha earnestly. ‘Anything I can do.’
‘You barely know Decima?’
‘’Fraid so. I’ve only ever met her a handful of times – just through Valentine, you know. I mean, I’ve eaten at the Happy Carrot. She’s a really gifted chef. It’s a shame, what’s happening to the restaurant, I hear it’s in trouble. She’s taken a leave of absence or something, hasn’t she?’
Strike suspected he was being invited to acknowledge that his client was having some kind of emotional crisis. When he didn’t speak, Sacha went on,
‘Yeah, so I’m afraid I’m out of the loop with the whole thing, because I went straight from filming Conquest into rehearsals for this.’
Strike had no idea what Conquest was – film, TV series, aftershave commercial – and cared even less, so he merely asked,
‘Rupert’s your first cousin, right?’
‘That’s right, yeah, Dad’s sister’s boy. Poor little sod. You know what happened? The avalanche, et cetera?’
‘Yeah, Decima told me.’
‘Bloody awful thing. I was only twelve when it happened. I can still remember bawling my eyes out. My first experience of real grief.’
Strike having declined, by his silence, the tacit invitation to commiserate with the actor, Sacha continued,
‘Yeah, so, Rupe was brought up in Switzerland by his paternal aunt. She kept a pretty tight grip on him while he was growing up. It was all Dad could do to get him over to Heberley every few years, and Rupe’s a lot younger than me, so we never really, you know, hung out much when we were kids. Lovely guy, though,’ said Sacha.
‘He seems to have got himself into a lot of trouble, one way or another,’ said Strike.
‘Well, as I say, you probably know more about that than I do,’ said Sacha, with a rueful expression.
‘Did you know about the drug debt?’
‘The – what, sorry?’ said Sacha, and Strike recognised his reaction as one of obfuscation, rather than genuine confusion.
‘Rupert was being threatened. His housemate stiffed a drug dealer who then turned his attention to Rupert.’
‘Ah,’ said Sacha.
‘And Rupert ended up paying the guy a couple of grand to get him to back off.’
‘Oh,’ said Sacha. ‘Right.’
‘You didn’t know he had a vengeful coke dealer after him?’
‘I… no, I had no idea.’
‘Did he ask to borrow money from you?’
A faint pink flush had now suffused Sacha’s handsome face.
‘I don’t know that that’s any of your business.’
‘My whole business is asking questions that wouldn’t usually be any of my business.’
‘“Dirty work, but someone’s got to do it”?’
‘Wouldn’t claim I’ve got to,’ said Strike. ‘Just the line of work that best suits my abilities.’
‘Look, the person you really need to talk to is Rupe’s aunt, Anjelica. She’ll know the whole story.’
‘I’ve already talked to her. She wasn’t very complimentary about Rupert, nor very sympathetic to his predicament.’
‘Ah,’ said Sacha, with another rueful smile. ‘Well, I think she worries Rupe’s genetically predisposed to being a wastrel.’
‘Rupert’s parents were wastrels, were they?’
‘Not my aunt, but Peter Fleetwood wasn’t what you’d call one of the world’s hardest workers. Charming guy, but he mostly gambled and drank.’
‘Did you know about Rupert nicking this silver ship thing from Dino’s?’
A less experienced interviewer might have missed the tiny twitch at the corner of Sacha Legard’s mouth.
‘No. Again, you see, I was—’
‘Mexico, yeah. But you found out subsequently?’
‘Yes,’ said Sacha, and Strike detected a slight reluctance at having to admit to this concrete knowledge, minimal though it was.
‘When did you find that out?’
‘Er… it was on my birthday, as a matter of fact.’
‘Which is when?’ said Strike.
‘May the twenty-first.’
‘Did Rupert tell you what he’d done?’
‘No, I – well, to tell you the truth, I saw Rupe and Valentine having some kind of confrontation in a corner, at my party. We were at Claridge’s and, yeah, there was a slight scene.
I hadn’t actually invited Rupe – it wasn’t a big party, he wouldn’t have known many people there – anyway, I looked round and there he was.
Kind of crazy to gatecrash, all things considered; you’d think he’d have avoided any place where the Longcasters were. ’