Page 58 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, who was making rapid notes, ‘you would. Was Dino at your party?’

‘God, no,’ said Sacha, with a little laugh. ‘Dino never attends parties unless they’re held at his club. D’you know him?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘Quite a character,’ said Sacha.

‘Tara doesn’t mind you hanging out with her ex-husband?’

‘Oh, that’s all water under the bridge,’ said Sacha easily. ‘Ma doesn’t dictate who I see. No, with my party – I only invited Val and Cosima. She was in tears, actually.’

‘Who’s Cosima?’ asked Strike, though he already knew.

‘Decima and Valentine’s half-sister. Lovely girl.’

Strike seemed to remember that in Robin’s notes of her interview with Albie Simpson-White, Cosima Longcaster had been described as ‘a spoiled brat’.

‘Why was she in tears?’

‘I assume because Rupe was being aggressive, or offensive. I… to tell you the truth,’ said Sacha for the second time, lowering his voice, ‘I had to ask security to ask Rupe to leave. He seemed to have come looking for a fight. After he’d gone, I asked Val what it was all about, and he told me about this silver ship thing that had gone missing. ’

‘Did he say why Rupert had turned up?’

‘I assume he was trying to get Val to call off the police, or something. Val was pretty pissed off about it all, as you can imagine.’

‘How was Valentine supposed to call off the police? The stolen property was his father’s, wasn’t it?’

‘I honestly don’t know details,’ said Sacha, with a slightly helpless gesture. ‘It was all news to me, I didn’t know what was going on – and as you can imagine, I had a lot of people to speak to and so on, that night, so I let it drop.’

‘Did you hear from Rupert after the party?’

‘No, the next thing I heard, he’d left for New York.’

‘How did you find that out?’

‘Anjelica emailed all the trustees, said he’d got himself a job there.’

‘Have you heard from him since he went to New York?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Sacha, brow slightly furrowed again. He leaned forwards, lowered his voice still further, and said,

‘Listen – can I speak honestly? I think… look, I don’t like saying this, but honestly, I really do think Dessie’s – you know – a bit deluded. Val thinks it would be better for her – kinder , at this point – for her to be helped to face facts.’

‘Which are?’

‘Come on, Corm,’ said Sacha, smiling, and Strike resented hearing the abbreviation of his name used by his friends, and by Charlotte, when she wasn’t calling him ‘Bluey’, ‘Dessie’s a lot older than Rupe.

I hate saying this, but I think Rupe just wised up and wanted out.

Dessie’s lovely, she’s great, but I think Rupe probably fell into this thing with her while he was working at Dino’s, and she’s made it into some grand amour in her head.

He’s twenty-six. He doesn’t want to be tied down at his age. ’

Conveniently forgetting that he’d told Robin that Decima wasn’t the kind of thirty-eight-year-old he could ‘see a twenty-six-year-old going for’, and that he’d asserted that Decima’s attraction for Rupert had been her money, Strike said,

‘They were together a year, weren’t they? Hardly a one-night stand.’

‘I don’t know, because—’

‘You were in Mexico, yeah. Have you got a number for Rupert in New York?’

‘No,’ said Sacha.

‘D’you know where he’s working?’

‘You’d have to ask Anjelica.’

‘I have. She refused to give me contact details.’

‘Well – with respect,’ said Sacha, ‘she’s not obliged to, is she?’

‘So you’ve never checked that he’s actually gone to New York?’

‘He’s a grown man, he doesn’t want me hounding him.’

‘So your position is: he’s gone to New York, he’s definitely alive—’

‘What d’you mean, “alive”?’ said Sacha, no longer smiling.

Perhaps the actor, like the detective himself, now felt as though a spectral Charlotte had drawn up a seat at the table, smiling.

She’d always been stimulated by tension and the possibility of rows, and she’d loved seeing members of the family she claimed to hate, but from which she could never quite pull free, clashing with the boyfriend who was impressed by neither their wealth nor their breeding.

Rupert Fleetwood, towards whom Strike had felt very little sympathy until this point, seemed suddenly to have become her surrogate: a young man towards whom his blood relations seemed indifferent at best, who’d slipped out of sight, occasioning exasperation rather than concern.

The night that Charlotte had so nearly been killed by a London bus felt as though it had occurred mere days previously as Strike said,

‘Don’t really know how much more simply to put it. “Not dead”, if you prefer.’

‘Why the hell would he be dead?’

‘He’d lost his job, he was broke, he had a drug dealer threatening him, the police were after him, he’d just had a ruptured love affair, no family to speak of—’

‘He’s got family,’ said Sacha.

‘I don’t mean any criticism,’ said Strike, ‘but my information is that he doesn’t get on with the aunt and uncle in Switzerland, which leaves you, and by your own admission—’

‘D’you think I wouldn’t have done something, if I thought Rupe had genuinely gone missing?’

No, you fucker, I don’t.

Strike could almost see Charlotte’s wide smile. Now starting to take a vindictive pleasure in this interview, he said,

‘Where exactly did it come from, this nef thing?’

‘From Dino’s club.’

‘I mean: was it originally Fleetwood property, or Legard?’

‘How’s that relevant?’

‘Well, where did Rupert think he was going to offload it?’

There was a pause. Strike watched Sacha’s pale face colour.

‘You aren’t seriously suggesting…?’

‘Not suggesting anything,’ said Strike dishonestly.

He didn’t for a second believe Rupert had stolen the nef on Sacha’s orders, so that it might henceforth grace the sideboard in Heberley House, but he enjoyed hinting that Sacha, so eel-like in his ability to wriggle free of responsibility and culpability, might yet be drawn into the story of the stolen nef and the drug dealer, by police or press.

‘It was a Fleetwood relic, then, was it?’

‘No,’ said Sacha, after another fractional pause, ‘it was ours. I mean, Dad’s sister’s.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, making a further note. ‘Well, I doubt Rupert would have taken it abroad. He needed cash. He’ll have wanted to sell it. Have you had any press enquiries at all?’ he asked, the idea suggested by his own recent troubles.

‘What about?’

‘Plenty there to keep the tabloids excited, “famous actor’s cousin pursued by coke dealer, does flit with ancestral treasure”—’

‘No,’ said Sacha, ‘nobody – no, there’s been no interest.’

Strike raised his eyebrows to indicate surprise, enjoying the discomfort now apparent in Sacha’s expression.

‘You’re a member of Dino’s, right?’ Strike said. ‘You were the one who suggested Rupert went and worked there?’

‘Yes,’ said Sacha.

‘Any idea why Rupert’s aunt thinks Dino Longcaster’s a “ghastly man”?’

‘Plenty of people think Dino’s a ghastly man,’ said Sacha, forcing a smile. ‘Didn’t you ever hear my mama on the subject?’

‘I did, yeah. Is Tara in contact with Rupert?’ asked Strike, who didn’t doubt the answer was ‘no’, because he could think of little Tara would be less interested in, than an impecunious nephew by a previous marriage.

‘No,’ said Sacha, goaded at last into a display of weak temper, ‘and I’d advise—’

He stopped short, but Strike, whose sole aim now was to needle the actor as much as he could before Sacha terminated the interview, said,

‘You’d advise me not to contact your mother?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘Drying out somewhere again, is she?’ asked Strike, so politely that it was a few seconds before Sacha seemed to register the sense of his words, at which his colour mounted higher.

‘I’d advise you not to contact her,’ he said, now looking tense, ‘for reasons I’d have thought would be obvious.’

‘Charlotte, you mean,’ said Strike.

The name had been spoken at last, and of the two men facing each other across the wooden table, Strike was by far the more at ease, and not only because he was the one who’d shattered the taboo.

The detective was considerably larger than the actor, unafraid of adding another fracture to his already bent nose, and in any case quite keen on the idea of hitting someone, whereas he was certain that Sacha, though angry, was currently wishing a panic button had been installed somewhere in the cast’s bar.

‘The sight of me would drag up unbearable memories of her beloved dead daughter, you think?’ said Strike. ‘That was the wording in her press statement, wasn’t it? “Our beloved Charlotte”?’

‘I’m afraid I need to get going,’ said Sacha, who looked rather paler than he had when Strike had entered the bar.

Strike could tell the actor had hoped Strike would get up to leave on these words, and therefore took great pleasure in remaining exactly where he was.

It is the great misfortune of the coward that he sees danger everywhere, and of the snob that he perpetually underestimates those he considers his inferiors.

Thus Cormoran Strike knew that Sacha Legard, who was both snob and coward, was placing no rational reliance upon the self-control of the common ex-soldier sitting opposite him.

‘Corm, I don’t want a row.’

But you’re getting one, you fucking shitweasel.

‘Going to make a hell of a splash in the papers, two of your relatives topping themselves within months of each other. Where should I send pictures of Rupert’s body, when I find it? Via your agent?’

‘Are you threatening me?’ said Sacha, in a half-whisper.

‘Asking a simple question.’

‘I’ve got no reason to suppose Rupert’s – that he’s hurt himself.’

‘Nobody’s seen him for six months. Social media’s inactive. No phone calls. Drug lord after him. Family insisting he’s in America but obstructing anyone who wants to contact him.’

‘Why not go all in and suggest one of us murdered him?’ said Sacha, with a poor attempt at a scornful laugh.

‘Struggling to see a motive, unless you really wanted that nef back at Heberley House and didn’t want to pay him for it,’ said Strike.

‘I’ve been told Rupert’s in New York,’ said Sacha. ‘I can only tell you what I’ve been told.’

‘I’d run that line past your PR people before using it at the inquest,’ said Strike.

‘Are you – is that what this is?’ said Sacha, who appeared to have scraped up a mote of weak courage from somewhere.

Perhaps he was counting on the barman to come to his aid, should Strike dive across the table and seize him by the throat.

‘You want revenge, or something? Charlotte was ill for years—’

‘Oh, you noticed, did you?’

‘So it is revenge?’ said Sacha, now white about the mouth and eyes. ‘Charlotte had the best psychiatrists, the best care the family could give her. You don’t know—’

‘ I don’t fucking know? I don’t?’

‘You couldn’t even turn up to her funeral!’

‘I had a different fucking fashion show to go to that day.’

Strike got to his feet and saw, with pleasure, Sacha shrink slightly in his seat.

‘I’ve been hired to do a job,’ said Strike. ‘If it so happens that I have to testify in court that you’re a self-centred cunt who isn’t arsed when his desperate relatives go missing, trust me, I’ll be owning the fucking stage myself. Have a nice Christmas.’