Page 71 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

‘Because – I wanted to know what it was all about,’ said Gretchen.

Robin could hear the strain in her voice. She could also tell that Max was itching to spirit his girlfriend away from this dangerous woman, to regroup, to think out their next steps. Robin decided a bluff was the only way to go.

‘Gretchen, our agency’s got good police contacts.

The police already know Sofia was hanging around with a man who had dark, curly hair.

That’s how we connected Sofia with the pair who robbed the flat in Newham.

I think you know who that man is, and I think you know Sofia was with him, the weekend she was killed. ’

‘How could Gretchen know who Sofia vos vid?’ said Max angrily. ‘She vosn’t dere.’ He stood up. ‘ Lass uns gehen, ’ he said to his girlfriend.

Gretchen half-rose.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to inform the police I believe you’ve deliberately withheld information,’ said Robin.

Gretchen fell back into her chair as though her legs wouldn’t support her weight. Max stooped to hiss in his girlfriend’s ear.

‘ Du solltest mit einem Anwalt reden! ’

Robin, who’d taken three years of German at school, seemed to remember the word ‘Anwalt’ cropping up while learning the names of various professions. At her boyfriend’s words, Gretchen’s face crumpled. Hiding it in her hands, she began to sob.

‘ Ich h?tte es sagen sollen! ’

‘ Dann geh zurück zur Polizei! ’ said Max angrily, and Robin deduced from the last word that Max was telling his girlfriend that the police should receive any information she might have, rather than Robin.

‘You don’t have to tell me what you know,’ said Robin, ‘but you should tell the police, if you know anything about that man.’ And now Robin changed tack again, becoming reassuring. ‘I’m sure you won’t be in any trouble. People forget things, and then their memory gets jogged…’

Gretchen was still crying. Max sat down again, putting a tentative hand on her back, muttering in German.

The girl shook her head, her shoulders shaking, her face still hidden.

Four young people at a nearby table, who were sharing a jug of some purple liquid, were staring over at the scene.

Robin cast a cold look at them and they turned hastily back to their pitcher of cocktails.

‘Tell me more about Sofia,’ Robin said, judging it best to leave the subject of the curly haired man for now.

Gretchen looked up. Her tear-stained, woeful face looked childish now. She wiped her nose on the cuff of her fleece.

‘She vos… what Max said,’ she whispered.

‘A party girl?’ said Robin gently. ‘Well, he’s right, there’s no harm in that, is there?’

Still rubbing his girlfriend’s back, Max said through clenched lips,

‘ Sag nichts anderes. Sie hat keine Autorit?t. ’

‘I might not be a policewoman,’ said Robin, ‘but we work closely with the police, and continuing to hide what you know—’

‘She vonted a sugar daddy,’ blurted Gretchen.

Robin wouldn’t have needed to know any German at all to recognise that Max had just sworn under his breath.

An argument now broke out in their native language, Max speaking in an angry whisper, Gretchen tearful, her voice rising higher and higher in pitch.

Several words recurred: Polizei , Anwalt and Lüge , the last of which Robin was certain meant ‘lie’.

‘ Weil die Polizei es bereits wei?! ’ Gretchen threw at her boyfriend at last, and appealing to Robin, she said, ‘They know already, the police, yes? They know she knew that man viz the curly hair?’

In the stress of the situation, her flawless English accent was deteriorating.

‘They do, yes,’ said Robin. And if they didn’t listen when we told them he was at Wright’s house, they will now.

‘You see?’ said Gretchen desperately to her boyfriend. ‘ Dey already know! ’

‘Tell me about this man,’ said Robin. ‘Where did Sofia meet him?’

‘On… on OnlyFans,’ said Gretchen.

Robin took her notebook out of her bag. Both her interviewees looked frightened at the sight of it, but they were in too deep, now, to run.

‘How long were they together?’

‘Only… a month or something, before she died. She said she loved him.’

‘It vosn’t luff ,’ said Max impatiently. ‘She liked his money.’

‘He’s rich,’ Gretchen told Robin. ‘He gave her a ruby necklace… real rubies…’

‘Are you sure they were real?’ asked Robin, who was making notes.

‘Yes, because she took dem to a jeweller, and he said they were real.’

‘Was she was wearing the necklace, the last time you saw her?’

‘She wore it all the time,’ said Gretchen, as Robin scribbled. There’d been no mention of a ruby necklace on the body found on the North Wessex Downs.

‘Did you ever meet him, Gretchen?’

‘No, I didn’t vant her bringing him to the flat, I didn’t want any men from OnlyFans at the flat. She said he vos in the music business—’

A second surge of excitement shot through Robin.

‘—but he did bad things when he vos young.’

‘What sort of bad things?’

‘I don’t know. Sofia thought that made him more…’

‘Exciting?’ suggested Robin, and Gretchen nodded before saying miserably,

‘And she did have him at our flat and I knew, because I saw him leaving the building, when I was coming home. I saw him in the distance, a man like – like you said, with dark, curly hair, and he vos older, and I knew it was him. And I said, “you’ve had O – you’ve had him here, haven’t you?”’

Robin decided to ignore the ‘O’ for the present, but before she could ask her next question, Gretchen started to cry again.

‘I didn’t vont her family to know she was with a married man!

They’re religious, they’re quite old! That’s why she wanted to come to the UK to study, to get away from dem!

She was… innocent. She vos ,’ she told her angry boyfriend, who’d opened his mouth to speak again.

‘She did all dese things, vit the pictures online, but she was… naive. Childish. She vonted to liff in a fantasy… O – he told her not to tell anyone she was with him, because he was married, and he had a kid, but she told me. She was excited about it all, she couldn’t keep it to herself. She vonted to show me the necklace…’

‘Was Sofia with him, the weekend she was killed?’ Robin asked again.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gretchen tearfully, ‘but I sink zo. She said she was going to be going somewhere special. He travelled a lot, so I thought maybe they were going abroad, but she was giggling about it, as if it was… naughty, or something, so then I thought maybe he was going to take her to his house, because his vife was going to be away. I didn’t like it, I didn’t think she should…

not viz a married man and a father, it wasn’t right. ’

‘Did Sofia tell you where the man lived?’

‘She said he had a big house in the country, with a swimming pool.’

‘Can you remember a county, a town?’

Gretchen shook her head.

Robin laid down her pen.

‘I can tell you’re a good person, Gretchen,’ she said. ‘You’ve got morals. You were worried about what Sofia was up to with that man, and you clearly felt protective of her.’

Gretchen closed her clear green eyes, as though she couldn’t bear to look at Robin.

‘And that’s why I know something big must have stopped you telling the police about this man,’ Robin continued.

‘ Ja , I already told you – her family—’

‘I’m afraid I don’t believe it’s because you wanted to protect her parents from knowing she was having an affair with a married man,’ said Robin firmly.

‘They already knew she’d been posting nudes online for money.

Anyway, if he’s the one who murdered their daughter, do you honestly think they wouldn’t want him caught? ’

Gretchen started to cry again.

‘Are you scared of him?’ said Robin. ‘Are you afraid he’ll do something to you , if you talk about him?’

Max was now staring up at the Deadbeats’ poster. He’d stopped trying to control the interview; the thing he’d tried to prevent had already happened.

‘Gretchen,’ said Robin, dropping her voice, ‘has this man got pictures of you, too?’

A tiny negative jerk of the head was the only response, but Gretchen’s sobs increased.

‘Has he?’ said Robin quietly, and this time, Gretchen nodded.

‘S-Sofia – he offered her a lot for some pictures of the two of us – I… I vos drunk. And next day… I vonted her to tell him to delete them, but I know he’s still got them…’

‘The best thing you can do, right now, is tell me that man’s name, and anything else you can remember about him,’ said Robin.

‘But der pictures will get in der papers,’ sobbed Gretchen.

‘If you’re a witness, there are ways of protecting you—’

‘People vill know it vos me, my family, people at college—’

‘Future employers,’ interjected Max angrily.

‘People will tink I do things like det all the time, I don’t, I never did, I vos drunk and she said I could haff half the money…’

‘You’d rather Sofia’s killer got away with it, would you?’ said Robin in a low voice. ‘You’d rather this man stays free to murder other girls? Or d’you really think Sofia got what she deserved, for being silly, and liking ruby necklaces?’

‘No!’ squealed Gretchen. ‘I liked her! She was funny and she vos… she vos sweet…’

‘Then tell me everything you know about this man,’ said Robin firmly.

‘She didn’t tell me anything except his job, and that he had a vife.’

‘And his name?’ said Robin.

‘It vossn’t his real name,’ said Max contemptuously. ‘He wouldn’t use det. ’

But Gretchen, who had mingled snot and tears dripping from her chin, whispered:

‘Osgood. Calvin Osgood, but she called him Oz.’

Max heaved a large sigh, put his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders and said,

‘ Und jetzt rufen wir einen Anwalt an. ’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, closing her notebook. ‘I think calling a lawyer’s a very good idea.’