Page 75 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Oh, many a month before I learn

Will find me starting still

And listening, as the days return,

For him that never will.

A. E. Housman XLII: A. J. J., More Poems

Strike’s conscience was whispering that he ought to tell Robin exactly what fresh, unforeseen calamity had descended upon him, that he had to warn her that another deluge of tabloid smut might be about to engulf them.

However, after the story about the call girl, and his forced admission that he’d slept with Nina Lascelles, not to mention Robin’s rape being made public on the back of his newsworthy love life, Strike didn’t much fancy adding to the already unsavoury heap of circumstances in his disfavour that there was a remote chance – please, God, a fucking remote chance – he’d fathered a child with a woman he detested.

A primitive sense of self-interest therefore shouted conscience down: he’d fix things without Robin ever having to know.

At a quarter past twelve, the two partners left the office for lunch in Dean Street. The day was cold and bright, the sun overhead a dazzling platinum coin trying to burn its way through the cloud cover. Trying to dissemble his new state of acute anxiety, Strike said,

‘Looks like we can rule out Wright being killed in a fight that got out of hand. Someone stoved in the back of his head while he had his back turned. That was no accident.’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘which must make it more likely the mutilation, the masonic sash and the hallmark were planned, pre-murder.’

‘How many people would you say know A. H. Murdoch’s hallmark?’

‘Not many,’ said Robin, ‘but the Salem Cross is a masonic symbol, too.’

‘True,’ said Strike. He remembered the scarlet letter ‘G’ that had been painted on the office street door at New Year. ‘Any luck finding a new Land Rover?’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘they’re all way out of my price range, even second hand… have we had any more calls from that Scottish Gateshead, by the way? The Golden Fleece person?’

‘Nothing since New Year,’ said Strike.

His mobile rang. He tugged it out of his pocket, saw that Pat was calling him. Afraid that Bijou, who no longer had his mobile number, was trying to reach him at the office, he switched his phone to mute.

‘Lucy,’ he said to Robin. ‘I’ll call her back. On that subject… we’ve just sold Ted and Joan’s house. I was thinking: the business could pay for part of a Land Rover, and I could loan you the rest.’

‘Wh—? You can’t do that!’

‘Yeah, I can. The money’s just going to sit in my account, I haven’t got any use for it at the moment.’

Robin’s immediate thought was of Murphy, and what he’d think of her taking a loan of this size from Cormoran Strike.

He was bound to see it as another bond between them, another commitment of the type she’d never yet made to him.

And yet she felt strangely vulnerable and bereft without her own car, her own means of – the word ‘escape’ rose in her mind, and was dismissed.

Quo Vadis, the large black-fronted restaurant and private members’ club where Decima had booked lunch, was now within view. Realising she hadn’t yet responded to what, by any standard, was a very generous offer, Robin said,

‘Strike, thank you, but you can’t. It’s too much.’

‘You need your own car and I don’t think any business manager would advise us to keep hiring them for you.’

‘But—’

‘The Land Rover was bloody handy, ’specially for long journeys and trips outside London.’

‘But even second hand, they cost—’

‘I know what they cost. We’ll see how much the accountant’ll let you charge against the business and I’ll make up the difference. We can have a loan agreement if it makes you feel any better.’

‘But it could take ages to pay you back.’

Good, thought Strike, but aloud he said,

‘So? I’ve just told you, I haven’t got any use for the money right now.’

‘It’s really generous of you,’ said Robin, and she thought with some longing of a second-hand Defender 90 she’d spotted online just the previous day. ‘But—’

‘Christ’s sake, I’m not offering you a kidney,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.

They entered the club. The foyer had blood red walls.

At the reception, they gave Decima’s name and were led upstairs, past the entrance to a large restaurant with white walls and leather seats around tables, then into a small private room called the Library, which had dark blue walls, book shelves and orb-shaped lamps.

Decima was already sitting at the round table, wearing a loose black dress.

She’d lost a lot of weight since she and Strike had last met; her large brown eyes were shadowed, but she’d brushed her hair and dyed its grey roots.

Her air was of a creature who’d been forcibly flushed out of their burrow into the daylight.

Strike, who’d been dreading having to watch Decima breastfeed, registered that there was no baby present.

‘You haven’t brought—?’

‘Lion? No, I’ve got a local girl babysitting,’ said Decima, and she glanced down at the phone lying face up beside her. ‘He’ll be OK, I expressed plenty of milk for him.’

This fell into the category of too much information as far as Strike was concerned, but Robin said, smiling,

‘Have you got any pictures of him?’

‘A couple,’ said Decima. She brought up the photos of her child to show Robin.

‘He’s lovely,’ said Robin, but in fact, to Robin, he just looked like a baby, any baby.

He seemed smaller than the huge nephew whose picture she’d just been sent, but otherwise indistinguishable from most others.

Yet unlike the baby pictures Robin was increasingly used to seeing from friends and family, these were all of the child alone, on a changing mat, or asleep in his cot.

Of course, nobody lived with Decima to take a picture of her with her child, and the father had never even seen him.

‘I didn’t want to leave him, I’ve never done it before,’ Decima said nervily, ‘but I had to come to town today, I needed to sort out some staffing problems. Hopefully they can get along without me for a bit longer.’

‘I like this club,’ said Robin, trying to put Decima at her ease.

‘I chose it because it’s near your office, and we can be private. My father hates it,’ Decima added.

‘I can’t see how anyone could dislike this,’ said Robin, looking around at the understated elegance of the place; the wood panelling, the fresh flowers.

‘My father doesn’t approve of any clubs except his own,’ said Decima. ‘Anyway, this is always full of media people. The shitterati , my father calls them.’

Robin might have laughed if Decima hadn’t looked so strained.

A waiter now arrived to take drinks orders.

‘Just water, please, I’m breastfeeding,’ said Decima, which again, as far as Strike was concerned, was information the waiter didn’t need.

When the door had closed again, Decima launched immediately into speech, looking at Strike rather than Robin, her tone shakily assertive.

‘There are a couple of things I want to say, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course,’ said Strike.

‘OK, well, firstly: you seem to think that, if Rupe managed to give Dredge some money, the man wouldn’t have hurt Rupe, but Zac owed Dredge much more than two thousand pounds. Dredge still had a motive to hurt Rupe: to send a message to Zac!’

‘That’s possible,’ said Strike, ‘but we’ve found no evidence to sugg—’

‘And if Rupe had two thousand pounds, he must have sold the nef! He obviously got an advance payment from Ramsay Silver, pending them selling it!’

‘The owner of Ramsay Silver says he’s only ever had one nef in stock,’ said Strike . ‘It was masonic, and taken the night Wright was murdered.’

‘But Ramsay would hardly admit to having my father’s nef, would he?’ said Decima. ‘It was stolen!’

‘Well, it’s notoriously difficult to prove a negative,’ said Strike, careful to keep his tone polite. ‘We can’t be a hundred per cent certain Kenneth Ramsay never bought your father’s nef, but I think it’s very unlikely. His shop specialises in masonic pieces and—’

‘But then, where did Rupe get two thousand pounds from?’

‘I’m not denying he might have sold the nef somewh—’

‘But it’s kind of a huge coincidence that a body turns up in Ramsay Silver that exactly matches Rupe, who had a big bit of silver to sell, isn’t it?’ said Decima, her voice now rising in pitch. ‘And that Rupe had a drug dealer after him, who’d made threats to literally kill him?’

She’d said this already, of course, both in person and by email.

Strike might have responded that the body no more exactly fitted Rupert Fleetwood than any of the other men whose pictures were pinned up on the corkboard in the office.

He might even have pointed out that there had to be thousands of people up and down the country who had bits of silver they’d like to turn into ready cash, but that he saw no reason to suppose any of them had died in the silver vault, either.

While he was trying to formulate a diplomatic response, Decima said,

‘And I wanted to say something else. I don’t believe Rupert went to Sacha Legard’s birthday party. Sacha’s either lying, or he’s made a mistake.’

‘I don’t think he can have made a mistake,’ said Strike. ‘There were a lot of witnesses. It’d be a very stupid lie to tell.’

‘But Rupe would never have gone there!’

‘Why d’you say that?’