Page 86 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

The piece detailed the ‘unconventional marriage’ of Charlotte’s mother, Tara, and her fourth husband, one Lord Jenson.

The couple lived apart, Jenson retaining the large house in Mayfair in which he’d lived with his late wife, Tara (‘of the wealthy Clairmont family, who founded the Clairmont hotel chain’) continuing to preside over her son’s inherited mansion, Heberley House, which ‘suits Sacha’, according to Tara, ‘because he’s away filming such a lot, and who’s going to look after Heberley better than me? ’

Naturally, there was also mention of Tara’s daughter’s ‘tragic’ suicide.

‘She was troubled from childhood onwards,’ says Lady Jenson sadly. ‘We did everything we could, of course, but once your child is an adult… unfortunately, she entered a very long, very dysfunctional relationship that we believe significantly contributed to her mental health problems.’

Before her marriage, Charlotte had an almost 20-year on-off relationship with Cormoran Strike, the controversial private detective recently alleged to have harassed a sex worker .

However, Lady Jenson remains resilient.

‘One learns to cope,’ she says. ‘Naturally, the loss of a child—’

‘The hell are you doing here?’ said a rumbling voice.

Strike looked up. A short, thickset and almost entirely bald man, who was vigorously chewing gum, had detached himself from the group at the bar and was looking down at the detective: Fergus Robertson, the journalist who’d recently taken Strike’s statement on the Candy story.

‘Work,’ said Strike. ‘You?’

‘Same,’ said Robertson, dropping without invitation into the seat opposite Strike. ‘Gonna get Nicola Sturgeon’s reaction to Theresa May’s speech on Brexit tomorrow. Paper’s blagged me an interview.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

‘Didn’t want to enrich British Rail, I see,’ said Robertson, eyes on Strike’s Scotch.

‘Help yourself,’ said Strike, pushing the bottle towards the journalist, who poured a generous measure into his own plastic cup.

Strike felt so depressed he could barely muster interest in Robertson’s conversation, yet it was a slight distraction to be sitting opposite the journalist. When Robertson handed back the bottle, he poured himself another triple Scotch.

‘Funny, bumping into you here,’ said Robertson. ‘I was going to give you a call when I got back from Edinburgh.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, without much interest. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Ever heard of the Winston Churchill Masonic Lodge?’

‘Why d’you ask?’ said Strike, who knew perfectly well that this was DCI Malcolm Truman’s lodge.

‘You asked me whether Oliver Branfoot’s a Freemason.’

‘Yeah, and you said you didn’t know.’

Robertson shoved more nicotine gum into his mouth, then said, watching Strike closely,

‘Dodgy Freemasons are always news.’

‘I’d imagine so,’ said Strike, not yet so drunk that he was going to unintentionally hand Robertson a story that might lay both of them open to being sued.

‘Rumour is, the membership of the Winston Churchill Lodge skews heavily towards police.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I got talking to a journo mate who was covering the masons in ’99,’ said Robertson, dropping his voice still lower. ‘When the Home Affairs Committee produced their report into Freemasonry in public life, remember that?’

‘No,’ said Strike, who’d spent a good deal of 1999 in Kosovo. ‘What did it say?’

‘That there’s a lot of unjustifiable paranoia about Freemasons, but they don’t help themselves by being so secretive, and there were cases where allegations of masonic influence might be justified.

The forensic scientist involved in the Birmingham Six investigation was a Freemason, as was uncovered by the Home Affairs Select Committee’s investigation into masonic influence.

“As regards the forensic scientist we conclude that freemasonry could have been a factor in the close and unprofessional relationship he enjoyed with the police.”

‘Anyway,’ said Robertson, dropping his voice still lower, and still watching Strike for his reaction, ‘I was talking to this guy the other day, and I slipped Branfoot’s name into the conversation, and he said, yeah, Branfoot’s a mason, and he heard Branfoot changed lodges a couple of years ago.

Apparently he used to be in one of the ones that are packed with aristos.

Then, according to my source, he moved to the Winston Churchill. ’

When Strike didn’t speak, Robertson said in a half-jocular growl,

‘C’mon. You’ve got something on Branfoot.’

‘He jumped on Culpepper’s anti-me bandwagon and I wanted to know why, that’s all.’

Strike had just been handed a plum bit of intelligence, but felt too anaesthetised by misery and alcohol to take much pleasure in it.

The bar full of male voices and laughter, the pimply young barman in his polyester waistcoat, the smell of cheap whisky and the sight of Robertson’s vigorous chewing was suddenly even more intolerable than his cramped compartment.

‘Need some sleep,’ he informed the journalist as he stood up.

‘You’ll keep me posted,’ said Robertson, ‘right?’

‘Sure,’ said Strike.

He grabbed his whisky bottle by the neck and set back off along the train, swaying with its motion.

Back on his lower bunk, he considered texting Robin to tell her about Branfoot attending the same lodge as Malcolm Truman, but what was the fucking point?

She’d be enjoying a post-coital laugh with her CID boyfriend right now.

The news could keep until Ironbridge. However, one vindictive thought brought a kind of cold comfort.

He had a bloody good reason, now, for digging deeper into Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Truman, who so coincidentally happened to share a masonic lodge with Lord Oliver Branfoot, and anyone who didn’t like Strike going after a member of the Met – Ryan Fucking Murphy, to take just one example – could stick their objections right up their arse.