Page 87 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Some girl, who here from castle-bower,

With furtive step and cheek of flame,

’Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower

By moonlight came

To meet her pirate-lover’s ship…

Matthew Arnold A Southern Night

Robin, who’d spent much of the weekend pretending to be excited about the house she and Murphy were going to view on Thursday evening, was glad to have an excuse to get up before her boyfriend on Monday.

She wanted to be waiting outside Juniper Hill High School in Finsbury Park before the first students arrived, so as to maximise her chances of waylaying Tia Thompson, friend of the missing Sapphire Neagle.

Standing on the opposite pavement to the entrance of the large, ugly grey comprehensive, watching the first pupils enter the school in their red sweatshirts, Robin was attempting, but failing, to block out thoughts of Strike.

He hadn’t called over the weekend – not that she’d ordinarily have expected him to – but you’d have thought he’d have rung her to ask why her email was so unfriendly, and why she was dropping out of the Scotland part of the trip, and to tell her there’d be plenty of other opportunities to speak to Tia Thompson and Valentine Longcaster, wouldn’t you? But no. So much for friendship…

Maybe I should leave , Robin thought. Maybe I should just find another job.

But this was a form of mental blood-letting: she didn’t really have the slightest intention of resigning.

Walk out on everything she’d helped build?

Walk away from nearly seven years of sacrifice, and risk, and hard, relentless work?

Throw away the job she loved, just because Cormoran Strike was a lying, manipulative bastard?

Because he was manipulative, she saw that now: his offer to buy her a new Land Rover, and his Christmas gift, and the repeated mentions of Charlotte’s suicide note, all designed to keep her bound to him and the business, while he was off impregnating Bijou bloody Watkins, and, for all Robin knew, sleeping with a few more women on the side…

well, good luck, Bijou, you picked a hell of a father for your baby…

The red sweatshirt-ed throng was growing and Robin scanned the faces of every black girl she could see.

Most students were arriving in groups, but when at last Robin spotted and identified Tia, the girl was walking along alone, reading something off her phone while vaping.

So intent was she on her screen that as she made to cross the road, twenty yards short of where Robin was standing, the latter shouted out:

‘Tia, be careful !’

Tia started and jumped backwards as a bus trundled past.

‘The hell do you know my name?’ the girl demanded, as Robin hurried towards her.

‘I was hoping to talk to you,’ said Robin, unable to stop herself adding, ‘you shouldn’t be looking at Snapchat when you’re crossing roads.’

‘For your information,’ said Tia, showing Robin her screen, ‘I’m reading a fucking book.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘Well, even so… I was hoping to talk to you about Sapphire Neagle.’

‘Why?’

‘My name’s Robin Ellacott. I’m a private detective. Sapphire’s missing and I’m trying to find out what happened to her.’

Robin handed Tia her card. The girl scrutinised it, frowning.

‘I’d just like to ask a couple of questions,’ said Robin. ‘If you don’t know the answers, fine.’

Tia looked understandably wary.

‘You can look me up online,’ said Robin. ‘I’m a genuine private detective, and I’m worried about Sapphire. Nothing you say’s going to end up in court, or anything like that. I’m just trying to find her.’

‘All right,’ said Tia slowly, ‘but hurry up. I don’t wanna miss English.’

‘D’you know anything about a man – an older man – Sapphire might have met before she disappeared?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia. ‘I told ’em about him.’

‘Told who?’

‘Police,’ said Tia. She took another deep drag on her vape and exhaled. Robin smelled candyfloss.

‘What did you tell them?’ asked Robin.

‘He said he was gonna get her a job as a backing singer. Said she could go on tour. With Ellie Goulding.’

‘Did you ever see her with this man?’

Tia shook her head.

‘Did anyone?’

‘Dunno. Don’t think so.’

‘How did Sapphire meet him?’

‘Up the road, in Jimmy’s,’ said Tia, nodding in the direction of the corner.

‘What’s Jimmy’s?’

‘Café,’ said Tia.

‘So she didn’t meet him online?’

‘I’ve just told you,’ said Tia, ‘she met him in Jimmy’s. She bunked off one afternoon and she got talking to the guy in there. He bought her a coffee. She said she’d looked him up online, so she knew he was for real.’

‘“For real” in what sense?’

‘He worked in the music industry or something.’

‘Did she tell you his name?’

‘Nah, she stopped telling me anything about him because I said he was full of shit and she went off on one and hit me round the face.’

‘She hit you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, with a wry smile. ‘Didn’t hurt, really. She’s tall but she’s really skinny… some of the boys used to call her Olive Oyl.’

‘But you were friends with her?’

‘Not really,’ said Tia, with a slight shrug. ‘I was her “buddy”. If you’re a good student, you get to look after people, if they’re new…’

‘You had to take care of her?’

‘Kinda, yeah… she was always fighting, though. Spent most of her time in special ed when she was here.’

‘What else do you know about her?’

‘Know her dad and uncle were abusing her until she went into care when she was seven,’ said Tia, a pronouncement more shocking for being said in such a matter-of-fact tone.

‘How awful,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia unemotionally. ‘She put it about a lot. Girls like her, they think they’ll get over it by letting boys do it to ’em again. Telling themselves it’s no big deal.’

Tia’s thickly lashed eyes looked too old and world-weary for her youthful, rounded face. Robin didn’t think the girl’s unshockability was a pose. Perhaps she’d been ‘buddies’ with too many troubled students to remain ignorant of the uglier facts of life.

‘D’you think Sapphire was sleeping with this so-called music producer?’

‘Probably,’ said Tia, taking another drag on her vape.

‘Can you remember her saying anything else about him?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, ‘he give her a necklace. She told me it was rubies.’

In spite of her general misery, a shiver of excitement shot through Robin at this.

‘Rubies,’ sneered Tia. ‘It was just beads. My auntie’s got a ruby ring, I know the difference.’

‘Do you remember anything else she said about him?’

‘Nah,’ said Tia, and as she said it, a bell sounded in the distance, and Robin saw the red sweatshirt-ed hordes swarming into the ugly grey building. ‘I gotta go.’

Robin watched the girl cross the road, but Tia had barely reached the school gate when she suddenly wheeled around and dashed back to Robin.

‘Jus’ remembered. He told her she reminded him of a Swedish girl he used to know. When he said she had the right look for the backing singer job.’

‘A Swedish girl,’ repeated Robin, her heart suddenly racing.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia.

‘Thanks, Tia,’ said Robin. ‘This is a big help. Shouldn’t you hide that?’ she added, looking at the vape still clutched in the girl’s hand.

‘Oh. Yeah,’ said Tia, smiling for the first time. She plunged it into her backpack, then turned, sprinted back across the road and into the rapidly emptying yard.