Page 88 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Listlessly through the window-bars

Gazing seawards many a league

From her lonely shore-built tower,

While the knights are at the wars…

Matthew Arnold Tristram and Iseult

Ever since limping off the train at Glasgow Central at six that morning, the end of his stump sweaty and sore because he’d fallen asleep fully clothed with his prosthesis still on, Strike had felt atrocious: poorly rested, queasy and with a headache throbbing behind his temples.

Fully aware that with nearly a bottle of Johnnie Walker inside him he was still over the alcohol limit, he picked up his hired automatic Audi A1 and set off north through yet more pelting rain, stopping on the way at a fast food van at the side of the road to buy and eat a fried bacon and egg roll, because he’d been in no condition to eat the plastic-smelling breakfast he’d been offered on the train.

For the next half an hour, he drove in constant uncertainty as to whether he ought to stop the car again to throw up.

Shortly before eleven o’clock, thick rain still falling, stomach churning, head pounding, Strike entered the small Perthshire town of Crieff where Niall Semple’s abandoned wife continued to live, and deposited his Audi in a car park off the High Street.

The Semples’ house had appeared a short walk away on the map, but what Strike hadn’t noticed was that Comrie Road, up which he had to walk to get there, was on a steep incline.

Head down, inwardly cursing the weather, the hill and his own whisky consumption, he set off up the street, passing small shops set in Victorian buildings of stained stone.

His mobile rang and he answered, taking inadequate shelter in a doorway.

‘Hi Pat, what’s up?’ he croaked.

‘You ill?’

‘No, I’m great,’ said Strike, while rain trickled down the back of his neck.

‘Might’ve found your Hussein Mohamed,’ said Pat.

‘There’s a local news story about a nine-year-old Syrian refugee called Hafsa Mohamed, who’s in a wheelchair.

Says here: “Her father Hussein says proudly that although he and his wife had a little English when they arrived in London, Hafsa had to start from scratch. She’s now fluent in the language and flourishing at her primary school in Forest Gate.

” Forest Gate, that’s still in Newham. Looks like they stayed in the area they knew. ’

‘Sounds promising,’ said Strike. ‘Could you get on to the paper and see whether you can get contact details for the family?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Pat, making a note.

‘Better go, I’m heading for an interview,’ said Strike.

As he put his phone back into his pocket he turned his face upwards to allow rain to fall directly onto his face, hoping it might make him feel less ill.

A familiar symbol caught his eye, directly overhead: the iron square and compasses, protruding discreetly over the nondescript blue door outside which he was sheltering.

He moved back onto the pavement, contemplating the masonic lodge, which was no larger than a two-up, two-down house, then walked on up the hill, wondering – while trying to maintain balance on the slippery pavement and ignore his broiling guts and his pulsing headache – how many masons met in the tiny temple behind him.

He ought to have stopped for painkillers.

He shouldn’t have sunk nearly an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.

He really wished he hadn’t had that fucking roll.

The Semples’ house was large, square, detached and made of grey stone, with a well-tended front garden. As he knew from Jade’s texts, this was the house in which her husband had grown up, and which he’d inherited upon his mother’s death.

When he rang the bell, the front door opened to reveal the tiny wife of Niall Semple who, to Strike’s surprise, was dressed in a hooded bright yellow raincoat and accompanied by a dog on a lead that, to Strike, looked as though someone had shoved a fox into a tumble dryer.

It was small, orange and covered in thick, long hair that stood out all around its body, and began yapping vociferously at the sight of him.

‘Cameron?’ said Jade loudly, over the noise of the dog barking.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, who couldn’t be bothered to correct her.

‘I dunno what I’ve said yes to this for,’ she said, with what seemed to be a combination of irritability and foreboding, ‘bu’ we can talk while I’m walkin’ Pom Pom. I ’aven’t got long.’

Strike, who’d been very much looking forward to sitting down rather than taking a rainy walk, said,

‘OK.’

In the hall behind Jade, a short ginger-haired man with the kind of moustache Strike associated with World War Two pilots emerged from a door holding a coffee, then ducked back out of sight.

Unaware Strike had seen her guest, Jade said, ‘C’mon then,’ stepped outside, closed the door, and walked past him down the garden path, leaving Strike with no option but to follow.

He had a hunch he’d just seen the man who’d called Jade Semple ‘babe’ and advised her Strike was probably working for a newspaper.

He also suspected that Jade might be a fellow hangover sufferer, a conclusion he drew not only from Jade’s habit of texting him when she appeared to be unable to see her phone or use her fingers very well, but from her pallor, the puffiness of her face and the fact that her heavy fake lashes had been applied crookedly.

She was elfin-looking, barely five feet tall, with large brown eyes and a small, pointed nose, and smelled strongly of a heavy oriental perfume that reminded him of a friend of his Aunt Joan’s in the eighties, whose scent had been powerful enough to overwhelm barbecue smoke.

In this case (unless he was judging her by himself, because he was certain he was giving off a reek of whisky) he suspected she was trying to cover up the fact that she’d slept too late to shower.

The small amount of blue-black hair he could see from beneath the raincoat hood looked unbrushed, and there was a deep crease in her left cheek that looked as though it had been made by a pillow.

Strike’s best guess was that Ginger Moustache had kept her up late.

‘We’ll go up MacRosty Park,’ said Jade. ‘But, look, I definitely don’t fink it was Niall in that vault now, all righ’? Tha’ was jus’ before I realised what was really goin’ on. I don’ know why I said I’d do this,’ she repeated distractedly.

‘What made you think it was Niall in the first place?’ Strike asked, eyes screwed up against the rain and trying not to limp. He could feel the end of his stump chafing.

‘’Cause of it being a masonic shop, an’ the body sounded a bit like ’im, and righ’ blood group an’ everyfing, an’ because ’e went a bit funny about the masons, after ’is ’ead injury. Did you know ’e’s a mason?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘D’you know what degree he was?’

‘Knight of somefing, I can’ remember.’

‘Not Prince?’

‘No, “knight”… all the men in ’is family were masons. ’E was never weird abou’ it ’til ’e got injured, though, it was jus’, like, a social fing, but then ’e wen’ funny, readin’ all the time, so that made me fink, when I seen it was a masonic shop… an’ there was the name, “William Wright”.’

‘He had a connection with that name, did he?’

‘Yeah, kinda. Wright was a famous what-d’you-call-it – botanist – an’ he was born in Crieff, like, two ’undred years ago or somefing.’

‘Niall’s interested in local history, is he?’

‘No, but ’is dad was. ’E self-published a book on masonic ’istory in Perthshire an’ ’e put an ’ole chapter about this William Wright in there, finkin’ ’e was a Freemason, but then it turned out ’e’d never been a mason, so ’e ’ad to cut them pages out of the book.

When I seen that bloke at the silver shop was callin’ ’imself “William Wright”, I fort, wasn’t that that guy old Mr Semple got it all wrong abou’? An’ I looked ’im up an’ I was right.’

She crossed the road towards a rainswept park and Strike followed, hoping to God he wasn’t about to be asked to walk across slippery grass, which was the worst of all possible surfaces for his prosthesis.

‘Bu’ then I found ou’ abou’ the woman,’ said Jade bitterly, ‘so I knew wha’ was really goin’ on.

I’m only stayin’ ’ere in Crieff because ’e’s gonna ’ave to come back some time.

I’m not movin’ back to Colchester so ’e can move some ovver woman in.

I’m not makin’ it fuckin’ easy for ’im, after what ’e done.

’E can fuckin’ well come ’ome an’ tell me to my face ’e wants a divorce. ’

To Strike’s relief, they entered the park via a smooth, tarmacked path.

It was still raining hard, but the cold, fresh air was making him feel less queasy, he could barely smell Jade’s perfume in the stiff breeze, and her loud voice was less deafening in the open.

A deserted children’s play area lay to their right.

‘You think he’s with the woman you texted me about, do you? The one who used his credit card, after the body in the vault turned up?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Have the police traced her?’

‘Not yet, but they showed me a picture of ’er, at a cashpoint, usin’ ’is card. Bank security camera. She looks a real skank,’ said Jade savagely. ‘Blonde. ’E always told me ’e din’ like blondes. I din’ even know abou’ that bank account they were bofe usin’. ’E was keepin’ it ’id from me.’

‘He was withdrawing money you didn’t know about?’

‘Yeah. Nobody’ll tell me ’ow much was in there, or wevver it’s all gone now. They jus’ come to me wiv a picture of the woman an’ asked if I recognised ’er, an’ I never seen ’er before in my life. Tattoo on ’er face,’ said Jade bitterly. ‘ Classy. ’

She bent down and let the Pomeranian off its lead; it bounded away onto the grass while Strike and Jade kept walking along the path.

‘What kind of tattoo did this woman have?’