Page 95 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Little is the luck I’ve had,

And oh, ’tis comfort small

To think that many another lad

Has had no luck at all.

A. E. Housman XXVIII, Last Poems

Strike had used the retractable walking stick he carried with him for emergencies to enter and leave the Travelodge in Penrith, and slathered the end of his stump in its usual moisturising cream before sleeping.

Unfortunately, neither measure had ameliorated the pain in his right knee, which remained swollen and continued to resent the slightest amount of weight-bearing or movement.

The drive to Ironbridge the following morning was therefore uncomfortable even though the Audi was an automatic.

The rain lifted as he drove south, but the intermittent sunlight didn’t do much to cheer him.

He ought to have been driving away from the Lake District hotel with Robin at his side, either ecstatic that his declaration of love had been reciprocated and (even better) consummated, or – and in his current glum state of mind, he didn’t doubt that this had been more likely, all along – in extreme mutual embarrassment, because she’d turned him down.

But he’d have swapped even that for this state of flat depression.

There was no dishonour in losing after venturing everything; he’d have coped, and he’d have known, at least, that he’d tried, but to be gunned down before you’d even left your trench was ignominious defeat indeed.

The small town of Ironbridge was beautiful, which Strike hadn’t expected.

A dramatic arching iron bridge spanned the sludge-green River Severn, which was bordered by thick trees and foliage.

Buildings seemed to tumble down the steep hill on the north bank, where the High Street, parallel with the river, was bordered with shops, cafés and pubs that had a quaintly 1950s appearance, their signs illuminated by the wintry sunlight.

Strike took no pleasure in the scene; he’d have preferred to be pulling up among graffitied tower blocks and broken glass, which would have better chimed with his mood.

He left his Audi in the car park of the Swan Taphouse, and was about to text Robin his position when he spotted her a hundred yards away, getting out of her own hire car. He resented having to use the stick to walk towards her, because it felt like asking for pity.

Robin, who’d had only a couple of hours’ sleep the night before, which had been punctuated by dreams of oversleeping to pick up the hire car, and of the box at Chapman Farm, and of Murphy shouting at her, had spent much of the journey resolving to be completely natural with Strike when she saw him.

Murphy had called her during her drive north, apologising for being so angry about the photographs of the body in the vault, and they’d reaffirmed their intention to look over the two-bedroomed house in Walthamstow the following day.

She hadn’t, of course, told her boyfriend about being threatened with a masonic dagger.

Approaching each other from a distance, both self-conscious, each was struck by very different thoughts.

Strike thought Robin looked far from her best. She still hadn’t regained all the weight she’d lost at Chapman Farm, and in this bright winter light looked slightly gaunt and very tired.

She also had a smudge of something black beneath her right eye.

But none of it mattered: he wanted her as he’d never wanted any woman in his life, and it was too late.

Meanwhile, Robin saw Strike limping towards her, and she hated herself for recognising how attractive she found him, dishevelled and badly shaven as he was.

It had taken Robin a long time to see what other women seemed to find so sexy about this broken-nosed, overweight, bear-like man, and it was extremely upsetting to find him physically appealing now, of all possible times, and she needed to readjust her sight again, to focus exclusively on Murphy ( who’s the Paul Newman lookalike?

) because Strike was a liar who hid both girlfriends and babies from his business partner.

‘Hi,’ said Strike, when they’d covered the last few yards separating them, each trying to look at anything but the other. ‘We’ve got half an hour before Dilys, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Want to get a coffee or something?’

‘OK,’ said Robin. ‘I think that hotel’s open.’

In spite of her resolution to be natural, she heard the unfriendliness in her voice as she pointed towards the Tontine Hotel, a large Georgian building with pea-green shutters that overlooked the iron bridge.

They crossed the road in silence. Robin might have asked about the fact that her partner was walking with a stick, but as he usually disliked enquiries about his leg, she decided not to. Strike, meanwhile, was perversely wondering why she couldn’t at least ask about his leg.

Once sitting in the window at the hotel bar, each with a coffee, Strike told Robin about his interview with Jade Semple, omitting to mention either his crashing hangover or the fact that he’d fallen on his arse in the mud mid-interview, because his reputation as a detective was about the only thing he currently had going for him and he was damned if he was going to give that up, too.

‘If Niall was in such a poor mental state he was scared of crossing a bridge,’ said Robin, once Strike had finished, ‘is it likely he was in a fit state to run away with a girlfriend? Wouldn’t that woman be worried about him? Would she want the responsibility?’

‘No idea,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ll be honest, I don’t think the Semples’ marriage was a meeting of minds.

She’s from Colchester, which means she probably met him when he was still 3 Para, as it’s where they’ve got their base.

To be blunt about it, men in those kinds of regiments are warned against local girls looking for a ticket out of small-town life.

She’s good-looking enough, but I can’t see that they’d have had a hell of a lot in common.

Semple passed SAS selection, so he’ll be very intelligent, and she said herself they were both unfaithful before they got married.

I think she got pregnant, he felt cornered and thought he was doing the right thing, marrying her. ’

Severely aggravated by Strike’s gall in talking so casually about accidental pregnancy, and his implicit criticism of Niall Semple for getting entangled with a woman with whom he had nothing in common, Robin said,

‘Did you ask her about Reata Lindvall and Belgium?’

Shit. He’d completely forgotten.

‘Yeah. No connection,’ said Strike.

‘Did you ask whether he knew a man called Oz?’

Fuck. He hadn’t asked that, either.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘She didn’t think so.’

‘So,’ said Robin, striving to sound coolly professional, ‘how likely d’you think it is that Niall Semple was the man in the vault?’

‘On balance, slightly more likely than Fleetwood,’ said Strike, ‘because he’s a mason and, from what Jade says, he got a bit obsessive about Freemasonry, post-injury.

Plus, there’s a connection with the name William Wright.

On the other hand, would he have been capable of all the subterfuge involved in pretending to be Wright, with a brain injury?

And why was he going on twenty-mile runs?

That suggests to me he was training for something, or thought he was.

I can’t help wondering whether he hasn’t left the country, tried to get back to a battlefield, find or avenge his best mate. ’

‘But we’d know if he’d left the UK.’

‘You think the SAS always travel on their own passports?’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, to whom this hadn’t occurred.

‘We’re talking about the kind of bloke who can navigate by the stars, scale buildings without ropes, learn Arabic in two weeks flat – they’re the best of the best, the SAS. I struggle to see why a man like that would think it important to go undercover in a silver shop in London.’

‘Maybe the brain injury made him abnormally interested in the Murdoch silver?’

‘Oh yeah, and she gave me a picture of the note he left for her,’ said Strike, pulling out his phone, and Robin’s anger at him burned a little hotter for him ignoring her suggestion. Nevertheless, she took the mobile and read the strange message.

‘“RL knows where”,’ she read aloud. ‘Any idea what that means?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

Only now did it occur to him that these were Reata Lindvall’s initials, but as they were millions of other people’s initials, too, he didn’t find the fact of overwhelming relevance.

‘The other thing I found out was that he’d handcuffed his briefcase to him. I thought it looked like that, when I saw the photo in the press.’

‘You think he had something valuable in there?’

‘That would seem the obvious explanation, but if so, he must’ve got hold of the valuable thing between leaving Crieff on the twenty-seventh of May and visiting a cashpoint on the fourth of June. Jade says he didn’t take anything valuable with him. Maybe some old masonic books.’

‘Well, I managed to speak to Tia Thompson, Sapphire’s friend, yesterday,’ said Robin, handing Strike back his phone and making sure their fingers didn’t touch.

‘Ah, good work,’ said Strike, trying to curry favour, but she didn’t smile. After giving Strike a concise summary of all Tia had told her, she concluded,

‘… and the last thing she told me was, this mysterious man in the music business told Sapphire she reminded him of a Swedish girl he’d once known.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Strike, choosing not to voice his opinion that ‘you look Swedish’ was a fairly easy line to toss at a young blonde Brit you were trying to flatter.

Nevertheless, still trying to ingratiate himself, he said, ‘Well, we aren’t exactly swamped with candidates for Rita Linda, so we should definitely bear Lindvall in mind…

speaking of schoolkids, Pat thinks she’s found Hussein Mohamed – or his daughter, anyway. ’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘she emailed me.’

‘With the photo of the kid that was in the paper, we could—’

‘Hang around primary schools in Forest Gate and tail her home?’ said Robin.

‘It worked with Tia Thompson.’

‘I didn’t tail her home, and Tia’s sixteen. Do you seriously think that’s the same thing as stalking a child in a wheelchair who’s just escaped a civil war?’

‘I’m not talking about stalk – OK, forget it, it was just an idea,’ said Strike.

‘We’d better pay for our coffees,’ said Robin. ‘We haven’t got long now.’

‘I’ll get it,’ said Strike, reaching for his wallet.

‘I need the bathroom,’ said Robin, standing up. ‘Er – Dilys’s house is up quite a steep road, I’ve just seen the sign. If your leg’s bad—’

‘It’s fine,’ said Strike shortly.

Sod you, then, thought Robin, walking away in search of the Ladies.

Strike asked for the bill then stared gloomily out of the window at the huge iron bridge.

Suddenly, his subconscious decided to throw up the thing that had been nagging at him in the café in Moffat.

The unknown Scottish woman who’d twice called the office to beg for his help, and asked him to meet her in the Golden Fleece, had said: It’s all hid under the bridge.

Meanwhile Robin, who was washing her hands at the sink, looked into the mirror over it and noticed not only how pale and exhausted she looked, but also the large black smudge of mascara under her right eye. Strike could have told her about it, she thought furiously, as she wiped it away.