Page 96 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)
… it was only the mistaken justice of a simple people that wanted blood for blood, and was not over-heedful as to whose blood so long as its own sense of justice was satisfied.
John Oxenham A Maid of the Silver Sea
Robin hadn’t been lying about the steepness of New Road, which made Comrie Road in Crieff look like a gentle incline.
It wound its way up the hill behind the High Street and the gradient was such that, in spite of the cold, Strike was soon sweating from pure pain, and, against his will, having to stop every few yards.
‘Listen,’ said Robin, sympathy temporarily dampening down her resentment, ‘I can easily interview Dilys alone.’
‘No,’ panted Strike, ‘I’m coming.’
A mixture of pride, stubbornness and some sad residue of his determination to spend as much time with Robin as possible forced him onwards. Murphy, he thought, while his knee screamed for mercy, would doubtless be gambolling up the hill like a fucking gazelle.
The houses on both sides of the narrow road faced the river below, so that those on the right showed their back view.
All were detached and well maintained, some built of brick, others painted and cottagey, with trailing plants around the doors.
Robin, who’d been trying to match her speed to Strike’s without dawdling too obviously, suddenly stopped of her own accord, staring at a circular blue plaque on a house in a short terrace.
‘Strike.’
‘What?’
She pointed. He followed her finger and read:
BILLY WRIGHT CBE
1924–1994
LEGENDARY FOOTBALL CAPTAIN
OF ENGLAND AND WOLVES
LIVED AND GREW UP HERE
‘Christ,’ muttered Strike, glad of a chance to stop walking, and trying not to look as though the stick was bearing half his weight. ‘Billy Wright… that should’ve occurred to me… never think of him as William…’
‘And Tyler’s grandmother lives just there,’ said Robin. She was pointing at a house that was rather smaller than those that flanked it, and painted a muddy shade of orange.
‘Just there’, Strike thought, was a relative term. It took him a further five minutes of agony to reach the wooden front door of Dilys Powell.
Robin knocked, then knocked again. They waited.
‘Oh no,’ said Robin. ‘She sounded pretty vague both times I spoke to her… maybe she forgot we were coming?’
Strike barely refrained from swearing. Robin peered in through the dusty window, past the plastic flowers in a jug on the window sill, to an old lady-ish room of armchairs bearing antimacassars, bits of inexpensive china and a patterned purple carpet.
‘Tyler’s parents’ house is a bit further on,’ said Robin. ‘We could try there?’
‘Fine,’ said Strike, trying to look as though this would require no effort whatsoever.
They set off again, Strike now bent sideways, trying to use the stick as a back-up leg.
At the crest of the hill stood a white house larger than Dilys’s, outside which was a For Sale sign. Robin knocked. Nobody answered. She went to peer through a window. The downstairs room was devoid of furniture.
‘ Oi! ’
The detectives turned. A short and extremely belligerent-looking man with longish dark hair had emerged from the back door of the house opposite.
He was wearing a Steely Dan T-shirt and holding an acoustic guitar by the neck and as he hurried towards them, he did precisely what Strike had been trying to avoid for the last fifteen minutes: slipped on his back lawn and tripped.
However, he recovered his balance with the aid of his guitar and, hobbling and slightly pigeon-toed, he advanced on them, shouting:
‘What d’you want? Bloody press, is it?’
‘No,’ said Strike, interested in this assumption. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card. ‘We’re private detectives.’
Robin assumed the man was Tyler’s neighbour Ian Griffiths, because he’d just emerged from the house she knew Ian Griffiths owned.
Robin had grown up in a tall family – the only person in it who was of average height was her mother, and all her brothers were around six feet tall – and she felt slightly guilty (was there such a thing as sizeism?) that the first thing she’d noticed about Ian Griffiths was that he wasn’t much over five feet tall.
She had to admire his courage, though, because he was facing up to Strike as though more than willing to challenge him physically, in spite of the height difference between them of over a foot, and the fact that Strike was considerably broader.
Possibly, she thought, Griffiths intended using the guitar as a weapon.
He all but snatched the card out of Strike’s hand.
‘ Detectives? ’ Griffiths snarled, reading the card. ‘ Shropshire bloody Star , is it?’
‘No,’ said Robin, before Strike could answer; she sensed some placation might be necessary, and Strike’s gifts in that area were variable. ‘Dilys Powell invited us here to talk about her grandson Tyler, but she doesn’t seem to be at home.’
‘ Dilys hired you?’ said Griffiths, in clear disbelief.
‘No, we’re working for a different client,’ said Robin.
‘Faber bloody Whitehead, is it?’ said Griffiths, looking still more incensed.
‘I don’t know anyone called Whitehead,’ said Robin mildly. ‘Dilys thinks Tyler might have been the man found dead in a silver shop in London last June. That’s why she wanted to talk to us.’
‘Oh,’ said Griffiths. Some of the wind appeared to have been taken out of his sails. ‘Yeah. She mentioned something about that…’
‘You wouldn’t happen to know where Dilys is?’ asked Robin.
‘No,’ said Griffiths, looking down the road in the direction of Dilys’s house. ‘She’s probably forgotten you’re coming. She’s on a lot of medication. She had a bad fall a couple of months ago. Lethal, this hill, when it’s icy.’
His belligerence seemed to be turning into embarrassment. He looked in his mid-forties; dark, with hazel eyes and a dimple in his chin, quite a handsome man. Now he glanced down at the guitar as though surprised to find himself holding it.
‘You’ll know Tyler Powell, I suppose?’ said Robin. ‘Living opposite his parents?’
‘Yeah, I know him,’ said Griffiths, who seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. He squinted back up at Strike, who he seemed to find particularly suspicious. ‘You’re definitely not working for the Whiteheads?’
‘Never heard of them,’ said Strike.
‘OK, well… you can come in here and wait for Dilys, if you want. She won’t have gone far. Have a cup of tea. It’s bloody cold.’
‘Very good of you,’ said Strike, grateful for the chance to take the weight off his right knee. ‘Thanks.’
‘Ian Griffiths,’ said the man, at last holding out a hand, which first Strike, then Robin shook. ‘But everyone calls me Griff.’
Still holding his guitar, Griffiths led Strike and Robin in through his back gate. His back garden was full of whimsical sculptures, including a gargoyle.
Strike, who’d dropped out of university at the end of his first year, had only a vague memory of student accommodation, but in his disapproving view, the interior of Ian Griffiths’ house spoke of someone who’d never aged out of their late teens.
Not only did the place stink of joss sticks, to which Strike had a strong aversion, because they’d been one of the signature smells of the various houses to which Leda had dragged him in childhood, but the sitting room into which Griffiths led them was cluttered with kitschy objects that Strike mentally classed as ‘tat’: Day of the Dead figurines, snow globes filled with glitter, a Rastafarian teddy bear, scatter cushions in psychedelic patterns and a framed poster of Jesus smoking a joint were among the objects for which Strike would have had no earthly use.
Candles had been stuck in empty wine bottles, ramshackle shelves held a combination of LPs and CDs, and a keyboard and two more guitars stood in the corner, though Strike noted grudgingly that the place seemed basically clean.
There were a lot of framed photographs, the largest of which showed a pretty dark-haired woman in a tie-dyed shirt and beaded necklace who had her arms around an equally pretty little girl. The same child featured in other photographs, in two of which she was wearing school uniform.
Seeing Robin’s eyes on the photographs, Griffiths said,
‘I lost my wife seven years ago. Breast cancer.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Robin.
‘Thanks,’ said Griffiths. ‘We moved to Ironbridge to be near my brother and his wife. Chloe’s all grown up now and interrailing with her boyfriend, so it’s just me at the moment. What d’you take in your tea?’
When they’d given their requests and Griffiths had left to make the drinks, Strike and Robin sat down on the sofa, which was covered in a throw patterned with a mandala.
Robin, who knew exactly what Strike’s feelings would be about their host’s taste in décor, might have passed comment, but chose instead to get out her notebook.
‘You question him,’ said Strike in a low voice. ‘I’ll take notes. Think he likes you better than me.’
‘Fine,’ said Robin, returning her notebook to her pocket.
Griffiths returned after five minutes with three mugs of tea and a plate of Tunnock’s Teacakes.
Strike thanked him and placed his mug beside him on a rickety wicker tray with legs, which meant shifting aside the gold figurine of a small boy apparently about to take a piss and a large purple candle studded with crystals.
‘You’re a musician, Mr Griffiths?’ asked Robin.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I give piano and guitar lessons. Play in a band. Bit long in the tooth to get that record deal now, but we do pubs and weddings and stuff.’
He sat down opposite them and started unwrapping a teacake, saying,
‘Sorry I was a bit… there’s been a lot of trouble. About Tyler, I mean.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Robin. Strike’s pen was hovering over his notebook.
‘Dilys didn’t tell you?’
‘No, but we know Tyler did something that made people in Ironbridge unhappy with him,’ said Robin. ‘We saw online that people didn’t want to have to look at him, in photos.’