Page 187 of The Hallmarked Man

‘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.

59

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 tumbledryer. 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.