Page 229 of The Hallmarked Man

He hung up and walked on, trying to shove aside his own multitude of problems, the better to concentrate on Wardle’s.

The policeman’s flat was in a modern block on Brixton Water Lane. Strike buzzed the intercom and climbed two flights of stairs, which did his aching stump little good, and found Wardle waiting in the doorway with his sleepy, pyjama-ed eighteen-month-old son in his arms. This sight gave Strike an extremely unwelcome vision of himself trying to entertain a daughter in his attic flat, so as to enable Bijou to go out on the town, in pursuit of another wealthy potential husband.

‘He’ll go down soon,’ said Wardle and, slightly to Strike’s surprise – his experience of small children was that their bedtimes were haphazard and often involved a lot of protests and grizzling – Wardle’s son did indeed settle quickly in the spare bedroom, while Strike wasin the kitchen, prising lids off plastic tubs of curry. The jingling music of a cartoon was issuing from the sitting room.

The kitchen was as clean and tidy as Strike would have expected, but Wardle had made no effort to make the place homely or to change what Strike guessed was pre-existing décor, because he doubted the policeman would have chosen tiles patterned with root vegetables.

‘Cheers for this,’ said Wardle, sitting down at the table. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘It’s on me,’ said Strike. ‘Payment for information soon to be received.’

‘Well, you’ve pissed the murder investigation team off, big time.’

‘How’ve I done that?’ said Strike, helping himself to naan bread.

‘Those witnesses, Wright’s neighbours. Daz and someone.’

‘Mandy, yeah. What about them?’

‘They’re denying they told you anything.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike.

He wasn’t surprised. Daz and Mandy’s immediate, reflexive reaction to being called on by police a second time would, he was certain, be to deny everything, without pausing to consider that they could be storing up far more serious trouble for themselves in continuing to deny that they’d hidden evidence from the police.

‘And one of them let it slip that you’d given them money.’

‘Which they took, in exchange for the information. Does the Met think I shower banknotes on people with nothing to tell me?’

‘I’m just warning you,’ said Wardle, ‘that’s the line the team’s taking, that you’re trying to build up your rep by pretending to have found stuff they didn’t.’

‘So nobody’s following up Oz and Sofia Medina?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Wardle. ‘One of the women on the team – name’s Iverson – thinks Daz and Mandy told you the truth and that it’s worth looking into the Oz bloke. Murphy knows Iverson,’ he added. ‘Knows her bloody well, actually.’

Strike felt a flicker of interest unrelated to the case.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Wardle. ‘They had a good grope in the pub a while back.’

‘How long ago was this?’ asked Strike, trying to sound casual.

‘Back when he was splitting up with his wife,’ said Wardle, and the tiny shoot of – not exactly hope, but something resemblingit – withered and died inside Strike. ‘I told you before, he was a proper arsehole when he was drinking, nothing in a skirt was safe. He’s been in a bloody bad mood lately, apparently. Iverson says, if she didn’t know better, she’d think he was drinking again. Mind, he’d have good reason.’

Much as Strike would have liked to believe Murphy had fallen off the wagon he thought that was too much to hope for.

‘Why’d he have good reason?’ he asked.

‘He was on that gangland shooting, with the kids.’

‘So I heard.’

‘Well, he was the one who fucked it up. He arrested the mother’s boyfriend, who’s admittedly a violent, vengeful fucker with a record, but Murphy had sod all evidence.’

Strike, who assumed Robin already knew all this, knew that even if she didn’t, he’d only make himself look like a prick if he brought any of it up, so he didn’t pursue the subject.

‘Anyway, I checked out that Calvin Osgood’s alibi for you,’ said Wardle. ‘It’s sound. He really was in Manchester when he said he was.’