Page 234 of The Hallmarked Man

‘Stare at them. Make it clear you’re suspicious. They need to know they’ve blown their cover, that they’re risking you confronting them or reporting them to a hotel worker for following you.’

‘What if they ask where I’m going? What if they confrontme?’

‘Then you either tell the story you’re meeting an American girlfriend upstairs, or ask why that’s any of their business. Donotget in a lift with anyone, all right?’

‘All right,’ said Bijou.

‘Once you’re in the lift alone, press the sixth-floor button. That’s not where you’re getting out, but we want them scurrying up to the top while you’re going back down to the fourth. I’ll already be in the room waiting for you. We do the swabs, and I leave immediately via the back of the hotel. You stay in the room for at least a couple of hours, to make the coffee with the friend story stick. Then you go back out through the lobby at the front.’

‘All right,’ said Bijou, ‘but it’s going to be really expensive, taking a room at the Savoy, and I’m not getting paid at the—’

‘It’s fine, I’ve already paid for it,’ said Strike.

‘Oh,’ said Bijou. ‘Well, I’ll pay half, if you—’

‘There’s no need. I just want this sorted out.’

Having given her the room number, Strike hung up.

He replaced the priest on the windowsill and got to his feet, trying not to think about the likely press massacre should Dominic Culpepper realise there was a story combining Strike, a gorgeous brunette, an accidentally conceived baby and a well-known barrister who was the scourge of the tabloids, nor to imagine that story’s effects on Robin and the rest of the agency. Strike had detected a definite lack of warmth in his recent interactions with Shah, and had a nasty feeling this might be because Shah knew Bijou had called the office.

He was heading downstairs without intending to enter the office, because he wanted to be in good time to meet Hardacre, when Pat, seeing him pass, called out to him from behind the glass-panelled door.

‘What’s up?’ asked Strike, looking in.

‘That Scottish Gateshead’s just called again,’ she said, looking cross. ‘Bloody rude.’

‘The woman who wants to meet me in the Golden Fleece?’ said Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Pat. ‘Very angry you haven’t called her back. Swearing.’

‘I haven’t got her number,’ said Strike. ‘What was she saying this time?’

‘Something about an engineer and people are out to get her. Swearing her head off.’

‘OK, well, if she calls again, try and get contact details.’

He was about to set off downstairs again when he changed his mind and walked through into the inner office instead, where he madea note and pinned it on the corkboard beneath the picture of Niall Semple.Scottish woman. Engineer. People out to get her.

‘If that womandoescall back,’ he told Pat on his way back to the glass door, ‘ask if she’s blonde and has got anything tattooed on her face.’

‘On herface?’ said Pat.

‘Yeah, you know, the thing on the front of your head,’ said Strike, and left.

Hardacre had suggested meeting in a pub called the Freemasons’ Arms, which lay a short distance from Freemasons’ Hall, because, as he’d told Strike by text, ‘we might as well do the thing properly’. However, as Strike saw when he entered, the pub was disappointingly free of masonic emblems, placing an emphasis instead on old football photographs.

Hardacre was already at the bar. Barely five foot eight, the SIB man had become tubbier since Strike had last seen him, and lost more of his mousy hair, though his amiable, nondescript face was far less lined than Wardle’s. The pair exchanged their usual half-hug, half-handshake.

‘You’re thinner, Oggy.’

‘Not thin enough,’ said Strike, whose knee and hamstring had resented the ten-minute walk. ‘You look well. How’s the family?’

‘All good, yeah,’ said Hardacre. ‘Quick pint before we get you initiated?’

‘Yeah, go on,’ said Strike. ‘But they take all money and metal off you first, don’t they?’

‘Been reading up?’ said Hardacre, with a grin.