Page 239 of The Hallmarked Man

I knew they lived and moved

Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest

Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet

The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb

Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Matthew Arnold

The Buried Life

At eight o’clock the following evening, Robin, who’d been informed by Two-Times that his wife would be celebrating a female friend’s birthday at Coya, a Latin American restaurant in Mayfair, sat down to watch his so far blameless spouse drinking and eating with seven other women. Loud music pounded in the dimly lit basement room, which was swathed in lush greenery to suggest the rainforest. Robin, who’d been home to change, was wearing an old blue dress, the opal pendant her parents had bought for her thirtieth birthday and the matching earrings Murphy had given her for Christmas. On checking her reflection before leaving her flat she’d remembered the night when she’d worn exactly the same outfit, and Strike, she was certain, had come close to kissing her on the pavement outside the Ritz.

As she’d thought it might look conspicuous to eat alone, Robin had asked Midge to join her, but the latter hadn’t yet arrived, so Robin sat writing in her notebook while casually keeping a covert eye on MrsTwo-Times’ party, who were all around Robin’s own age, in high spirits and clearly intent on getting as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible.

Robin had just looked up from her notes for a third time in hopes of seeing Midge when she saw a suited Strike walking towards her instead, and experienced an electric shock in the pit of the stomach.

‘Midge and I swapped,’ he said, sitting down opposite her. ‘Thought we should have a catch-up on the silver vault case, because I’ve had a very good twenty-four hours on the information-gathering front.’

‘Yes, I read your file note about Temple Seventeen,’ said Robin.

‘I got a bit further on Semple last night. His best friend Ben Liddell, who was also Scottish, and was killed in the operation where Semple got his brain injury, has only one living relative: a sister called Rena. I’m starting to wonder whether she isn’t our Scottish Gateshead.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. She might even be the woman Jade Semple overheard Semple planning to meet. The Gateshead called again yesterday, babbling about an engineer to Pat. The pub where Jade overheard Niall arranging to meet the woman was called “The Engineer”. The Gateshead seems worried about going back there, which is why she wants to meet me in the Golden Fleece instead.’

‘Right,’ said Robin, deliberately unenthusiastic. Apparently indulging in speculation about Swedish Reata Lindvall was pointless, but it was fine for Strike to make assumptions about an unknown woman because she was Scottish.

‘But I’ve got a load more than that,’ said Strike, unaware that he’d just annoyed Robin even further. ‘Look at this.’

He handed Robin his phone and she looked down at a news story dated 2010, topped by a picture of Jim Todd staring sullenly at the camera, captioned ‘Todd Jameson’. The cleaner had had more hair in the photograph, but the wide mouth and tiny eyes were unmistakeable. The headline read:BATTERSEA RAPIST JAILED.

‘Category two rape, seventeen-year-old girl, sentenced to ten years, out in five,’ said Strike.

‘How on earth did you find this?’ said Robin, momentarily forgetting her antagonism.

‘Told you I thought Todd might be using a fake name. Started searching variations on Todd and James and that came up. Surprising how often people stick close to their birth names when choosing a fake one.’

Robin handed Strike back his phone. Strike, who’d recognised both the dress and the pendant Robin had worn to the Ritz on the night he’d almost kissed her, was reminded how recently he’d hoped for a situation like this – both of them dressed up, alone in a restaurant – to make the declaration he was now certain would have been fruitless.

‘There’s more,’ he said, trying to dispel this miserable thought. ‘Once I got Todd’s real name, it wasn’t too hard to find out he’s got a brother who’s a Conservative borough councillor. I rang the guy up. He wasn’t best pleased to hear from a private detective who’s interested in his pervert brother, but he became a lot friendlier when I asked him how old his grandmother is.’

‘He’s a mason?’

‘Certainly is. He jumped to the conclusion that we’ve been hired by Kenneth Ramsay to quash all masonic rumours around the murder. Needless to say, I didn’t correct him.

‘Bottom line: when Todd got out of jail after the Battersea rape, he went to his brother looking for money. His brother told him to sling his hook, and Todd threatened to spill a lot of family secrets to the local press, including the fact that their mother used to be on the game. Big brother caved and managed to get Todd a couple of cleaning jobs with some fellow masons, to keep him in gambling money. By the sounds of it, all Todd cares about is cards and girls.

‘Anyway, the brother assumed I already knew that Todd’s sex offending goes back years. I played along, probed a bit, and Todd was arrested in Belgium in ’97.’

‘Belgium?’ said Robin, shocked.

‘Yep. He was working as a coach driver, moving young Eastern European girls between brothels and abuse rings, and he was doing it under the name “Jim Philpott”, which was his mother’s maiden name. Look at this.’