Page 253 of The Hallmarked Man

He called Barclay, informed him that he and Robin were on their way, and that he should leave before he was spotted.

‘Strange night to have a dog fight, Valentine’s Day,’ commented Robin, once Strike had hung up.

‘I don’t think we’re dealing with born romantics here.’

‘At least he hasn’t brought his son along,’ said Robin. ‘God, I feel sorry for that boy.’

‘Yeah, I can’t imagine it’s much fun having Plug as a father… did you read my email about the bloke in sunglasses who went looking for Todd after he moved out?’ asked Strike.

‘Yes, I’ve read all your emails,’ said Robin, a little more snappily than she’d meant to.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, fine,’ said Robin quickly. The last thing she wanted right now was a discussion about her mood. ‘You were going to say something else before he came out of the house. “On an unrelated subject…”’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I think I’ve identified Danny de Lion.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘Nope. Still don’t know whether he’s dead or alive, but there’s a record of him on Sark, which fits everything you got out of Fay: no cars, only tractors or horse-drawn carts, small island. If I’ve got the right bloke, his real surname’s de Leon with an ‘e’, not an ‘i’. He’s the right age and there are a couple of old photos floating around online that look like him, before he got into peroxide and fake tan, and he’s still got a mother and brother living on Sark. D’you know what the Sark flag looks like?’

‘No,’ said Robin.

‘Cross of St George with two lions passant in the upper left quadrant.’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin, unable to help herself. The agency proving Malcolm Truman had conspired to hush up the facts around William Wright’s killing certainly wasn’t going to help the strain on her relationship with Murphy, although admittedly she was currently so angry with him this was troubling her slightly less than it would before he’d called about the gazumping.

‘I can’t find a landline number for de Leon’s mother or brother,’ Strike continued, ‘but Sark’s so small, I’m considering going out there to bang on their front doors. I won’t bill Decima,’ he added, before Robin could protest. ‘I’ve got the cash from Ted and Joan’s house, I’ll pay out of my own pocket.’

‘You think de Leon was Wright, don’t you?’ said Robin.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it yet,’ said Strike, ‘but he’s the only one I can find a coherent narrative for: he was a blackmailer and got polished off in the vault because it gave Branfoot maximum control over the investigation. However, we’re a long way off proving that, which is why I want to go to Sark. If de Leon’s family have had contact with him since June the seventeenth last year, we can rule him out. If they haven’t, I’ll go to Fyola’s boyfriend and try and scare him into telling me where Branfoot’s doing his secret filming. Finding out the address of the flat where he keeps his camera and two-way mirror will scare off his goons, if anything does.’

Robin’s mobile rang and connected at once to Bluetooth, revealing Murphy’s name.

‘Ignore that,’ she said, as the phone continued to ring. ‘So you’re inclined to rule out Semple and Powell?’

‘Not yet,’ said Strike, who was far more interested in the fact that Robin was ignoring Murphy’s call on Valentine’s Day than he wasin Niall Semple or Tyler Powell. ‘Must admit, since I met Hardy I’ve been rethinking Semple a bit.’

‘In what way?’

‘It was just… seeing Freemasons’ Hall and listening to Hardy. I maybe… projected too much of my own stuff on to Semple.’

Murphy rang off. The ensuing silence seemed particularly loud.

‘What d’you mean, you projected…?’ asked Robin.

‘I haven’t got much use for religion or mysticism, so I s’pose it made far more sense to me that an ex-member of the SAS would’ve tried to get back to active service on his own, rather than that he went down a masonic rabbit hole. But hewasbrain injured, and that bridge thing’s nagging at me a bit…

‘I downloaded a book Hardy mentioned to me,Bridge to Light. It’s an introduction to the masonic degrees.’

Strike opened Kindle on his phone to look at the passages he’d marked the previous evening.

‘Hardy told me there’s a bridge in the ceremony of induction into the fifteenth degree, when you become a Knight of the East. Jade Semple told me whatever degree Niall had reached was called “Knight of something”. During initiation, the candidate has to cross a bridge over a river with “bodies and human limbs and heads floating in it”. The candidate finally reaches “the treasure chamber of King Cyrus, which contains the sacred treasures… the Ark of the Covenant, golden candlesticks, the altar and the gold and silver vessels”.

‘I s’pose I’ve been assuming it was either/or for Semple, that he had a binary choice between war or Freemasonry, but this,’ said Strike, indicating the book on his phone, ‘is crammed with references to being a spiritual soldier. In fact, when you become a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, you become “God’s soldier to war against fanaticism, intolerance, bigotry and all the evils which have made a hell of earth”, which isn’t a million miles away from:

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go