Page 304 of The Hallmarked Man

‘He might’ve been trying to paint a picture of himself as a man with something going for him, for the benefit of his new neighbours.’

‘I know, but—’

‘I got a fuck of a shock when she said it,’ Strike admitted, ‘but this still doesn’t make Fleetwood Wright. For all we know, Powell or Semple might’ve knocked – been expecting kids themselves,’ Strike corrected himself quickly, because after what Robin had told him on Sark, he didn’t want to sound glib about pregnancy. ‘Anyway, I’m even keener to find Hussein Mohamed now, and Shah thinks he’s found the right house.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, just saw it in the file. The wife opened the door to Shah and he saw a wheelchair behind her in the hall. The wife says her husband’s working as an Uber driver. She seemed panicky about getting the knock on the door and shut it in Shah’s face before he could ask about Wright. I think we need to keep an eye on the house and see if we can catch Hussein going in and out between shifts.’

‘Do we tell Decima what Wright said?’

Strike chewed a mouthful of sausage, thinking.

‘I’d rather not,’ he said. ‘Not unless we get something else, something concrete. There was that bloke who called claiming to be Fleetwood, remember?’

‘Has Decima got back to you about that?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Predictable answer. “Everyone heard me calling Rupert ‘Bear’, that man could have been faking a deep voice” – note the tacit admission that Fleetwoodhasgot a deep voice – and “everyone who worked at Dino’s knew about the nef being stolen”. She thinks it was someone impersonating him, either for a macabre joke or because they were involved in his killing and are trying to throw us off the scent. Frankly, I think we could frogmarch the living Fleetwood right up to her at this point and she’d still insist he was dead.’

‘Tish Benton’s back from Sardinia,’ said Robin, taking out her phone and bringing up Tish’s Instagram account. ‘I don’t think it was a holiday, or not entirely. She’s got a new job, which is going to mean a lot of travel. We might be lucky to catch her in London, going forwards.’

Strike took the phone from her. A pretty girl with shiny black hair beamed out of the most recent picture, standing in front of a sign that read Hotel Serenità, with the caption:

So thrilled to announce that from March 1st I’ll be working as #brandconsultant for #ClairmontHotelsEurope!!! #travel #dreamjob #luxuryhotels

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Well, we’ll have to try and doorstep her between flights.’

Robin really did look exhausted and miserable, Strike thought, as he passed her back her phone. He couldn’t attribute it all to shock about the increased likelihood that Wright had been Fleetwood, because she’d arrived looking pale and sad.

‘You sure you’re all right?’ he asked, remembering her previous admission that she hadn’t been able to sleep.

‘Yes,’ said Robin automatically, ‘fine.’

But the desire to unburden herself, if not of everything, then of something, made her add,

‘Ryan’s… going through a rough time.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, who regretted asking, because he wasn’t particularly cheered by the thought of Robin sitting up all night to console or counsel her boyfriend. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but his name came up, in last night’s interview.’

‘How?’ said Robin, in sudden panic.

‘They asked if he’d been feeding us information – I denied it, obviously. Said he’d never told either of us anything.’

They sat in silence for a minute. Then Robin said,

‘What if he was having some kind of mental crisis?’

‘Who, Murphy?’

‘No!’ said Robin quickly. ‘Rupert Fleetwood!’

‘Oh,’ said Strike, depressed by her protective tone.

‘I know you think I’m too soft on Rupert,’ she went on, ‘but hear me out, please. He’s being horribly bullied at work. Longcaster’s taunting him about his parents’ death in front of guests. He’s being chased for cash by a dealer. Everyone’s against his relationship. Decima announces she’s pregnant. Say Rupert had some kind of – some kind of meltdown – and stole that nef and only then realised how much worse he’d made his situation. That’s alotof stress. Just say he tookthe job at Ramsay Silver to prove something; that he could make it on his own, that he wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, telling himself he’d return to Decima like a hero and—’

‘And get arrested for the theft of the nef,’ said Strike.

‘But if he wasn’t thinking rationally?’