Page 306 of The Hallmarked Man

‘My thoughts exactly. They seemed thoroughly pissed off we know Malcolm Truman’s a mason, and even more pissed off at my suggestion that he refused to consider evidence that the body might not be Jason Knowles, which, needless to say, I made sure I said on tape.’

A yawn overtook Strike. When he’d finished, he raised his hand to the waiter to request more coffee.

‘I imagine you’ve noticed,’ he said, once his mug had been topped up, ‘there’ve been no press stories about Lord Oliver Branfoot’s private porn movies? The de Leon brothers aren’t upholding their side of the bargain.’

‘It’s only been a few days. We did agree they could prepare their mother first.’

‘I want Branfoot neutralised,’ said Strike. ‘We’re vulnerable in more ways than one while he’s skulking around, sending thugs to intimidate us. “We think you might have a flat where you make dirty films” isn’t a solid enough basis for a counter-attack. We need proof. An address.’

‘You still think the man who threatened me was Branfoot’s?’

‘Nobody else connected to this case has got blokes at their fingertips who’d be happy to break the law in exchange for a wad of cash, and while the fucker’s got a hotline to Culpepper, we’re still at risk of more bullshit press stories. I got a snide remark from DCI Northmore about the way I conduct business. I’d say he’d be fucking delighted tosee me done over in the tabloids again. It’d help a lot if we could rule out Powell or Semple. How was Wynn Jones?’

Robin gave a short summary of her talk with Jones, concluding,

‘If I had to bet, I’d say he knows where Tyler is, and has promised not to tell. He claims to be convinced Tyler didn’t tamper with the car, but Tyler’s alibi for that night is really feeble – feeling ill and staying at home in his parents’ empty house. But on the other hand, it really does stretch credulity that Tyler followed them all the way to Birmingham to fiddle with the ABS in the car park.’

‘It does, yeah,’ said Strike. He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, then said, ‘Did you believe Jones, when he said Powell never mentioned silver to him?’

‘He kind of scoffed at the idea,’ said Robin. ‘Maybe theyweretalking about Sylvain Deslandes. Do we keep Pat calling all pubs called the Silver Something? We’re running up a lot of man hours for Decima to pay.’

‘Yeah, but as we’ve got fuck-all else on Powell… incidentally, I finally made direct contact with the Scottish Gateshead on Thursday. When I asked whether she was Rena Liddell she yelled “don’t say my name” or words to that effect and hung up, so I think it’s safe to assume she is. I’ve left messages on all her old social media accounts, asking her to get back in touch. Christ knows where she is. Not London, from what she’s said. I thought she might’ve gone back to Scotland, but I had a look overnight and I can’t find a single Scottish pub called the Golden Fleece. Unless I’ve missed one, it’s a name that only appeals to the English and Welsh…

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m going to visit Holborn Library this morning.’

‘To find out why Scots don’t have pubs called “the Golden Fleece”?’ said Robin, nonplussed.

‘No, because I want to see if they’ve got any old plans of Freemasons’ Hall and Wild Court. I can’t find anything online, but the library might have old stuff in a file.’

‘What d’you want plans of Wild Court for?’

‘Because I still can’t fathom how Wright and Oz got to the shop that night. You said before there must be CCTV footage of them heading towards the shop, but if the police had found it, they’d have released it by now. The only people spotted going into Wild Court around the right time were those four students they’ve ruled out. So how thehell did two men manage to materialise in Wild Court without being seen by anyone, or captured on camera?’

‘I don’t know, but how would plans—? Wait,’ said Robin, unsure whether to be amused or not. ‘You’re not suggesting some kind of—?’

‘Secret passage between the hall and the shop it backs on to? I grant you it sounds far-fetched, but I want to check when that shop was built, and find out whether any part of the hall was converted to make it. If there’s a connection between the two buildings, we’d potentially be looking for two men who entered Freemasons’ Hall on the evening after Wright got on the Tube at Covent Garden.’

‘But the hall would be closed – oh. You mean to attend a masonic meeting?’

‘Possibly. I’m trying to find out which lodges met there that night. If Oz and Wright were both masons, it might explain Wright trusting Oz, even though he knew someone might be coming for him.’

‘But if Wright trusted Oz because they were both masons, Oz could have lured himanywhere,’ said Robin. ‘Why meet him at Freemasons’ Hall, with loads of fellow masons as witnesses, then lead him away from the meeting just so he could be killed at Ramsay Silver?’

‘Why did it have to be done in the vault,’ said Strike, frowning. ‘Yeah. Right back where we started.’

96

… the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Matthew Arnold

The Forsaken Merman

News of the murders of Jim Todd and his mother hit the LondonEvening Standardthe following day. To Strike’s relief, his presence at the scene wasn’t mentioned. For once, his own and the Met’s interests seemed to have coincided: they didn’t want publicity about the fact that the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency might be ahead of them in investigations into the silver vault murder, and Strike had no wish to encourage journalists back into Denmark Street. The papers didn’t seem to have spotted the connection between the murder of Wright and those of Todd and his mother, for which Robin, too, was grateful. She needed no further complications in her severely strained relations with Murphy.

She and her boyfriend met at last on Tuesday evening, back in the Duke pub. Murphy looked as though he’d lost weight in the two days since they’d last seen each other. Slightly hunched and red-eyed, he listened as Robin delivered the speech she’d planned.