Page 320 of The Hallmarked Man

‘That Kim Cochran. Heard something very interesting about her the other day. Reason she left the force.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, still thinking about Murphy and Robin. ‘Well, she’s not my concern any more.’

Whether because Wardle had noticed his colleague’s abstraction or not, he said,

‘So what d’you want me to do, start following Two-Times tomorrow?’

‘Need to think it through,’ said Strike, forcing himself to concentrate. ‘We’ll have to maintain a pretence of following the wife, because he’ll ask me if he doesn’t see anyone around when he joins her.’

They discussed the ramifications of this double-agent job until Wardle, coffee finished, said he might as well get an early night. Strike, desperate to be alone, told him to leave his mug; he’d wash it with his whisky glass.

When Wardle had left, Strike remained sitting where he was. As he was now forced to recognise, he’d retained a slender hope that in spite of Robin’s talk of egg freezing, something might yet happen to prise her and Murphy apart. But if a proposal was in the offing…

He remembered the sapphire ring that had adorned Robin’s third finger when she’d first started work for him, when she’d occupied the space Pat did now. The ring had represented a hard, blue full stop: nothing doing. She’d married Matthew, in spite of his previous infidelity and what Strike privately thought of as his general cuntery, and it had taken a second, still more blatant, infidelity to blow the marriage apart, but Murphy, alas, seemed faithful…he’s been great… I can’t fault him… he wants me, whether or not I can have kids… he’s been really kind since it happened…

Strike got to his feet, realising he wasn’t quite steady on them any more, and returned to the inner office. In shutting down various open tabs on his computer he accidentally turned Waits back on.

Nobody, nobody

Will love you the way that I could

Cause nobody, nobody’s that strong…

He slapped the music off, shut down his computer, turned out the light, then returned to the outer office, where he washed Wardle’s mug and his own glass.

He was on the point of turning out the second light when his eye fell again on the gasping black goldfish at the top of the tank, flailing and gulping pathetically, belly up, its sufferings, if Wardle was to be believed, entirely self-inflicted. Finger on the light switch, swaying slightly where he stood, Strike stared at it, imagining finding it dead and motionless in the morning, floating where it was now fighting for life. Its two tank mates, one silver, one gold, drifted serenely below, indifferent to its plight. The black fish was exceptionally ugly; close to an abomination. It was an added insult that it bore his name.

‘Fine, you stupid little fucker,’ he muttered, and he headed none too steadily towards the stairway to the attic, unsure whether he had any frozen peas, but prepared – nonplussed to find himself doing it, yet with a vague desire to set something to rights, even as everything else turned to shit around him – to check.

99

… perfect honesty, which ought to be the common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds.

Albert Pike

Morals and Dogma of The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Several things happened in quick succession the following morning to thoroughly destabilise Robin.

Firstly, she was woken at six a.m. by a call from Barclay to tell her she needn’t bother tailing Mrs Two-Times, because the woman was spending the day at a spa with some girlfriends, which Two-Times had forgotten to tell the agency. Robin was delighted to have an unexpectedly free Saturday, which she intended to spend on sleep and laundry.

Unfortunately, she was woken again, shortly before nine, by Murphy, who called to inform her that his parents were unexpectedly in town, and to ask her over to his place for lunch.

‘I wasn’t expecting them, they just turned up,’ he said, sounding harassed. ‘For a “surprise”, because I haven’t been in touch enough. So can you come over, because they really want to meet you? I’ll cook. Dad wants to watch the football. They’re not staying overnight, thank Christ, they’re at Mum’s sister’s.’

It so happened that even though Robin and Murphy were now into the second year of their relationship, Robin had never yet met any of his family. His retired parents lived in Ireland, where his father had been born. Robin had once answered the phone to his mother, who was English, and had made pleasant small talk with her while Murphy was finishing a shower, but this was the sum total of their direct contact. Robin therefore felt refusing lunch was impossible, so draggedherself reluctantly out of bed and began looking for something suitable to wear among her small stock of clean clothes.

She’d just started running a bath when her phone rang yet again. This time it was Strike. After a brief explanation of the surprise visit to the office from Mrs Two-Times the previous evening, he asked whether Robin could possibly forfeit her day off to cover Two-Times, because literally every other detective at the agency was busy, either keeping watch over Plug and his possibly murderous cronies, who hadn’t yet attacked the man who’d had Plug’s monstrous dog put down, tracking the movements of Lord Branfoot, trying to catch Uber driver Hussein Mohamed at home or following Albie Simpson-White. Robin thought she heard a note of exasperation when Strike mentioned the last of the names, and assumed she was being reminded, none too subtly, that she was the one who’d added this extra burden to the rota.

When Robin explained that she really couldn’t get out of lunch with Murphy’s parents five minutes after agreeing to it, Strike said shortly,

‘Fine. Better hope Mrs Two-Times doesn’t get pissed off we’re not doing as she asked, and go to the press, then.’

As this was the first time in years that Robin had declined a job for personal reasons, and as she’d been bearing a heavier workload than all subcontractors lately, she considered Strike’s impatient tone quite unwarranted, but before she could say so, he’d hung up.

Now cross in addition to exhausted (whose fault was it that the agency was currently vulnerable to bad press?) Robin took her bath. Once dried and dressed, she opened her bedroom curtains and saw – her eye was drawn to him instantly, as if she’d been expecting him – a man in a green jacket standing on the opposite pavement. He’d turned quickly as the curtains opened, as though to hide his face, even though she couldn’t have seen it from this distance without binoculars. Her conscious mind tried to tell her she couldn’t be sure, but her gut instinct told her a different story: same green jacket, same build, same height as the man who’d worn the gorilla mask to threaten her with the masonic dagger.

Heart pounding, Robin watched as he sloped away, keeping his face averted. She was certain he’d been watching her windows.