Page 332 of The Hallmarked Man

‘I… never mind. What favour are you doing me?’

‘Culpepper’s about to run a fucking massive piece on you. I heard from a mate. He’s got a new source.’

It was as though a frozen snake had slithered down Strike’soesophagus. He’d thought it was over, done, finished with, but he knew instantly who the new source was likely to be.

‘Kim Cochran?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What kind of piece is it?’ he said, but he already knew.

‘Apparently you’ve been in a love triangle with a hot brunette and Andrew Honbold. Honbold took out a super-injunction to stop the papers printing that he didn’t know whether the mistress’s baby is his or yours. It’s just been overturned. Public interest: family values crusader cheating on his wife.’

‘The baby’s his,’ said Strike. ‘I’m not the father.’

‘OK, well, if you’ve got proof, now would be the time to sling it at a lawyer,’ said Robertson. ‘It’s probably too late to stop the piece running, but you’ll be able to get it amended.’

‘All right,’ said Strike, marvelling at how calm his own voice was. ‘Thanks for the heads-up.’

He stood up, leaving his sandwich unwrapped and his coffee undrunk, and limped back to his BMW, where he sat for a minute, staring ahead into darkness. If the piece ran, he was fucked. Journalists would descend on Denmark Street yet again. Every insinuation Culpepper had so far made about him would be magnified a hundred times. He’d be That Guy who did all the stuff with those women: Candy the sex worker, Nina, who he’d screwed and spurned, Charlotte, dead in a bath, Bijou, her illegitimate baby and her tabloid-bashing lover. His business would be finished. Everyone who worked with him would be tainted.

He called Bijou. She answered on the second ring.

‘You’ve heard?’ she said, sounding just as panicked as he felt.

‘I have, yeah. Tell me the truth: did you admit to Honbold we’d screwed?’

‘No,never! I said Ihintedwe had to people at work, to try and make him jealous! I’ve shown him the DNA tests and he actually said, yesterday, he was sorry he’d doubted me, butnow—’

‘Right. You stick to the story we never had more than drinks, and so will I,’ said Strike. ‘No one can prove otherwise. I’m going to try and sort this. Got to go.’

He hung up. He could see only one possible solution to his dilemma, and nothing but this extremity could have brought him to it. Strike took a lungful of nicotine and called his half-sister Prudence.

105

The night my father got me

His mind was not on me;

He did not plague his fancy

To muse if I should be

The son you see.

A. E. Housman

XIV: The Culprit, Last Poems

The townhouse outside which Strike arrived half an hour later was tall and white, with columns either side of the glossy black front door. When he got close enough to see it, he saw that instead of the standard lion’s head, the brass door knocker was in the shape of an electric guitar. Strike chose to ring the bell.

He heard footsteps and had just put his hand in his pocket for a business card, anticipating a housekeeper or perhaps even a butler, when the door opened to reveal a tall, grizzled Jonny Rokeby in person, wearing a black suit and an open-necked blue shirt.

‘Ah,’ he said, grinning as he stood back to allow Strike to pass. ‘Come in.’

In youth, Strike knew, Rokeby had been exactly as tall as his oldest son, though he was now a little shorter. Rokeby had allowed his thick mane of shoulder-length hair to go grey, after years of dyeing it a purplish brown. His walnut-coloured face was deeply lined, doubtless due to long sojourns in his holiday home in the Caribbean, as much as from years of drug-taking and drinking. Unlike his eldest son, he was very thin.

‘In ’ere,’ he said, and he led Strike into a huge drawing room that was furnished in shades of chocolate brown and gold. It felt vaguely familiar, but in his distracted state, Strike didn’t know why.