Page 339 of The Hallmarked Man

Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?

Matthew Arnold

To a Friend

In spite of what she kept telling Murphy, Robin wasn’t ‘all right’, ‘fine’ or ‘completely OK’. She was constantly on the verge of tears. She kept seeing her attacker’s face, distorted by the strange square shadows thrown by the oblique angle of the street light. She seemed to feel the strong hands throttling her. Swallowing was painful. When she looked in the mirror she saw dark grey bruising on her neck; when she showered, she saw more bruises on her hip and stomach, where her attacker had knelt on her. She was having flashbacks to the man who’d nearly killed her when she was nineteen, the gorilla mask inches from her face, the patch of white vitiligo beneath his ear, which she’d noticed and which her police liaison officer had told her later had been key in identifying and convicting him. The eight-inch scar on her forearm seemed to tingle, reminding her of yet another man who’d come at her, out of the dark.

If she told these stories to a stranger, they’d ask how on earth it was possible that she’d tangled with three different men intent on strangling or knifing her, and that was before she mentioned being held at gunpoint, or sexually assaulted by a cult leader. They’d think she was lying, that she was desperate for attention. It was absurd. It was ludicrous. These things simply didn’t happen. And if they did happen, they certainly didn’t all happen to the same woman. What was she doing to attract this? What was wrong with her?

She was the weak link. She was the one it was easiest to intimidate.For the rest of her life, she’d be dragging her history of victimhood behind her, for anyone to see and to use against her.

She couldn’t say any of this to Murphy. They couldn’t both be having enormous work crises at the same time. If he was worried about her now, when she hadn’t told him half of it – no, she hadn’t told him a hundredth of what was going on – Robin could just imagine what he’d say if he knew Green Jacket had followed her at least twice before, and threatened her with a knife and, she was almost certain, shoved a small gorilla into her hand in Harrods. She couldn’t tell Murphy that her attacker was almost certainly one of Branfoot’s ex-offenders, because that led directly to Malcolm Turnbull, the Met and the masons, and if she told him she’d been tailed by a second man in a Honda Accord, or about the threatening calls to the office, he’d just get angry.Why didn’t you tell me?

And the answer to that was simple: because he’d tell her to stop re-traumatising herself, to give up the job that had given her the scar and the bruises, the insomnia and the nightmares, which she didn’t doubt was the advice any sane person would give her. Murphy would want her to retreat into the hermit-like state she’d been in after her shattering rape, when she’d been almost incapable of leaving the house. He didn’t understand that this job had given her back a sense of self she’d lost at nineteen. In addition to every other thing the most recent attack had left her with, she’d been forced to face the stark fact that she’d rather give up anything, Murphy included, than the agency. That realisation made her afraid of speaking to a therapist. She didn’t want her career choice analysed and didn’t want to relive the rape all over again, with a box of tissues within easy reach and a nodding psychologist making notes.

Strike, meanwhile, had insisted over the phone that Robin take time off. They’d argued about it. Robin was terrified of not being able to leave her flat if she spent too long there. Finally, she’d agreed to work from home for a week.

What Robin didn’t know was that Murphy had phoned Strike the day after the incident in Beaconsfield. The conversation had been brief and blunt. Murphy had told Strike that Robin was in a very bad way. Strike responded by saying he’d be happy for Robin to take as long a break as she liked, and it was she who was insisting on a mere five days.

‘She only had a week off after Chapman Farm,’ said Murphy in an accusatory tone.

‘Which was also her choice,’ said Strike.

But when the call had ended, Strike, who was sitting in his BMW watching Two-Times’ office, was left with increased concern about Robin’s mental health. He didn’t need Murphy to tell him Robin should have taken longer off from work after leaving the cult she’d investigated the previous year, nor did he need to be taught about the realities of PTSD, because he’d suffered it himself.

He’d heard a proprietorial note in Murphy’s voice that had never been so obvious before, doubtless because he and Robin were now officially engaged, and this had made Strike shorter than he might otherwise have been on the phone. Nevertheless, the call had had its intended effect, which was to remind Strike that he had ethical responsibilities towards Robin, even though she was a partner in the firm and no longer an employee. These musings led him to approach his and Robin’s next conversation with a tact for which Strike knew he wasn’t generally renowned. When a pretext for getting in touch presented itself on Wednesday, he called her from the office.

‘I’ve got news.’

‘Oh good,’ said Robin. ‘I’m so bored, I’m sitting here watching the Budget.’ This wasn’t entirely true. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was indeed addressing Parliament on Robin’s muted television screen, but in reality she’d been looking at an old and amateurish website devoted to supposed sightings of Reata Lindvall, following her alleged murder.

‘Well, firstly: Barclay’s nabbed Two-Times. Photos of him coming out of a hotel with a mini-skirted blonde wearing industrial amounts of make-up.’

‘Great. Have you told Mrs Two-Times?’

‘Yeah, and I think she’s going to absolutely rinse him, so it’ll be a few years before he can afford to indulge his surveillance kink again. But I’ve got even better news than that. Guess who’s agreed to meet me on Friday?’

‘Who?’

‘Funny bloke off the telly. Goes on quiz shows a lot. Pays to have porn stars killed.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope. And it gets better. He wants to buy me dinner at the Goring Hotel.’

‘Why?’

‘Smarm offensive,’ said Strike. ‘His police contacts must’ve told him by now William Wright wasn’t Jason Knowles, so I’d say he’s even more worried we’re messing with the case. I called his office this morning and said I wanted to talk to him about regulation in the detective business, following his comments in the press. “Oh, absolutely, what a top-hole idea.”’

‘He never said “top hole”.’

‘He did. Also “spiffing”.’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘You wait,’ said Strike. ‘I said I wanted to bring my detective partner. He said he’d be delighted.’

‘Fantastic, I need to get out of this bloody flat,’ said Robin fervently, which was precisely the reaction Strike had been hoping for. ‘The Goring… isn’t that where royalty always stays in London?’