Page 372 of The Hallmarked Man

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Lions,’ said Mohamed.

‘Lions?’

‘Yes. My wife and I and Hafsa had been out all day. We were expecting a parcel. The man on the bottom floor said he’d seen William taking boxes up to his flat. I wondered whether he was keeping ours for us, so I knocked on his door. He took a while to answer the door. He’d drawn the curtains and there was only a lamp on, so it was dark and he’d done something strange. He’d thrown asheet over his weights but it slid off while I was standing there. He went and threw it back over them. I could tell he didn’t want me to see them – at the time, I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand it. But if he’d stolen them, that made sense. Maybe they came from a house he’d burgled?’

‘Can you remember anything about the weights?’ asked Midge, while Robin’s heart rate accelerated almost painfully.

‘Yes, they were yellow, with the face of a black lion on them, or maybe a lioness, drawn like a cartoon. I only saw them for a second. He looked at me strangely when he’d covered them again. Guilty, you know? But he knew I’d seen, so I said – to show I didn’t care, to be friendly – “ah, the lion is my lucky animal. Hafsa’s name means lioness cub”. I told him that. And he smiled and said “but don’t they call al-Assad the lion of Syria?” which is true, and not something everyone knows, so I said, “but that’s not the fault of lions” and he laughed. He gave me my package, and that was all – no,’ said Mohammed, ‘not all. There was a suit and he was ironing it. He told me he was starting a new job on the Monday. He seemed pleased about it.’

‘Did you tell the police about the yellow weights you saw in Wright’s room?’

‘No. They’ll have seen them for themselves, won’t they, when they went in there?’

‘Did you know two people – a man and a woman – went into William’s flat twice, before and after his murder, and removed things?’

‘I heard they’d been there, but not that they took anything. The woman on the ground floor asked me if I’d seen them, but I hadn’t. They stole, you say? They robbed the flat?’

‘Yeah, we think so. Can you remember anything else William said to you or your wife? Like friends, co-workers, anyone else he knew in London?’

‘No… except, he told us about a foodbank in… Stone Road, I think it was.’

‘Had Wright used it?’

‘I think so. He told us he didn’t have much money.’

‘Stone Road, yeah?’

‘Yes. My wife and I went there a few times, after he told us.’

Robin texted her gratitude to Midge, then noticed she’d received a WhatsApp response from Chloe Griffiths.

No I don’t know why Tyler left, he was hardly talking to me before I went interrailing and my boyfriend was getting angry if I even said hello to him in the street after he gave me that crappy birth flower bracelet thing. Why are you still pestering me? I DON’T KNOW WHERE TYLER POWELL IS AND I DON’T FUCKING CARE.

Robin sent a fresh WhatsApp message.

Out of interest, where were you, the night that Hugo and Anne-Marie crashed?

She had a hunch that Chloe might want to do some thinking before she answered that one.

Robin now looked up Stone Road in Newham, where William Wright had visited a foodbank. They needed just one person who hadn’t been drunk, drugged, or suffering visual problems when viewing Wright by daylight; just one, who’d look at a photograph and say, with conviction,it washim…

Mohamed had, understandably, mistaken the name of the street where the foodbank was situated: it was ‘Strone’, not Stone. Robin made a note of this, remembering as she did so Wynn Jones’ smug correction of herself:on Wellsey Road– WesleyRoad…

Words that were easily mistaken for each other… things that looked as you expected them to look. A sheaf of corn, or a tree. A black lion on a yellow background…

Names… William Wright was a wholesale manufacturer of catering silverware, or an eighteenth-century Scottish botanist, or a famous English football player, or a Freemason who’d drowned in the First World War… the meaning of names…

Struck by a random idea, Robin looked up the meaning of a name on Google.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

With shaking hands, she opened Instagram yet again. She had to be sure, before she contacted Strike. She must be absolutely certain.

An hour passed, and for the first time since she’d been attacked outside the Whiteheads’ house, Robin forgot her fear. She neither jumped at small night-time noises, nor did she get up from her table to re-check that the door was locked. It didn’t occur to her to cross to the window to stare down into Blackhorse Road, in case WadeKing was watching her windows. All she cared about was proving the shocking theory that had leapt out at her, from the meaning of a name.

At last, she reached for the mobile beside her and called her partner’s number.