Page 382 of The Hallmarked Man

‘Got it,’ said Wardle, snatching it up from the floor before going to assist Barclay, who was attempting to cuff Jones’ hands behind his back.

‘What’s happening up there?’ asked Strike.

‘Three of ’em legged it soon as we got through the door,’ panted Wardle. ‘We’ve got the slowest two cuffed, but I don’t know if any of them’s—’

‘This is the main man,’ said Strike, still fighting to subdue Griffiths.

‘Did ye know yer ear’s hangin’ off?’ Barclay asked Strike.

‘You’ve got a daughter, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Barclay, looking understandably perplexed by the non sequitur.

Strike, who had a confused idea that the father of a daughter was the next best thing, in the absence of a woman, nodded towards Sapphire.

‘She’s tied to that bloody pipe. Can you get her loose?’

‘Nae bother,’ said Barclay, straightening up as far as was possible, Jones now safely handcuffed and lying on his front. ‘Ye’re all right, hen,’ he told Sapphire, advancing on her. ‘We’ll have ye oot o’ here in no time.’

‘Help me get these cunts upstairs,’ Strike panted to Wardle, as Griffiths continued to struggle.

123

We intuitively understand what justice is, better than we can depict it. What it is in a given case depends so much on circumstances, that definitions of it are wholly deceitful.

Albert Pike

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

Griffiths stopped resisting once Wardle had got the handcuffs on him. Strike was pleased to see he’d broken Griffiths’ nose, which was spread across his face and bleeding profusely, although nowhere near as copiously as the wound to Strike’s left ear, which was causing him excruciating pain. He could feel a weird coldness, as though flesh that had never been exposed to fresh air was meeting it for the first time, and this contrasted unpleasantly with the continuing flow of warm blood.

‘You need a hospital,’ Wardle told Strike, as they manoeuvred Griffiths up the ladder Barclay had replaced at the hatch. ‘Fast.’

‘Later,’ said Strike.

He wasn’t in such agony that he failed to noticed Griffiths’ pigeon-toed walk as they dragged him alone, a peculiarity Strike had attributed to Griffiths’ trip over his guitar the first time they’d come face to face. This small, extra confirmation of his theory was enough to make Strike determined to see the thing through himself, because he was worried that Ian Griffiths might yet get away with the murder of Tyler Powell. ‘Not proven’ was the verdict he feared. Even if the killings of Sofia Medina, Jim Todd and Todd’s mother could be pinned on Griffiths, even if the man was rightly sentenced to multiple life sentences, that wouldn’t be enough for Strike. He wanted justice,even vengeance, for Tyler Powell: a young man who’d suffered an inordinate amount of bad luck while living, and who most certainly hadn’t deserved the fate he’d met at Griffiths’ hands. The ingenious, complicated and outlandish nature of his murder might yet prevent a jury believing it could have happened as Strike was certain it had, but Powell had become real to him lately: a little lost, as Robin had said, but brave, resourceful and determined, not the fool people might have thought him; a young man who, Strike believed, had been ‘proper good’, and whose biggest mistake had been to believe that a man who held out a helping hand was doing so out of kindness.

The sitting room was in disarray. A keyboard had been upended and the poster of the pot-smoking Jesus had been knocked askew. Strike kicked aside the Rastafarian teddy bear lying face down on the carpet. It was a room tailor-made for a man who liked drawing in teenagers and young women, a room that spoke disingenuously of an offbeat charmer who remained young at heart. Strike despised it.

Two men were sitting on the floor, cuffed back to back. One was a scrawny youth whose mouth was hanging open, revealing very bad teeth. The other was a middle-aged man with a heavy beard, who was sobbing.

‘Get the other one up here,’ Strike told Wardle, as he shoved Griffiths down onto the mandala-covered sofa. ‘If he gives you any trouble, Barclay’ll help.’

‘Strike—’

‘Get fucking Jones, I want him here for the interrogation!’

‘You could fuck up the whole prosecution,’ said Wardle in a low voice. ‘We’ve got to call the policenowso they can see what we saw, and you need a hosp—’

‘He could still fucking weasel his way out of the silver vault,’ said Strike. ‘You said it yourself: the footprint’s not enough.Get fucking Jones!’

With clear reluctance, Wardle left the room.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Strike growled at the sobbing bearded man, who subsided into whimpers.

In addition to being angry at Wardle for having intimated Strike might be endangering their case in front of the captives, Strike was having difficulty hearing, because his left ear was full of blood; he inserted his index finger into it to clear it, which was so painful he nearly threw up. From what he’d just felt, he suspected Barclay hadn’t been joking when he’d said it was hanging off.

Griffiths was sitting silently on the sofa, his nose still swelling and breathing through his mouth. Strike didn’t doubt the man had come to believe himself untouchable, which was why he’d permitted himself so many risks, to gamble for such high stakes, to play with naked flames, and Strike suspected Griffiths hadn’t quite lost faith in his own invincibility, even now, with his nose so discoloured and swollen it was looking increasingly like a beetroot, and drenched in the blood of the man he’d just slashed.