Page 397 of The Hallmarked Man

‘Gonna finish these accounts now I’m started,’ growled the office manager, her e-cigarette waggling in her mouth as she continued to type. ‘Won’t have to do it Monday.’

‘You got a replacement for Travolta,’ said Robin, realising the fish tank had a new occupant, this one speckled in white, black and orange.

‘Yeah,’ said Pat gruffly. ‘It looks too empty with just two.’

‘What’s this one called?’

‘Elton,’ said Pat, and Robin laughed.

When the two detectives had returned to the inner office with coffee, Robin said,

‘I haven’t asked how your ear is.’

‘Seems to be attaching itself back to my head,’ said Strike, ‘which is good, because I’d look a right prick trying to wear sunglasses without it.’

‘Is it still painful?’

‘No,’ said Strike, unsure exactly why he was lying, though he suspected he hadn’t yet lost the habit of trying to appear as fit and physically un-fucked as Murphy. ‘Been wall-to-wall star-crossed lovers, this case, hasn’t it?’ he said, preferring to get off the subject of his own physical decrepitude.

‘It has,’ Robin agreed. ‘Rupert and Decima. The Semples. Pamela Bullen-Driscoll and her husband…’

Strike grinned, but said more seriously,

‘And Tyler and Jolanda… it was that fucking bracelet that screwed them. Griffiths might’ve had his suspicions she was getting too close to Tyler, but the bracelet was the big mistake.’

Robin thought, yet again, of the silver charm bracelet hidden at home in her evening bag.

‘I can’t bear the thought of Tyler going down to London, falling in with all the disguise stuff,’ she said, ‘passing his interview at Ramsay Silver, thinking he’s getting a home ready for Jolanda… trying to find out if it was worth joining the Freemasons, for protection…’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘I know.’

Like Robin, the silver vault investigation was one of Strike’s least enjoyable ever. There was, of course, satisfaction in knowing that Griffiths and his fellow rapists and traffickers were in custody; he took theoretical pride in having found out where each of their five possible William Wrights had gone, or met their ends, but what he’d primarily feel when looking back over the past few months was bitter regret and endless self-recriminations that had nothing whatsoever to do with the silver vault, and everything to do with Robin.

‘I’d better get going,’ she said reluctantly when she’d finished her coffee.

Strike accompanied her to the outer office, where Pat was pulling on her coat, receipts evidently dealt with.

‘Have a good weekend,’ she said gruffly.

‘You too, Pat,’ said Robin. ‘Thanks for staying.’

As the door closed behind the office manager, Strike gestured at Robin’s dress.

‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘Yes,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘It’s Ryan’s birthday. We’re going to the Ritz – the restaurant,’ she added quickly, in an attempt to turn both their thoughts away from the bar. ‘Well, I’ll see you Monday.’

The glass door opened and closed again, and Robin had gone.

Strike was suddenly flooded with adrenaline. He might have been back on that yellow dirt track, knowing what was about to happen, because he’d spotted the youth who’d planted the IED running away from the road, dragging a small boy he was determined to pull clear of the imminent explosion. He’d yelled ‘brake’, but too late to avoid calamity.

He was almost certainly too late now. Nevertheless, he wrenched open the glass door.

127

No signal crackings, no thin jets or streams from the green immensity beyond.

Just one universal collapse, one chaotic climacteric, begun and ended in the same instant, as the crust of the chamber, no longer supported by the in-pent air, dissolved under the irresistible pressure of the sea.