Page 42 of The Hallmarked Man

It’s Christmas time in the city…

15

The deed a man may do on the spur of the moment, when his brain is on fire, is not so readily done when it has to be thought about.

John Oxenham

A Maid of the Silver Sea

Strike glanced up at the camera over the street door as he and Robin emerged into the chilly afternoon. Strike suspected it was inactive, because it had a noticeable crack in the lens. This, he assumed, was the reason there’d been no pictures in the press of the killers entering the shop.

‘Let’s have a look at Wild Street,’ he said, and they headed onwards, away from Kingsway, onto a much quieter road without shops or cafés.

‘Yeah, they must’ve brought the silver here,’ said Strike, looking up and down the street, ‘and bunged it in the getaway car. There’s a pub up there,’ he added, pointing back towards the place where they’d met. ‘Fancy some food?’

‘Great,’ said Robin.

‘What was Ramsay trying to flog you, when I came upstairs?’ asked Strike as they walked.

‘Um – first a triangular pocket watch, and then a charm that was a ball that turned into a cross marked with hidden masonic symbols when you opened it. I could’ve been persuaded into buying that one.’

‘Never had you pegged as a pushover for salesmen.’

‘I’m not, but it was pretty and—’

‘You felt sorry for him.’

‘I did,’ Robin admitted, ‘yes.’

‘You haven’t got enough money to go round trying to save idiots from bankruptcy.’

‘“Idiot”’s a bit harsh.’

‘He’s an idiot,’ said Strike implacably. ‘I’m sorry for his personal misfortunes, but state-of-the-art security my arse, it’s about as lax as it could be without leaving the bloody doors and windows open. He would’ve punched in the code for the vault right in front of us if I hadn’t stopped him, he didn’t insure this silver he’d paid a mint for, he hires an untrained security guy on the cheap, he didn’t check Wright’s references properly, never upgraded the alarm or the camera after buying the place, the locks on the front door—’

‘I know all that, but he’s lost his son, his wife’s seriously ill… people don’t always make the best decisions when they’re under a lot of stress.’

‘People who’re already in trouble are the very people who can’t afford to get careless,’ said Strike sententiously.

He didn’t notice Robin’s slightly clouded expression, and wouldn’t had understood its significance if he had. He had no idea how much of Robin’s free time was currently spent castigating herself for what she now saw as a cavalier disregard for warning signs at the ages of both nineteen and thirty-two.

‘What were you up to, pretending to need the bathroom?’ she asked.

‘Wanted to have a shufti at that staff area. It wouldn’t take much to guess which six digits open the vault, because the keys are worn. All you’d have to do is memorise the pattern made by whoever was punching in the code. The sink and bog are clean, so Todd doesn’t seem to have been acting in an unusual manner when he scrubbed the staff area before the police turned up. The cupboards under the sink are full of silver polish and Dettol.’

‘You’re thinking collusion?’

‘First thing you’ve got to ask, when there’s a burglary like this. Todd wiped the place clean of prints and Pamela left early on the day of the killing, leaving Wright to shut up. Any standard set of skeleton keys would open up the latch lock on that door, as long as the mortice hadn’t been locked. Makes you think.

‘That said,’ Strike continued, the Prince of Wales pub now in sight, ‘they all seem to have very solid alibis, so it could’ve just been sloppiness. If this Pamela was worried about her knees and her eyes, goingup and down the stairs, she might’ve given Wright the vault code so he could lug stuff in and out of it for her, and not wanted to admit it to Ramsay, or the police. After you.’

Robin walked through the door Strike was holding open for her, into the large, crowded and noisy pub, which had wooden floorboards, tiled pillars and a good deal of red and gold tinsel hanging from the ceiling.

‘I’ll get the drinks in,’ said Strike. ‘What d’you want?’

‘Orange juice, please.’

‘Have some reading material,’ said Strike, handing her the catalogue Ramsay had given him. He headed for the bar, already weighing the non-investigative possibilities offered by this apparently casual lunch, while the oblivious Robin sat down at a table beside the window and flicked through the catalogue.