Page 48 of The Hallmarked Man

16

… this wild girl (whom I recognise

Scarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit,

Eccentric speech and variable mirth,

Not very wise perhaps and somewhat bold

Yet suitable, the whole night’s work being strange)

—May still be right…

Robert Browning

In a Balcony

Strike returned to the office in a far worse mood than he’d left it. It might be the height of hypocrisy for him to feel aggrieved that Robin (as he saw it) had hidden the fact that she was house-hunting with Murphy – how much had he concealed about his own private life, throughout their friendship? – but this in no way lessened his resentment.

Stick to the game plan.He went into the inner office, opened the rota and identified Monday as the best day for him and Robin to visit St George’s Avenue together, blocking out enough time not only to identify William Wright’s former residence and, hopefully, interrogate his neighbours, but also to have another drink with Robin, ostensibly to debrief. Having made the necessary adjustments, Strike turned his attention to Niall Semple, the ex-paratrooper who’d now been missing for six months.

As Strike had told Robin, there’d been a light smattering of press about Semple when he disappeared, though interest seemed to have died fairly quickly. Strike now opened an article he hadn’t yet read, in which Semple’s wife, Jade, pleaded for information on her husband’s whereabouts. The story contained three pictures: one of aclean-shaven Semple in the dress uniform of a paratrooper, the second, of the Semples’ wedding day and the third, the last known sighting of him, at a cashpoint in Camden.

Thick of neck, with high cheekbones, Semple was a handsome man with short blond hair and bright blue eyes, who resembled the physical type most often cast as a young Nazi in films, although his smile was engaging in the clean-shaven picture.

However, in the photograph of his wedding he was wearing a full beard – a most unusual choice for a soldier in the British army – and looked stern rather than happy. His wife, Jade, resembled an over-painted doll. Strike wasn’t a fan of the fashion for thickly pencilled, angular eyebrows, which Jade had embraced whole-heartedly. Her thick hair, which was dyed a blueish-black, was pulled back in a semi-beehive, with locks left loose over her shoulders, and the bodice of her wedding dress was partly sheer, and had been constructed to make the most of her cleavage. She looked small even standing beside Semple, who, according to the article, was five foot seven. Strike didn’t find Jade Semple attractive, but he could imagine that to men who liked that sort of thing, who enjoyed feeling large and masculine beside girlish women of tiny proportions, she’d be something of a catch.

The last picture, of Semple at the cashpoint in Camden on June the fourth of the previous year, showed a scruffy man with an unkempt beard who, rather incongruously, was holding a metal briefcase. Strike squinted at the hand gripping the briefcase. Either Semple was wearing a heavy metal watch, or he’d handcuffed it to himself.

He skim-read the article and learned that Semple had undergone brain surgery in 2014 and subsequently been discharged from the army, unfit for service. He’d disappeared from his family home in Crieff, Scotland, on the twenty-seventh of May, days after his mother’s funeral.

‘I’m desperate,’ says Jade Semple. ‘I’m so worried, I can’t sleep or eat, I just want Niall to get in touch and if anybody’s seen him, to please, please call the helpline. I’m really scared he’s living rough or in some kind of bad situation.’

Strike sat back in his computer chair, thinking not so much about what the article contained, but what it didn’t. The lack of detail on the incident that had left Semple so severely injured it had ended his military career was particularly interesting to him. He opened Facebook,found Jade Semple’s account easily enough and scrolled back to the date her husband had disappeared. A clutch of photos from the twenty-sixth of May all featured a fancy dress party. Jade was an identical twin: he couldn’t tell whether she was the one dressed as Princess Peach from the Nintendo franchise, or the one dressed as Rosalina. There was no sign of her husband in any of the party photos.

From that day onwards, Jade had posted only requests for information on her missing husband and links to news stories about his disappearance. The very last picture posted showed Jade holding a small orange puffball of a puppy, captioned #NewFurBaby.

Strike sent Jade a private message explaining who he was, that he’d been hired to look into the body found in the silver vault and giving her his mobile number. He then opened email and began searching for the message he’d received months previously from his former SIB colleague and friend Graham Hardacre, which he’d neglected to acknowledge or answer. He’d just found it when a text from Kim arrived.

Where do you want to meet this evening? Kx

Strike noticed the casually attached kiss and didn’t much like it. He texted back:

Outside Dorchester, 7

He’d only just sent this when his mobile rang with a call from Barclay.

‘There’s somethin’ up,’ said the Scot in a low voice, before Strike could speak. ‘Plug’s visiting some kinda compound, wi’ two men.’

‘What d’you mean, “compound”?’

‘Waste ground, high fences, sheds… we’re a good way north of Ipswich. Middle o’ nowhere. Ah can hear guard dogs. There’s somethin’ up,’ repeated Barclay. ‘If Ah stick around till after dark, Ah might be able to get in there.’

‘What about the dogs?’

‘Ah’ll change out o’ my sausage trousers.’

‘OK, but for fuck’s sake don’t get caught. Last time Midge trespassed on private land, she got chased off by a bloke with a riding whip.’