Page 88 of The Hallmarked Man

‘He was calling from Istanbul.’

‘OK, fine,’ sighed Diana. ‘This is Cormoran Strike, Charlie. He’s a—’

‘Private detective, yeah,’ said Carter, sidling a little further into the room. ‘Bradley told me.’

Strike surmised that Bradley was the security man.

‘He’s here to talk about Larry McGee,’ said Diana. ‘D’you want to pull up a chair?’

Carter did so with such alacrity that Strike suspected the messageabout the delayed delivery had been a pretext to find out what was going on in Diana’s office. Carter looked ex-military or police; his thick grey hair was cut very short, his gaze was penetrating and his royal blue overalls were neatly pressed.

‘I’ve just been explaining about those disappearing dogs,’ Diana said. Turning back to the detective, she said, ‘Anyway, last January, the same thing happened on another delivery McGee made. This time, it was a kifwebe.’

‘A what?’ said Strike. If nothing else, the silver vault case was undoubtedly improving his vocabulary; first nefs, now this.

‘It’s a mask, produced by the Songye and Luba people. This was nineteen-twenties and especially fine, worth around five thousand. Again, it vanished between warehouse and purchaser and, again, the client had bought several items in the same auction, so didn’t immediately notice that one of the masks was missing. Two incidents of easily portable objects disappearing from multiple lots delivered to the same buyer, McGee the delivery driver on both—’

‘—is a hell of a coincidence,’ said Strike.

‘Well, quite.’

‘You’d let him go out alone again, had you?’

‘No,’ said Carter, before Diana could answer. ‘He never went out alone again after the pottery dogs disappeared. There were two of ’em on the kifwebe delivery, and the co-driver backed McGee up and said there hadn’t been any opportunity for McGee to have pinched it. He was right gormless, that kid,’ said Carter, shaking his head. ‘Panicked and thought he’d be sacked if he admitted McGee had been alone with the mask. We had to let’imgo in the end – nothing criminal, just dozy.’

‘And you didn’t involve the police?’ Strike asked Diana.

‘It’s tricky,’ said Diana.

‘You don’t want a reputation for poor security.’

‘Well, exactly. The losses weren’t huge, relatively speaking, but even so… We couldn’t prove McGee had taken the mask, but after that, management asked Charlie to keep a log of every infraction, every instance of lateness or laziness. We just wanted to get rid of McGee.’

‘He’ll have been background checked before he was hired, I suppose?’ Strike asked Carter.

‘He will’ve been, yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but not by me. I inherited ’imfrom the last Head of Deliveries.’ Turning to Diana he said, ‘Did you tell ’im about the porn?’

‘I hadn’t got to that,’ said Diana.

‘Porn?’ said Strike.

‘McGee was watchin’ it on ’is phone, at work,’ said Carter. ‘Every free minute, pretty much. Not bothered if anyone saw him, either – or he wasn’t till he got a verbal warning for doing it. No, he had quite a little fantasy life going, McGee,’ said Carter.

‘In what way?’

‘Two of the younger lads he went on jobs with told me he was always going on about women, and girls coming on to him.’

‘Larry McGeethought girls were coming on to him?’ said Diana, with a scornful laugh.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Carter. ‘Drawn to him like flies round – all over ’im, he claimed,’ Carter corrected himself quickly. ‘Teenager living opposite deliberately left her blinds up to undress in front of the window, that sort of thing. Girls sidling up to him asking him for cigarettes and flashing their knickers when they bent over. Anyway, ’e got ’is next warning for ’ow he was behaving to the girls who visited the warehouse.’

‘We’ve got storage facilities and garaging in Waterloo,’ Diana explained. ‘That’s where McGee was based most of the time. He was making off-colour jokes about what the younger girls were wearing, and their sex lives. After we got two complaints we started gearing up for a full disciplinary hearing, but then he handed us a cast-iron reason for firing him, so there was no need.’

‘What was the final straw?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, he really f – messed up,’ said Carter, correcting himself smoothly for a second time. ‘With the Murdoch silver delivery. He was with a co-driver as usual, they’d made a couple of drop-offs, then he deliberately ditched the other guy. Faked having a migraine. Begged the guy to go get him some stuff for it out of Boots, and when the guy come back out, the van was gone.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, who was now making rapid notes. ‘When did you find out what had happened?’