Page 78 of The Hallmarked Man
‘All right,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks for the warning.’
He finished his pint at the bar, then left the Falcon without looking back at Shanker or his business associate.
To his knowledge, Shanker had never intentionally misled him, preferring a straightforward ‘keep the fuck out of it’ if Strike’s questions struck too close to home. Strike therefore had to take seriously the possibility that he and Robin had indeed stumbled unknowingly on to a crime that had lain undetected until they arrived on the scene to complicate matters.
Strike turned his coat collar up against the cold, then stood for a few moments, vaping and mulling over what his next move should be. One particular thing his old friend had just said gave rise to an idea. Slipping his vape pen back into his coat pocket, Strike set off again, not for Denmark Street, but for Wild Court.
22
But chiefly the great and troublesome question of ‘Who?’
John Oxenham
A Maid of the Silver Sea
Strike phoned Robin at home that evening to inform her that Rupert Fleetwood had somehow scraped together two thousand pounds to buy off the drug dealer with a grudge against his housemate, and to relay Shanker’s warning about the body in the silver vault. Murphy was there for dinner, and Robin’s flat was far too small for him not to be able to hear everything she was saying unless she locked herself in the bathroom. As pretending to want a shower immediately after her work partner had called her might give her boyfriend well-justified grounds for suspicion, her responses to Strike were deliberately concise and gave no hint of what they were talking about.
Fortunately for Robin, whose mind was racing post-call, Murphy asked no questions. He was very obviously low and tired, slumped on the sofa watching the news. Tuesday’sMailhad run its double-page interview with the mother of the boys who’d been shot in the gang shooting, and this had been followed by stories in other papers, today. For the first time, Robin, along with the rest of the newspaper-reading public, had learned that the bereaved mother’s estranged boyfriend had been arrested initially, and this, it was alleged, had wasted valuable hours and days in which the true perpetrators had been able to cover their tracks.
Once again, she sensed that Murphy would welcome neither sympathy nor questions, so she hadn’t mentioned theMailarticle, or any of the spin-offs, but it was impossible not to suspect that Murphy had personally been involved in some part of what nowseemed to have been early mistakes in the case. Remembering again how kind and understanding he’d been in the aftermath of her long stay at Chapman Farm, not to mention his consideration since she’d been hospitalised, she wanted only to be supportive and give him a respite from his stress and, perhaps, his guilt. They ate the ready-made lasagne Robin had heated up, and as both needed to be up very early the following morning, they were in bed by half past nine. They hadn’t had sex since Robin been released from hospital, but Murphy wrapped his arms around her in bed, kissed the top of her head and said,
‘I’m so fucking lucky to have you.’
‘I’m lucky to have you too,’ she said, kissing him back.
But after Murphy’s breathing lengthened, and he rolled away from her, asleep, Robin lay awake in the dark, ruminating on Strike’s call and its possible ramifications. What she really wanted to do was to slide out of bed and call her detective partner back, but she didn’t want to wake Murphy, so she stayed where she was, finally falling asleep to dream that she and Strike were standing in Ramsay Silver which, for some mysterious reason, had been filled with cuddly toys instead of masonic swords and aprons.
By nine the following morning Robin was back in Camberwell, watching the house where Plug was living with his elderly mother. She’d glimpsed the old lady through a downstairs window and her heart had ached with pity: she looked worried and seemed to be mumbling to herself. Then, five minutes after she arrived, Plug’s fourteen-year-old son, who ought to have been at school, burst out of the house looking terrified and set off at a fast walk up the road. With a split second to decide whether she should keep watching the house or follow the boy, she chose the latter.
Robin felt almost as sorry for Plug’s son as she did for Plug’s mother. Not only was the boy burdened with his father’s ears and overbite, he seemed lonely, forlorn and often looked scared. She could well imagine that being uprooted from Haringey to live with his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his verbally abusive father wasn’t fun. The boy was walking very fast, every now and then breaking into a jog, and Robin had a hunch that whatever he was doing, it was on his father’s orders. Robin soon had a dull stitch in her side – or perhaps, she thought, the operation site was aching. This reminded her of the letter from the GP she was still ignoring.
She’d been tailing the boy for fifteen minutes when her mobile rang.
‘Got a moment?’ asked Strike.
‘Yes,’ said Robin, trying not to pant. ‘I’m following Plug Junior on foot. Where are you?’
‘Liberty’s,’ said Strike, and Robin immediately remembered her thirtieth birthday, on which Strike had taken her to the old London store to buy her perfume, before that fatal trip to the bar at the Ritz. ‘Mrs Two-Times is in the hairdressers.’
‘I didn’t know Liberty’s had a hairdressers.’
‘Nor did I, and now I’m stuck hanging around the women’s clothing department looking like a weirdo,’ said Strike, shifting to allow a group of women to examine rows of what, to him, were exceptionally ugly, baggy dresses with large fluorescent flowers printed all over them.
‘It’s Christmas,’ said Robin. ‘Pretend to be buying presents.Actuallybuy some presents.’
‘Not in here,’ said Strike.
‘Why not?’
‘I just… can’t.’
The music, the bewildering choice, the crowds, his total ignorance of what the women he had to buy for might want: he’d rather face root-canal surgery. At least that would be quiet, and there’d be anaesthetic.
‘You’ll look more natural hanging around in there if you’ve got shopping bags. Who are you buying for, women-wise?’
‘Lucy and Prudence. I wasn’t going to get Prudence anything, but she’s invited me to their Christmas party. I can’t go, but that probably means she’s got me something.’
‘When did Mrs Two-Times start her hair appointment?’
