The Hallmarked Man полностью

‘Yeah, Kim just wanted to discuss some personal stuff,’ said Strike, struggling to sound casual.

‘She sees you as the firm’s HR rep, does she?’ said Robin.

‘Christ knows,’ said Strike.

Robin sat down again and said,

‘So: the couple in the Peugeot. You don’t think—?’

‘Oz and Medina?’ said Strike, trying to concentrate (he thought he could count on Kim not telling Robin anything about Bijou – Kim, he was certain, would like nothing better than to think she and Strike had a slightly sordid secret that excluded his partner). ‘Got to be a chance.’

Robin picked up the photograph that showed the footprint in the blood around the corpse’s head.

‘That looks small for a man’s foot, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I thought so, too,’ said Strike.

‘And it was under the body.’

‘Great. I mean, yeah,’ said Strike, still struggling to focus.

‘The mutilation, the sash – it looks like very deliberate staging,’ said Robin. ‘Why didn’t they get rid of the footprint?’

‘Maybe they didn’t notice it, then moved the body over it, while they were mutilating him.’

‘You know, if Medina was driving that Peugeot to pick Oz up after the killing, she might not have seen blood on him,’ said Robin. ‘Whoever did it waited for livor mortis to start setting in before they got started cutting the body up…’

Robin’s phone now buzzed, and she saw a text from her brother Stephen.

‘Everything OK?’ Strike asked, in response to Robin’s look of shock.

‘Yes, fine, my sister-in-law’s just had an emergency Caesarean… God above, the baby was nearly eleven pounds.’

‘Same as me,’ said Strike, still striving to sound normal.

‘When have you had an emergency Caesarean?’ said Robin.

‘No, I was nearly eleven pounds. It’s how I got my name.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘“Cormoran”. He was a Cornish giant. My mother said she was going to call me that, as a joke, my aunt took her seriously and said she couldn’t, so of course that’s what I got called, to piss off Joan.’

‘They’re calling him “Barnaby”,’ said Robin, looking at the picture of her new nephew, who was bright red, swaddled in a hospital towel, with a sumo wrestler’s indignant face. ‘Born on Friday the thirteenth.’

‘Who was?’ said Strike.

‘My nephew. Today’s Friday—’

‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, of course.’

He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he thought that might well change, after today.

Strike’s conscience was whispering that he ought to tell Robin exactly what fresh, unforeseen calamity had descended upon him, that he had to warn her that another deluge of tabloid smut might be about to engulf them. However, after the story about the call girl, and his forced admission that he’d slept with Nina Lascelles, not to mention Robin’s rape being made public on the back of his newsworthy love life, Strike didn’t much fancy adding to the already unsavoury heap of circumstances in his disfavour that there was a remote chance – please, God, a fucking remote chance – he’d fathered a child with a woman he detested. A primitive sense of self-interest therefore shouted conscience down: he’d fix things without Robin ever having to know.

At a quarter past twelve, the two partners left the office for lunch in Dean Street. The day was cold and bright, the sun overhead a dazzling platinum coin trying to burn its way through the cloud cover. Trying to dissemble his new state of acute anxiety, Strike said,

‘Looks like we can rule out Wright being killed in a fight that got out of hand. Someone stoved in the back of his head while he had his back turned. That was no accident.’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘which must make it more likely the mutilation, the masonic sash and the hallmark were planned, pre-murder.’

‘How many people would you say know A. H. Murdoch’s hallmark?’

‘Not many,’ said Robin, ‘but the Salem Cross is a masonic symbol, too.’

‘True,’ said Strike. He remembered the scarlet letter ‘G’ that had been painted on the office street door at New Year. ‘Any luck finding a new Land Rover?’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘they’re all way out of my price range, even second hand… have we had any more calls from that Scottish Gateshead, by the way? The Golden Fleece person?’

‘Nothing since New Year,’ said Strike.

His mobile rang. He tugged it out of his pocket, saw that Pat was calling him. Afraid that Bijou, who no longer had his mobile number, was trying to reach him at the office, he switched his phone to mute.

‘Lucy,’ he said to Robin. ‘I’ll call her back. On that subject… we’ve just sold Ted and Joan’s house. I was thinking: the business could pay for part of a Land Rover, and I could loan you the rest.’

‘Wh—? You can’t do that!’

‘Yeah, I can. The money’s just going to sit in my account, I haven’t got any use for it at the moment.’