The Hallmarked Man полностью

Stop it, Robin told herself firmly, while tidying her sitting room at six o’clock that evening. She resented feeling apprehensive, and hated her ill-disciplined brain for returning, yet again, to the conversation in which Strike had lobbed his bombshell, then walked nonchalantly away. He’s not in love with you, he was just being an annoying sod. She wiped the coffee table a little more energetically than was required, as though to defy the slight throbbing of her operation site, and reminded herself that she was happy with Murphy.

Her jangled nerves weren’t helped when she turned on the news for distraction and saw a picture of Jonathan Wace, cult leader, staring back at her. She turned the TV off again.

She’d hoped Murphy would be there at half past six, and in situ when Strike arrived, but he was twenty-five minutes late. Just as she was thinking that Murphy would have only himself to blame if Strike got there ahead of him, her boyfriend knocked on her front door carrying a water bottle, his gym bag over his shoulder, looking flushed.

‘Bloke downstairs let me in. Sorry I’m late. Did an hour at the gym, but when I came out some tosser had blocked me in in the car park. Had to wait for him to come out.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Robin, greeting him with a kiss and a hug, glad to know he’d been doing some exercise; hopefully it had brought down his stress levels, which, given the ongoing drubbing his team was getting in the press for failing to catch the shooter of the two young boys, remained high. ‘I’m so grateful for this, Ryan, I really am.’

‘Yeah, well, you didn’t want the weekend in Paris… He not here yet?’

‘No, but he will be any minute,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve ordered pizzas.’

She was trying to show Murphy she was making no special effort for her detective partner, and had dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt for that reason.

‘You’ve warned Strike, haven’t you, that this is sen—?’

The doorbell rang again. Robin buzzed Strike in, and a few minutes later he and Murphy were shaking hands and exchanging what almost qualified as smiles. Strike handed Robin a bottle of red wine, for which she thanked him, heading into the kitchen to get glasses. The doorbell then rang for a third time.

‘I’ll get it,’ Murphy called to Robin, and while he was buzzing in the pizza delivery man, Strike took off his coat and hung it up, glancing around Robin’s sitting room, noting Murphy’s gym bag lying nonchalantly outside the bedroom door.

The flat was mostly unchanged since the last time Strike had been here, when he’d been sleeping over, though unfortunately only on the sofa bed. He wondered whether Murphy knew that. He noticed that the plant he’d given Robin as a housewarming gift was flourishing, but to his displeasure, one of the photographs on the mantelpiece was now of Robin and Murphy, arms around each other in front of what looked ominously like Robin’s family home in Yorkshire.

When Murphy had tipped the delivery man and passed the pizzas to Robin in the kitchen, he returned to Strike, who was still standing in the middle of the room, and said quietly,

‘What I’ve got is highly confidential. If anyone finds out I’ve passed it on, I’ll be up to my neck in shit. My contact shouldn’t have said as much as she did, so it’ll be her neck on the line, too, if anything gets blabbed.’

‘I don’t blab,’ Strike assured him.

‘Robin wanted this. That’s why I’ve done it.’

As it was hardly likely Strike thought Murphy had gone digging for information for love of him, Strike wasn’t entirely sure why he was being told this.

‘Anyway,’ said Murphy, and he gestured curtly towards the three-piece suite.

Strike sat down in an armchair and Murphy on the sofa. Robin, who could hear the uncomfortable silence, wished she’d thought to put on music, and sped up in her assembling of plates, napkins and glasses.

‘How’re things going with the lawyer?’ Murphy asked Strike.

‘What lawyer?’ said Strike.

Out of sight, Robin experienced a lift-drop in her stomach.

‘Thought you were going out with a lawyer? Bijou or something.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah. It’s going well.’

Robin hurried back into the room, slightly flushed, holding pizza, plates and napkins, and avoiding looking at Strike.

‘Shall we get going, then?’ she said, before sitting down on the sofa beside Murphy. The latter reached for his notebook.

‘Just been telling Strike: this can’t go any further.’

‘It won’t, Ryan, I promise,’ said Robin, pouring Strike wine.

‘Right. Well.’ Murphy picked up his notebook, as Strike helped himself to pizza. ‘You’ll know the basics. Guy calling himself William Wright got himself a job at this shop in Holborn, Ramsay Silver. Worked there two weeks. On the third Monday, the shop owner opened up the vault, found Wright’s mutilated body, and none of the valuable silver they’d put in there on Friday.