‘First thing you’ve got to ask, when there’s a burglary like this. Todd wiped the place clean of prints and Pamela left early on the day of the killing, leaving Wright to shut up. Any standard set of skeleton keys would open up the latch lock on that door, as long as the mortice hadn’t been locked. Makes you think.
‘That said,’ Strike continued, the Prince of Wales pub now in sight, ‘they all seem to have very solid alibis, so it could’ve just been sloppiness. If this Pamela was worried about her knees and her eyes, going up and down the stairs, she might’ve given Wright the vault code so he could lug stuff in and out of it for her, and not wanted to admit it to Ramsay, or the police. After you.’
Robin walked through the door Strike was holding open for her, into the large, crowded and noisy pub, which had wooden floorboards, tiled pillars and a good deal of red and gold tinsel hanging from the ceiling.
‘I’ll get the drinks in,’ said Strike. ‘What d’you want?’
‘Orange juice, please.’
‘Have some reading material,’ said Strike, handing her the catalogue Ramsay had given him. He headed for the bar, already weighing the non-investigative possibilities offered by this apparently casual lunch, while the oblivious Robin sat down at a table beside the window and flicked through the catalogue.
The introduction explained that the ‘museum quality’ objects on sale had all been purchased or commissioned by A. H. Murdoch, nineteenth-century American explorer, industrialist and Grand Master Freemason. The Murdoch hallmark had been used as a backdrop to several of the pages. It was a curious symbol: a slanted cross with additional bars. Kenneth Ramsay had circled in Sharpie everything he’d bought, and by examining estimated prices, Robin worked out that he’d have had to pay a minimum of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to get the pieces removed from the auction. His business seemed to be far from flourishing, so she wondered how on earth he’d managed this.
A. H. Murdoch’s collection wasn’t entirely masonic. Here and there were bits of silver that were merely ornamental, but Ramsay hadn’t bid on any of these. Instead he’d obtained a selection of objects whose use was mysterious to Robin. What, for instance, was a ‘setting maul’? To her, it resembled a plunger, having a handle of polished oak and a cone-shaped piece of solid silver at the end, intricately engraved with eight-pointed stars. There were many trowels and set squares, and multiple ‘jewels’, which to Robin’s eye were medals, with elaborate designs, including a two-headed eagle on a Teutonic cross.
When Strike returned to the table with the drinks and two menus, he found Robin looking at the picture of an ornate silver centrepiece, which according to the catalogue measured nearly three and a half feet in height.
‘“Estimate: sixty to eighty thousand pounds”,’ Robin read out of the catalogue, turning it so that Strike could see it.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike, staring at the thing, which he found exceptionally ugly.
‘That’s the Oriental Centrepiece, which went to Bullen & Co by mistake,’ said Robin, turning the catalogue back towards herself to examine at the profusion of symbols that embellished the object. ‘Jacob’s ladder, acacia tree, the all-seeing eye, the blazing star…’
‘Been boning up on masonic symbolism?’
‘Yes… it’s strange, though.’
‘It’s an eyesore, is what it is,’ said Strike, looking at the upside-down centrepiece.
‘Not this – the theft. It’s not like stealing cash, or diamonds, which you could sell easily. The thieves can’t have been intending to melt the silver down, because its value is in its form. And this centrepiece alone must be massively heavy.’
‘Which is why I think it must’ve all gone in the getaway car in Wild Street. Why anyone wanted a pile of masonic crap, though…’
Robin thought of the spartan attic in which Strike lived, devoid of almost anything of sentimental or decorative value.
‘I think you might underestimate how obsessive people can get about objects, not being a things person yourself.’
‘A “things” person?’
‘Are there any physical objects you’re really attached to?’
‘Yeah, my prosthetic leg.’
‘Ha ha… you know what I mean. It’s not just the size and weight of them,’ said Robin, now turning the pages of the catalogue, ‘they’re all publicly linked to Wright’s murder. D’you think whoever stole them has just stashed them in a cellar somewhere, and they go down every night to gloat over it all?’
‘Good question,’ said Strike. He took a sip of his beer, then said, ‘Another good question is: why would Lynden Knowles want a pile of masonic silver?’
‘Maybe he knew a buyer who wouldn’t care how it was obtained?’ said Robin doubtfully.
‘Does that smell right to you? A gangster who deals in guns, suddenly turning high-class fence?’
‘Not really,’ Robin admitted.
‘And if he’d wanted the stuff for himself, which I think is highly unlikely, why tie his nephew’s murder to it?’
‘It is odd,’ admitted Robin. ‘And why kill Knowles in the vault? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to—’
