Though technically on Christmas leave, Strike was sitting at the partners’ desk. To spare himself another trip upstairs he’d brought down the holdall he’d packed for his brief stay at Lucy’s, plus two carrier bags full of Christmas presents for the family, comprising the pastel-coloured scarf he’d chosen for Lucy in Liberty’s, a bottle of gin for Greg, gift tokens for his eldest and youngest nephews and, for Jack, his favourite, a survival kit Strike would have loved himself when young. Among other things, the khaki rucksack contained water purifying tablets, a compass, emergency food rations, camouflage make-up, an elaborate penknife and a couple of safety light sticks. The last of these had reminded Strike of the tube-shaped object that had fallen from William Wright’s pocket on the night he’d shared a takeaway and cannabis with Mandy and Daz, and which Wright had claimed was a blood sample. What the hell that had really been, Strike still had no idea.
Pat was now on Christmas leave, but she’d propped another handwritten card against the aquarium.
DON’T FEED, THERE’S A TIME RELEASE BLOCK OF FOOD IN HERE, WILL LAST A WEEK.
The subcontractors were on various jobs, which left Strike alone and free to do a bit of research he preferred to do in privacy: trying to identify the woman who’d shoved the cipher note through their office door. This meant trawling through stills advertising porn films, and he didn’t fancy being discovered with an erection, nor did he much relish the idea of explaining to the accountant why he was charging porn to the business account, which was why he was trying not to pay for anything.
Starting on the premise that the blonde might have worked with Dangerous Dick de Lion, if she knew or feared he’d been murdered, Strike was working his way steadily through de Lion’s oeuvre, which included such titles as
‘Hi,’ said Robin. ‘Sorry to call on Christmas Eve.’
‘No problem,’ said Strike, shutting down the window on his computer as though she could see what he was doing, and hoping his hard-on would subside enough to concentrate. ‘What’s up?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen today’s
‘No,’ said Strike, with an ominous feeling that, if nothing else, was helping to subdue his erection. ‘There’s not another—?’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘nothing about you, but there’s a picture of Lord Oliver Branfoot in it, and Strike, he’s standing beside the customer we saw in Ramsay Silver. That tall man who had one eye looking up at the ceiling.’
Sitting on her bed, still in her pyjamas, Robin waited for Strike’s response. After a few seconds, he said,
‘Shit.’
‘Kenneth Ramsay said your name in front of him, remember? Not mine, though.’
‘Who is he, the customer?’ said Strike.
‘Sir Victor Lambert,’ said Robin, reading it from the newspaper. ‘He sits on the Branfoot Trust and I’ve just looked him up; he’s a banker. But
‘That’d seem unwise,’ agreed Strike.
‘So…’ said Robin, unwilling to put into words what she was thinking; if she’d worried that connecting Sofia Medina with the murder of Wright might sound far-fetched, this, surely, was a hundred times more so.
‘You think Lambert mentioned to his mate Branfoot that I’ve been nosing around at Ramsay Silver,’ said Strike, ‘and Branfoot, who ordered the hit on Wright, panicked and started gunning for us?’
‘Well… I know it’s a stretch,’ said Robin, ‘but you can’t say it doesn’t fit. Shanker said “you were seen”, and we knew all along that could only have been Ramsay Silver or St George’s Avenue. I know Branfoot’s a real rent-a-quote, but why’s he suddenly so interested in the private detective business? Why’s he out to get us? And he’s on the telly, which fits the cipher note, too.’
Robin heard someone coming upstairs. Right now she’d be delighted for Murphy to find her on the phone to Strike; indeed, she might ask him to leave the bedroom until they’d finished the call. However, the footsteps moved on past her bedroom door, and she reflected that Murphy would probably make sure his run was a long one, after the scene in the kitchen.
‘Well,’ said Strike at last, ‘there’s no reason, just because a man’s a raging self-publicist, he can’t also be a crook. Look at Jeffrey Archer. Look at Savile.’
He got to his feet and, once again, stood contemplating the corkboard on the office wall, where the four present candidates for William Wright were pinned, eyes on Dick de Lion, with his fake tan, his peroxided hair and his very white teeth.
‘Might be worth finding out which way Branfoot swings, sexually speaking.’