The Hallmarked Man полностью

A silver Land Rover, representing the car which perhaps only Strike would miss as much as she did; the Houses of Parliament, where she’d worked undercover and planted a bug every bit as legally suspect as the one for which Mitch Patterson had been arrested (she’d never told Murphy that); a miniature enamelled shield bearing the coat of arms for Skegness, where they’d once eaten chips together, and joked about donkey rides, and interviewed the key witness in a thirty-year-old murder case; a silver sheep (‘What does your dad do for a living? You’ve never told me.’ ‘He’s a professor of sheep medicine, production and reproduction… why’s that funny?’); a tiny pair of silver scales (‘That’s Libra, it’s my sign, I used to have a keyring with that on it.’ ‘Yeah, well, I’m team rational.’); a silver and enamel robin, the newest and brightest charm of them all, for her name, and, perhaps, for Christmas; and in the middle of them all, what she didn’t doubt had been the most expensive of the lot, barring the chain itself: the little silver orb, with its ornate catch which, when released, unfurled into the jointed masonic cross, and she’d raised it close to her eyes to examine the symbols inscribed inside before she realised she couldn’t see, because of the tears now pouring down her cheeks.

What did you do that for? she thought, and she slid off the side of the bath onto the floor and sobbed quietly into her knees, two patches of tears spreading on her pyjama bottoms, the bracelet clutched in her hand.

It took Robin several long minutes to regain control of herself, and then she examined each charm again, twice over, thinking that nothing else anyone gave her today (because it must now be Christmas Day) could possibly mean as much to her; not diamonds, not a new Land Rover: nothing. She knew how much hard work Cormoran Strike would have put into this, he who found present-giving an onerous chore, who found it inexplicable that anyone would remember what anyone liked, or wore, but he’d remembered all of this, and he wanted her to know he remembered it, and oh God, I love him, thought Robin, and then another voice in her head said sternly,

No, you don’t.

I do, I do…

You’re still drunk.

Wiping her eyes on the hem of her robe, Robin reached out for her phone. She didn’t care if she woke him, didn’t care if he wondered what she was doing awake and texting him, in the early hours of Christmas Day, when she ought to be in bed with her boyfriend.

Thank you. I love it so much xxxxx

And two hundred and fifty miles away in his sister’s spare room in Bromley, sleepless, suffering heartburn and gas after too much lager, and grumpy after what was probably the worst party he’d ever attended, Cormoran Strike heard his mobile vibrate and reached for it in the dark. Looking down at Robin’s text, Christmas, and the unusual opportunities it afforded you, if you were prepared, at last, to put in the work, suddenly seemed a wonderful thing.

I’m glad, he typed, and then, slowly, painstakingly, he added a kiss for every one of hers.

PART FOUR

And all putting in and getting nothing out results in stressful times, in business ventures as in the case of individuals. The great shafts sank deeper and deeper, the galleries branched out far under the sea, and there was a constant call for more and more money, lest that already sunk should be lost.

John Oxenham

A Maid of the Silver Sea

42

In every man’s career are certain points

Whereon he dares not be indifferent;

The world detects him clearly, if he dare,

As baffled at the game, and losing life…

Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most

Or needs most, whatsoe’er the love or need…

Robert Browning

Bishop Blougram’s Apology