‘Very specific, wanting to see just one temple.’
‘Said informant isn’t overly trustworthy. I’m checking it out on the off-chance. Don’t suppose you’ve got anything else on Niall Semple for me?’
‘A bit,’ said Hardacre, dropping his voice, ‘but you need to keep this on the down low, Oggy. I’ll be deep in the shit if they find out I’ve passed it to you.’
‘There’ll be no publicity,’ said Strike, considerably more sympathetic to this request than he’d been to the almost identical one made by Ryan Fucking Murphy.
‘Name Ben Liddell familiar to you?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but I know Semple’s best mate was called Ben and I know he got killed in the same operation where Semple sustained his traumatic brain injury.’
‘That’s him. Well, Semple seems to have been very fucking angry about that, and from what I heard – I shouldn’t know any of this, Oggy – he showed extreme animosity to the Regiment once he was compos mentis again and even made noises about press exposure regarding the botched operation where Liddell died.’
‘That’d explain a lot,’ said Strike, thinking of Ralph Lawrence, the alleged MI5 operative, and his obvious preference for Strike giving up attempts to find Semple. ‘What d’you know about the operation?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hardacre, ‘and frankly, I don’t want to know.’
‘Has this Ben Liddell got any next of kin?’
‘No idea.’
‘OK… can I ask you a couple of masonic questions?’
‘Yeah, go on.’
‘Wouldn’t happen to know what gow-too is, would you?’
‘Gow-too?’ said Hardacre. ‘How’re you spelling it? G – A – O – T – U?’
‘Haven’t seen it written down,’ said Strike. ‘What would it mean if it’s that?’
‘Masonic acronym. Great Architect Of The Universe.’
‘God, in other words?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘We’ve got an anonymous caller who’s allegedly got GAOTU on their side. I thought Freemasonry wasn’t supposed to be a religion?’
‘It’s not,’ said Hardacre.
‘But you believe in God.’
‘You’ve got to believe in a single higher power to be a mason. Doesn’t have to be any particular God.’
‘This, in spite of the fact that most of the symbolism is Christian and weighs towards the Crusades?’
‘Still only symbolism,’ said Hardacre. ‘We aren’t aiming to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem any more. Just to erect it in our own pure hearts.’
Strike snorted, then said,
‘Ever read any A. H. Murdoch?’
‘Not much,’ said Hardacre. ‘The language is pretty flowery and obscure. I prefer
‘What’s that?’
‘Popular introduction to the Scottish Rite.’
‘Bridges are a thing in Freemasonry, are they?’
‘What d’you mean, “thing”?’
‘Bridges have cropped up a bit,’ said Strike.
‘How?’
‘Semple freaked out about crossing a masonic bridge on a run, and I’ve got some Scottish woman calling the office, who thinks something’s hidden under a bridge.’
Hardacre drank some beer, eyed Strike thoughtfully for a moment or two, then said,
‘There’s a bit in
‘Interesting,’ said Strike. ‘That might chime with Semple being angry his mate Liddell had been sacrificed.’
‘Yeah. And when you’re inducted into the fifteenth degree, there’s a bridge, too.’
‘What, literally?’
‘They don’t generally hammer one together out of wood in the middle of the temple, no,’ said Hardacre, ‘but there’s a symbolic representation of one.’
‘What happens – troll jumps out and gets you, if you get the password wrong?’
‘Ha ha,’ said Hardacre. ‘You cross the bridge, over a river in which body parts are floating—’
‘Body parts?’
‘It’s symbolic, Oggy,’ said Hardacre.
Slightly to Strike’s surprise, his old friend seemed half-embarrassed, half-defiant, so he decided to leave off flippant comments about Freemasonry, for the moment.
‘How highly would you say masons prize the medals—’
‘Jewels,’ Hardacre corrected him.
‘—jewels they get for achieving the degrees?’
‘Well, they probably wouldn’t want to lose them. Why?’
‘Because Semple seems to have either taken something valuable, or something he thought was valuable, with him to London – or picked it up here, I suppose. He had a briefcase handcuffed to him, last time he was seen.’
‘If he’d got obsessive about Freemasonry, he might’ve thought it was important to keep his regalia with him,’ said Hardacre.
‘What would regalia comprise? Sash? Apron? Medals – jewels, I mean?’
‘All of the above, probably,’ said Hardacre. ‘I had a look for any masonic connection with the name William Wright, by the way. A Captain William Wright of Ardwick Lodge died in the First World War.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘East Lancashire. The lodge is still active.’
‘Was he well known, this Wright? Would most Freemasons have heard of him?’
‘Doubt it,’ said Hardacre. ‘The only claim to fame I found is that he drowned at sea. How’s the case going, in general?’