‘Precisely. Burner phone. Pamela got home on Friday after waiting in Debenhams café alone until closing time. She let rip at her husband, who panicked and gave himself away by saying “it was only once”, before realising the text had been sent from an unknown number. So, someone knew enough about Pamela and Geoffrey’s private life to know exactly how to lure Pamela out of the shop – Geoffrey says she was already suspicious about the true nature of his reinvigorated friendship before she got the fake text. I asked Geoffrey who might have known about all this, and he said he and Pamela had a couple of rows about it, back when he was running Bullen & Co and she was working at Ramsays.’
‘So anyone in either shop might have overheard?’
‘Exactly. The other thing Geoffrey told me was that it was definitely the genuine Oriental Centrepiece in the crate that arrived at Bullen & Co, which he opened to check the contents. He’s an expert on antique silver, so I think we can take his word for it.’
‘Right,’ said Robin, trying not to feel aggrieved that Strike had found all this out, rather than her. ‘Well, I’ve spoken to Ivor Powell, Tyler’s father, in Florida.’
‘And?’
‘He said he’s had a few texts from Tyler and that he’s working in a pub. He seemed annoyed I was bothering him with what he called Dilys’s “rubbish” and refused to send me Tyler’s texts. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t had any at all. He gave the impression he simply didn’t care about Tyler.’
A waiter arrived at the table to take Strike’s drinks order. When he’d departed, Strike said,
‘That message from Griffiths’ daughter about Powell was interesting.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘It certainly paints a different picture of Tyler to the one her father was pushing.’
‘Pat hasn’t found Powell in any pubs called “the silver something” yet. ’Course, he might be doing a Todd and going under a different name. A different different name to William Wright, I mean.’
‘I’ve also looked into the car crash that killed Anne-Marie Morgan and Hugo Whitehead,’ said Robin. ‘It really does look like Hugo just lost control of the car in the storm. The Mazda’s anti-lock braking system failed and it skidded into the back of an articulated lorry, the airbags failed to deploy and the car went up in flames. I assume people in Ironbridge latched onto the anti-lock brakes failing, but in those conditions it was likely, especially if Hugo was driving too fast.’
‘So we don’t think Powell fled Ironbridge because he had a guilty conscience?’
‘He might not’ve caused the crash,’ said Robin, ‘but I’d still like to hear what that other girl, Zeta, who had a bad experience with him has to say.’
Strike’s beer arrived, served by a waiter asking if they were ready to order food. Strike ordered beef, Robin chicken, and the waiter retreated again. Mrs Two-Times’ group erupted into shrieks of laughter; Robin glanced over to their table to see Mrs Two-Times flicking her expertly coloured hair out of her eyes, talking to a very handsome, dark-eyed waiter.
‘I’d imagine it’s occurred to you that we’ve got an unusual number of sex offenders congregating around this crime?’ Strike asked Robin. ‘McGee felt up a workmate on a previous job, Todd’s a rapist and trafficker, Oz appears to groom young women—’
‘You probably won’t like my answer to that,’ said Robin.
‘Which is?’
‘That men perennially underestimate how many of their fellow men are perverts and predators. You know what they say: “all women know a rape victim, no man knows a rapist”.’
Strike decided to retreat to slightly safer territory.
‘This feels like a pro job, not a first kill. There aren’t many people cold-blooded enough to spend a couple of hours with a fresh corpse, carving it up and dissecting it, late at night in an underground vault. That took strong nerves.’
‘You think Oz is Shanker’s hired hitman?’
‘If it
‘Using the same persona twice, you mean?’
‘For starters, yeah, that was sloppy. I imagine he took the view it worked great on Medina and he’d got clean away with it, so why not use “Oz” again, as he’d put work into it. But it was bloody over-optimistic thinking fourteen-year-old Sapphire Neagle’s going to keep her mouth shut about a bloke showering her in rubies.’
‘She never told anyone his name, though,’ said Robin.