The Hallmarked Man полностью

But the desire to unburden herself, if not of everything, then of something, made her add,

‘Ryan’s… going through a rough time.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, who regretted asking, because he wasn’t particularly cheered by the thought of Robin sitting up all night to console or counsel her boyfriend. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but his name came up, in last night’s interview.’

‘How?’ said Robin, in sudden panic.

‘They asked if he’d been feeding us information – I denied it, obviously. Said he’d never told either of us anything.’

They sat in silence for a minute. Then Robin said,

‘What if he was having some kind of mental crisis?’

‘Who, Murphy?’

‘No!’ said Robin quickly. ‘Rupert Fleetwood!’

‘Oh,’ said Strike, depressed by her protective tone.

‘I know you think I’m too soft on Rupert,’ she went on, ‘but hear me out, please. He’s being horribly bullied at work. Longcaster’s taunting him about his parents’ death in front of guests. He’s being chased for cash by a dealer. Everyone’s against his relationship. Decima announces she’s pregnant. Say Rupert had some kind of – some kind of meltdown – and stole that nef and only then realised how much worse he’d made his situation. That’s a lot of stress. Just say he took the job at Ramsay Silver to prove something; that he could make it on his own, that he wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, telling himself he’d return to Decima like a hero and—’

‘And get arrested for the theft of the nef,’ said Strike.

‘But if he wasn’t thinking rationally?’

Strike swallowed a large mouthful of black pudding before saying,

‘I’m not denying Fleetwood’s moved up the table of possible Wrights, but answer me this. If he was genuinely happy about the pregnancy, why did he rip up the “lucky T-shirt” he was wearing when she told him?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘But if Wright had a pregnant girlfriend, and he wasn’t Fleetwood, it seems really strange that no other woman has come forward looking for the father of her child. Decima’s the only recent mother we know of who thinks Wright might’ve been her partner.’

‘Possibly the woman in question thinks she’s just been abandoned,’ said Strike. ‘The anti-Decima.’

‘I still want to know why Rupert went to Sacha Legard’s party,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the last known sighting of him and it’s really strange he gatecrashed it, given everything that was going on at the time. I’m going to speak to Cosima this week, I’ll force her to talk to me, somehow… have you heard from Kim since yesterday?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I wouldn’t have expected her to go quietly. I thought she might’ve come back to you, to persuade you to keep her on.’

‘Not after what I said to her in that bar,’ said Strike. ‘No, I left a message on Pat’s desk this morning to pay her the balance of what we owed her, so hopefully that’s the end of her.’

‘What’ll she do now?’

‘Join Farah Navabi’s new agency, probably.’

‘When can Wardle start, d’you know?’

‘Wednesday. He wants to get straight on the job and he had some leave in hand. Apparently when he said he was resigning, they weren’t overkeen on him hanging around. He thinks they suspect he’s joining us.’

Robin glanced around at the rapidly filling café, and dropped her voice.

‘So… Todd.’

‘Extremely dead Todd,’ said Strike, ‘yeah. Exactly the same m.o. as Wright’s murder, minus dismemberment and mutilation. Blow to the back of the head and multiple knife wounds. The mother took a single stab to the stomach. She wouldn’t have taken much effort. Small and skinny.’

‘This is appalling,’ said Robin.

‘It’s not good,’ agreed Strike. ‘I think Oz has committed four murders in eight months, which puts us in serial killer territory, but I don’t think these are thrill killings – not all of them, anyway. I think he enjoyed Medina, but I doubt he got a kick out of Todd and his mother. Todd had simply become a liability, so he had to go.’

‘Because of the upskirting?’

‘I think so, yeah. He knew Todd might’ve made himself of interest to the police again, and I imagine one of the last things Oz would want is Todd in an interview room. What if Todd decided to give up Oz in some kind of plea deal?’

‘Todd must have been implicated in the murder of Wright himself, then?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and I think the police are leaning that way too; they’ve connected the dots on Todd and McGee, though I don’t think they know much more than we do. They asked me why they both went to Dalston at the same time.’

‘But Todd had a cast-iron alibi for the actual killing.’

‘He did, yeah, but I’d lay odds Todd wrote Wright’s CV and coached him to scrape through the interview. And another thought occurred to me after I left the police. If Todd found that shithole room in St George’s Avenue for Wright, he might’ve had keys at some point. Could have had spares cut and passed them to Oz. As for all the stuff he fed me about a man in sunglasses watching the shop and Temple Seventeen, and Wright being camp, I think it was all bullshit and attempted misdirection.’