The Hallmarked Man полностью

Strike waited until she’d disappeared from sight, then, as stealthily as he could manage, headed firstly towards the drawing room door, which he opened so he could cast a sweeping look over the interior, before crossing the hall to look in on the dining room. He’d just seen what he’d come for when he heard footsteps again, and returned to stand beside the fireplace.

Tara was descending the staircase and talking as she came.

‘I thought you must be delivering something from my son, but—’

She stopped mid-sentence, still six stairs from the floor, staring at Strike.

Once as dark and breathtakingly beautiful as her dead daughter, Tara’s hair was now dyed blonde. Her face had been lifted, probably more than once, so that she had odd horizontal creases on either side of her mouth where the skin had been stretched upwards. Filler distorted the proportions of her face. She was as thin as she’d always been, wearing her expensive interpretation of country clothing, which in this case meant a silk blouse and tweed trousers. Had she been able to move her face properly, Strike knew it would have been wearing an expression of fury.

‘What the fuck are you doing here? Why did you let him in?’ she demanded of the housekeeper, who’d just returned to the hall, possibly to offer refreshments.

‘He said he from Cartier,’ said the housekeeper, looking terrified.

‘Did you ask to see his ID?’

‘No,’ said the housekeeper, looking as though she might cry.

‘It’s not her fault,’ said Strike.

‘You shut up,’ snapped Tara. ‘In fact, get out. Fucking get out, now, or I’ll get one of the groundsmen to drag you out.’

‘Unless you want to see Sacha plastered all over the papers for receiving stolen goods, I’d advise against doing that,’ said Strike. ‘And before you pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve just seen it on the sideboard in the dining room.’

For a few seconds Tara glared at him, then she barked ‘coffee!’ at the housekeeper, who scuttled away. Tara descended the stairs without looking at Strike, swung around in exactly the same way Charlotte, when drunk, had turned her back on those who were annoying or boring her, and strode into the drawing room. Strike followed and was in time to see Tara take a cigarette out of an ivory box, light it, then drop into a low brocade armchair.

The room had been redecorated at some point in the nine years since Strike had last been in it, when the walls had been of a pale, silvery blue. Now they were dark green and some of the pictures had been rearranged, although the same Augustus John portrait of Sacha Legard’s bored-looking great-grandmother hung over the mantelpiece.

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the fucking balls to walk in here,’ sneered Tara.

‘Why’s that?’ said Strike, sitting down without invitation on the sofa.

‘You know fucking well why not. After what you did.’

‘I’ve done a lot of things,’ said Strike, stretching out the leg bearing the prosthesis, which was cramping again, after the long drive. ‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘It’s your bloody fault she killed herself!’ shouted Tara.

Strike wasn’t remotely surprised that they’d arrived within seconds at this grotesque accusation, which to most people would have made sense only as the culmination of a vicious row. Tara’s tactic in arguments had always been to reach for the most damaging thing she could throw at her opponent before the latter had time to collect their wits. Charlotte had been forever branded with her mother’s opening salvos. I wish I’d never fucking had you. Go overdose again, whining attention-seeker. God, you’re a tedious, ugly little shit.

‘So whose fault were the two suicide attempts before I ever met her?’ asked Strike.

‘Fuck you!’

‘Eloquent as ever,’ said Strike. ‘Anyway, back to the sideboard.’

‘It’s none of your fucking business what’s on my sideboard!’

‘It’s not your sideboard, it’s your son’s, and he’s going to be royally fucked when the press find out where Dino Longcaster’s silver ship went, isn’t he?’

‘Sacha knows it’s here and he doesn’t care!’ said Tara, with what Strike was certain was gross mendacity. If Sacha knew what his mother had done, he’d be extremely nervous about anyone else finding out about it, most of all journalists. ‘I read Charlotte’s suicide note,’ she added loudly. ‘I know what you did to her.’

‘The worst I can be accused of with regards to Charlotte is not reconfiguring my entire life around her death wish,’ said Strike.

‘You were unfaithful, you were—’

‘I picked up the fucking pieces until there was no putting her back together any more,’ said Strike, ‘and I’m looking at the reason she was never going to make old bones.’

‘Bastard,’ said Tara. ‘And I mean that literally, of course.’