Watching her make heavy work of brewing coffee, opening and closing cupboards as though she kept forgetting where things were, and muttering under her breath, Strike’s opinion of her shifted again. There were three kinds of people he was unusually good at identifying on short acquaintance: liars, addicts and the mentally ill. He had a hunch Decima Mullins might belong in the third category, and while this might excuse her ill-kempt appearance, it made him no keener to take her case.
At last she carried two mugs of coffee and a jug of milk over to the table, then, for no obvious reason, sat down extremely slowly as though she thought she might do herself an injury by hitting the chair too hard.
‘So,’ said Strike, pulling out his notebook and pen, more eager than ever to get this interview over with, ‘you said on the phone you want something proven, one way or another?’
‘Yes, but I need to say something else first.’
‘OK,’ said Strike, for the third time, and he tried to look receptive.
‘I wanted you because I know you’re the best,’ said Decima Mullins, ‘but I was in two minds about hiring you, because we know people in common.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. My brother’s Valentine Longcaster. I know you don’t like each other much.’
This information came as such a surprise that Strike was temporarily lost for words. Valentine, whom he’d met infrequently and always reluctantly over a certain period of his life, was a good-looking, floppy-haired, extravagantly dressed man who worked as a stylist for various arty glossy magazines. He’d also been one of the closest friends of the late Charlotte Campbell, Strike’s sometime fiancée, who’d died by suicide a few months previously.
‘So “Mullins” is…?’
‘My married name, from when I was in my twenties.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Right.’
Could she be telling the truth? He couldn’t remember Valentine mentioning a sister, but then, Strike had always paid as little attention as possible to anything Valentine said. If they were indeed brother and sister, Strike had rarely met a pair of siblings who resembled each other less, although in some ways that might add credence to Decima’s story: it would have been perfectly in character for Valentine to hush up this squat, grubby-looking woman, because he was a man who placed a very high premium on looks and stylishness.
‘It’s
‘OK,’ said Strike, for the fourth time.
‘And you know Sacha Legard, too, don’t you?’
Now starting to feel as though some personal devil had decided to devote its day to kicking him repeatedly in the balls, because Sacha was Charlotte’s half-brother, Strike said,
‘You’re related to him, too, are you?’
‘No,’ said Decima, ‘but he’s involved in… in what I want you to investigate. I never really knew Charlotte Campbell, though. I only met her a couple of times.’
Some might have considered her flat tone insensitive, given Charlotte’s recent death in a blood-filled bathtub, but as Strike was more than happy to dispense with prurient questions or faux sympathy, he said,
‘Right, well, why don’t you explain what it is you want me to do?’
‘I need you to find out who a body was,’ said Decima, eyeing him with a mixture of wariness and defiance.
‘A body,’ repeated Strike.
‘Yes. You probably read about it in the papers. It was the man they found in the vault of a silver shop, in June.’
Five months previously, Strike had been almost entirely focused on a complex case the agency had been investigating, and had had little attention to spare for much else, but he remembered this news story, which had generated a short but intense burst of media coverage.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘If it’s the one I’m thinking of,’ (though God knew why he was saying this, because how many men were found dead in silver vaults, on average, per month, in London?) ‘the police identified him quite quickly.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ said Decima, her tone brooking no contradiction.
‘I thought,’ said Strike, though what he really meant was, ‘as I accurately recall’, ‘he turned out to be a convicted thief?’
‘No,’ said Decima, shaking her head, ‘he wasn’t that thief. Not definitely.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s what I read,’ said Strike, tugging his phone out of his pocket. He was hopeful, now, he’d be able to get out of here within ten minutes, because she was giving him a cast-iron reason for refusing a case he definitely didn’t want. ‘Yeah, see here?’ said Strike, having typed a few words into Google. ‘“… the dead man, who posed as salesman William Wright during his two weeks’ employment at Ramsay Silver, has now been identified as convicted armed robber Jason Knowles, 28, of Haringey.”’
‘It wasn’t definite,’ insisted Decima. ‘I know a policeman, and he told me so.’
‘Which policeman is this?’ asked Strike, who had prior experience of those who asserted imaginary ties to the police to justify their lunatic theories.