The Hallmarked Man полностью

‘Sir Daniel Gayle. He’s a retired commissioner. His daughter works for me. I asked her whether I could talk to Sir Daniel, and he spoke to some people, then told me the police never got DNA confirmation. They never proved it was that Knowles man, not beyond doubt.’

‘What’s your interest in finding out who the man was?’ asked Strike.

‘I just need to know,’ said Decima. Her voice was trembling. ‘I need to. I need to know.’

Strike drank some coffee to give himself thinking time. Odd features of the case of the body in the vault came back to him. The body had been naked and heavily mutilated, which had naturally fanned the flames of press interest before the victim had been revealed as a violent criminal, at which point, public sympathy and interest had dwindled considerably. Knowles, the press reported, had so severely beaten the female cashier at a building society he’d previously robbed that she’d been left with a fractured skull and seizures. In fact, there’d been general agreement that, however nasty his end, Jason Knowles had probably had it coming.

‘Are you worried the man was someone you know?’ Strike asked.

‘Yes. I think . . no,’ said Decima, suddenly passionate, tears appearing in her eyes, ‘I know it was him, and… I need proof, because… I need proof. I just need somebody to prove it.’

‘Who exactly—?’

‘He was someone very close to me, and he matched the body exactly, and it all fits: the silver, and him being m-murdered, and he disappeared at the same time – it was him. I know it was.’

The lonely house, the tearful woman: Strike felt as though he’d been plunged back into the situation he’d left in Cornwall, but with far stranger overtones. Unable to think of anything else to do, he flicked open his notebook.

‘All right, what similarities are there between the body and the man you know?’

‘I’ve written it all down,’ said Decima at once, reaching for the red notebook, and she flicked to the back of what was revealed to be a weekly diary, where Strike saw several densely written pages. ‘My friend was twenty-six – the press said the body was of a man in his mid-twenties to mid-thirties. William Wright was left-handed; so was my friend. The body was blood group A positive – that’s the same. Five feet six or seven – that matches. Wright was interviewed for the job on the nineteenth of May – I didn’t see my friend that day. Wright moved into a rented room on May the twenty-first – that fits, because my friend was moving out of his house that weekend – I wanted him to bring all his things to my place, but he wouldn’t. I didn’t understand where he was putting it all. It must have been this rented room.’

Having tried and failed to think of a more tactful way of posing his next question, Strike said,

‘And why would your friend have changed his name and gone to work in a silver shop?’

‘Because – it’s complicated.’

‘Have you reported him missing?’

‘Yes, of course, but the police aren’t helping, they just took his aunt’s word for it that—’

She broke off, then said in a higher-pitched voice.

‘Look, I know it was him, I know it was, all right?’

Strike, Robin and their subcontractors had a name for the kind of people who’d emailed and phoned their office in increasing numbers as the agency’s profile grew, desperate to tell the detectives that they were being spied on by domestic appliances, that Satanic rings were being run out of Westminster, or that they were in relationships with celebrities who were unaccountably withholding their affections due to malign forces: Gatesheads. The distinguishing characteristics of a Gateshead were an irrational belief, a dislike of common sense questions and an inability to contemplate alternative explanations for their dilemmas. The woman sitting opposite Strike was currently presenting a classic set of symptoms.

‘You said Sir Daniel Gayle’s daughter works for you,’ Strike said, hoping to unravel the problem by tugging on a different thread. ‘What exactly—?’

‘I’ve got a restaurant,’ said Decima. ‘The Happy Carrot, on Sloane Street. She’s my maître d’.’

Strike happened to know the restaurant in question, which, in spite of the name, wasn’t a vegan café but a very well-reviewed and expensive eatery offering organically produced food, to which Strike had recently tailed an unfaithful commercial pilot and his mistress. Unless Decima was lying about being Valentine’s sister she came from money: the Longcasters were a very wealthy family, and Decima and Valentine’s father, whom Strike had never met, but about whom he knew far more than he’d ever wanted to, owned one of the most expensive private members’ clubs in London. Trying yet another tack, he asked,

‘How well did you know the man you think was the body in the vault?’

‘Very well,’ said Decima. ‘I—’

To Strike’s consternation, something now stirred beneath Decima’s poncho, as though her breasts had developed independent motion. Then, making Strike jump, an ear-splitting screech echoed through the kitchen.