Page 167 of The Hallmarked Man
‘That looks small for a man’s foot, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I thought so, too,’ said Strike.
‘And it wasunderthe body.’
‘Great. I mean, yeah,’ said Strike, still struggling to focus.
‘The mutilation, the sash – it looks like very deliberate staging,’ said Robin. ‘Why didn’t they get rid of the footprint?’
‘Maybe they didn’t notice it, then moved the body over it, while they were mutilating him.’
‘You know, if Medinawasdriving that Peugeot to pick Oz upafter the killing, she might not have seen blood on him,’ said Robin. ‘Whoever did it waited for livor mortis to start setting in before they got started cutting the body up…’
Robin’s phone now buzzed, and she saw a text from her brother Stephen.
‘Everything OK?’ Strike asked, in response to Robin’s look of shock.
‘Yes, fine, my sister-in-law’s just had an emergency Caesarean… God above, the baby was nearly eleven pounds.’
‘Same as me,’ said Strike, still striving to sound normal.
‘When have you had an emergency Caesarean?’ said Robin.
‘No, I was nearly eleven pounds. It’s how I got my name.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘“Cormoran”. He was a Cornish giant. My mother said she was going to call me that, as a joke, my aunt took her seriously and said she couldn’t, so of course that’s what I got called, to piss off Joan.’
‘They’re calling him “Barnaby”,’ said Robin, looking at the picture of her new nephew, who was bright red, swaddled in a hospital towel, with a sumo wrestler’s indignant face. ‘Born on Friday the thirteenth.’
‘Who was?’ said Strike.
‘My nephew. Today’s Friday—’
‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, of course.’
He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he thought that might well change, after today.
49
Oh, many a month before I learn
Will find me starting still
And listening, as the days return,
For him that never will.
A. E. Housman
XLII: A. J. J., More Poems
Strike’s conscience was whispering that he ought to tell Robin exactly what fresh, unforeseen calamity had descended upon him, that he had to warn her that another deluge of tabloid smut might be about to engulf them. However, after the story about the call girl, and his forced admission that he’d slept with Nina Lascelles, not to mention Robin’s rape being made public on the back of his newsworthy love life, Strike didn’t much fancy adding to the already unsavoury heap of circumstances in his disfavour that there was a remote chance –please, God, a fucking remote chance– he’d fathered a child with a woman he detested. A primitive sense of self-interest therefore shouted conscience down: he’d fix things without Robin ever having to know.
At a quarter past twelve, the two partners left the office for lunch in Dean Street. The day was cold and bright, the sun overhead a dazzling platinum coin trying to burn its way through the cloud cover. Trying to dissemble his new state of acute anxiety, Strike said,
‘Looks like we can rule out Wright being killed in a fight that got out of hand. Someone stoved in the back of his head while he had his back turned. That was no accident.’
