Page 218 of The Hallmarked Man
‘Or they stopped bothering looking once Truman decided it was Knowles,’ said Strike. ‘Said it before, who cares when young men go missing?’
‘He seems to have tried calling Dilys,’ said Robin, still scanning the messages, ‘but if he really wanted her off his back, why wouldn’t he just tell her where he was?’
‘Might not have trusted her with his whereabouts,’ said Strike. ‘She might’ve blabbed his location or tried to send someone to fetch him back… that said, the whole fake name and disguise thing seems a bit extreme for Powell, and I can’t see why the hell he’d want to work in a masonic silver shop. Good mechanics are always in demand. Why not go and do that somewhere else?’
‘Unless he reallydidhave something to do with that car crash and he was scared he was going to be arrested for it?’ said Robin.
‘I’m struggling to see how him tampering with brake lines or steering before they left for the concert could’ve resulted in a fatal crash on the way back.That’ll’ve been looked into. There’ll have been an inquest.’
‘But there’s a connection with the name William Wright.’
‘True,’ said Strike, scratching his chin. ‘Well, if Powell doesn’t call you back we should have a word with the Whiteheads, if we can find them. If they genuinely think Powell sabotaged the car, they had a motive, so that needs ruling out. Then we’ve got the birthmark on Powell’s back. Was the Salem cross carved into the body to get rid of a distinguishing mark?’
‘And they did the ears, eyes and hands for fun?’
‘You’re forgetting the penis,’ said Strike, which was inaccurate; Robin hadn’t forgotten. ‘Trouble is, you could make a case for the mutilation to be to disguise any of our possible Wrights.’
Both drank their soft drinks, looking at the Severn rather than at each other. Robin was wondering when she was going to tell Strike about the man with the masonic dagger. Before she could speak, the barmaid returned to take their food order. When Strike had ordered beer-battered haddock and Robin, chicken nachos, the former said,
‘On the subject of masonic stuff, I haven’t told you: I ran into Fergus Robertson on the train to Scotland. Turns out Lord Oliver Branfoot is a mason and he’s a member of the Winston Churchill Lodge, which meets in one of the temples at Freemasons’ Hall, and is also the lodge of—’
‘Malcolm Truman,’ said Robin, conscious of an increasingly familiar sinking feeling.
‘Yeah. Apparently Branfoot changed lodges a few years ago, and the Winston Churchill’s full of coppers.’
He’d registered the sudden blankness of Robin’s expression, but before he could continue, she said,
‘There’s something I haven’t told you, either. Last night, after I interviewed Valentine Longcaster—’
‘Oh, he talked to you, did he?’ said Strike, experiencing his own feeling of dread. He’d been expecting, and counting on, Longcaster to tell Robin to get lost.
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘Slag me off?’
‘A bit.’
‘What did he say? I knocked Charlotte about? Screwed around? It’s my fault she topped herself?’
‘Something along those lines, but—’
‘I never laid a finger on her in anger, except to stop her hurting herself,’ said Strike.
How many more blows to the gut was he supposed to take? How much more self-respect had to be stripped from him, in front of the person whose good opinion mattered more to him than any other’s?
‘OK,’ said Robin, ‘well, that’s not what I—’
‘Did he have anything useful to say about Fleetwood, or was it wall-to-wall Charlotte as saint and me as bastard?’
‘He didn’t say anything very useful about Fleetwood, no,’ said Robin, keeping her tone measured. ‘But he was definitely twitchy about us going near his sister Cosima, and generally evasive on the subject of why Rupert gatecrashed Legard’s party. But,’ she said, taking a deep breath, ‘that isn’t what I was going to tell you.
‘I was followed when I left the restaurant where I interviewed Longcaster.’ She didn’t want to admit the next bit, but honesty compelled her to do so. ‘I think he tailed me from my flat yesterday morning and I didn’t realise. He was wearing a – well, he was wearing a gorilla mask by the time he caught up with me—’
‘What?’
‘—but I’d noticed him before, on the industrial estate where I was waiting for Longcaster; he was wearing the same green jacket. He didn’t make his move until I was completely alone and there was no one else—’
‘What move?’ said Strike.
