Page 244 of The Hallmarked Man
‘I… I don’t understand how you got my number,’ said the girl.
‘Oh,’ said Robin, as the realisation hit her: Zeta, the girl to whom Tyler Powell had allegedly done some harmful thing in Ironbridge. ‘Your friend Chloe Griffiths gave it to me.’
‘Oh,’ squeaked Zeta. ‘I… I wish she hadn’t.’
‘I was only calling for background,’ said Robin, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Nothing you tell me will be passed on.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Zeta asked in trepidation.
‘Chloe told me you’d had a bad experience with Tyler,’ said Robin.
‘I don’t want you to tell the police!’
‘I won’t,’ Robin reassured her hastily.
‘Because I haven’t got any proof! He’ll just say he didn’t!’
‘I understand. I’d still like to know what happened.’
‘Well… I was really drunk in the Jockey & Horse. The pub. And I was talking about Anne-Marie, and Hugo, and the crash – you know about that?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘I don’t want trouble. I don’t want Tyler coming back to… to get me, or anything.’
‘I won’t tell the police,’ Robin reassured her again.
‘Well, Tyler was there and I didn’t realise. Someone must have told him what I was saying and he came up to me, and he was really angry.And a week after, when I was walking home up Wellsey Road, in the dark, a car came up onto the pavement. It missed me by, like, a few centimetres.’
‘Could you see who was driving?’
‘No, the headlights were too bright.’
‘But you think it was Tyler?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you recognise his car?’
‘No, but he works in a garage. He could’ve borrowed any of them cars.’
‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘What exactly had you been saying about the crash, Zeta?’
‘The same everyone was saying. Tyler used to boast about sato – sabotaging cars if he didn’t like the people who brought them in his garage. Everyone knew.’
‘I see,’ said Robin.
‘Don’t tell the police,’ said Zeta.
‘I won’t,’ said Robin. ‘D’you—?’
‘Bye then.’
Zeta hung up.
A great listlessness rolled over Robin as she walked on. She was sick of bullying, callous, deviant men, but she had to show Murphy a cheerful face when she arrived in the pub for what was supposed to be a celebration of their offer on the house being accepted, because it wasn’t Murphy’s fault if Tyler Powell used his driving prowess to terrify young women, or if Lord Oliver Branfoot and Dino Longcaster enjoyed humiliating those less rich and influential than themselves, or if Craig Wheaton policed his girlfriend’s emails and texts. It couldn’t be laid at Murphy’s door that Niall Semple had abandoned his new bride shortly after her miscarriage, or that Jim Todd had raped a schoolgirl, that Larry McGee was so addicted to porn he couldn’t stop watching it, even at work, or that an unidentified man, or men, were using Robin’s own rape to intimidate her. Checking over her shoulder yet again, and touching the homemade pepper spray in her bag for reassurance, Robin reminded herself that millions of males, Murphy, her own father and brothers among them, weren’t depraved, violent or sadistic, but kind and decent people. The trouble was that kind and decent men rarely cropped up in criminal cases. Her job, she knew, was in danger of warping her worldview, and she thought how niceit would be to take some time off, to get away from bitterly cold and dark London, and not have to think about the grubby underbellies of men’s lives – but not yet. Not now. There was too much to do.
Murphy was already sitting at a wooden table with a pint in front of him when Robin entered the pub.
