Page 264 of The Hallmarked Man
‘It’s fine,’ said Robin.
‘Was I snoring?’
‘A bit.’
Strike wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, afraid he’d also been drooling.
‘Don’t think I snored as badly as this before my nose got broken,’ he said apologetically.
‘How did that happen?’ said Robin, who’d never asked.
‘Boxing. Uppercut from a Welsh Grenadier. He got lucky.’
‘Of course he did,’ said Robin, amused.
‘He did,’ Strike insisted. ‘I knocked him out the following round. You were telling me more about Lindvall,’ he added.
‘I’d finished,’ said Robin untruthfully. ‘That was it.’
Strike falling asleep while she was talking had temporarily dimmed her enthusiasm for the subject.
Strike yawned, then said,
‘Did you know they found silver on Sark in the nineteenth century?’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Nineteenth century. They hit a good vein, thought they’d struck it rich, and poured money into the mines, but the vein petered out. Cost a fortune, because they were digging out under the sea and they needed pumps to keep the water out. Then a shaft caved in, drowning ten miners, and that was the end of Sark silver. Ruined the Seigneur.’
‘Who’s the Seigneur?’
‘Feudal ruler of Sark. It’s a weird place,’ said Strike. ‘Last feudal system in Europe, till 2008, when they decided to try democracy instead.’
Robin’s fantasies of warmth and light were dashed by her first sight of Guernsey, where it was chilly and wet. She and Strike took a taxi from the airport to the town of St Peter Port, from which they were to catch the ferry to Sark. The talkative taxi driver made further discussion of the case impossible until they’d left him outside the ferry ticket office, where they were informed that, in addition to their ferry tickets, they should purchase luggage labels, which would ensure their bags were transported to their lodgings by tractor on arrival on Sark.
‘How’re your sea legs?’ Strike asked Robin as they walked towards the harbour, rain peppering their faces as they looked out over the choppy grey sea.
‘They’ve never been tested much,’ Robin admitted.
‘Ah well,’ said Strike. ‘Short trip.’
Only as he began to descend the long, steep, wet, grilled-metal ramp down to the ferry did it occur to Strike that he should have thrown his walking stick into the kit bag he’d packed, necessarily hastily, that morning. He walked slowly, his right knee trembling on every alternate step, holding tight to the handrail, while Robinwatched in some trepidation. However, Strike reached the interior of the small ferry without mishap and, not wanting to take any more chances, sat in the first row of cold plastic seats, directly opposite a sign reading:Sark Shipping reserves the right to refuse embarkation and passage to any person who appears to be in a drunken state.
The engines roared into life, and the ferry heaved away from the dock.
‘Eyes on the horizon if you feel ill,’ Strike advised Robin, and she thought immediately of Christmas Eve, her jerky vision, and Murphy’s hunched, angry back.
83
‘And our men – well, they’re Sark, and there’s more’n a bit of the devil in them.’
John Oxenham
A Maid of the Silver Sea
‘Not too bad,’ said Strike, forty-five minutes later.
‘No,’ said Robin, although in fact she hadn’t found the movement of the old ferry very pleasant and had indeed spent the last twenty minutes staring out at the horizon without talking.
