Page 291 of The Hallmarked Man
‘Don’t you want to put Dilys’s mind at rest?’ asked Robin.
‘That old cow badmouths me, I don’t give a shit whether ’er mind’s at rest or not,’ said Jones. ‘Tell you what—’
Jones’ friend had started laughing harder than ever, although the punchline hadn’t yet been delivered. Robin thought she knew what was coming; it had become ever more likely since that first drooling emoji. Jones either didn’t know Powell’s whereabouts, or had promised his friend he would keep his secrets. He was boorish and childish, and a woman he was unlikely ever to meet was good only for amusing himself and his mates with.
‘—show us your tits and I’ll give ya—’
Robin ended the call.
She slumped back in her chair and rubbed her tired eyes. She couldn’t help thinking that Powell’s friendship with the crudely offensive Jones tended to add weight to the portrait of him given by Chloe and Zeta, rather than the one offered by Dilys and Griffiths. Opening her eyes again, Robin looked back down at her notebook.
For some reason, she was experiencing a tiny, nagging doubt, but she didn’t know why. Had she just missed something, failed to make an important connection? She read back over her notes, but couldn’t see anything obvious, so she tried to remember everything Jones had said, aside from the bits she’d thought important enough to transcribe.Dilys thinks Jones pretending to be Tyler.Bracelet for Chloe. Zeta, Rita, who’s next, Peter? Apeton. WesleyRoad.
Robin heard the door of the flat open and close; Murphy had returned. He entered the room seconds later, rummaging in his gym bag.
‘Oh, forfuck’ssake – I’ve left my phone at the fucking gym.’
‘Here,’ said Robin, holding out her own.
Murphy called his own phone and, after a brief conversation, hung up.
‘They’ve got it at the front desk. Shall I pick up a curry on my way back?’
‘That’d be great,’ said Robin, yawning.
Murphy departed again. Robin sat thinking about Tyler Powell, for whom she’d never found any social media. Turning back to her laptop, she opened both Twitter and Instagram and began searching for variations on the names ‘Lugs’ and ‘Powell’.
After twenty minutes, she found an Instagram account she thought might, possibly, have been Tyler’s: LugzCarz. It featured nothing but pictures of vintage motors interspersed with photos of engines on which the person posting was working. The account had few followers, but two things made Robin suspect it was Powell’s: there had been no additions since May of the previous year, when Powell had left Ironbridge under a cloud of suspicion, and beneath a picture of a 1965 Austin-Healey Mark III somebody had replied:fuck off posting cars like we don’t know what you did. However, as far as clues to Powell’s current whereabouts went, the account was useless.
Robin closed down the website, stretched and got to her feet.
Murphy had left his gym bag behind. It had leaked a puddle of clear fluid. Evidently he hadn’t put the lid of his water bottle on securely enough.
Robin opened the bag, to find a tangle of damp gym clothes. Sure enough, the bottle contained only dregs, and the top wasn’t properly screwed back on.
A faint smell made her sniff her fingers. Unable to believe the evidence of her nose, Robin put her index finger into her mouth.
Still crouched, tasting pure spirit, she felt again that icy wave of shock she’d felt on finding the diamond stud that had flown from the bedclothes in that house in Deptford, the day she’d left Matthew for good. She thought of the upswing in gym sessions and runs that she’d imagined were doing Murphy so much good. She recalled Christmas Eve, when she’d thought, if she hadn’t known better, he’d been drinking, like her brothers. She remembered the night of their worst row.
Blank-faced, she fetched kitchen roll and mopped up the spilled excess on the floor, then set the water bottle, with its incriminating dregs, on the coffee table. She stood for another minute, staring at it, then headed into the kitchen, where she made a methodical search of the cupboards that turned up no spirits whatsoever.
The sky outside was dark; she hadn’t noticed night falling. She headed into the bedroom and opened Murphy’s wardrobe. Presumably her boyfriend had searched other people’s cupboards and drawers in a professional capacity, but private detectives rarely if ever got to rifle through the personal belongings of suspects.
Robin had to stand on tiptoe to access the top shelf. Behind a pileof T-shirts and a small box of foreign currency and old charging leads was a hessian bag that clinked when she touched it. She tugged it down, already certain of what she was about to see.
There were six bottles of vodka inside, one of them almost empty.
90
Yet something seemed to prick
And tingle in his blood; a sleight—a trick—
And much would be explained.
Robert Browning
Sordello: Book the Second
