Page 305 of The Hallmarked Man
Strike swallowed a large mouthful of black pudding before saying,
‘I’m not denying Fleetwood’s moved up the table of possible Wrights, but answer me this. If he was genuinely happy about the pregnancy, why did he rip up the “lucky T-shirt” he was wearing when she told him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘But if Wright had a pregnant girlfriend, and hewasn’tFleetwood, it seems really strange that no other woman has come forward looking for the father of her child. Decima’s the only recent mother we know of who thinks Wright might’ve been her partner.’
‘Possibly the woman in question thinks she’s just been abandoned,’ said Strike. ‘The anti-Decima.’
‘I still want to know why Rupert went to Sacha Legard’s party,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the last known sighting of him and it’s really strange he gatecrashed it, given everything that was going on at the time. I’m going to speak to Cosima this week, I’llforceher to talk to me, somehow… have you heard from Kim since yesterday?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I wouldn’t have expected her to go quietly. I thought she might’ve come back to you, to persuade you to keep her on.’
‘Not after what I said to her in that bar,’ said Strike. ‘No, I left a message on Pat’s desk this morning to pay her the balance of what we owed her, so hopefully that’s the end of her.’
‘What’ll she do now?’
‘Join Farah Navabi’s new agency, probably.’
‘When can Wardle start, d’you know?’
‘Wednesday. He wants to get straight on the job and he had some leave in hand. Apparently when he said he was resigning, they weren’t overkeen on him hanging around. He thinks they suspect he’s joining us.’
Robin glanced around at the rapidly filling café, and dropped her voice.
‘So… Todd.’
‘Extremely dead Todd,’ said Strike, ‘yeah. Exactly the same m.o.as Wright’s murder, minus dismemberment and mutilation. Blow to the back of the head and multiple knife wounds. The mother took a single stab to the stomach. She wouldn’t have taken much effort. Small and skinny.’
‘This is appalling,’ said Robin.
‘It’s not good,’ agreed Strike. ‘I think Oz has committed four murders in eight months, which puts us in serial killer territory, but I don’t think these are thrill killings – not all of them, anyway. I think he enjoyed Medina, but I doubt he got a kick out of Todd and his mother. Todd had simply become a liability, so he had to go.’
‘Because of the upskirting?’
‘I think so, yeah. He knew Todd might’ve made himself of interest to the police again, and I imagine one of the last things Oz would want is Todd in an interview room. What if Todd decided to give up Oz in some kind of plea deal?’
‘Toddmusthave been implicated in the murder of Wright himself, then?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and I think the police are leaning that way too; they’ve connected the dots on Todd and McGee, though I don’t think they know much more than we do. They asked me why they both went to Dalston at the same time.’
‘But Todd had a cast-iron alibi for the actual killing.’
‘He did, yeah, but I’d lay odds Todd wrote Wright’s CV and coached him to scrape through the interview. And another thought occurred to me after I left the police. If Todd found that shithole room in St George’s Avenue for Wright, he might’ve had keys at some point. Could have had spares cut and passed them to Oz. As for all the stuff he fed me about a man in sunglasses watching the shop and Temple Seventeen, and Wright being camp, I think it was all bullshit and attempted misdirection.’
‘So… Oz,’ said Robin. ‘We’re looking at a violent sex offender who kills people who become dangerous to him?’
‘A violent sex offender who shows no mercy to accomplices who can’t refrain from sex offending, even though all the evidence showshisself-restraint could use some work.’
‘He hasn’t been caught for any of these murders, though,’ said Robin, ‘which suggests brains.’
‘Agreed,’ said Strike. ‘Brains, and what I suspect is practice. A genuinely unhinged man might erupt into a sudden killing spree, but Ozisn’t unhinged. He’s methodical and controlled – except where girls are concerned. But even there, he hasn’t been caught yet.’
‘And you say four murders in eight months,’ said Robin, ‘but it might be five. We still don’t know what’s happened to Sapphire Neagle.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on finding out, because the police are playing catch-up where Oz is concerned,’ said Strike. ‘I don’t think they connected Medina’s murder and Neagle’s disappearance until I mentioned it this morning and they didn’t seem to know the real Osgood was emailed by a stranger about a van, from which I deduce that they haven’t been back to the real Osgood or tried to retrieve the mystery messages he’s received. On the other hand, they’ve clearly reconsidered their position that the Oz and Medina sightings in St George’s Avenue were made up by Mandy for money—’
‘Finding out the silver Peugeot visited Newham twice probably did that,’ said Robin.
