Page 322 of The Hallmarked Man
Hastily hitching a smile onto her face, Robin said,
‘Anyone want another tea? Coffee?’
But Murphy’s mother was already heading for the kitchen, her fluffy pink knitting left in her armchair. Mr Murphy senior went for a loudly announced pee.
Robin took out her notebook and wrote:Rupert’s aunt worked inBelgium until he was nine.She had to admit, the information didn’t look much of a breakthrough when written down. As she closed the notebook, Mr Murphy senior re-entered the room, his hand still on his fly.
‘Your Strike’s not gonna be happy, is he?’ he said to Robin, dropping back onto the sofa and taking up two seats with ease. ‘Two-nil already!’
‘No,’ said Robin, forcing another smile. ‘He’s not.’
So youdoknow something about my work. You know my partner’s name.
‘They’re gonna get Sánchez off the bench,’ said Murphy.
‘Yeah, well, no choice now,’ said his father.
Robin accepted a coffee from Murphy’s mother with a smile and thanks; the latter picked up her knitting and settled back in the armchair. When the football match restarted, and the others’ attentions were once again turned yet again towards the television, Robin stood up casually, ostensibly to stretch, but in reality to look out of the window.
She could see no trace of Green Jacket, although there were parked cars in which he might be lurking.
She sat down again and reopened Instagram, now following a different train of thought. Robin had already found two Instagram accounts for Chloe Griffiths. The older account showed various Ironbridge landmarks; the new, many pictures of her and her boyfriend interrailing.
As far as Robin was concerned, the most interesting of the pictures Chloe had posted before Tyler’s disappearance was that of her birthday in April, which she’d celebrated with a party at home: Robin recognised the poster of the dope-smoking Jesus in the background.
The picture was crammed with young people, but the photo centred four of them. There was goofily grinning, large-eared Tyler Powell, whose arm was slung around Anne-Marie’s shoulders, the latter recognisable from press pictures: an insipid-looking girl whose pale face wasn’t flattered by what looked like home-dyed pink hair. Anne-Marie looked perfectly happy and at ease. However, Chloe, who was standing on Tyler’s other side, was wearing a smile that appeared forced. A young man whose face wasn’t visible, but who had a shock of ginger hair, had his arm slung around Chloe’s neck. He was falling forwards, apparently laughing, dragging her with him as his plastic cup of beer spilled. Wynn Jones stood in shadow behind the pair, smirking, whereasIan Griffiths, beside Jones, and perhaps anticipating spilled beer on his carpet, didn’t look very happy.
‘SHIT!’ bellowed Murphy, and Robin jumped again, hastily affixing a smile to her face before registering that Murphy wasn’t celebrating, and that it was Arsenal who’d scored, not Liverpool.
‘Language,’ said Mrs Murphy softly, and Robin was reminded again of her late mother-in-law, who’d always urged a certain po-faced gentility on her family, even at times of celebration or crisis.
Robin returned to the picture of Chloe’s birthday party. The young woman was wearing a bracelet of what looked like enamelled violets, and Robin assumed this had been Tyler’s birthday gift, worn, perhaps, out of politeness, because it didn’t really chime with Chloe’s plain black dress. She wondered why Chloe hadn’t done as various angry comments had demanded, and taken down pictures of Tyler, although there was a clue in one of her replies.
ponzie2chloegriff take these down nobody wanna see that fucker
chloegrifffuck off telling me what to do
The last post on the old account, which had appeared a few weeks after Chloe’s birthday, was a quotation by Sylvia Plath.
‘I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I’m here.’
An odd quotation, Robin thought, exhibiting the sort of nihilism she’d have expected of a teenager rather than a young woman in her early to mid-twenties. Was it an expression of grief for her friend Anne-Marie? The old account had been left up, perhaps as an act of defiance towards the censoriousness of Ironbridge, but the new account appeared to represent a conscious turning of a leaf, because this opened with a Plath quotation, too.
‘I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy”.’
The new photos showed Chloe’s travels through Europe with a notably good-looking young man. There were arty photos of cities and the food the couple were eating, some selfies taken alone with picturesque backgrounds, others with her boyfriend. Then, following another train of thought, Robin left Chloe’s page for that of Oz.
The account had acquired another thirty followers since Robin had last looked at it, which angered her. It had been used to groom twogirls, one of whom was dead. Was the Met taking any action at all, or was it so determined not to take the agency’s word for anything that the fake account had been assigned low priority?
Oz’s most recent pictures were views of Nashville, with the usual non-specific, intriguing hashtags: #TS6, #SecretProject. One girl in the replies had replied excitedly:
OMG – TAYLOR SWIFT?????????
To which Oz had replied with a winking emoji.
Another bellow from the sofa announced Liverpool’s third goal.
‘That’s it!’ shouted Mr Murphy senior. ‘We’re done!’ He turned and said to Robin, ‘send Mr Strike my condolences’, in a tone, and with a gloating expression, that convinced Robin Strike had been a topic of conversation between Murphypère et fils, and that Murphy had told his father plainly how little he liked Robin’s business partner.
