Page 67 of The Hallmarked Man
‘You think your identity’s been stolen?’
‘Iknowit’s been stolen! He’s calling himself Calvin “Oz” Osgood, music producer, which is who I am, except I’ve never called myself Oz, and nor has anyone else, and he’s linked my LinkedIn profile to his bloody Instagram page, so I’ve been getting emails to him on my professional account!’
‘“Emails”, plural?’ said Strike, his mobile now pinned between shoulder and ear as he logged into LinkedIn and searched forCalvin Osgood music producer.‘What did they say?’
‘Well, there was that one from Ramsay Silver talking about helping me with a problem, and some idiot asking if I was still interested in buying his van, and complete gibberish from a girl who couldn’t write proper English, saying I’d played a prank on her cousin, and what had I done to her, or some such crap.’
Strike had just found what he assumed was Osgood’s genuine LinkedIn profile. It featured a man with a chubby, though not unhandsome, face who Strike judged to be in his mid-thirties, but what interested him most was that Osgood had dark, curly hair.Skim-reading the page, Strike learned that Osgood produced incidental music for television shows, though not any that Strike had watched.
‘Did you keep these emails for “Oz”?’
‘I deleted them,’ said Osgood, adding defensively, ‘I didn’t know I was going to have the police and a private detective calling me about them, did I?’
‘Could the deleted emails still be in your email b—?’
‘I emptied it. The police haven’t been any help at all,’ Osgood continued, his reedy voice rising still higher. ‘What’m I going to be dragged into next?’
‘This must’ve all been very difficult for you,’ said Strike, not particularly sincerely. He’d just found the Instagram page Osgood had described. The account purported to be that of Calvin ‘Oz’ Osgood, music producer, there was a link to the real Osgood’s LinkedIn page, to bolster the fake account’s credibility, but ‘Oz’ didn’t feature in the Instagram pictures except for the occasional wisp of dark, curly hair, the back of an equally curly head, or one lens of his mirrored sunglasses. In the absence of full-face shots, the small visible traces of the fake Osgood might plausibly have been photographs of the real producer. The images showed glamorous, intriguing settings – infinity pools, long white beaches, fireworks in the Seychelles, mixing desks, photographs of well-known singers that appeared to have been taken from the wings of the stage and interior shots of private planes. The captions were short, giving little away, and tending towards brief hashtags: #HighLife, #GouldingGig, #MusicMagic. One showed a pair of tanned bare feet standing on a pair of scales that read 68kg, with the caption #TargetWeight.
‘And those are the only emails you’ve had from people who think you and Instagram Oz are the same person, are they?’ asked Strike. ‘The one from Ramsay Silver, the one about the van, and another one about some supposed prank?’
‘Yes,’ said Osgood, sounding still more defensive. ‘Why would I lie?’
‘Just checking,’ said Strike. ‘Well, thanks for getting back to me.’
‘I was in Manchester,’ Osgood said, ‘when that Wright person was killed, and I’ve already proved it to the police!’
‘Then I needn’t trouble you any longer,’ said Strike, and having thanked Osgood again for his time, he rang off and began reverse-searching the images Oz had posted to Instagram.
As Strike had suspected, all had been stolen from other accounts,with portions of Oz’s curly hair photoshopped in. Strike suspected the picture of the scales, showing a weight Strike would have had to lose at least a couple more limbs to achieve, was meant to explain the discrepancy in size between the real chubby-faced music producer on LinkedIn and his Instagram impersonator.
Strike took out a fresh notecard of the type he used to pin on the noticeboard and headed it:Oz
Impersonates Calvin Osgood, music producer, online
Set up fake Instagram account in January last year
Might have his own curly hair or wears curly wig when pretending to be Osgood.
Someone at Ramsay Silver emailed Osgood/Oz offering help for unspecified problem
Was emailed about a van for sale
Was emailed in bad English about prank played on girl
Strike pinned this card beneath the various press clippings and notes relating to their four possible William Wrights, returned to his desk, and spent the rest of the morning dealing with paperwork unconnected to the silver vault case.
He was still there, consuming a late lunch, when Midge arrived to file her most recent notes. Hearing her ask Pat, ‘Are we getting fish?’ and Pat’s snapped answer, ‘No, turkeys, what’s it look like?’ Strike called Midge through to the inner office and asked whether she thought Plug had spotted her lately.
‘No,’ she said with an unexpected degree of aggression. ‘Why? What’s Kim been fookin’ saying now?’
‘She hasn’t been saying anything,’ said Strike. He remembered Robin telling him Midge’s romance might be on the rocks, but he didn’t much appreciate her tone. ‘We’ve had an anonymous call to the office and I wondered whether it could’ve been him or one of his mates.’
‘Oh,’ said Midge, looking somewhat abashed. ‘Right. Well, he did something fookin’ weird last night. Left his mum’s at midnight, jumped in his van, and drove to an allotment up the road. He goes into the shed with a torch, stays five minutes, comes out, locks it up again, and drives home. I waited ’til he was safe in the house, then went back to the allotment. Long story short, nearly bust my knee climbing over the fence, and there’s something alive in there.’
‘What, in the shed?’
‘Yeah. It’s animal, not human – unless they’re deaf, I s’pose. I said “knock twice if you can hear me” and nobody did. Whatever it is sounds big, but it wasn’t moving a lot. The windows are blacked out and there’s a massive chain and padlock on the door.’
