Page 79 of The Hallmarked Man
‘Five minutes ago.’
‘Then you’ve got two and a half hours at least.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Because she’s got two different shades of highlights. That takes time.’
‘I called,’ said Strike, ‘to discuss Shanker, and that anonymous phone call to the office, which I’m inclined to take a bit more seriously now.’
‘We can discuss Shanker while you go down to the ground floor,’ said Robin.
‘Why’m I going to the ground floor?’ said Strike, moving off, nevertheless.
‘Handbags,’ said Robin, ‘and scarves. For Lucy and Prudence.’
‘Pretty sure they’ll both have a handbag and a scarf.’
‘God, you’re hopeless,’ said Robin. ‘I think Plug Junior might be going to that same allotment his dad visited the other night,’ she added, eyes on the figure ahead of her.
‘Maybe the crocodile or whatever they’re keeping in the shed’s chewed its way out,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going outside so I can hear myself think and we can discuss Shanker.’
‘All right,’ said Robin, ‘but afterwards—’
‘I’ll buy something, yeah,’ said Strike with a sigh.
He forged his way through the crowded stationery department and at last, with relief, reached the pavement and took out his vape pen.
‘So,’ said Strike, while Robin continued to stride along, the pain in her side becoming ever sharper, ‘I called Decima and told her we’re fairly sure Fleetwood shook off Dredge the drug dealer by giving him cash. She’s not having it – or, more accurately, she thinks this proves he sold the nef to Kenneth Ramsay, but thinks Dredge killed him anyway, as a warning to Zacharias Lorimer.
‘I’ve also called Wardle and told him our criminal contact is certain that Jason Knowles’ body went to “Barnaby’s”, whoever or whatever that is, and that Knowles wasn’t the corpse in the Ramsay Silver vault.’
‘Great,’ said Robin, who’d been worrying about having information the police ought to have; hopefully Murphy would never find out where this information had come from, either. ‘You didn’t tell Shanker about the plainclothes—?’
‘Fuck’s sake, of course not!’
‘Sorry,’ said Robin quickly. ‘Sorry, of course you didn’t, I don’t know why I…’
But she did know why she’d said it: she was consumed with paranoia about her boyfriend finding out that she and Strike were meddling in matters that didn’t concern them.
Plug Junior had slowed down to take a call on his mobile, so Robin adjusted her pace accordingly. Her lower right side was now throbbing.
‘I really called about this hit business,’ said Strike, ‘and the fact that whoever allegedly ordered it knows we’re investigating – or knowsIam. Shanker didn’t mention you.’
‘Where d’you think you were spotted?’
‘It’s got to be Ramsay Silver or St George’s Avenue,’ said Strike.
An ornate clock was set high on an archway to his left, a mechanical Saint George and the dragon above it, a legend in gold beneath it:
No minute gone comes ever back again, Take heed and see ye do nothing in vain.
Back in Camberwell, Plug’s son was unlocking the allotment gate and Robin, with relief, had taken refuge beside a postbox.
‘This is getting bloody strange and murky,’ said Strike. ‘If we accept the premise that a rich, powerful Freemason wanted a man who was blackmailing him dead – and blackmailing victims do tend to want their blackmailers dead – I can’t see any earthly reason why the hit had to be carried out at Ramsay Silver. In fact, you’d think a murderous Freemason would want to keep the whole thing as far away from a masonic silver shop as possible, and why thefuckhe’d have given instructions that the corpse should be draped in a masonic sash…’
‘And if Wright really was the blackmailer of a wealthy Freemason,’ said Robin, watching Plug Junior hurrying towards the padlocked shed door, ‘why would he go and work for another Freemason?’
‘Well, exactly. The whole thing feels like something dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. It’s like the plot of a B movie.’
