‘That Scottish Gateshead’s just called again,’ she said, looking cross. ‘Bloody rude.’
‘The woman who wants to meet me in the Golden Fleece?’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Pat. ‘Very angry you haven’t called her back. Swearing.’
‘I haven’t got her number,’ said Strike. ‘What was she saying this time?’
‘Something about an engineer and people are out to get her. Swearing her head off.’
‘OK, well, if she calls again, try and get contact details.’
He was about to set off downstairs again when he changed his mind and walked through into the inner office instead, where he made a note and pinned it on the corkboard beneath the picture of Niall Semple. Scottish woman. Engineer. People out to get her.
‘If that woman does call back,’ he told Pat on his way back to the glass door, ‘ask if she’s blonde and has got anything tattooed on her face.’
‘On her face?’ said Pat.
‘Yeah, you know, the thing on the front of your head,’ said Strike, and left.
Hardacre had suggested meeting in a pub called the Freemasons’ Arms, which lay a short distance from Freemasons’ Hall, because, as he’d told Strike by text, ‘we might as well do the thing properly’. However, as Strike saw when he entered, the pub was disappointingly free of masonic emblems, placing an emphasis instead on old football photographs.
Hardacre was already at the bar. Barely five foot eight, the SIB man had become tubbier since Strike had last seen him, and lost more of his mousy hair, though his amiable, nondescript face was far less lined than Wardle’s. The pair exchanged their usual half-hug, half-handshake.
‘You’re thinner, Oggy.’
‘Not thin enough,’ said Strike, whose knee and hamstring had resented the ten-minute walk. ‘You look well. How’s the family?’
‘All good, yeah,’ said Hardacre. ‘Quick pint before we get you initiated?’
‘Yeah, go on,’ said Strike. ‘But they take all money and metal off you first, don’t they?’
‘Been reading up?’ said Hardacre, with a grin.
‘Just wondering whether alcohol’s a good idea when I’m about to be hopping around in the dark,’ said Strike.
‘Think they’d make an exception for your leg, unless you habitually use it as a weapon.’
‘Not often,’ said Strike, ‘but it’s been known.’
They took their pints to a table near the window.
‘So,’ said Hardacre, ‘what’re we looking for?’
‘Museum and Temple Seventeen,’ said Strike.
‘Museum won’t be a problem, but they don’t usually let the public into temples, other than the Grand Temple. Why’re we interested in number Seventeen?’
‘William Wright was interested in it, or so my informant says,’ said Strike.
‘Very specific, wanting to see just one temple.’
‘Said informant isn’t overly trustworthy. I’m checking it out on the off-chance. Don’t suppose you’ve got anything else on Niall Semple for me?’
‘A bit,’ said Hardacre, dropping his voice, ‘but you need to keep this on the down low, Oggy. I’ll be deep in the shit if they find out I’ve passed it to you.’
‘There’ll be no publicity,’ said Strike, considerably more sympathetic to this request than he’d been to the almost identical one made by Ryan Fucking Murphy.
‘Name Ben Liddell familiar to you?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but I know Semple’s best mate was called Ben and I know he got killed in the same operation where Semple sustained his traumatic brain injury.’
‘That’s him. Well, Semple seems to have been very fucking angry about that, and from what I heard – I shouldn’t know any of this, Oggy – he showed extreme animosity to the Regiment once he was compos mentis again and even made noises about press exposure regarding the botched operation where Liddell died.’
‘That’d explain a lot,’ said Strike, thinking of Ralph Lawrence, the alleged MI5 operative, and his obvious preference for Strike giving up attempts to find Semple. ‘What d’you know about the operation?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hardacre, ‘and frankly, I don’t want to know.’
‘Has this Ben Liddell got any next of kin?’
‘No idea.’
‘OK… can I ask you a couple of masonic questions?’
‘Yeah, go on.’
‘Wouldn’t happen to know what gow-too is, would you?’
‘Gow-too?’ said Hardacre. ‘How’re you spelling it? G – A – O – T – U?’
‘Haven’t seen it written down,’ said Strike. ‘What would it mean if it’s that?’
‘Masonic acronym. Great Architect Of The Universe.’
‘God, in other words?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘We’ve got an anonymous caller who’s allegedly got GAOTU on their side. I thought Freemasonry wasn’t supposed to be a religion?’
‘It’s not,’ said Hardacre.
‘But you believe in God.’
‘You’ve got to believe in a single higher power to be a mason. Doesn’t have to be any particular God.’
‘This, in spite of the fact that most of the symbolism is Christian and weighs towards the Crusades?’
‘Still only symbolism,’ said Hardacre. ‘We aren’t aiming to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem any more. Just to erect it in our own pure hearts.’
Strike snorted, then said,
‘Ever read any A. H. Murdoch?’
‘Not much,’ said Hardacre. ‘The language is pretty flowery and obscure. I prefer Bridge to Light.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Popular introduction to the Scottish Rite.’
‘Bridges are a thing in Freemasonry, are they?’
‘What d’you mean, “thing”?’
‘Bridges have cropped up a bit,’ said Strike.
‘How?’
‘Semple freaked out about crossing a masonic bridge on a run, and I’ve got some Scottish woman calling the office, who thinks something’s hidden under a bridge.’
Hardacre drank some beer, eyed Strike thoughtfully for a moment or two, then said,
‘There’s a bit in Morals and Dogma, another key text on the Scottish Rite, about a bridge. “The retreating general may cut away a bridge behind him, to delay pursuit and save the main body of his army, though he thereby surrenders a detachment to certain destruction.” It says such action isn’t unjust, but “may infringe some dreamer’s ideal rule of justice”.’
‘Interesting,’ said Strike. ‘That might chime with Semple being angry his mate Liddell had been sacrificed.’
‘Yeah. And when you’re inducted into the fifteenth degree, there’s a bridge, too.’
‘What, literally?’
‘They don’t generally hammer one together out of wood in the middle of the temple, no,’ said Hardacre, ‘but there’s a symbolic representation of one.’
‘What happens – troll jumps out and gets you, if you get the password wrong?’
‘Ha ha,’ said Hardacre. ‘You cross the bridge, over a river in which body parts are floating—’
‘Body parts?’
‘It’s symbolic, Oggy,’ said Hardacre.
Slightly to Strike’s surprise, his old friend seemed half-embarrassed, half-defiant, so he decided to leave off flippant comments about Freemasonry, for the moment.
‘How highly would you say masons prize the medals—’
‘Jewels,’ Hardacre corrected him.
‘—jewels they get for achieving the degrees?’
‘Well, they probably wouldn’t want to lose them. Why?’
‘Because Semple seems to have either taken something valuable, or something he thought was valuable, with him to London – or picked it up here, I suppose. He had a briefcase handcuffed to him, last time he was seen.’