‘All right,’ he said, having successfully lit the fire, closed the door on the wood burner and dragged himself back up into a standing position by using the mantelpiece beam, ‘what reasons do people have, for killing in particular places?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin.
Strike poured himself more wine and sat down in a wicker chair, which creaked loudly.
‘I can think of four.’
‘Really?’ said Robin, taken aback.
‘Yeah. Chance, convenience, opportunity and necessity.’
‘Well,’ said Robin, pulling the throw tighter around herself, soothed by having an intellectual exercise to engage her mind, and grateful for the fire, ‘it definitely wasn’t chance, was it? Wright and his murderer didn’t find themselves in that vault at that time in the morning by chance. It was pre-arranged. Organised.’
‘Agreed,’ said Strike.
Robin drank more wine, trying to focus.
‘What came after chance?’ she asked.
‘Convenience. Covers domestic murder, in particular. I think we can discount that. As far as places to commit murder go, I’d struggle to think of one more inconvenient than an underground silver vault.’
‘So, then – opportunity?’
‘Opportunity would fit fine if the killer had been Kenneth Ramsay, Pamela Bullen-Driscoll or Jim Todd. The vault might well have been one of the very few places they’d have had the chance to bash a strong young man over the head from behind, without witnesses. Unfortunately, they all have unbreakable alibis. So we’re left with necessity. The vault was literally the only place the killing was possible.’
Correctly interpreting Robin’s lack of response Strike said,
‘I can’t think why it would have been necessary to do it there, either. Even if we accept the premise that Wright was lured to his death on the promise of a cut of the proceeds from the robbery, why did the killer make it so difficult for themselves? If a victim’s after easy money, there are a hundred other scenarios they could be persuaded into, and they’d be bound to offer the back of their head at some point. Why there?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin again. ‘I feel as though we’ve got a lot of pieces from different jigsaws.’
‘We have,’ said Strike. ‘Semple, Powell, Fleetwood – Knowles, come to that… fuck knows what “Barnaby’s” is.’
Watching the dancing flames Robin said,
‘How often do you think there’s a murder case where both the killer and his victim were pretending to be someone else?’
‘Infrequently, I’d imagine,’ said Strike, ‘but I’m sure more killers would do it that way, if they could arrange it. Wright’s false identity worked brilliantly in his murderer’s favour. When you can’t identify the victim, it’s bloody difficult to see why anyone wanted them dead.’
Both watched the flames dancing in the wood burner for a while. Then Robin said,
‘I keep thinking about Wright. The way Daz and Mandy described him… he sounded…’
Robin’s voice trailed away. She drank some wine.
‘“Sounded”?’ Strike prompted her.
‘Well, a bit… lonely, or lost, or something… It seems so silly to go downstairs to your neighbours and eat a takeaway and smoke dope with them, and let them get a really good look at you, if you’re in disguise because you’re planning a burglary. If Wright knew he was only going to be there a short time, why get friendly with Mandy and Daz? And ordering weights to his flat – why would you do that, if you knew you’d only be there a month?’
‘Two very good points,’ said Strike.
‘D’you still think Todd wrote Wright’s CV?’ Robin asked.
‘I do, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Ergo, Wright thought Todd was an associate, maybe even a friend… but that throws up more questions, doesn’t it? If Todd was a double agent, convincing Wright he was on his side, but actually luring Wright to the vault for Oz to kill, we arrive back at the perennial question, why did the murder have to be in the vault? And why the hell would Wright have agreed to walk into the vault at one o’clock in the morning, with the man he was running from? This isn’t a Shakespearean comedy, where a man styles his hair differently and instantly becomes indistinguishable from his own sister. A curly wig’s hardly an impenetrable disguise.’
‘Wright might never have met Oz before, or known what he looked like.’
‘Then it’s just as strange that he agreed to walk into the vault with him at one in the morning. Mandy said Wright told her and Daz “or he might send someone”. Wright knew he might not recognise the man who came for him.’
‘I know Reata Lindvall probably wasn’t “Rita Linda”,’ Robin said, remembering Strike’s glazed expression on the plane, ‘but say she is, for the sake of argument – maybe Todd told Wright what had happened to her, after learning the truth in his Belgian jail?’
‘That crossed my mind after I heard Todd was in prison in Belgium,’ said Strike, ‘but if Wright thought Todd was his mate, why would Wright share the information with the press? That’d blow Todd’s incognito, remind the world he’s a convicted rapist, point the police and press right back towards him, and set Todd up for concealing evidence.’
Almost a minute passed as each pursued their own thoughts. Then:
‘That email sent to Osgood from Ramsay Silver…’ said Robin, freeing herself from the throw to tug her phone out of her pocket. Having found the message, she read it aloud.
‘“Dear Mr Osgood (Oz), I can help you with something that I know has been a problem for you if you would be happy to meet me.”’
She looked up at Strike.
‘It has to be Wright who sent that email. Todd wouldn’t have emailed Oz from work, not if they were accomplices.’
‘Soundly reasoned, as far as it goes,’ said Strike, ‘but did Wright mean to email Oz the fake music producer, or Osgood, the genuine one?’
‘What if Wright knew Osgood had an imposter, and was going to tell him who it was? The inclusion of “Oz” might’ve been a hint?’
‘That’d fit,’ said Strike, ‘but it’s not the only explanation. What if Wright was offering to help with a problem that was going to be resolved down in the vault at one in the morning?’
‘What kind of problem could Osgood have had, that meant going down to the silver vault at one in the morning?’
‘Well, for instance, “I’m currently lacking a hundred grand’s worth of masonic silver,”’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.
‘It’s tempting to try and fit Semple into all this,’ Strike continued, ‘because his mental state might explain some of the anomalies – putting too much trust in Todd, smoking dope with the neighbours. Possibly he did have a fixation about the Murdoch silver…’
‘But you could fit Powell into it, too,’ said Robin. ‘He wanted a fresh start and we know he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, which could explain him trusting Todd too much, and not recognising the danger posed to him by Oz.’
‘True, but like I said in Ironbridge, a masonic silver shop seems a particularly weird place for a mechanic to choose to work. Plus, nobody seems to have given too much of a shit about Powell except his grandmother, and her interest seems to be largely that he wasn’t doing her shopping any more. I think that car crash was a genuine accident. Do we honestly think the nice middle-class Whiteheads, bereaved or not, hired assassins to search the length and breadth of the UK for Tyler Powell?’
‘No,’ admitted Robin, ‘but Tyler might have thought that’s what was going to happen… we’re forgetting Rupert Fleetwood.’