‘And get arrested for the theft of the nef,’ said Strike.
‘But if he wasn’t thinking rationally?’
Strike swallowed a large mouthful of black pudding before saying,
‘I’m not denying Fleetwood’s moved up the table of possible Wrights, but answer me this. If he was genuinely happy about the pregnancy, why did he rip up the “lucky T-shirt” he was wearing when she told him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘But if Wright had a pregnant girlfriend, and he wasn’t Fleetwood, it seems really strange that no other woman has come forward looking for the father of her child. Decima’s the only recent mother we know of who thinks Wright might’ve been her partner.’
‘Possibly the woman in question thinks she’s just been abandoned,’ said Strike. ‘The anti-Decima.’
‘I still want to know why Rupert went to Sacha Legard’s party,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the last known sighting of him and it’s really strange he gatecrashed it, given everything that was going on at the time. I’m going to speak to Cosima this week, I’ll force her to talk to me, somehow… have you heard from Kim since yesterday?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I wouldn’t have expected her to go quietly. I thought she might’ve come back to you, to persuade you to keep her on.’
‘Not after what I said to her in that bar,’ said Strike. ‘No, I left a message on Pat’s desk this morning to pay her the balance of what we owed her, so hopefully that’s the end of her.’
‘What’ll she do now?’
‘Join Farah Navabi’s new agency, probably.’
‘When can Wardle start, d’you know?’
‘Wednesday. He wants to get straight on the job and he had some leave in hand. Apparently when he said he was resigning, they weren’t overkeen on him hanging around. He thinks they suspect he’s joining us.’
Robin glanced around at the rapidly filling café, and dropped her voice.
‘So… Todd.’
‘Extremely dead Todd,’ said Strike, ‘yeah. Exactly the same m.o. as Wright’s murder, minus dismemberment and mutilation. Blow to the back of the head and multiple knife wounds. The mother took a single stab to the stomach. She wouldn’t have taken much effort. Small and skinny.’
‘This is appalling,’ said Robin.
‘It’s not good,’ agreed Strike. ‘I think Oz has committed four murders in eight months, which puts us in serial killer territory, but I don’t think these are thrill killings – not all of them, anyway. I think he enjoyed Medina, but I doubt he got a kick out of Todd and his mother. Todd had simply become a liability, so he had to go.’
‘Because of the upskirting?’
‘I think so, yeah. He knew Todd might’ve made himself of interest to the police again, and I imagine one of the last things Oz would want is Todd in an interview room. What if Todd decided to give up Oz in some kind of plea deal?’
‘Todd must have been implicated in the murder of Wright himself, then?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘and I think the police are leaning that way too; they’ve connected the dots on Todd and McGee, though I don’t think they know much more than we do. They asked me why they both went to Dalston at the same time.’
‘But Todd had a cast-iron alibi for the actual killing.’
‘He did, yeah, but I’d lay odds Todd wrote Wright’s CV and coached him to scrape through the interview. And another thought occurred to me after I left the police. If Todd found that shithole room in St George’s Avenue for Wright, he might’ve had keys at some point. Could have had spares cut and passed them to Oz. As for all the stuff he fed me about a man in sunglasses watching the shop and Temple Seventeen, and Wright being camp, I think it was all bullshit and attempted misdirection.’
‘So… Oz,’ said Robin. ‘We’re looking at a violent sex offender who kills people who become dangerous to him?’
‘A violent sex offender who shows no mercy to accomplices who can’t refrain from sex offending, even though all the evidence shows his self-restraint could use some work.’
‘He hasn’t been caught for any of these murders, though,’ said Robin, ‘which suggests brains.’
‘Agreed,’ said Strike. ‘Brains, and what I suspect is practice. A genuinely unhinged man might erupt into a sudden killing spree, but Oz isn’t unhinged. He’s methodical and controlled – except where girls are concerned. But even there, he hasn’t been caught yet.’
‘And you say four murders in eight months,’ said Robin, ‘but it might be five. We still don’t know what’s happened to Sapphire Neagle.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on finding out, because the police are playing catch-up where Oz is concerned,’ said Strike. ‘I don’t think they connected Medina’s murder and Neagle’s disappearance until I mentioned it this morning and they didn’t seem to know the real Osgood was emailed by a stranger about a van, from which I deduce that they haven’t been back to the real Osgood or tried to retrieve the mystery messages he’s received. On the other hand, they’ve clearly reconsidered their position that the Oz and Medina sightings in St George’s Avenue were made up by Mandy for money—’
‘Finding out the silver Peugeot visited Newham twice probably did that,’ said Robin.
‘My thoughts exactly. They seemed thoroughly pissed off we know Malcolm Truman’s a mason, and even more pissed off at my suggestion that he refused to consider evidence that the body might not be Jason Knowles, which, needless to say, I made sure I said on tape.’
A yawn overtook Strike. When he’d finished, he raised his hand to the waiter to request more coffee.
‘I imagine you’ve noticed,’ he said, once his mug had been topped up, ‘there’ve been no press stories about Lord Oliver Branfoot’s private porn movies? The de Leon brothers aren’t upholding their side of the bargain.’
‘It’s only been a few days. We did agree they could prepare their mother first.’
‘I want Branfoot neutralised,’ said Strike. ‘We’re vulnerable in more ways than one while he’s skulking around, sending thugs to intimidate us. “We think you might have a flat where you make dirty films” isn’t a solid enough basis for a counter-attack. We need proof. An address.’
‘You still think the man who threatened me was Branfoot’s?’
‘Nobody else connected to this case has got blokes at their fingertips who’d be happy to break the law in exchange for a wad of cash, and while the fucker’s got a hotline to Culpepper, we’re still at risk of more bullshit press stories. I got a snide remark from DCI Northmore about the way I conduct business. I’d say he’d be fucking delighted to see me done over in the tabloids again. It’d help a lot if we could rule out Powell or Semple. How was Wynn Jones?’
Robin gave a short summary of her talk with Jones, concluding,
‘If I had to bet, I’d say he knows where Tyler is, and has promised not to tell. He claims to be convinced Tyler didn’t tamper with the car, but Tyler’s alibi for that night is really feeble – feeling ill and staying at home in his parents’ empty house. But on the other hand, it really does stretch credulity that Tyler followed them all the way to Birmingham to fiddle with the ABS in the car park.’
‘It does, yeah,’ said Strike. He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, then said, ‘Did you believe Jones, when he said Powell never mentioned silver to him?’
‘He kind of scoffed at the idea,’ said Robin. ‘Maybe they were talking about Sylvain Deslandes. Do we keep Pat calling all pubs called the Silver Something? We’re running up a lot of man hours for Decima to pay.’
‘Yeah, but as we’ve got fuck-all else on Powell… incidentally, I finally made direct contact with the Scottish Gateshead on Thursday. When I asked whether she was Rena Liddell she yelled “don’t say my name” or words to that effect and hung up, so I think it’s safe to assume she is. I’ve left messages on all her old social media accounts, asking her to get back in touch. Christ knows where she is. Not London, from what she’s said. I thought she might’ve gone back to Scotland, but I had a look overnight and I can’t find a single Scottish pub called the Golden Fleece. Unless I’ve missed one, it’s a name that only appeals to the English and Welsh…