‘Did Rupert tell you why he wanted to go abroad?’
‘Because Dino was after him, obviously.’
‘Did he tell you he’d been at Sacha’s birthday party?’
Tara took another drag on her cigarette.
‘He didn’t, but Sacha told me he’d gatecrashed.’
‘Did Sacha say why?’
‘Presumably because he doesn’t often get to hang out with the beautiful people,’ said Tara.
‘Not good-looking enough for a front-of-house job, then? Dish washing, is he?’
‘I’ve just told you, I don’t know where he is and I don’t know what he’s doing.’
‘OK,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I won’t trouble you any longer. Mind if I have a slash before I go?’
‘Yes,’ snarled Tara.
‘No need to get up,’ said Strike, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘I remember where the bog is.’
111
Seems as if we’d got to the end of things…
Preferring to leave the environs of Heberley House well behind him before he took a break for something to eat, Strike drove south to the city of York. Sitting in his parked BMW, and looking forward to a late pub lunch after he’d got this unpalatable duty out of the way, he phoned Decima Mullins.
When he’d finished giving an account of his interview with Tara, Decima said in a high-pitched voice,
‘No – that can’t be true. He’d never have – he wasn’t even in contact with Tara – no, she must be lying!’
‘She’s got the nef,’ said Strike, ‘and frankly, I feel stupid for not remembering that there was an ex-wife who’d be delighted to piss off Dino Longcaster, isn’t strong on ethics and has money to burn. She claims not to know which hotel Rupert’s working in, but I think she’s telling the truth about him working in one of them. She pulled strings to get him and Tish Benton jobs with the chain. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping for, but—’
‘So you’re going to call round all the Clairmont hotels, when he’s not even there?’
‘I think he is at one of those hotels,’ said Strike, trying to inject sympathy rather than impatience into his voice, ‘and no, I’m not going to call them. This ends the case.’
‘Wh – you’re walking out on me?’
‘There’s nothing to be done now that you can’t do yourself, so it would be wrong to keep billing you. I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I know you didn’t want to believe Rupert’s alive, but—’
‘It’s not that – how can you say that?’ she cried. ‘Of course I’d rather think he’s alive, but he’d never have left me like this, never!’
‘Sometimes we’re mistaken about people, however well we think we know them,’ said Strike, still striving for patience. ‘I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, the job’s done. I wish you luck,’ he concluded lamely, ‘and – better times.’
This call ended, Strike left the BMW and, limping slightly again, set off in search of food. While walking, he called Robin and told her the story of his trip to Heberley.
‘… so it’s over,’ he concluded. ‘The job of identifying William Wright returns to the Met. We’re out.’
Strike wasn’t surprised that a shocked silence followed these words.
‘But why did Rupert leave like that?’ said Robin at last. ‘Why do it so cruelly?’
‘I can only assume the easiest explanation is the right one,’ said Strike. ‘He didn’t want a baby and took the coward’s way out. Anyway, I’m starving and there’s a pub ahead, so I’ll talk to you later.’
The name of the pub, the Old White Swan, reminded Strike unhappily of Ironbridge, but as he didn’t want to have to walk any further he entered to find a pleasant space with white and blue painted walls. He’d just bought himself a pint of alcohol-free beer and ordered fish and chips when his Met contact, George Layborn, called him.
‘Hi,’ said the policeman. ‘I got your email about Wade King.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike, sincerely hoping that this would wrap up the entire silver vault case completely. ‘So…?’
‘He was in France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth of June last year.’
‘France?’ repeated Strike, frowning.
‘Yeah, driving a lorry full of Scotch from Speyside to Cannes.’
‘This is cast iron, is it?’
‘Fully corroborated, yeah.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike. ‘No – I mean, that’s good to know. Cheers, I owe you one.’
He hung up. Layborn’s information, while useful, was unwelcome. Had Wade King been Oz, that would have settled everything, but as it was…
He accidentally dislodged his vape from his pocket in replacing his notebook there; it rolled away under an empty neighbouring table, and as Strike bent to pick it up again, he thought again of the tube-like object William Wright had dropped, which Mandy and Daz had thought was a doob tube, and which Wright had claimed had been a blood sample, and he wondered, yet again, what it had really been.
112
Oh ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking
Spins the heavy world around.
If young hearts were not so clever,
Oh, they would be young for ever:
Think no more; ’tis only thinking
Lays lads underground.
So the case was closed. The agency had replaced Decima with the top client on the waiting list, and the mutilated body of the man called William Wright continued to lie unidentified, eyeless and handless in an unknown morgue, and Robin wasn’t supposed to care about him, or about dead Sofia Medina or missing Sapphire Neagle, but her mind refused to expel the disconnected facts of the silver vault case, on which it continued to chew uncomfortably, as if on bits of grit. Had Wright really had a pregnant girlfriend? Why had he visited Abused and Accused? Where was the Murdoch silver? What did the eight digits Niall Semple had left for his wife mean? Why had Chloe Griffiths become so aggressive about a bracelet? What were the things that Albie Simpson-White had said Decima was better off not knowing?
Robin knew she had to let it all go. The case was the Met’s now and, as if to underline the fact, a police spokesman announced on Thursday that Jason Knowles hadn’t been the body in the vault after all. The Sun newspaper was the only one to give any prominence to the story, which ran beneath the headline MASONIC BODY: COPS ‘GOT IT WRONG’.
At Strike’s insistence, Robin was continuing to work either in her flat or at the office. She was starting to feel like Pat’s assistant, dealing with paperwork and small bits of research that could be done online. On the other hand, she knew her mental state was as bad as it had ever been. As the days passed, instead of getting better, she seemed to be worse. Unexpected noises, even her phone ringing, startled her; she couldn’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, and kept having flashbacks of the man who’d tried to throttle her in the Land Rover. The smallest things made her want to cry: spilled orange juice, a lost button. She was trying her best to hide all of this from everyone around her, including Murphy, certain that telling the truth would lead to a row, or an insistence that she stop work altogether for a while.