‘Did you tell the police about the yellow weights you saw in Wright’s room?’
‘No. They’ll have seen them for themselves, won’t they, when they went in there?’
‘Did you know two people – a man and a woman – went into William’s flat twice, before and after his murder, and removed things?’
‘I heard they’d been there, but not that they took anything. The woman on the ground floor asked me if I’d seen them, but I hadn’t. They stole, you say? They robbed the flat?’
‘Yeah, we think so. Can you remember anything else William said to you or your wife? Like friends, co-workers, anyone else he knew in London?’
‘No… except, he told us about a foodbank in… Stone Road, I think it was.’
‘Had Wright used it?’
‘I think so. He told us he didn’t have much money.’
‘Stone Road, yeah?’
‘Yes. My wife and I went there a few times, after he told us.’
Robin texted her gratitude to Midge, then noticed she’d received a WhatsApp response from Chloe Griffiths.
No I don’t know why Tyler left, he was hardly talking to me before I went interrailing and my boyfriend was getting angry if I even said hello to him in the street after he gave me that crappy birth flower bracelet thing. Why are you still pestering me? I DON’T KNOW WHERE TYLER POWELL IS AND I DON’T FUCKING CARE.
Robin sent a fresh WhatsApp message.
Out of interest, where were you, the night that Hugo and Anne-Marie crashed?
She had a hunch that Chloe might want to do some thinking before she answered that one.
Robin now looked up Stone Road in Newham, where William Wright had visited a foodbank. They needed just one person who hadn’t been drunk, drugged, or suffering visual problems when viewing Wright by daylight; just one, who’d look at a photograph and say, with conviction, it was him…
Mohamed had, understandably, mistaken the name of the street where the foodbank was situated: it was ‘Strone’, not Stone. Robin made a note of this, remembering as she did so Wynn Jones’ smug correction of herself: on Wellsey Road – Wesley Road…
Words that were easily mistaken for each other… things that looked as you expected them to look. A sheaf of corn, or a tree. A black lion on a yellow background…
Names… William Wright was a wholesale manufacturer of catering silverware, or an eighteenth-century Scottish botanist, or a famous English football player, or a Freemason who’d drowned in the First World War… the meaning of names…
Struck by a random idea, Robin looked up the meaning of a name on Google.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
With shaking hands, she opened Instagram yet again. She had to be sure, before she contacted Strike. She must be absolutely certain.
An hour passed, and for the first time since she’d been attacked outside the Whiteheads’ house, Robin forgot her fear. She neither jumped at small night-time noises, nor did she get up from her table to re-check that the door was locked. It didn’t occur to her to cross to the window to stare down into Blackhorse Road, in case Wade King was watching her windows. All she cared about was proving the shocking theory that had leapt out at her, from the meaning of a name.
At last, she reached for the mobile beside her and called her partner’s number.
Strike answered almost immediately.
‘Where are you?’ asked Robin.
‘Just left Rena Liddell in a Travelodge,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve paid for her to stay there a couple of nights. How’re you?’
‘Strike, I think I’ve got something important – really important.’
‘Funnily enough,’ said Strike, who was limping towards to his BMW, ‘so have I.’
PART TEN
Here, of a surety, he said to himself, was the silver heart from which the scattered veins had been projected.
117
Knight of the East, or the Sword…
Most men yield to the stress of the current, and float with it to the shore, or are swept over the rapids; and only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.
‘I still think,’ said Strike, ‘we’ll be very lucky to interest the Met with what we’ve got right now.’
He was back at the office, sitting at the partners’ desk, the sky jet black outside the window. He and Robin were still on the call he’d taken on the way to his car, two hours previously. Each had shared everything they’d discovered and deduced, and while both believed that, at long last, they’d isolated the puzzle pieces of William Wright from those of other men and assembled them correctly, their conversation had been going round in circles for a while.
‘I’ve been kicking myself,’ said Robin. ‘I should’ve seen…’
‘We’ve been hunting a needle in a fucking haystack,’ said Strike, ‘but I can’t see what our counterargument is if the police say all we’ve got is guesswork, a couple of fake Instagram accounts and an old ad on eBay… bloody good work finding that, though.’
He was looking at the old advert as he spoke, because Robin had sent it to him by emaiclass="underline" second-hand weights, sold by a man in Dagenham in May of the previous year. Robin had already contacted the seller, and been told that a man called Will had purchased them for cash; he’d been delighted with them, because he hadn’t imagined such a set existed.
‘I’m nervous about you going it alone again,’ said Robin, refusing to be flattered out of her concerns.
‘I won’t be alone, I’m taking Barclay and Wardle.’
‘Going rogue, then. In the sense of getting arrested for breaking and entering again.’
‘This’ll be different.’
‘How?’
‘If I’m lucky, I’ll get in and out without anyone knowing I was ever there. You’re the one who thinks this might be life and death.’
Robin had indeed said this towards the beginning of the call, but two hours of circular discussion later she was feeling rather less optimistic.
‘That might’ve been wishful thinking. I hate saying this, but Sapphire Neagle might be dead. There’s been no sign of her in months and we know he’s got no qualms about killing people who’ve outlived their usefulness.’
‘Well, if you and Midge are successful at Ramsay Silver tomorrow morning, we’ll have solid evidence at least part of our theory’s right. Did I tell you Ramsays has been closed up ever since they found out Todd was murdered?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘Why?’
‘Apparently the assistant walked out, afraid she might be the next employee killed, his wife’s in no fit state to return to work and he’s barely clinging on at his financial services job. He says he’s going to declare bankruptcy.’
‘Oh no,’ said Robin.
‘You’ve always felt sorrier for him than he deserves,’ said Strike. ‘I know about the dead son and the ill wife, but the man’s an idiot.’
‘All right, calm down,’ said Robin, in mild surprise at Strike’s grouchy tone. ‘People make mistakes.’