No minute gone comes ever back again, Take heed and see ye do nothing in vain.
Back in Camberwell, Plug’s son was unlocking the allotment gate and Robin, with relief, had taken refuge beside a postbox.
‘This is getting bloody strange and murky,’ said Strike. ‘If we accept the premise that a rich, powerful Freemason wanted a man who was blackmailing him dead – and blackmailing victims do tend to want their blackmailers dead – I can’t see any earthly reason why the hit had to be carried out at Ramsay Silver. In fact, you’d think a murderous Freemason would want to keep the whole thing as far away from a masonic silver shop as possible, and why the fuck he’d have given instructions that the corpse should be draped in a masonic sash…’
‘And if Wright really was the blackmailer of a wealthy Freemason,’ said Robin, watching Plug Junior hurrying towards the padlocked shed door, ‘why would he go and work for another Freemason?’
‘Well, exactly. The whole thing feels like something dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. It’s like the plot of a B movie.’
‘But Shanker’s not a conspiracy theorist.’
‘You say that,’ said Strike slowly, ‘but get Shanker on to the subject of what powerful people in the law-abiding world get up to and things get fantastical, fast. You’ll never convince him that people who’ve achieved wealth and power legally aren’t really crooks, and he’s a firm believer in secret associations and hidden influence that people like him can’t access – and I know,’ said Strike, guessing what Robin was about to say, ‘unfair advantages and old boys’ networks exist, of course they do, but what Shanker believes goes way beyond that. If you told him the Prime Minister siphons off half the nation’s taxes and puts them in his own bank account, Shanker would tell you you’re a mug for not thinking he takes three quarters. At bottom, he thinks everyone’s as bent as he is, and world leaders and billionaires just conspire with each other to get away with it.’
‘He can’t think everyone’s bent,’ said Robin reasonably. ‘He knows you.’
‘He accepts that freaks of nature like me crop up from time to time, but he’s more credulous than you might think once outside his area of expertise.’
‘So you think Shanker’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick? It’s all rubbish?’
‘He claims to know the actual killer. He says the guy’s been mouthing off, pleased he got away with it. We’ve got to take that seriously. And there was that call to the office, too. It could’ve been a random nutter – but it might not’ve been.’
‘D’you want to drop the case?’ Robin asked, and she was surprised how unhappy she felt at the thought of doing so.
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘I’m getting more and more interested – but it’s not just up to me. That’s why I called.’
‘Well, if Shanker’s right, the risk was there already, wasn’t it?’ said Robin. ‘Whoever killed Wright was never going to be happy we’re investigating, were they? I can’t honestly see that we’d be in any less danger if we give up. It’s not as if we can let them know we’re backing off. In fact, it’s far better to know they’re on to us. We’re forearmed.’
‘That’s exactly my thinking,’ said Strike. ‘What’s Plug Junior up to now?’
‘He’s inside the shed.’
The pain in Robin’s lower right side was still extremely sharp. For the first time, she thought she might make that appointment with her GP. Previous neglect of symptoms had led her directly into the mess she’d recently found herself in; the responsible thing was to get herself checked. Wanting distraction, she said,
‘Have you been following Patterson’s case?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Not exactly riveting so far, is it? I was hoping they’d just call him a cunt and give him ten years.’
‘Maybe it’ll hot up once he’s on the stand. Are you going to get back inside Liberty’s and buy some presents?’
‘Fine,’ Strike sighed, and he returned inside the shop, to be met with a blast of hot air and ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. ‘How’m I supposed to know what scarves to buy?’
‘Well,’ said Robin, her eyes still on the distant shed, ‘Prudence likes classic colours. Cream, navy blue, black… nothing multicoloured or, you know, hippy. And Lucy looks good in pastels, so go light, and nothing too dramatic or splashy.’
‘How d’you know these things?’ said Strike, in honest amazement.
‘How do I know what looks nice on people?’
‘All of it,’ said Strike, who was now standing in a bewildering array of scarves of different sizes and patterns. ‘Remembering what colours Prudence wears.’
‘The same reason you remember the legend of Hiram Abiff. Listen, I know you’re not going to like this, but I think we ought to get the staff Christmas presents, too.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ groaned Strike.
‘It’s good for morale,’ said Robin, ‘and we’ve got a really great team for once. We ought to be showing our appreciation.’
‘I’m not buying more scarves,’ said Strike firmly.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Robin. ‘I was thinking bottles of booze, or gift tokens. And,’ she added, because she didn’t doubt Strike was as clueless about what to buy her as he was about his sisters, ‘if you’re getting me a scarf, I like blue and green.’
‘Too late, I’ve already chosen your present,’ said Strike. ‘I’m going to have to go, I can’t hear a bloody thing. Speak to you later.’
He hung up, leaving Robin in a state of mild surprise.
23
Then evils gather together,
There wants not one of them all –
Wrath, envy, discord, strife…
The substitution of Two-Times for Mr A meant that the agency was once again working at full capacity. Strike and Robin saw each other only in passing over the next few days, so informed each other by text and phone call that nobody they’d approached for further information on the silver vault case had responded.
‘It’s Christmas,’ Robin reminded Strike on Monday, ‘people will be busy or visiting family.’
In spite of these frustrations, there were developments in two matters of mutual interest, both unrelated to the murder of William Wright. The first was a couple of days of high excitement in the Patterson case, which was being lavishly covered in the papers. On Tuesday, Farah Navabi took the stand, and turned in a heart-rending, charismatic performance. Breaking down in sobs, so that a solicitous judge asked whether she’d like a break to compose herself, the beautiful Navabi regaled the court with an account of how she’d been relentlessly bullied, intimidated and sexually harassed by her boss, and revealed that she’d only undertaken the job of bugging the barrister’s office because Patterson had made egregious threats of retaliation if she didn’t do as she was told.
‘I can’t tell you how much I regret it,’ she sobbed. ‘Andrew Honbold’s a good, good man, and Mitch had me convinced he was a monster.’
‘Told you,’ said Kim Cochran smugly, during what Strike made sure was a brief surveillance handover that evening. ‘She’s rented premises in Belsize Park and she’s already snagged a ton of Patterson’s clients.’
On Wednesday, Patterson, who was tall and broad-shouldered, with a deeply pitted and lined face, was pursued from car to court by paparazzi. His evidence, live-tweeted from court by several journalists, became instantly meme-worthy for his barked repetition of the phrase ‘wholly and completely untrue’. By the time he was permitted to leave the witness stand he’d said it forty-seven times, and nobody, with the possible exception of Patterson himself, was surprised when the following morning he was found guilty, with sentencing deferred to the new year.