‘We’re definitely accepting what Shanker said, are we? This was a planned killing, not a fight that got out of hand?’
‘Can’t say for sure until we know exactly how Wright died, can we? If there were defensive marks and stab wounds to the front of his body it still might’ve been a punch-up that got out of hand, but it still seems a bloody strange place for a fatal knife fight to break out. Like I said before, a heist is a quick in-out job. You get pissed off at someone during it, you wait until you’re off the premises to thrash things out. I don’t think we should neglect the Ramsay Silver angle, going forwards. It’s all very well trying to fit different candidates to Wright, but I’ve got a feeling that when we find out why he was killed in the vault, we’ll know who he was.’
‘What happened to “means before motive”?’ asked Robin, repeating back to Strike his own oft-quoted dictum.
‘This is means,’ said Strike. ‘The motive could be anything: rage, jealousy, he hadn’t paid a debt. What I want to know is why Wright was killed there. We know he left Ramsay Silver at six, and we know he returned to the shop by night. It beggars belief that he turned up there by chance at one in the morning without realising a large-scale robbery was about to take place, so that suggests Wright’s a crook himself. Trouble is, with Knowles ruled out, the only current candidate for Wright we know had already committed theft is—’
‘Rupert Fleetwood,’ said Robin.
‘Exactly.’
‘But you don’t think Wright’s Fleetwood.’
‘I suppose,’ said Strike reluctantly, ‘framed like this, he has to move up the suspect list a bit, with one proven theft of silver behind him, but there’s a hell of a difference between him marching out of his godfather’s club in broad daylight, staggering under the weight of that nef, and this meticulously planned robbery – because you’ve got to give whoever did it that much credit, they’ve got clean away with it. No trace of the silver since, and no leads. But if the dead man’s Fleetwood, I’d say it was particularly unwise for the gang to polish him off in the vault. Fleetwood was a well-connected upper-class young man, a famous actor’s cousin, and when people like that get killed, you expect payback. I struggle to see how, with three other men in the vault, one of them wouldn’t have stepped in to stop a fight between Fleetwood and his assailant, knowing what the potential consequences might be of leaving him dead on the floor.’
‘I agree,’ said Robin. ‘It doesn’t add up.’
‘But if Wright’s killing was deliberate, planned murder, it seems even stranger than a spontaneous fight. Of all the places to polish someone off, the vault of a masonic silver shop seems one of the stupidest. Ramsays’ security might’ve been shit, but it was still a risky place to get into and you’re absolutely guaranteeing press interest.’
‘Strike, I’m going to have to go, I think she’s off shopping again,’ said Robin, watching Mrs Two-Times descend the steps of the house with her friend, and she ended the call, leaving Strike, whose stomach was now grumbling, to enter a supermarket to buy lunch. Murphy still in mind, he chose a salad, rather than the large BLT he really wanted.
The blonde he’d noticed earlier on the corner of Denmark Street had gone, but when Strike opened the street door to his office he spotted a small white envelope that definitely hadn’t been on the doormat when he’d left. On bending to pick it up, he saw the usual approximation of his own name printed in capitals: CAMERON STRIKE. The writing had an odd appearance, as though carefully formed between two horizontal lines, and Strike, who’d previously had reason to consult handwriting experts, suspected this had been done to eradicate any trace of individuality.
On entering the office, he found Midge and Pat in conversation. They fell silent when he entered. Midge’s eyes, he noticed, were bloodshot.
‘Morning,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t noticed. Walking past the goldfish, he closed the door of the inner office, sat down at the partners’ desk and opened the white envelope. Inside was a piece of paper on which were written two lines of what he recognised as pigpen cipher.
‘The fuck?’ he muttered, and had just turned on his computer to translate it, when Pat knocked on the dividing door.
‘There’s a man ringing the buzzer. Says he wants to talk to you about Niall Semple.’
‘Really?’ said Strike, thinking immediately of the man who’d advised Jade Semple not to speak to him, on the phone. ‘Has he given a name?’
‘No,’ said Pat, looking disgruntled, ‘and he hasn’t got an appointment.’
She disapproved on principle of letting people in off the street without appointments.
‘Let him in.’
Strike got up, closed the wings of the noticeboard on which he’d pinned Semple’s and the other possible Wrights’ pictures, and slid the cipher note out of sight, beneath his keyboard. He then headed into the outer office in time to see Pat opening the glass door, Midge passing out of it, and a stranger walking in.
He was a good-looking man in his late fifties, broad-shouldered, almost as tall as Strike, and wearing a dark blue suit the detective could tell was tailored. He had a thick head of short salt-and-pepper hair, a square jaw and silver-framed glasses, and entered the office, not exactly with an air of expecting to be saluted, but something close to it. Strike wasn’t entirely surprised to see a smile of welcome replace Pat’s scowl; she always had a soft spot for handsome men.
‘Mr Strike?’ said the newcomer, in the kind of rich, upper-class voice Strike could imagine declaring a garden fete open. This definitely wasn’t the man who’d called Jade Semple ‘babe’.
‘That’s me.’
‘Ralph Lawrence.’
They shook hands.
‘Want a coffee?’ asked Strike.
‘No, thanks, pressed for time,’ said Lawrence.
‘I could do you a small one,’ said Pat.
‘All right,’ said Lawrence with what Strike thought was a consciously charming smile, ‘a small one, then.’
‘Come through,’ said Strike, standing back to let Lawrence pass.
He noticed the sweeping gaze the man gave the two rooms as he moved through to the partners’ desk, as though he was memorising details.
‘We’ve got an acquaintance in common,’ Lawrence said, sitting down in Robin’s chair as Strike closed the door.
‘Yeah?’ said Strike. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Angela Darwish.’
Strike’s interest in his uninvited guest sharpened considerably. He and Robin had met Angela Darwish in the context of a previous case, which had involved a far-right terrorist group. Darwish had been working in conjunction with the Met and had never disclosed either her precise job description or employer, but by the end of the investigation, Strike had known perfectly well she was MI5. That didn’t mean Lawrence also worked for the security service, of course, but certain suspicions lurking in the back of Strike’s mind about Niall Semple now took more solid form.
‘How can I help?’ he asked, also sitting down.
‘You’re currently trying to identify the body found in the silver vault at Ramsay Silver, yes?’
In the absence of proof that he was speaking to a genuine MI5 operative, Strike answered with a question of his own.
‘Did Semple’s wife tip you off I want to interview her, or are you monitoring private messages on her Facebook page?’
‘Have you spoken to anyone other than Jade yet?’ Lawrence asked.