Wordlessly, both Strike and Robin turned and looked back towards Millfield Lane.
‘Could they possibly have been going to Blay’s flat, now they thought he was dead and couldn’t disturb them?’
‘That’s got to be a possibility,’ said Strike. ‘And that suggests the killer knew they’d be able to get access to the flat. Pity we don’t know whether anything’s gone missing from it. Mind you,’ Strike added, consulting the map on his phone, ‘it’s hard to see why, if Josh’s flat was their objective, they needed to come onto the Heath at all. There’s an easy direct route through the streets from Highgate Cemetery to Millfield Lane.
‘If,’ said Strike slowly, thinking it through, ‘the killer was Gus Upcott – humour me for a moment – crossing the Heath to get to and from the cemetery would’ve been the quickest route and avoided CCTV cameras. However,’ said Strike, scratching his chin while staring at the map, ‘he shouldn’t have come anywhere near this pond. It’s right off his route, assuming he headed straight home after stabbing them.’
‘Could the killer have been meeting somewhere else here?’ asked Robin. ‘There are a lot of trees. Good place of concealment. Or did they head into the trees to take off a disguise?’
‘Both possibilities,’ said Strike, nodding, ‘although there are clumps of trees closer to where Gus would’ve logically entered the Heath. Of course, this all assumes the killer meant to come here. The alternative is that they were forced to divert for some reason.’
‘To avoid people?’
‘People… or maybe just one person, who’d have recognised them,’ said Strike, who’d just pulled the list of names Katya had given him out of his pocket. ‘Yeah, look at this… a lot of people originally connected to The Ink Black Heart grew up in this area or live locally. Wally Cardew, Ian Baker and Lucy Drew, who played Lord and Lady’ – Strike squinted at the paper – ‘“Wyrdy-Grob”, were all from Gospel Oak. Schoolfriends of Josh Blay’s. And Preston Pierce was living at North Grove at the same time as Edie and Josh,’ said Strike, reading off Katya’s notes. ‘“Liverpudlian, voiced Magspie for two episodes.”’
‘Pez,’ said Robin suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Preston. Pez. The person who was supposed to be meeting Nils, Wally, Seb and Tim at the Red Lion and Sun. It was in your notes.’
‘Bloody well remembered,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet that’s him.’
‘Where’s North Grove from here?’ asked Robin, looking around.
Strike consulted the map.
‘That way,’ said Strike, pointing across the pond towards the road. ‘No earthly reason to come onto the Heath if you were heading back to North Grove. It’d be a very short walk home from the cemetery if the killer was someone from that art collective.’
Strike folded up Katya’s paper and tucked it back into his notebook, and contemplated a passing swan for a few moments before saying:
‘These attacks were planned. The time and place might not have been predetermined, but you can’t buy tasers in this country and people don’t generally have machetes lying around. This whole thing smacks of someone just waiting for a decent opportunity. They had everything ready to go.’
Robin’s phone rang. It was Midge. Robin answered, her heart suddenly racing.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘You owe me big time for this, Ellacott.’
‘Oh wow,’ said Robin, and Strike wondered why she was suddenly looking elated.
‘Got a pen?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, rummaging in her pocket and pulling out her notebook. She dropped into a crouch, pulled off the lid of her pen with her teeth and readied herself to write with the notebook open on her knee.
‘All right, here we go,’ said Midge heavily. ‘Her username’s Buffypaws, all one word, capital B. Don’t laugh. Buffy was the name of our cat.’
Robin spelled the name aloud to Midge as she wrote it down.
‘Exactly,’ said Midge. ‘And the password,’ she growled, ‘is WishIWasWithEllen. All the words are capitalised – tell you what, I’ll text it to you.’
‘Midge, I can’t thank you enough for this.’
‘“Wish I was with fookin’ Ellen”,’ said Midge bitterly. ‘That was her ex before me.’
‘Tasteful,’ said Robin. ‘Did you have to give up the mirror?’
‘Yeah. Don’t worry, though,’ said Midge. ‘There’s going to be a fookin’ big crack in it by the time she takes delivery.’
Robin laughed, thanked Midge again, then got to her feet.
‘We can get into the game.’
‘What?’
Robin explained.
‘Ellacott, you’re a genius,’ said Strike. ‘You can be inside the game while I’m interviewing Ormond. If Anomie turns up while Ormond’s talking to me, we’re down one suspect.’
35
By that gate I entered lone
A fair city of white stone…
Yet I heard no human sound;
All was still and silent round
As a city of the dead.
The Flask, which lay close to Hampstead Heath, was a very old pub, which had three separate parlours and two different bars: it was, in fact, tailor-made for two people who wished to coordinate their activities while out of sight of each other.
‘Great, it’s got Wi-Fi,’ said Robin, checking her phone as she and Strike stood at the bar together, fifteen minutes before Phillip Ormond was due to arrive. ‘I’ll keep my phone for Anomie’s Twitter feed and use my iPad to access the game… I’ve been carrying it around ever since I asked Midge for Beth’s log-in details,’ she explained to Strike, pulling the iPad out of the small nylon backpack she usually took on surveillance. ‘Just in case.’
‘The Boy Scouts missed a trick, not recruiting you,’ said Strike. ‘What d’you want?’
‘Tomato juice and a bag of crisps, please, I’m starving,’ said Robin. ‘Then I’ll get out of the way so Ormond can’t see me.’
Once she had her drink and crisps, Robin left Strike for the parlour adjacent to the main bar, where she sat down at a small corner table beside a fireplace. Having eaten a third of the crisps in a couple of mouthfuls, she propped up her iPad in front of her, took out her notebook and pen, checked Anomie’s Twitter feed, which showed no new activity, then brought up Drek’s Game.
A group of four middle-aged Americans entered the small parlour, one of the women reading aloud from a guidebook.
‘“… haunted”,’ said a voice from the Deep South, and the word seemed to have twice as many vowels as Robin would have given it, ‘“by the ghost of a Spanish barmaid who hanged herself in the cellar, for unrequited love of the pub’s owner”.’
A good deal of loudly interested comment ensued and much scraping of chairs, as the foursome took the table beside Robin.
Feeling tense, Robin typed the username Buffypaws into Drek’s Game’s login panel and then, after checking the capitalisation on Midge’s text, the password, WishIWasWithEllen.
Please work. Please work. Please work.
‘“The Flask”,’ continued the American woman with the guidebook, ‘“was the site of one of England’s first ever autopsies, performed” – oh, my word –’
Robin hadn’t ever watched a loading gif revolve with such anticipation.