“Got anything for me on Timpson?” she barked at Hardacre, but she gave Strike a suspicious glare and he guessed that she had already been well aware of his presence.
“I’ll cut away now, Hardy,” he said at once. “Great to catch up.”
Hardacre introduced him briefly to the Warrant Officer, gave a potted version of his and Strike’s previous association and walked Strike out.
“I’ll be here late,” he said as they shook hands at the door. “Ring me when you know what time you’ll have the car back. Happy travels.”
As Strike made his way carefully down the stone stairs, it was impossible not to reflect that he could have been here, working alongside Hardacre, subject to the familiar routines and demands of the Special Investigation Branch. The army had wanted to keep him, even with his lower leg gone. He had never regretted his decision to leave, but this sudden, brief re-immersion in his old life gave rise to an inevitable nostalgia.
As he stepped out into the weak sunshine that was gleaming through a rupture in the thick clouds, he had never been more conscious of the change in his status. He was free, now, to walk away from the demands of unreasonable superiors and the confinement of a rock-bound office, but he had also been stripped of the might and status of the British Army. He was completely alone as he resumed what might well prove a wild goose chase, armed only with a few addresses, in pursuit of the man who had sent Robin a woman’s leg.
15
Where’s the man with the golden tattoo?
Blue ?yster Cult, “Power Underneath Despair”
As Strike had expected, driving the Mini, even once he had made every possible adjustment to the seat, was extremely uncomfortable. The loss of his right foot meant that he operated the accelerator with his left. This required a tricky and uncomfortable angling of his body in such a cramped space. Not until he was out of the Scottish capital and safely on the quiet and straight A7 to Melrose did he feel able to turn his thoughts from the mechanics of driving the borrowed car to Private Donald Laing of the King’s Own Royal Borderers, whom he had first met eleven years previously in a boxing ring.
The encounter had happened by evening in a stark, dark sports hall that rang with the raucous cries of five hundred baying squaddies. He had been Corporal Cormoran Strike of the Royal Military Police then, fully fit, toned and muscled with two strong legs, ready to show what he could do in the Inter-Regimental Boxing Tournament. Laing’s supporters had outnumbered Strike’s by at least three to one. It was nothing personal. The military police were unpopular on principle. Watching a Red Cap being knocked senseless would be a satisfying end to a good night’s boxing. They were two big men and this would be the last bout of the night. The roar of the crowd had thundered through both fighters’ veins like a second pulse.
Strike remembered his opponent’s small black eyes and his bristle cut, which was the dark red of fox fur. A tattoo of a yellow rose spanned the length of his left forearm. His neck was thicker by far than his narrow jaw and his pale, hairless chest was muscled like a marble statue of Atlas, the freckles that peppered his arms and shoulders standing out like gnat bites on his white skin.
Four rounds and they were evenly matched, the younger man perhaps faster on his feet, Strike superior in technique.
In the fifth, Strike parried, feinted to the face then struck Laing with a blow to the kidneys that floored him. The anti-Strike faction fell silent as his opponent hit the canvas, then boos echoed throughout the hall like the bellowing of elephants.
Laing was back on his feet by the count of six, but he had left some of his discipline behind him on the canvas. Wild punches; a temporary refusal to break that earned a stern reproof from the ref; an extra jab after the bell: a second warning.