The Hallmarked Man Advent Adventure, Part 3: Chapters 15-19.

Note:  full book spoilers for The Hallmarked Man.  

Strike glanced up at the camera over the street door as he and Robin emerged into the chilly afternoon. 

Chapter 15 finds our heroes heading out to the pub lunch they didn't get on Strike's birthday, to review what they learned at the silver shop. interestingly, one of the first things Robin tells him is that she liked the orb charm. 

Some of the interesting clues that pop up in this conversation:

• The silver itself, despite being valuable, was an odd thing to steal, given it would have relatively limited appeal outside of a very small niche group. 
• Tyler Powell is described as having "overlarge ears" and ears were one of the parts removed from the body. As best I can remember, he's the only corpse candidate described as having distinctive ears. 

Strike manages to turn the conversation to Valentine Longcaster and Sacha Legard, and from there to Charlotte's suicide note and its mention of Robin. Strike brings up that Charlotte had spoken of Robin to Strike when sober, as well, and this completely spooks her. She winds up in the ladies room on the toilet, with her head in her hands, "asking herself what the hell Strike was playing at." 

We get one of the longest looks into Robin's thought processes in the book here, with Robin essentially considering three hypotheses:

1. He is "making straightforward statements of fact, untinged with embarrassment."
2. He is "trying to tell her indirectly that he did have deeper feelings for her than he'd ever admitted before.
3. It is "safe to play this game, now that she was with Murphy. Was his aim to undermine her relationship because it suited him better to keep her single, meaning the threat of her leaving the agency receded?"

Naturally, she feels annoyed, which pushes her away from the correct explanation (2) and towards 3. and RFM, with his lack of game-playing, starts to look a bit better. Interestingly, as Robin remembers the moments that they had come closest to initiating a romance (the hug on the stairs in LW, the missed kiss outside the Ritz in TIBH) she includes reaching for Strike's hand in their shared hotel bed on the list for the first time.

Strike, for his part, gets two setbacks in his plan while Robin is in the loo.  First, he learns that the Kimphomaniac has swapped jobs with Midge and will be accompanying him to the fancy dinner that night. Worse, he learns from Robin's phone that she is house-hunting with RFM.  Despite their agreement to go together to seek out William Wright's neighbors, both partners leave the pub a bit disgruntled with each other. The chapter closes with 

"Fine, said Robin again, now brisk. "Let me know when."

while Chapter 16 opens with 

Strike returned to the office in a far worse mood than he'd left it. 

Unfortunately, this pattern will repeat itself several more times before the book is through. 

Strike takes care of some case-related business: online research on Niall Semple and contacting Graham Hardacre (his first appearance since CoE) as well as chatting with Barclay about his proposal to climb a roof to see what is in Plug's dog-guarded compound. Then, he has to put on his fancy clothes to meet KFC at the Dorchester.  

Kim shows up in revealing clothes and no underwear, eager to drink and overshare with her new boss about her hobby of sleeping with married man. Equally unwelcome is the appearance of Nina Lascelles (throwback to The Silkworm) drunker and nastier than when we last saw her and bearing a grudge against Strike not only for the way he ghosted her six years ago but claiming he recently "f*cked up" a friend's life. On first read, I wondered if this was Giles Harmon, who we had heard earlier was in hiding in the aftermath of the UHC's exposure. In any case, this chance encounter will have serious repercussions in terms of stirring up Nina's cousin Dominic's vendetta against Strike. 

Strike makes his first phone contact with Jade Semple, and learns from Kim that Farah Navabi expects to escape charges in the Patterson bugging and is opening her own agency. 

There's another significant Christmas song playing, Judy Garland's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which includes the line "Someday soon we all will be together, if the Fates allow." This has a double meaning, since Strike took Decima's case primarily because he thought it would afford opportunities to get closer to Robin, and Decima is the name of one of the Three Fates in Roman mythology.  The same one, in fact, that was known as Lachesis to the Greeks and whose name was important to the mystery of LW. 

The Kimphomaniac serves her only useful function of the book by snapping the picture that will end the cricketer case. 

"The woman in gold is Lady Violet," said Kim triumphantly. "Dominic Culpepper's wife."

Chapter 17 picks up the next morning, when

Strike called Robin on Saturday morning to give her two bits of news, neither of them particularly welcome. 

The first is straightforward: Barclay got caught and arrested trying to get into the compound. The second is a bit odder: Kim has cracked the case of Mrs. A with the photo. Atypically, Robin is not happy about this, "imagining Kim's smug self-satisfaction." She had a similar reaction to Saul F. Murphy's quick resolution of the Mrs. Smith case in Troubled Blood, another connection between those KFC and SFM. Maybe they'll meet as employees of Navabi, Inc. and fall in love. 

Unfortunately, it isn't a good look for either detective when they let personal feelings put them into a position where they are hoping a case doesn't get solved. We'll see more of this from Strike later on. Also unfortunately, this development gives Robin an unexpected day off on Sunday, and she has an enjoyable date with RFM, and, over wine, agrees to start seriously looking for houses. 

Monday morning Robin is heading to work and is called by Midge. Annoying as Midge's gossip can be, it serves a good purpose for the readers here: giving us more evidence of what a liar KFC is--Strike told her absolutely nothing about his exes at the party. It also, unfortunately, plants unhelpful ideas in Robin, both suspicion that Strike could be sleeping with Kim and speculation about who this mysterious ex could be. As a result, there's a "slight aloofness" when she meets up with Strike on St. George's Avenue. 

So the partners split up, Strike walking up the street and Robin down. 

Fortunately, they are not split up for long, because

St. George's Avenue wasn't a particularly long street.

and Strike manages to find the house quickly.  Chapter 18 finds our heroes visiting a bedsit where it is hard to imagine any family willingly living, unless the alternative was literal homelessness. Strike is taken back to his childhood in squats with Leda. Personally, I was reminded of the visit to Betty Fuller's in Troubled Blood. 

Fortunately Mandy and Daz are quite chatty and give major information about Wright that they declined to tell the police; namely, that a curly-haired man and a younger woman with long dark hair arrived at his flat with his keys and carried away suitcases full of something heavy, then drove away in a silver car. Here we see one of the major plot holes: the curly haired visitor was 5 foot tall Ian Griffiths.  Mandy got a good enough look at him to notice his hair and glasses, but did not make note that he was unusually short. 5 feet tall is a good 9 inches shorter than average, shorter than 99.96 % of British men.

This is also when Robin gets the first clue about "Rita Linda" which she will turn into a very impressive lead, even if it takes Strike a while to understand the significance. During the interview, Robin also turns the tables on Strike by accidentally getting a glimpse of one of his texts: one from KFC with the words "SO SEXY."

Unfortunately, Strike has two reasons to be disgruntled at chapter's end. First, Robin postpones their debrief, telling him she is viewing a house later. She doesn't mention Murphy but, thanks to the text, Strike knows this is a joint undertaking. Second, he becomes aware of the Kimphomaniac's texting games. 

Another text from Kim had followed the one he'd glimpsed inside. 

Omg, sorry, that wasn't meant for you!

He scrolled up to the previous text. 

He looked SO SEXY in his dinner jacket!

Welcome to middle school, folks. 

Fortunately for Strike, the first house on Robin and RFM's list is a dump. 

"So," said Murphy, setting a glass of tonic water and a packet of crisps in front of Robin six hours later. "That was a waste of bloody time."

Chapter 19 shows Robin and RFM in a pub, after the house viewing. He's supposedly drinking zero-alcohol beer, but we're not told if it is in a glass or a bottle and, if the former, I'd be willing to bet it wouldn't pass the sniff test. He was also late and unresponsive during the house viewing, raising the possibility that he was drunk then. The gang shooting case isn't going well, and he's expecting bad press from an interview with the victim's mother.  Robin is relieved when he leaves because she is in a state that is "a combination of anxious, miserable and another emotion that she didn't particularly want to identify." And for plenty of reasons other than the dumpy house.

She remains in the pub, brooding about the "SO SEXY" text from KFC,  and debating whether she and Strike need to tell the police about Mandy and Daz's observations. Strike, too, is brooding in a pup (his favorite, the Flying Horse). He debates for 30 minutes before texting Robin to ask about the house. Robin is touched by his interest and he is relieved to hear the place was unacceptable. 

They start a text conversation that initially seems to be cheering them both up. Strike has located the Abused and Accused website, and Robin unknowingly reads a message that will be important later, AustinH's complaint about his girlfriend's father spreading rumors about him.  Strike offers to call Wardle with Daz and Mandy's information, which takes the pressure off Robin to tell RFM. Unfortunately, Strike makes the mistake of saying that KFC may have an in with the police that would help with the case, triggering a huge bout of jealousy in Robin. Robin leaves the pub to head back to the Land Rover. 

Strike shows remarkable insight not only to what Kim is up to, but also to the possibility that Robin had seen the offending text, and manages to diffuse the bomb by saying that Kim is starting to "p*ss him off." Robin perks up, but her relief is short-lived, because Strike gos on to tell her about meeting a "cousin of Dominic Culpepper" at the dinner, which triggers Robin into speculating about the identity of this heretofore unknown ex-- ad wondering how many other ones there are in London. Strike, who had been so savvy about how to soothe the KFC situation, is now "oblivious to the new hole he'd inadvertently dug for himself." Thus, the three steps forward, two steps back pattern seen so often with our heroes in this book. 

After a few more case-related exchanges, Robin cuts the conversation because she's in the unheated Land Rover and wants to go home. The detective duo agree to meet on Wednesday afternoon to review the security footage from Ramsay's silver shop, and Strike is relieved to have another meeting with Robin on his schedule. 

Given her house-hunting activities, every conversation from now on had to be considered in the light of an opportunity. 

We'll see what opportunities arise in Chapter 20-25 as the Advent Adventure continues on Saturday. 

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