"Oo's grassed?" said Shanker furiously: Are seeds for a Sleep Tight, Evangeline plotline being planted at Barnaby's ?

One of the relatively successful guesses I made prior to The Hallmarked Man was that the Arsehole Cricketer case would really enrage Dominic Culpepper, which would result in retaliatory journalism that would necessitate Strike making contact with his father. True, I thought the scandalous story would involve Leda, not Bijou, (perhaps trying to implicate Rokeby, Strike or both in her death) and that Rokeby and Strike would have to team up because they both had a reason to block publication, but I was still close.  During this most recent re-read, I am seeing what could be hints for a future plotline, one that I think could bring disaster, or even tragedy, to everyone's favorite career-criminal-with-a-heart-of-gold, Shanker. 

Longtime readers know that Shanker and I are somewhat like Harry Potter and Professor Trelawny, in that I have been predicting his death since before Troubled Blood was published. Still, there are several hints in The Hallmarked Man that have me visualizing trouble for him, and lots of them happen at the start of Part Eight, when Strike is arrested and interrogated.  My major concern is that the Met seems very eager to know the identity of Strike's criminal contact. 

“Where did you get the tip-off that Knowles wasn’t the man found in the silver vault?" asked Iverson.

Noting that they were now acknowledging that they’d been well aware before tonight that Strike was investigating the body in the vault, he replied,

"A contact."

“Same guy who’s previously given you tips on organised crime?’

"Yeah," said Strike.

"People might think an informant like that would do more good working with the police, than for a private detective,’ said Northmore. The man’s breath really stank; Strike was trying not to breathe through his nose. "Or d’you pay him well enough to make sure you’re the only one who gets tips?"

"Not a question of money," said Strike, and Northmore let out a small, derisive snort, which irritated the detective, though he tried not to show it. "This particular contact would collaborate with the Met when hell freezes over.”

The thing is, this is not the first Met cop to inquire about Shanker in this book. The first was RFM himself, at the celebratory toast for the new house, back in Chapter 75 (February 10th, only slightly more than two weeks before Strike's arrest). 

“Who’s this contact Strike’s got, who knows all this inside stuff?"

"I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. I don’t know his real name."

"He’s clearly well informed," said Murphy.

"Yes," said Robin.

"A crim, obviously."

"Yes,’"said Robin again. She drank more wine, still holding Murphy’s hand.

As I have said before, any seemingly minor detail that pops up twice in a book deserves special attention. 

Despite what Strike told Iverson and Northmore, (“Murphy’s never shared confidential information with me, and to my knowledge he’s never shared it with my partner, either,”) RFM has passed information about the case on to them at least twice in the last three months: the first, back in November when he told Strike and Robin about the undercover officer in the Knowles operation and the reason the body had not been DNA-tested and, more recently, on February 10th, when he gave Robin the information about the getaway vehicle. We know the first information came from Iverson; we can guess the second did, too. Iverson seems to have both personal and professional interest in Murphy; according to Wardle, she suspected Murphy of drinking again back in January. She is certainly well-informed on the trouble he is in for his actions on the gang shooting. 

The fact that Iverson and Murphy asked the same question to Strike and Robin respectively leads me to wonder: did Murphy inquire about Shanker's identity at Iverson's behest? Did she "strike" some sort of deal with RFM, exchanging information on the silver vault case for his promise that he would try to find out Strike's contact's identity, via his girlfriend?

For that matter, could Iverson's sudden interest in Wardle at the end of the book be not so much a rebound from losing RFM to Robin, but in hopes that Wardle, clearly more friendly with Strike than RFM ever will be, will eventually learn Shanker's identity and she'll be able to get the information from him?

The Met's interest may extend beyond Iverson. We know Murphy is in a lot of trouble at work, and the subject of a formal investigation for both excessive force with a suspect and on-the-job drinking. Could one of his superiors have offered to make some of his troubles go away in exchange for this information?

What worries me is that it seems that a good detective-- and neither Murphy or Iverson strike me as dumb--could probably figure it out, especially if Robin lets any more information slip to her boyfriend, like the fact that this informant is someone Strike has known since his teens. There is at least one public document that links Strike and Shanker, and includes the latter's real name. Recall from CoE that Shaker and Strike were both witnesses in Whittaker's murder trial. 

Inadvisedly allowed into the witness box to describe a maternal woman who never touched heroin in her life, Shanker had screamed, "That fucker done it!," attempted to climb over the barrier towards Whittaker and been unceremoniously bundled out of the courtroom.

The early part of Shanker's testimony, where he "described a maternal woman" would almost certainly have included questions about his relationship with Leda, and he likely spoke of the way she had become a second mother to him. This would have established that he and Strike, at least for a time, lived as foster brothers. We also know Shanker's name is in the police files, given that he's been in and out of jail much of his life, and that he was in serious danger of going being incarcerated again as recently as December. It would not be a stretch to think some enterprising cop might think to review the trial transcripts in search of people Strike lived with as a teen, recognize that Strike and Shanker were both close to Leda, and connect the name of that unruly witness to the modern-day career criminal who is clearly well-placed to feed Strike information. 

Even more ominous: The police presumably searched Barnaby's shortly after Strike's tip-off, and, if they examined the most recently processed van, they probably found evidence implicating Marco Ricci in criminal activity. If the police have a vested interest in finding out who Strike's informant is, the Riccis, and probably other organized crime figures, have even more of a motive to find out who spilled the beans. It was strongly hinted in TB that the Riccis have cops in their pockets. I don't like Shanker's chances if bigwigs of London's crime network find out that he was the reason the cops shut down Barnaby's. It could also mean danger for Strike and, by extension, a lot of other people. Remember what Robin told us back in TB: 

If you'd been recognized in there, the whole agency would have paid the price. I've read up on Ricci. I'm not stupid. He goes for people's families and associates and even their pets as often as he goes for them personally. 

I certainly hope Angel's full name is not "Evangeline."  Between Brockbank and the leukemia, the poor child's suffered enough.