Phillip Ormond was Edie Ledwell‘s partner at the time of her death; they were living together at his home in Finchley. He is a computing teacher at a high school in Highgate, although he used to be in the police. Edie and Ormond met at North Grove Art Collective when Ormond attended an evening class there.

Strike interviews Ormond in The Flask in Highgate. “Several inches shorter than the man he’d come to meet, Ormond looked as though he might be a regular gym user. He had light blue, wide-set eyes, light brown hair, which was worn short and neat, and a pointed jaw covered in carefully trimmed stubble” (Ch 36). Strike also notes that “Ormond now proved himself to belong to that category of men who seem to think they’ll be suspected of impotence unless their handshake causes the recipient physical pain” and gives Ormond a taste of his own medicine as they part after the interview (Ch 36).

Ormond claims to have asked Edie to marry him shortly before she was killed, although Edie told nobody about this before she died. Grant Ledwell, Edie’s uncle, is of the opinion that Ormond is telling people they were engaged in order to try and make a claim on Edie’s estate (Ch 18). In a similar vein, Ormond tells Strike that he was helping Edie write the script for The Ink Black Heart, and that Edie was planning on giving him a writing credit for the film.

On finding out that Josh Blay placed a letter in Edie’s coffin, Ormond does the same.

It later transpires that Ormond is collaborating with Yasmin Weatherhead on her book about The Ink Black Heart and its fandom.