Career of Evil

15

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.

One minute into the sixth round, Strike managed to capitalize on his opponent’s disintegrating technique and forced Laing, whose nose was now pouring blood, onto the ropes. When the referee separated them, then signaled to continue, Laing shed the last thin membrane of civilized behavior and attempted to land a headbutt. The referee tried to intervene and Laing became crazed. Strike narrowly avoided a kick to the crotch, then found himself locked in Laing’s arms, with the other’s teeth digging into his face. Indistinctly Strike heard the ref’s shouts, the sudden drop in noise from the crowd as enthusiasm turned to unease at the ugly force emanating from Laing. The referee forced the boxers apart, bellowing at Laing, but he seemed to hear none of it, merely gathering himself again then swinging at Strike who sidestepped and landed a hard punch to Laing’s gut. Laing doubled over, winded, and hit the floor on his knees. Strike left the ring to weak applause, blood trickling from the stinging bite on his cheekbone.

Strike, who finished the tournament as runner-up to a Sergeant from 3 Para, was rotated out of Aldershot two weeks later, but not before word had reached him that Laing had been confined to barracks for his display of ill discipline and violence in the ring. The punishment might have been worse, but Strike heard that his senior officer had accepted Laing’s plea of mitigating circumstances. His story was that he had entered the ring deeply distressed by news of his fiancée’s miscarriage.

Even then, years before he had gained the additional knowledge of Laing that had led Strike to this country road in a borrowed Mini, he had not believed that a dead fetus meant anything to the animal he had sensed seething beneath Laing’s hairless, milk-white skin. Laing’s incisor marks had still been visible on his face as he left the country.

Three years later, Strike had arrived in Cyprus to investigate an alleged rape. On entering the interrogation room he came face to face for the second time with Donald Laing, who was now carrying a little more weight and sporting a few new tattoos, his face heavily freckled from the Cyprus sun and creases etched around the deep-set eyes.

Unsurprisingly, Laing’s lawyer objected to the investigation being undertaken by a man whom his client had once bitten, so Strike swapped cases with a colleague who was in Cyprus investigating a drugs ring. When he met this colleague for a drink a week later Strike found, to his surprise, that he was inclined to believe Laing’s story, which was that he and the alleged victim, a local waitress, had had clumsy, drunken, consensual sex which she now regretted because her boyfriend had heard rumors that she had left her place of work with Laing. There were no witnesses to the alleged attack, which the waitress claimed had taken place at knifepoint.

“Real party girl,” was his fellow SIB man’s assessment of the alleged victim.

Strike was in no position to contradict him, but he had not forgotten that Laing had once managed to gain the sympathy of a senior officer after a display of violence and insubordination witnessed by hundreds. When Strike asked for details of Laing’s story and demeanor, his colleague had described a sharp, likable man with a wry sense of humor.

“Discipline could be better,” the investigator admitted, having reviewed Laing’s file, “but I don’t see him as a rapist. Married to a girl from home; she’s out here with him.”

Strike returned to his drug case in the sweltering sun. A couple of weeks later, by now sporting the full beard that grew conveniently fast when he wished to look “less army,” as the military phrase had it, he was to be found lying on the floorboards of a smoke-filled loft, listening to an odd story. Given Strike’s unkempt appearance, his Jesus sandals, baggy shorts and the sundry bracelets tied around his thick wrist, the stoned young Cypriot dealer beside him was perhaps justified in not suspecting that he was talking to a British military policeman. As they lounged side by side with spliffs in their hands, his companion confided the names of several soldiers dealing on the island, and not merely in cannabis. The youth’s accent was thick and Strike was so busy memorizing approximations of the real names, or indeed pseudonyms, that the new name of “Dunnullung” did not immediately suggest anyone he knew. Only when his companion began to tell him how “Dunnullung” tied up and tortured his wife did Strike connect Dunnullung with Laing. “Crazy man,” said the ox-eyed boy in a detached voice. “Because she try and leave.” Upon careful, casual questioning, the Cypriot confided that he had had the story from Laing himself. It seemed to have been told partly to amuse, partly to warn the young man with whom he was dealing.

The Seaforth Estate had been baking in the midday sun when Strike visited it the following day. The houses here were the oldest of the island’s military accommodation, white-painted and a little shabby. He had chosen to visit while Laing, who had successfully eluded his charge of rape, was busy at work. When he rang the doorbell, he heard only a baby’s distant cries.

“We think she’s agoraphobic,” confided a gossipy female neighbor who had rushed outside to share her views. “There’s something a bit off there. She’s really shy.”

“What about her husband?” asked Strike.

“Donnie? Oh, he’s the life and soul, Donnie,” said the neighbor brightly. “You should hear him imitating Corporal Oakley! Oh, it’s spot on. So funny.”

There were rules, many of them, about entering another soldier’s house without his express permission. Strike pounded on the door, but there was no answer. He could still hear the baby crying. He moved around to the rear of the house. The curtains were all closed. He knocked on the back door. Nothing.

His only justification, if he had to defend his actions, would be the sound of that baby crying. It might not be considered sufficient reason for forcing entry without a warrant. Strike mistrusted anyone who was overreliant on instinct or intuition, but he was convinced that there was something wrong. He possessed a finely honed sense for the strange and the wicked. He had seen things all through his childhood that other people preferred to imagine happened only in films.

The door buckled and gave the second time he shouldered it. The kitchen smelled bad. Nobody had emptied the bin for days. He moved into the house.

“Mrs. Laing?”

Nobody answered. The baby’s feeble cries were coming from the upper floor. He climbed the stairs, calling out as he went.

The door to the main bedroom stood open. The room was in semidarkness. It smelled horrible.

“Mrs. Laing?”

She was naked, tied by one wrist to the headboard, partially covered by a heavily bloodstained sheet. The baby lay beside her on the mattress, wearing only a nappy. Strike could see that it looked shrunken, unhealthy.

As he bounded across the room to free her, his other hand already scrambling for the mobile to call an ambulance, she spoke in a cracked voice:

“No... go away... get out...”

Strike had rarely seen terror like it. In his inhumanity, her husband had come to seem almost supernatural. Even as Strike worked to release her wrist, which was bloody and swollen, she begged him to leave her there. Laing had told her that he would kill her if the baby was not happier when he returned. She did not seem able to conceive of a future where Laing was not omnipotent.

Donald Laing had been sentenced to sixteen years’ imprisonment for what he had done to his wife, and Strike’s evidence had put him away. To the last, Laing had denied everything, saying that his wife had tied herself up, that she liked it, that she was kinky that way, that she had neglected the baby, that she had tried to frame him, that it was all a put-up job.

The memories were as filthy as any he had. Strange to relive them while the Mini moved past sweeping slopes of green, sparkling in the strengthening sun. This scenery was of a kind that was not familiar to Strike. The sweeping masses of granite, these rolling hills, had an alien grandeur in their bareness, in their calm spaciousness. He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the little town with its long smuggling history, where colorful houses tumbled down to the beach.

As he passed a spectacular viaduct to his right, he thought about psychopaths, and how they were to be found everywhere, not only in run-down tenements and slums and squats, but even here, in this place of serene beauty. The likes of Laing resembled rats: you knew they were there, but you never gave them much thought until you came face to face with one.

A pair of miniature stone castles stood sentinel on either side of the road. As Strike drove into Donald Laing’s hometown, the sun broke through, dazzlingly bright.