Career of Evil

27

They were given rooms five doors apart in the Travelodge. Robin had dreaded the man behind the desk offering a double room, but Strike had headed that off with a peremptory “two singles” before he had time to open his mouth.

Ridiculous, really, to feel suddenly self-conscious, because they had been physically closer all day in the Land Rover than they were in the lift. It felt odd saying goodnight to Strike when she reached the door of her room; not that he lingered. He merely said “’night” and walked on to his own room, but he waited outside his door until she managed to work the key card and let herself inside with a flustered wave.

Why had she had waved? Ridiculous.

She dropped her holdall on the bed and moved to the window, which offered only a bleak view of the same industrial warehouses they had passed on their way into town a few hours earlier. It felt as though they had been away from London for much longer than they had.

The heating was turned up too high. Robin forced open a stiff window, and the cool night air surged inside, eager to invade the stuffy square box of a room. After putting her phone on to charge, she undressed, pulled on a nightshirt, brushed her teeth and slid down between the cool sheets.

She still felt strangely unsettled, knowing that she was sleeping five rooms away from Strike. That was Matthew’s fault, of course. If you sleep with him, we’re over for good.

Her unruly imagination suddenly presented her with the sound of a knock on the door, Strike inviting himself in on some slim pretext...

Don’t be ridiculous.

She rolled over, pressing her flushed face into the pillow. What was she thinking? Damn Matthew, putting things in her head, judging her by himself...

Strike, meanwhile, had not yet made it into bed. He was stiff all over from the long hours of immobility in the car. It felt good to get the prosthesis off. Even though the shower was not particularly handy for a man with one leg, he used it, carefully holding on to the bar inside the door, trying to relax his sore knee with hot water. Towel-dried, he navigated his way carefully back to the bed, put his mobile on to charge and climbed, naked, beneath the covers.

Lying with his hands behind his head he stared up at the dark ceiling and thought about Robin, lying five rooms away. He wondered whether Matthew had texted again, whether they were on the phone together, whether she was capitalizing on her privacy to cry for the first time all day.

The sounds of what was probably a stag party reached him through the floor: loud male laughter, shouting, whoops, slamming doors. Somebody put on music and the bass pounded through his room. It reminded him of the nights he had slept in his office, when the music playing in the 12 Bar Café below had vibrated through the metal legs of his camp bed. He hoped the noise was not as loud in Robin’s room. She needed her rest — she had to drive another two hundred and fifty miles tomorrow. Yawning, Strike rolled over and, in spite of the thudding music and yells, fell almost immediately asleep.

They met by agreement in the dining room next morning, where Strike blocked Robin from view as she surreptitiously refilled their flask from the urn at the buffet and both loaded their plates with toast. Strike resisted the full English and rewarded himself for his restraint by sliding several Danish pastries into his backpack. At eight o’clock they were back in the Land Rover, driving through the glorious Cumbrian countryside, a rolling panorama of heather moors and peat lands under a hazy blue sky, and joining the M6 South.

“Sorry I can’t share the driving,” said Strike, who was sipping coffee. “That clutch would kill me. It’d kill both of us.”

“I don’t care,” said Robin. “I love driving, you know that.”

They sped on in companionable silence. Robin was the only person whom Strike could stand to be driven by, notwithstanding the fact that he had an ingrained prejudice against women drivers. This was something that he generally kept quiet, but which had its roots in many a negative passenger experience, from his Cornish aunt’s nervous ineptitude, to his sister Lucy’s distractibility, to Charlotte’s reckless courting of danger. An ex-girlfriend from the SIB, Tracey, had been competent behind the wheel and yet had become so paralyzed with fear on a high, narrow alpine road that she had stopped, on the verge of hyperventilating, refusing to cede the wheel to him but unable to drive further.

“Matthew like the Land Rover?” Strike asked as they trundled over a flyover.

“No,” said Robin. “He wants an A3 Cabriolet.”

“Course he does,” said Strike under his breath, inaudible in the rattling car. “Wanker.”

It took them four hours to reach Market Harborough, a town which, as they established en route, neither Strike nor Robin had ever visited. The approach wound through a number of pretty little villages with thatched roofs, seventeenth-century churches, topiary gardens and residential streets with names like Honeypot Lane. Strike remembered the stark, blank wall, barbed wire and looming submarine factory that had formed the view from Noel Brockbank’s childhood home. What could have brought Brockbank here, to bucolic prettiness and charm? What kind of business owned the telephone number that Holly had given Robin, and which was now residing in Strike’s wallet?

The impression of genteel antiquity only increased when they reached Market Harborough itself. The ornate and aged church of St. Dionysius rose proudly in the heart of the town, and beside it, in the middle of the central thoroughfare, stood a remarkable structure resembling a small timbered house on wooden stilts.

They found a parking space to the rear of this peculiar building. Keen to smoke and to stretch his knee, Strike got out, lit up and went to examine a plaque that informed him the stilted edifice was a grammar school that had been built in 1614. Biblical verses painted in gold ran around the structure.

Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

Robin had remained in the Land Rover, examining the map for the best route to Corby, their next stop. When Strike had finished his cigarette he hoisted himself back into the passenger seat.

“OK, I’m going to try the number. If you fancy stretching your legs, I’m nearly out of fags.”

Robin rolled her eyes, but took the proffered tenner and left in search of Benson & Hedges.

The number was engaged the first time Strike tried it. On his second attempt, a heavily accented female voice answered:

“Thai Orchid Massage, how can I help you?”

“Hi,” said Strike. “I’ve been given your number by a friend. Whereabouts are you?”

She gave him a number in St. Mary’s Road, which he saw, after a brief consultation of the map, was mere minutes away.

“Any of your ladies free for me this morning?” he asked.

“What kind you like?” said the voice.

He could see Robin coming back in the wing mirror, her strawberry-blonde hair blowing freely in the breeze, a gold pack of Benson & Hedges glinting in her hand.

“Dark,” said Strike, after a fractional hesitation. “Thai.”

“We have two Thai ladies free for you. What service you look for?”

Robin pulled open the driver’s door and got back in.

“What have you got?” asked Strike.

“One-lady sensual massage with oils, ninety pound. Two-lady sensual massage with oil, one hundred twenty. Full body-to-body naked massage with oil, one hundred fifty. You negotiate extras with lady, OK?”

“OK, I’d like the — er — one lady,” said Strike. “Be with you in a bit.”

He hung up.

“It’s a massage parlor,” he told Robin, examining the map, “but not the kind you’d take your bad knee to.”

“Really?” she said, startled.

“They’re everywhere,” he said. “You know that.”

He understood why she was disconcerted. The scene beyond the windscreen — St. Dionysius, the godly grammar school on stilts, a busy and prosperous high street, a St. George’s Cross rippling in the breeze outside a nearby pub — might have appeared on a poster advertising the town.

“What are you going to — where is it?” asked Robin.

“Not far away,” he said, showing her on the map. “I’m going to need a cashpoint first.”

Was he actually going to pay for a massage? Robin wondered, startled, but she did not know how to frame the question, and nor was she sure that she wanted to hear the answer. After pulling in at a cashpoint to enable Strike to increase his overdraft by another two hundred pounds, she followed his directions onto St. Mary’s Road, which lay at the end of the main street. St. Mary’s Road proved to be a perfectly respectable-looking thoroughfare lined with estate agents, beauty spas and solicitors, most of them in large detached buildings.

“That’s it,” said Strike, pointing, as they drove past a discreet establishment that sat on a corner. A glossy purple and gold sign read THAI ORCHID MASSAGE. Only the dark blinds on the windows hinted at activities beyond the medically sanctioned manipulation of sore joints. Robin parked in a side street and watched Strike until he passed out of sight.

Approaching the massage parlor’s entrance, Strike noticed that the orchid depicted on the glossy sign overhead looked remarkably like a vulva. He rang the bell and the door was opened instantly by a long-haired man almost as tall as himself.

“I just phoned,” Strike said.

The bouncer grunted and nodded Strike through a pair of thick black inner curtains. Immediately inside was a small, carpeted lounge area with two sofas, where an older Thai woman sat along with two Thai girls, one of whom looked about fifteen. A TV in the corner was showing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The girls’ expressions changed from bored to alert as he entered. The older woman stood up. She was vigorously chewing gum.

“You call, yeah?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“You want drink?”

“No thanks.”

“You like Thai girl?”

“Yep,” said Strike.

“Who you want?”

“Her,” said Strike, pointing at the younger girl, who was dressed in a pink halterneck, suede miniskirt and cheap-looking patent stilettos. She smiled and stood up. Her skinny legs reminded him of a flamingo’s.

“OK,” said his interlocutor. “You pay now, go private booth after, OK?”

Strike handed over ninety pounds and his chosen girl beckoned, beaming. She had the body of an adolescent boy except for the clearly fake breasts, which reminded him of the plastic Barbies on Elin’s daughter’s shelf.

The private booth was accessed down a short corridor: a small room with a single black-blinded window and low lighting, it was suffused with the smell of sandalwood. A shower had been crammed into the corner. The massage table was of fake black leather.

“You want shower first?”

“No thanks,” said Strike.

“OK, you take off clothes in there,” she said, pointing at a tiny curtained-off corner in which Strike would have had great difficulty concealing his six foot three frame.

“I’m happier with my clothes on. I want to talk to you.”

She did not seem fazed. She had seen all sorts.

“You want top off?” she offered brightly, reaching for the bow behind her neck. “Ten pound extra, top off.”

“No,” said Strike.

“Hand relief?” she offered, eyeing his flies. “Hand relief with oil? Twenty extra.”

“No, I just want to talk to you,” said Strike.

Doubt crossed her face, and then a sudden flash of fear.

“You police.”

“No,” said Strike, holding up his hands as though surrendering to her. “I’m not police. I’m looking for a man called Noel Brockbank. He used to work here. On the door, I expect — probably the bouncer.”

He had chosen this particular girl because she looked so young. Knowing Brockbank’s proclivities, he thought Brockbank might have sought contact with her rather than any of the other girls, but she shook her head.

“He gone,” she said.

“I know,” said Strike. “I’m trying to find out where he went.”

“Mama sack him.”

Was the owner her mother, or was it an honorary title? Strike preferred not to involve Mama in this. She looked shrewd and tough. He had an idea he would be forced to pay well for what might turn out to be no information at all. There was a welcome naivety about his chosen girl. She could have charged him for confirmation that Brockbank had once worked there, that he had been sacked, but it had not occurred to her.

“Did you know him?” Strike asked.

“He sacked week I come,” she said.

“Why was he sacked?”

The girl glanced at the door.

“Would anyone here have a contact number for him, or know where he went?”

She hesitated. Strike took out his wallet.

“Twenty,” he said, “if you can introduce me to someone who’s got information on where he is now. That’s yours to keep.”

She stood playing with the hem of her suede skirt like a child, staring at him, then tweaked the tenners out of his hand and tucked them deep into her skirt pocket.

“Wait here.”

He sat down on the fake-leather massage table and waited. The little room was as clean as any spa, which Strike liked. He found dirt deeply anaphrodisiac; it always reminded him of his mother and Whittaker in that fetid squat, of stained mattresses and the miasma of his stepfather thick in his nostrils. Here beside the oils neatly lined up on a side cabinet, erotic thoughts could hardly fail to occur. The idea of a full body-to-body naked massage with oil was far from unpleasing.

For no reason that he could think of, his thoughts jumped to Robin, sitting outside in the car. He got briskly to his feet again, as though he had been discovered doing something compromising, and then angry Thai voices sounded close at hand. The door burst open to reveal Mama and his chosen girl, who looked frightened.

“You pay for one girl massage!” said Mama angrily.

Like her protégée, her eyes found his flies. She was checking to see whether any business had already been done, whether he was trying to get more on the cheap.

“He change mind,” said the girl desperately. “He want two girl, one Thai, one blonde. We do nothing. He change mind.”

“You pay for one girl only,” shouted Mama, pointing at Strike with a talon-tipped finger.

Strike heard heavy footsteps and guessed that the long-haired doorman was approaching.

“I’m happy,” he said, inwardly cursing, “to pay for the two-girl massage as well.”

“One hundred twenty more?” Mama shouted at him, unable to believe her ears.

“Yes,” he said. “Fine.”

She made him come back out into the lounge area to pay. An overweight redhead was sitting there in a cut-out black lycra dress. She looked hopeful.

“He want blonde,” said Strike’s accomplice as he handed over another hundred and twenty pounds, and the redhead’s face fell.

“Ingrid with client,” said Mama, shoving Strike’s cash in a drawer. “You wait here ’til she finish.”

So he sat between the skinny Thai girl and the redhead and watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? until a small, suited man with a white beard came scurrying out of the corridor and, avoiding eye contact with everybody, disappeared through the black curtains and escaped onto the street. Five minutes later a slim peroxide blonde who, Strike thought, must be around his own age appeared in purple lycra and thigh-high boots.

“You go with Ingrid,” said Mama and Strike and the Thai girl traipsed obediently back to the private parlor.

“He no want massage,” Strike’s first girl told the blonde breathlessly when the door was closed. “He want know where Noel went.”

The blonde eyed Strike, frowning. She might be more than twice the age of her companion, but she was good-looking, with dark brown eyes and high cheekbones.

“What d’you want ’im for?” she asked in pure Essex and then, calmly, “Are you police?”

“No,” said Strike.

Sudden comprehension was illuminating her pretty face.

“’Ang on,” she said slowly. “I know ’oo you are — you’re that Strike! You’re Cameron Strike! The detective ’oo solved the Lula Landry case and — Jesus — didn’t someone just send you a leg?”

“Er — yeah, they did.”

“Noel was fucking obsessed with you!” she said. “All I ever heard ’im talk about, practically. After you was on the news.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, ’e kept saying you give ’im a brain injury!”

“I can’t take full credit. You knew him well, did you?”

“Not that well!” she said, correctly interpreting Strike’s meaning. “I knew ’is friend from up north, John. He was a great guy, one of my regular punters before ’e went off to Saudi. Yeah, they was at school together, I fink. ’E felt sorry for Noel ’cause ’e was ex-forces and ’e’d ’ad a few problems, so ’e recommended him for ’ere. Said ’e was down on his luck. ’E got me to rent Noel a room at my place an’ all.”

Her tone said plainly that she felt John’s sympathy for Brockbank had been misplaced.

“How did that go?”

“’E was all right at first, but once ’is guard come down ’e just ranted all the time. About the army, about you, about ’is son — ’e’s obsessed with ’is son, getting ’is son back. ’E says it’s your fault he can’t see ’im, but I don’t see ’ow ’e works that out. Anyone could see why his ex-wife didn’t want ’im near the kid.”

“And why’s that?”

“Mama found ’im with ’er granddaughter on ’is lap and ’is ’and up ’er skirt,” said Ingrid. “She’s six.”

“Ah,” said Strike.

“’E left owing me two weeks’ rent and that’s the last I ever saw of ’im. Good bloody riddance.”

“D’you know where he went after he was sacked?”

“No idea.”

“So you haven’t got any contact details?”

“I’ve prob’bly still got his mobile number,” she said. “I don’t know whether ’e’ll still be using it.”

“Could you give—?”

“Do I look like I’ve got a mobile on me?” she asked, raising her arms high. The lycra and boots outlined every curve. Her erect nipples were clearly visible through the thin fabric. Invited to look, Strike forced himself to maintain eye contact.

“Could you meet me later and give it to me?”

“We’re not allowed to exchange contact details with punters. Terms and conditions, sweet’art: why we’re not allowed to carry phones. Tell you what,” she said, eyeing him up and down, “seeing as it’s you and seeing as ’ow I know you punched the bastard and you’re a war ’ero and everyfing, I’ll meet you up the road when I clock off.”

“That,” said Strike, “would be great. Thanks very much.”

He did not know whether he imagined a flirtatious glint in her eye. Possibly he was distracted by the smell of massage oil and his recent thoughts of warm, slippery bodies.

Twenty minutes later, having waited long enough for Mama to assume that relief had been sought and given, Strike left the Thai Orchid and crossed the road to where Robin was waiting in the car.

“Two hundred and thirty quid for an old mobile number,” he said as she pulled away from the curb and accelerated towards the town center. “I hope it’s bloody worth it. We’re looking for Adam and Eve Street — she says it’s just up here on the right — the café’s called Appleby’s. She’s going to meet me there in a bit.”

Robin found a parking space and they waited, discussing what Ingrid had said about Brockbank while eating the Danish pastries that Strike had stolen from the breakfast buffet. Robin was starting to appreciate why Strike was carrying extra weight. She had never before undertaken an investigation that lasted more than twenty-four hours. When every meal had to be sourced in passing shops and eaten on the move, you descended quickly to fast food and chocolate.

“That’s her,” said Strike forty minutes later, clambering out of the Land Rover and heading for the interior of Appleby’s. Robin watched the blonde approach, now in jeans and a fake-fur jacket. She had the body of a glamour model and Robin was reminded of Platinum. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen; neither Strike nor the girl reappeared.

“How long does it take to hand over a telephone number?” Robin asked the interior of the Land Rover crossly. She felt chilly in the car. “I thought you wanted to get on to Corby?”

He had told her nothing had happened, but you never knew. Perhaps it had. Perhaps the girl had covered Strike in oil and...

Robin drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She thought about Elin, and how she would feel if she knew what Strike had done that day. Then, with a slight jolt, she remembered that she had not checked her phone to see whether Matthew had been in contact again. She took it out of her coat pocket and saw no new messages. Since telling him she was definitely not going to his father’s birthday party, he had gone quiet.

The blonde and Strike emerged from the café. Ingrid did not seem to want to let Strike go. When he waved farewell she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then sashayed away. Strike caught Robin watching and got back into the car with a kind of bashful grimace.

“That looked interesting,” said Robin.

“Not really,” said Strike, showing her the number now keyed into his phone: NOEL BROCKBANK MOBILE. “She was just chatty.”

If Robin had been a male colleague he would have found it impossible not to add: “I was in there.” Ingrid had flirted shamelessly across the table, scrolling slowly through the contacts on her phone, wondering aloud whether she still had the number so that he started to feel anxious that she had nothing, asking him whether he had ever had a proper Thai massage, probing about what he wanted Noel for, about the cases he had solved, especially that of the beautiful dead model, which had first brought him to public notice, and finally insisting, with a warm smile, that he take her number too, “just in case.”

“D’you want to try Brockbank’s number now?” Robin asked, recalling Strike’s attention from the back view of Ingrid as she walked away.

“What? No. That wants thinking about. We might only have one shot if he picks up.” He checked his watch. “Let’s get going, I don’t want to be too late in Cor—”

The phone in his hand rang.

“Wardle,” said Strike.

He answered, putting the phone onto speaker so that Robin could listen.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve ID’d the body,” said Wardle. A note in his voice warned them that they were about to recognize a name. The tiny pause that followed allowed the image of that little girl with her small bird-like eyes to slide in panic through Strike’s mind.

“She’s called Kelsey Platt and she’s the girl who wrote to you for advice on how to cut off her leg. She was genuine. Sixteen years old.”

Equal amounts of relief and disbelief crashed over Strike. He groped for a pen, but Robin was already writing.

“She was doing a City and Guilds in childcare at some vocational college, which is where she met Oxana Voloshina. Kelsey usually lived in Finchley with her half-sister and the sister’s partner. She told them she was going away on a college placement for two weeks. They didn’t report her missing — they weren’t worried. She wasn’t expected back until tonight.

“Oxana says Kelsey didn’t get on with her sister and asked whether she could stay there for a couple of weeks, get some space. Looks like the girl had it all planned out, writing to you from that address. The sister’s a total mess, understandably. I can’t get much sense out of her yet, but she’s confirmed the handwriting on the letter was genuine and the thing the girl had about wanting to get rid of her leg didn’t seem to come as a total shock to her. We got DNA samples off the girl’s hairbrush. It matches. It’s her.”

With a creak of the passenger seat, Strike leaned closer to Robin to read her notes. She could smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes and a tiny whiff of sandalwood.

“There’s a partner living with the sister?” he asked. “A man?”

“You won’t pin it on him,” said Wardle, and Strike could tell that Wardle had already had a good try. “Forty-five, retired fireman, not in great nick. Knackered lungs and a watertight alibi for the weekend in question.”

“The weekend—?” began Robin.

“Kelsey left her sister’s on the night of April first. We know she must’ve died on the second or third — you got handed her leg on the fourth. Strike, I’m going to need you back in here for more questions. Routine, but we’re going to have to take a formal statement about those letters.”

There seemed little else to be said. After accepting Strike’s thanks for letting them know, Wardle rang off, leaving a silence that seemed to Robin to quiver with aftershocks.