Career of Evil

33

“I messed up with Brockbank,” said Robin. “I’m really sorry — but I don’t know how I messed up! Plus I didn’t dare take pictures of Mad Dad, because I was too close.”

It was nine o’clock on Friday morning and Strike had arrived, not from the upstairs flat but from the street, fully dressed and carrying his backpack again. Robin had heard him humming as he came up the stairs. He had stayed overnight at Elin’s. Robin had called him the previous evening to tell him about the Brockbank call, but Strike had not been at liberty to talk for long and had promised that they would do so today.

“Never mind Mad Dad. We’ll get him another day,” said Strike, busy at the kettle. “And you did great with Brockbank. We know he’s in Shoreditch, we know I’m on his mind and we know he was suspicious that you might be police. So is that because he’s been fiddling with kids up and down the country, or because he’s recently hacked a teenager to death?”

Ever since Brockbank had spoken his last six words into her ear, Robin had felt slightly shaken. She and Matthew had barely talked to each other the previous evening and, having no outlet for a sudden feeling of vulnerability that she did not entirely understand, she had placed all her reliance on seeing Strike face to face and getting to discuss the meaning of those six ominous words: Do A know you, little girl? Today, she would have welcomed the serious, cautious Strike who had taken the sending of the leg as a threat and warned her about staying out after dark. The man now cheerfully making himself coffee and talking about child abuse and murder in a matter-of-fact tone was bringing her no comfort. He could have no idea what Brockbank had sounded like, crooning inside her ear.

“We know something else about Brockbank,” she said in a tight voice. “He’s living with a little girl.”

“He might not be living with her. We don’t know where he left the phone.”

“All right, then,” said Robin, feeling even more tightly wound. “If you want to be pedantic: we know he’s in close contact with a little girl.”

She turned away on the pretext of dealing with the mail she had scooped from the doormat on her arrival. The fact that he had arrived humming had irked her. Presumably his night with Elin had been a welcome distraction, providing recreation and recuperation. Robin would have loved a respite from her hypervigilant days and evenings of frigid silence. The knowledge that she was being unreasonable did nothing to diminish her resentment. She scooped the dying roses in their dry plastic bag off the desk and pushed them headfirst into the bin.

“There’s nothing we can do about that kid,” said Strike.

A most enjoyable stab of anger shot through Robin.

“I won’t worry about her, then,” she snapped.

Trying to extract a bill from an envelope, she accidentally ripped the whole thing in two.

“You think she’s the only child at risk from an abuser? There’ll be hundreds of them, right now, just in London.”

Robin, who had half expected him to soften now that she had revealed how angry she was, looked round. He was watching her, eyes slightly narrowed, with no air of sympathy.

“Keep worrying all you want, but it’s wasted energy. There’s nothing you or I can do about that kid. Brockbank’s not on any registers. He hasn’t got any convictions. We don’t even know where she is or what she’s—”

“Her name’s Zahara,” said Robin.

To her horror, her voice turned to a strangled squeal, her face flooded with color and tears started in her eyes. She turned away again, although not fast enough.

“Hey,” said Strike kindly, but Robin made a wild flapping gesture with her hand to stop him talking. She refused to break down; all that was holding her together was her ability to keep moving forwards, to keep doing the job.

“I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “I am. Forget it.”

She could not now confess how menacing she had found Brockbank’s sign-off. “Little girl,” he had called her. She was not a little girl. She was not broken or childlike — not anymore — but Zahara, whoever she was...

She heard Strike leave for the landing, and a moment later a large wad of toilet paper appeared in her swimming sights.

“Thank you,” she said thickly, taking it from Strike’s hand and blowing her nose.

Several silent minutes passed while Robin periodically dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, avoiding looking at Strike, who was perversely remaining in her part of the office rather than heading for his own.

“What?” Robin said at last, anger rising again at the fact that he was simply standing there watching her.

He grinned. In spite of everything, she experienced a sudden desire to laugh.

“Are you going to stand there all morning?” she asked, trying to sound cross.

“No,” said Strike, still grinning, “I just wanted to show you something.”

He ferreted in his backpack and pulled out a glossy property brochure.

“Elin’s,” he said. “She went to see it yesterday. She’s thinking of buying a flat there.”

All desire to laugh fled. How exactly did Strike think that it would cheer Robin up, to know that his girlfriend was thinking of buying a ludicrously expensive flat? Or was he about to announce (Robin’s fragile mood began to collapse in on itself) that he and Elin were moving in together? Like a film flickering rapidly before her eyes she saw the upstairs flat empty, Strike living in luxury, herself in a tiny box room on the edge of London, whispering into her mobile so that her vegan landlady did not hear her.

Strike laid the brochure on the desk in front of her. The cover showed a tall modern tower topped by a strange shield-like face in which wind turbines were set like three eyes. The legend read: “Strata SE1, London’s most desirable residential property.”

“See?” said Strike.

His triumphant air was aggravating Robin beyond measure, not least because it seemed so unlike him to gloat about the prospect of borrowed luxury, but before she could respond there was a knock on the glass door behind him.

“Bloody hell,” said Strike in frank astonishment as he opened the door to Shanker, who walked in, clicking his fingers and bringing with him the usual fug of cigarette smoke, cannabis and body odor.

“I was in the area,” said Shanker, unconsciously echoing Eric Wardle. “I’ve found him for you, Bunsen.”

Shanker dropped down onto the mock-leather sofa, legs spread out in front of him, and took out a packet of Mayfairs.

“You’ve found Whittaker?” asked Strike, whose dominant emotion was astonishment that Shanker was awake so early in the morning.

“’Oo else did you ask me to find?” said Shanker, inhaling deeply on his cigarette and clearly enjoying the effect he was creating. “Catford Broadway. Flat over a chip shop. The brass lives with ’im.”

Strike held out his hand and shook Shanker’s. Notwithstanding his gold tooth and the scar that twisted his upper lip, their visitor’s grin was strangely boyish.

“Want a coffee?” Strike asked him.

“Yeah, go on then,” said Shanker, who seemed disposed to bask in his triumph. “All right?” he added cheerfully to Robin.

“Yes, thanks,” she said with a tight smile, returning to the unopened mail.

“Talk about on a roll,” Strike said quietly to Robin while the kettle boiled loudly and an oblivious Shanker smoked and checked texts on his phone. “That’s all three of them in London. Whittaker in Catford, Brockbank in Shoreditch and now we know Laing’s in Elephant and Castle — or he was three months ago.”

She had agreed to it before doing a double take.

“How do we know Laing was in Elephant and Castle?”

Strike tapped the glossy brochure of the Strata on her desk.

“What d’you think I’m showing you that for?”

Robin had no idea what he meant. She looked blankly at the brochure for several seconds before its significance struck her. Panels of silver punctuated the long jagged lines of darkened windows all down the rounded column: this was the background visible behind Laing as he stood on his concrete balcony.

“Oh,” she said weakly.

Strike wasn’t moving in with Elin. She did not know why she was blushing again. Her emotions seemed totally out of control. What on earth was wrong with her? She turned on her swivel chair to concentrate on the post yet again, hiding her face from both men.

“I dunno if I’ve got enough dosh on me to pay you, Shanker,” Strike said, looking through his wallet. “I’ll walk you down to a cashpoint.”

“Fair enough, Bunsen,” said Shanker, leaning over to Robin’s bin to dispose of the ash trickling from his cigarette. “You need ’elp wiv Whittaker, y’know where I am.”

“Yeah, cheers. I can probably handle it, though.”

Robin reached for the last envelope in the post pile, which felt stiff and had an additional thickness at one corner, as though it contained a card with some kind of novelty attached. On the point of opening it, Robin noticed that it had been addressed to her, not Strike. She paused, uncertain, looking at it. Her name and the address of the office had been typed. The postmark was from central London and the letter had been sent the previous day.

Strike and Shanker’s voices rose and fell but she could not have said what they were saying.

It’s nothing, she told herself. You’re overwrought. It couldn’t happen again.

Swallowing hard, she opened the envelope and gingerly removed the card.

The image showed a Jack Vettriano painting of a blonde sitting in profile on a chair, which was draped in a dustsheet. The blonde was holding a teacup and her elegant black stockinged, stilettoed legs were crossed and raised on a footstool. There was nothing pinned to the front of the card. The object that she had felt through the card was taped inside it.

Strike and Shanker were still talking. A whiff of decay caught her nostrils through the fug of Shanker’s body odor.

“Oh God,” said Robin quietly, but neither man heard her. She flipped over the Vettriano print.

A rotting toe was taped to the inner corner of the card. Carefully printed in capital letters were the words:

She dropped it onto the desk and stood up. In slow motion, it seemed, she turned to Strike. He looked from her stricken face to the obscene object lying on the desk.

“Get away from it.”

She obeyed, sick and trembling and wishing that Shanker was not there.

“What?” Shanker kept saying. “What? What is it? What?”

“Somebody’s sent me a severed toe,” said Robin in a collected voice that was not her own.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” said Shanker, moving forwards with eager interest.

Strike physically restrained Shanker from picking up the card, which lay where it had fallen from Robin’s hand. Strike recognized the phrase “She’s as Beautiful as a Foot.” It was the title of another Blue Öyster Cult song.

“I’ll call Wardle,” Strike said, but instead of taking out his mobile he scribbled a four-digit code on a Post-it note and extracted his credit card from his wallet. “Robin, go and get the rest of Shanker’s money out for him, then come back here.”

She took the note and the credit card, absurdly grateful for the prospect of fresh air.

“And Shanker,” said Strike sharply, as the two of them reached the glass door, “you walk her back here, all right? Walk her back to the office.”

“You got it, Bunsen,” said Shanker, energized, as he always had been, by strangeness, by action, by the whiff of danger.