Career of Evil

37

If she had to be at home, she supposed she would watch the wedding. Robin staked out a position on the sitting-room sofa early next morning, her laptop open on her knees, her mobile beside her, the TV on in the background. Matthew, too, had the day off work, but he was in the kitchen, keeping out of her way. There had been no solicitous offers of tea today, no questions about her work, no obsequious attentiveness. Robin sensed a change in him since her mother had left. He seemed anxious, wary, more serious. Somehow, during their quiet conversations, Linda appeared to have convinced Matthew that what had happened might never be reparable.

Robin knew perfectly well that she needed to deliver the coup de grâce. Linda’s parting words had increased her sense of urgency. She had not yet found another place to live, but she must nevertheless tell Matthew that she was moving out and agree a form of words to issue to their friends and family. Yet here she sat on the sofa, working rather than dealing with the subject that seemed to fill the small flat, pressing against the walls, keeping the atmosphere perpetually stiff with tension.

Commentators wearing buttonholes and corsages were babbling on screen about the decorations in Westminster Abbey. Famous guests snaked towards the entrance and Robin half listened as she noted down the telephone numbers for lap-dancing clubs, strip joints and massage parlors in and around Shoreditch. Every now and then she scrolled down a page to look through the client reviews on the remote chance that somebody might have mentioned a bouncer called Noel, but no individual was named except the women who worked there. Punters often recommended them on the basis of their reported enthusiasm for their jobs. Mandy from one massage parlor “gives full thirty minutes” with “never any sense of being rushed”; the gorgeous Sherry of Beltway Strippers was always “willing, accommodating and up for a laugh.” “I can thoroughly recommend Zoe,” said one punter, “gorgeous figure and a very ‘happy ending’!!!”

In a different mood — or, perhaps, in a different life — Robin might have found the way they talked about the women funny. So many of the men handing over cash for sex needed to believe that the women’s enthusiasm was real, that they took their time for pleasure, that they were really laughing at punters’ jokes, genuinely enjoying the body-to-body massages and the hand jobs. One reviewer had posted a poem about his favorite girl.

Even as she diligently compiled her list of numbers, Robin thought it unlikely that Brockbank, with his insalubrious record, would have been hired by any of the more upmarket places, whose websites featured artistically lit, airbrushed naked girls and invitations for couples to attend together.

Brothels, Robin knew, were illegal, but you did not have to travel too far into cyberspace to find mention of them. She had become adept at nosing information from out-of-the-way corners of the internet since going to work for Strike and was soon painstakingly cross-referencing mentions of local establishments on ramshackle sites dedicated to the exchange of such information. Here, at the cheapest end of the market, there were no poems: “£60 for anal going rate round here.” “All forigen girls, no english.” “Very young probably still clean. Wouldn put your dick in some of wht you see.”

Often, only an approximate location was available. She knew that Strike would not let her go looking for any of these basements and tenements where “mostly east european grils” or “all Chinese tail” were working.

Taking a break and subconsciously hoping to loosen the tight knot in her chest, she looked up at the television. Princes William and Harry were walking up the aisle together. As Robin watched, the door to the sitting room opened and Matthew walked in, carrying a mug of tea. He had not offered to make her one. He sat down in the armchair, saying nothing, and stared at the television screen.

Robin returned to her work, hyperconscious of Matthew beside her. Joining her without talking was a departure. Acceptance of her separateness — not interrupting her, even with the offer of tea — was also new. So was the fact that he did not pick up the remote control and change the channel.

The cameras returned to the outside of the Goring Hotel, where they were keeping vigil for the first glimpse of Kate Middleton in her wedding dress. Robin took covert glimpses over the top of her laptop while scrolling slowly down a series of barely literate comments about a brothel near Commercial Road.

An outburst of excitable comment and cheering made Robin look up in time to see Kate Middleton climbing into a limousine. Long lace sleeves, just like the ones she had removed from her own wedding dress...

The limousine moved slowly away. Kate Middleton was just visible beside her father in the car. So she had chosen to wear her hair down. Robin had planned to keep her hair down too. Matthew liked it that way. Not that that mattered anymore...

The crowds were cheering all the way down the Mall, Union Jacks as far as the eye could see.

As Matthew turned towards her, Robin pretended to be immersed in her laptop again.

“D’you want tea?”

“No,” she said. “Thanks,” she added grudgingly, aware how aggressive she had sounded.

Her mobile beeped beside her. Matthew often scowled or sulked when this happened on her days off: he expected it to be Strike, which it sometimes was. Today he merely turned back to watch the television.

Robin picked up her mobile and read the text that had just arrived:

It was the lead she was pursuing without Strike’s knowledge and she had her answer ready. While the crowds cheered the limousine’s slow progress on screen, she typed in:

She put the mobile down again, her heart beating faster.

Kate Middleton was getting out of her limousine at the Abbey. Her waist looked tiny in the lace dress. She looked so happy... genuinely happy... Robin’s heart hammered as she watched the beautiful woman in a tiara proceed towards the Abbey entrance.

Her mobile beeped again.

Matthew made a peculiar noise into his mug of tea. Robin ignored him. He probably thought that she was texting Strike, usually the cause of his little grimaces and noises of exasperation. Switching her mobile to camera mode, Robin held it up in front of her face and took a photo.

The flash startled Matthew, who looked around. He was crying.

Robin’s fingers trembled as she sent the photograph of herself off in a text. After that, not wanting to look at Matthew, she watched the television again.

Kate Middleton and her father were now walking slowly up the scarlet-carpeted aisle that divided a sea of hatted guests. The culmination of a million fairy tales and fables was being played out in front of her: the commoner walking slowly towards her prince, beauty moving inexorably towards high rank...

Against her will, Robin remembered the night that Matthew had proposed under the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus. There had been tramps sitting on the steps, jeering as Matthew sank to his knees. She had been caught completely off guard by that unexpected scene on the grimy steps, Matthew risking his best suit on the damp, dirty stone, alcoholic fumes wafting towards them over the smell of exhaust fumes: the little blue velvet box and then the winking sapphire, smaller and paler than Kate Middleton’s. Matthew later told her he’d chosen it because it matched her eyes. One of the tramps had got to his feet and applauded drunkenly when she said yes. She remembered the flashing neon lights of Piccadilly reflected on Matthew’s beaming face.

Nine years of shared life, of growing up together, of arguing and reconciling, of loving. Nine years, holding fast to each other through trauma that ought to have broken them apart.

She remembered the day after the proposal, the day she had been sent by the temping agency to Strike. It seemed much, much longer ago than it was. She felt like a different person... at least, she had felt like a different person, until Strike told her to stay at home and copy down phone numbers, evading the question of when she would return to work as his partner.

“They split up.”

“What?” said Robin.

“They did,” said Matthew, and his voice broke. He nodded at the screen. Prince William had just turned to look at his bride. “They broke up for a bit.”

“I know they did,” said Robin.

She tried to speak coldly, but Matthew’s expression was bereft.

Maybe on some level I think you deserve better than me.

“Is it — are we really over?” he asked.

Kate Middleton had drawn level with Prince William at the altar. They looked delighted to be reunited.

Staring at the screen, Robin knew that today her answer to Matthew’s question would be taken as definitive. Her engagement ring was still lying where she had left it, on top of old accountancy textbooks on the bookcase. Neither of them had touched it since she had taken it off.

“Dearly beloved...” began the Dean of Westminster on screen.

She thought of the day that Matthew had asked her out for the very first time and remembered walking home from school, her insides on fire with excitement and pride. She remembered Sarah Shadlock giggling, leaning against him in a pub in Bath, and Matthew frowning slightly and pulling away. She thought of Strike and Elin... what have they got to do with anything?

She remembered Matthew, white-faced and shaking, in the hospital where they had kept her for twenty-four hours after the rape. He had missed an exam to be with her, simply taken off without leaving word. His mother had been annoyed about that. He had had to resit in the summer.

I was twenty-one and I didn’t know then what I know now: that there’s nobody like you and that I could never love anyone else as much as I love you...

Sarah Shadlock, arms around him when he was drunk, no doubt, while he poured out his confused feelings about Robin, agoraphobic, unable to be touched...

The mobile beeped. Automatically, Robin picked it up and looked at it.

Robin could not take in what she was reading and set the mobile down on the sofa without responding. Men looked so tragic when they cried. Matthew’s eyes were scarlet. His shoulders heaved.

“Matt,” she said in a low voice over his silent sobs. “Matt...”

She held out her hand.