Career of Evil

39

“Look at this,” said Elin on Monday morning, standing aghast in front of the television with a bowl of granola in her hands. “Can you believe it!”

Strike had just entered the kitchen, freshly washed and dressed, after their usual Sunday night rendezvous. The spotless cream and white space was full of stainless steel surfaces and subdued lighting, like a space age operating theater. A plasma TV hung on the wall behind the table. President Obama was on screen, standing at a podium, talking.

“They’ve killed Osama bin Laden!” said Elin.

“Bloody hell,” said Strike, stopping dead to read the tickertape running across the bottom of the screen.

Clean clothes and a shave had made little difference to his hangdog look of exhaustion. The hours he was putting in trying to catch a glimpse of Laing or Whittaker were beginning to take their painful toll: his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was tinged with gray.

He crossed to the coffee maker, poured himself a mugful and gulped it down. He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week’s few small achievements that he had finished that job, at least. Now he leaned against the steel-topped island, watching the immaculate President and envying him from his soul. He, at least, had got his man.

The known details of bin Laden’s death gave Elin and Strike something to talk about while she was dropping him off at the Tube.

“I wonder how sure they were it was him,” she said, pulling up outside the station, “before they went in.”

Strike had been wondering that, too. Bin Laden had been physically distinctive, of course: well over six feet tall... and Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker, until Elin recalled them.

“I’ve got work drinks on Wednesday, if you fancy it.” She sounded slightly self-conscious. “Duncan and I have nearly agreed everything. I’m sick of sneaking around.”

“Sorry, no can do,” he said. “Not with all these surveillance jobs on, I told you.”

He had to pretend to her that the pursuit of Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker were paid jobs, because she would never have understood his so far fruitless persistence otherwise.

“OK, well, I’ll wait for you to ring me, then,” she said, and he caught, but chose to ignore, a cool undertone in her voice.

Is it worth it? he asked himself as he descended into the Underground, backpack over his shoulder, with reference not to the men he was pursuing but to Elin. What had begun as an agreeable diversion was starting to assume the status of onerous obligation. The predictability of their rendezvous — same restaurants, same nights — had started to pall, yet now that she offered to break the pattern he found himself unenthusiastic. He could think offhand of a dozen things he would rather do with a night off than have drinks with a bunch of Radio Three presenters. Sleep headed the list.

Soon — he could feel it coming — she would want to introduce him to her daughter. In thirty-seven years, Strike had successfully avoided the status of “Mummy’s boyfriend.” His memories of the men who had passed through Leda’s life, some of them decent, most of them not — the latter trend reaching its apotheosis in Whittaker — had left him with a distaste that was almost revulsion. He had no desire to see in another child’s eyes the fear and mistrust that he had read in his sister Lucy’s every time the door opened onto yet another male stranger. What his own expression had been, he had no idea. For as long as he had been able to manage it, he had closed his mind willfully to that part of Leda’s life, focusing on her hugs and her laughter, her maternal delight in his achievements.

As he climbed out of the Tube at Notting Hill Gate on his way to the school, his mobile buzzed: Mad Dad’s estranged wife had texted.

Strike swore under his breath. He had indeed forgotten about the bank holiday. On the plus side, he was now free to return to the office, catch up with some paperwork, then head out to Catford Broadway by daylight for a change. He only wished that the text could have arrived before he made the detour to Notting Hill.

Forty-five minutes later, Strike was tramping up the metal staircase towards his office and asking himself for the umpteenth time why he had never contacted the landlord about getting the birdcage lift fixed. When he reached the glass door of his office, however, a far more pressing question presented itself: why were the lights on?

Strike pushed open the door so forcefully that Robin, who had heard his laborious approach, nevertheless jumped in her chair. They stared at each other, she defiant, he accusing.

“What are you doing here?”

“Working,” said Robin.

“I told you to work from home.”

“I’ve finished,” she said, tapping a sheaf of papers that lay on the desk beside her, covered with handwritten notes and telephone numbers. “Those are all the numbers I could find in Shoreditch.”

Strike’s eyes followed her hand, but what caught his attention was not the small stack of neatly written papers she was showing him, but the sapphire engagement ring.

There was a pause. Robin wondered why her heart was pummeling her ribs. How ridiculous to feel defensive... it was up to her whether she married Matthew... ludicrous even to feel she had to state that to herself...

“Back on, is it?” Strike said, turning his back on her as he hung up his jacket and backpack.

“Yes,” said Robin.

There was a short pause. Strike turned back to face her.

“I haven’t got enough work for you. We’re down to one job. I can cover Mad Dad on my own.”

She narrowed her gray-blue eyes.

“What about Brockbank and Laing and Whittaker?”

“What about them?”

“Aren’t you still trying to find them?”

“Yes, but that’s not the—”

“So how are you going to cover four cases?”

“They’re not cases. No one’s paying—”

“So they’re a kind of hobby, are they?” said Robin. “That’s why I’ve been looking for numbers all weekend?”

“Look — I want to trace them, yes,” said Strike, trying to marshal his arguments through heavy fatigue and other, less easily definable emotions (the engagement was back on... he had suspected all along that it might happen... sending her home, giving her time with Matthew would have helped, of course), “but I don’t—”

“You were happy enough to let me drive you to Barrow,” said Robin, who had come prepared for argument. She had known perfectly well he didn’t want her back in the office. “You didn’t mind me questioning Holly Brockbank and Lorraine MacNaughton, did you? So what’s changed?”

“You got sent another fucking body part, that’s what’s fucking changed, Robin!”

He had not intended to shout, but his voice echoed off the filing cabinets.

Robin remained impassive. She had seen Strike angry before, heard him swear, seen him punch those very metal drawers. It didn’t bother her.

“Yes,” she said calmly, “and it shook me up. I think most people would have been shaken up by getting a toe stuck inside a card. You looked pretty sick about it yourself.”

“Yeah, which is why—”

“—you’re trying to cover four cases single-handedly and you sent me home. I didn’t ask for time off.”

In the euphoric aftermath of replacing her ring, Matthew had actually helped her rehearse her case for returning to work. It had been quite extraordinary, looking back on it, he pretending to be Strike and she putting her arguments, but Matthew had been ready to help her do anything at all, so long as she agreed to marry him on the second of July.

“I wanted to get straight back to—”

“Just because you wanted to get back to work,” said Strike, “doesn’t mean it was in your best interests to do so.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize you’re a qualified occupational therapist,” said Robin, delicately sarcastic.

“Look,” said Strike, more infuriated by her aloof rationality than he would have been with rage and tears (the sapphire sparkling coolly from her finger again), “I’m your employer and it’s down to me if—”

“I thought I was supposed to be your partner,” said Robin.

“Makes no difference,” said Strike, “partner or not, I’ve still got a responsibility—”

“So you’d rather see this business fail than let me work?” said Robin, an angry flush rising in her pale face, and while Strike felt he was losing on points he took an obscure pleasure in the fact that she was losing her cool. “I helped you build it up! You’re playing right into his hands, whoever he is, sidelining me, neglecting paying cases and working yourself into the—”

“How do you know I’ve—?”

“Because you look like shit,” said Robin baldly and Strike, caught off guard, almost laughed for the first time in days.

“Either,” she resumed, “I’m your partner or I’m not. If you’re going to treat me like some piece of special-occasion china that gets taken out when you don’t think I’ll get hurt, we’re — we’re doomed. The business is doomed. I’d do better to take Wardle up on—”

“On what?” said Strike sharply.

“On his suggestion that I apply to the police,” said Robin, looking Strike squarely in the face. “This isn’t a game to me, you know. I’m not a little girl. I’ve survived far worse than being sent a toe. So—” She screwed up her courage. She had hoped it would not come to an ultimatum. “—decide. Decide whether I’m your partner or a — a liability. If you can’t rely on me — if you can’t let me run the same risks you do — then I’d rather—”

Her voice nearly broke, but she forced herself onwards.

“—rather get out,” she finished.

In her emotion, she swung her chair round to face her computer a little too forcefully and found herself facing the wall. Mustering what dignity she felt she had left, she adjusted her seat to face the monitor and continued opening emails, waiting for his answer.

She had not told him about her lead. She needed to know whether she was reinstated as his partner before she either shared her spoils or gave it to him as a farewell gift.

“Whoever he is, he butchers women for pleasure,” said Strike quietly, “and he’s made it clear he’d like to do the same to you.”

“I’ve grasped that,” said Robin in a tight voice, her eyes on the screen, “but have you grasped the fact that if he knows where I work, he probably also knows where I live, and if he’s that determined he’ll follow me anywhere I go? Can’t you understand that I’d much rather help catch him than sit around waiting for him to pounce?”

She was not going to beg. She had emptied the inbox of twelve spam emails before he spoke again, his voice heavy.

“All right.”

“All right what?” she asked, looking around cautiously.

“All right... you’re back at work.”

She beamed. He did not return the smile.

“Oh, cheer up,” she said, getting to her feet and moving around the desk.

For one crazy moment Strike thought she might be about to hug him, she looked so happy (and with the protective ring back on her finger, perhaps he had become a safely huggable figure, a de-sexed noncompetitor), but she was merely heading for the kettle.

“I’ve got a lead,” she told him.

“Yeah?” he said, still struggling to make sense of the new situation. (What was he going to ask her to do that wasn’t too dangerous? Where could he send her?)

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve made contact with one of the people on the BIID forum who was talking to Kelsey.”

Yawning widely, Strike dropped down into the fake-leather sofa, which made its usual flatulent noises under his weight, and tried to remember whom she was talking about. He was so sleep-deprived that his usually capacious and accurate memory was becoming unreliable.

“The... bloke or the woman?” he asked, with the vague remembrance of the photographs Wardle had shown them.

“The man,” said Robin, pouring boiling water onto tea bags.

For the first time in their relationship Strike found himself relishing an opportunity to undermine her.

“So you’ve been going onto websites without telling me? Playing games with a bunch of anonymous punters without knowing who you’re messing with?”

“I told you I’d been on there!” said Robin indignantly. “I saw Kelsey asking questions about you on a message board, remember? She was calling herself Nowheretoturn. I told you all this when Wardle was here. He was impressed,” she added.

“He’s also way ahead of you,” said Strike. “He’s questioned both of those people she was talking to online. It’s a dead end. They never met her. He’s working on a guy called Devotee now, who was trying to meet women off the site.”

“I already know about Devotee.”

“How?”

“He asked to see my picture and when I didn’t send it, he went quiet—”

“So you’ve been flirting with these nutters, have you?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Robin impatiently, “I’ve been pretending I’ve got the same disorder they have, it’s hardly flirting — and I don’t think Devotee’s anything to worry about.”

She passed Strike a mug of tea, which was precisely his preferred shade of creosote. Perversely, this aggravated rather than soothed him.

“So you don’t think Devotee’s anything to worry about? What are you basing that on?”

“I’ve been doing some research into acrotomophiliacs ever since that letter came in addressed to you — the man who was fixated on your leg, remember? As paraphilias go, it’s hardly ever associated with violence. I think Devotee’s much more likely to be masturbating over his keyboard at the idea of all the wannabes.”

Unable to think of any response to this, Strike drank some tea.

“Anyway,” said Robin (his lack of thanks for his tea had rankled), “the guy Kelsey was talking to online — he wants to be an amputee too — lied to Wardle.”

“What do you mean, he lied?”

“He did meet Kelsey in real life.”

“Yeah?” said Strike, determinedly casual. “How do you know that?”

“He’s told me all about it. He was terrified when the Met contacted him — none of his family or his friends knows about his obsession with getting rid of his leg — so he panicked and said he’d never met Kelsey. He was afraid that if he admitted he had, there would be publicity and he’d have to give evidence in court.

“Anyway, once I’d convinced him that I am who I am, that I’m not a journalist or a policewoman—”

“You told him the truth?”

“Yes, which was the best thing I could have done, because once he was convinced I was really me, he agreed to meet.”

“And what makes you think he’s genuinely going to meet you?” asked Strike.

“Because we’ve got leverage with him that the police haven’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” she said coldly, wishing that she could have returned a different answer, “you. Jason’s absolutely desperate to meet you.”

“Me?” said Strike, completely thrown. “Why?”

“Because he believes you cut your leg off yourself.”

“What?”

“Kelsey convinced him that you did it yourself. He wants to know how.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Strike, “is he mentally ill? Of course he is,” he answered himself immediately. “Of course he’s mentally ill. He wants to cut his fucking leg off. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Well, you know, there’s debate about whether BIID is a mental illness or some kind of brain abnormality,” said Robin. “When you scan the brain of someone suffering—”

“Whatever,” said Strike, waving the topic away. “What makes you think this nutter’s got anything useful—?”

“He met Kelsey,” said Robin impatiently, “who must have told him why she was so convinced you were one of them. He’s nineteen years old, he works in an Asda in Leeds, he’s got an aunt in London and he’s going to come down, stay with her and meet me. We’re trying to find a date. He needs to find out when he can get the time off.

“Look, he’s two removes from the person who convinced Kelsey you were a voluntary amputee,” she went on, both disappointed and annoyed by Strike’s lack of enthusiasm for the results of her solo work, but still holding out a faint hope that he would stop being so tetchy and critical, “and that person is almost certainly the killer!”

Strike drank more tea, allowing what she had told him to percolate slowly through his exhausted brain. Her reasoning was sound. Persuading Jason to meet her was a significant achievement. He ought to offer praise. Instead he sat in silence, drinking his tea.

“If you think I should call Wardle and pass this over to him—” said Robin, her resentment palpable.

“No,” said Strike, and the haste with which he answered gave Robin some small satisfaction. “Until we’ve heard what he’s... we won’t waste Wardle’s time. We’ll let him know once we’ve heard what this Jason’s got. When did you say he’s coming to London?”

“He’s trying to get time off; I don’t know yet.”

“One of us could go up to Leeds and meet him.”

“He wants to come down. He’s trying to keep all this away from anyone who knows him.”

“OK,” said Strike gruffly, rubbing his bloodshot eyes and trying to formulate a plan that would keep Robin simultaneously busy and out of harm’s way. “You keep the pressure on him, then, and start ringing round those numbers, see whether you can get a lead on Brockbank.”

“I’ve already started doing that,” she said and he heard the latent rebelliousness, the imminent insistence that she wanted to be back on the street.

“And,” said Strike, thinking fast, “I want you to stake out Wollaston Close.”

“Looking for Laing?”

“Exactly. Keep a low profile, don’t stay there after dark and if you see the beanie bloke you get out of there or set off your bloody rape alarm. Preferably both.”

Even Strike’s surliness could not douse Robin’s delight that she was back on board, a fully equal partner in the business.

She could not know that Strike believed and hoped that he was sending her up a dead end. By day and by night he had watched the entrances to the small block of flats, shifting position regularly, using night-vision goggles to scan the balconies and windows. Nothing he had seen indicated that Laing was lurking within: no broad shadow moving behind a curtain, no hint of a low-growing hairline or dark ferret-like eyes, no massive figure swaying along on crutches or (because Strike took nothing for granted when it came to Donald Laing) swaggering along like the ex-boxer he was. Every man who had passed in and out of the building had been scrutinized by Strike for a hint of resemblance to Laing’s JustGiving photograph or to the faceless figure in the beanie hat, and none of them had come close to a match.

“Yeah,” he said, “you get onto Laing and — give me half those Brockbank numbers — we’ll divide them up. I’ll stick with Whittaker. Make sure you check in regularly, OK?”

He heaved himself out of the sofa.

“Of course,” said Robin, elated. “Oh, and — Cormoran—”

He was already on the way to the inner office, but turned.

“—what are these?”

She was holding up the Accutane pills that he had found in Kelsey’s drawer and which he had left in Robin’s in-tray after looking them up online.

“Oh, them,” he said. “They’re nothing.”

Some of her cheeriness seemed to evaporate. A faint guilt stirred. He knew he was being a grumpy bastard. She didn’t deserve it. He tried to pull himself together.

“Acne medication,” he said. “They were Kelsey’s.”

“Of course — you went to the house — you saw her sister! What happened? What did she say?”

Strike did not feel equal to telling her all about Hazel Furley now. The interview felt a long time ago, he was exhausted and still felt unreasonably antagonistic.

“Nothing new,” he said. “Nothing important.”

“So why did you take these pills?”

“I thought they might be birth control... maybe she was up to something her sister didn’t know about.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “So they really are nothing.”

She tossed them into the bin.

Ego made Strike go on: ego, pure and simple. She had found a good lead and he had nothing except a vague idea about the Accutane.

“And I found a ticket,” he said.

“A what?”

“Like a coat check ticket.”

Robin waited expectantly.

“Number eighteen,” said Strike.

Robin waited for a further explanation, but none came. Strike yawned and conceded defeat.

“I’ll see you later. Keep me posted on what you’re up to and where you are.”

He let himself into his office, closed the door, sat down at his desk and slumped backwards in his chair. He had done all he could to stop her getting back on the street. Now, he wanted nothing more than to hear her leave.