Career of Evil

4

“You know four men who’d send you a severed leg? Four?”

Strike could see Robin’s appalled expression reflected in the round mirror standing beside the sink, where he was shaving. The police had taken away the leg at last, Strike had declared work suspended for the day and Robin remained at the little Formica table in his kitchen-cum-sitting room, cradling a second mug of tea.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, strafing stubble from his chin, “I think it’s only three. Think I might’ve made a mistake telling Wardle about Malley.”

“Why?”

Strike told Robin the story of his brief contact with the career criminal, who owed his last prison stretch, in part, to Strike’s evidence.

“... so now Wardle’s convinced the Harringay Crime Syndicate found out who I was, but I left for Iraq shortly after testifying and I’ve never yet known an SIB officer’s cover blown because he gave evidence in court. Plus, the song lyrics don’t smell like Digger. He’s not one for fancy touches.”

“But he’s cut bits off people he’s killed before?” Robin asked.

“Once that I know of — but don’t forget, whoever did this hasn’t necessarily killed anyone,” temporized Strike. “The leg could have come off an existing corpse. Could be hospital waste. Wardle’s going to check all that out. We won’t know much until forensics have had a look.”

The ghastly possibility that the leg had been taken from a still-living person, he chose not to mention.

In the ensuing pause, Strike rinsed his razor under the kitchen tap and Robin stared out of the window, lost in thought.

“Well, you had to tell Wardle about Malley,” said Robin, turning back to Strike, who met her gaze in his shaving mirror. “I mean, if he’s already sent someone a — what exactly did he send?” she asked, a little nervously.

“A penis,” said Strike. He washed his face clean and dried it on a towel before continuing. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. More I think about it, though, the surer I am it’s not him. Back in a minute — I want to change this shirt. I ripped two buttons off it when you screamed.”

“Sorry,” said Robin vaguely, as Strike disappeared into the bedroom.

Sipping her tea, she took a look around the room in which she was sitting. She had never been inside Strike’s attic flat before. The most she had done previously was knock on the door to deliver messages or, in some of their busiest and most sleep-deprived stretches, to wake him up. The kitchen-cum-sitting room was cramped but clean and orderly. There were virtually no signs of personality: mismatched mugs, a cheap tea towel folded beside the gas ring; no photographs and nothing decorative, save for a child’s drawing of a soldier, which had been tacked up on one of the wall units.

“Who drew that?” she asked, when Strike reappeared in a clean shirt.

“My nephew Jack. He likes me, for some reason.”

“Don’t fish.”

“I’m not fishing. I never know what to say to kids.”

“So you think you’ve met three men who would’ve—?” Robin began again.

“I want a drink,” said Strike. “Let’s go to the Tottenham.”

There was no possibility of talking on the way, not with the racket of pneumatic drills still issuing from the trenches in the road, but the fluorescent-jacketed workmen neither wolf-whistled nor cat-called with Strike walking at Robin’s side. At last they reached Strike’s favorite local pub, with its ornate gilded mirrors, its panels of dark wood, its shining brass pumps, the colored glass cupola and the paintings of gamboling beauties by Felix de Jong.

Strike ordered a pint of Doom Bar. Robin, who could not face alcohol, asked for a coffee.

“So?” said Robin, once the detective had returned to the high table beneath the cupola. “Who are the three men?”

“I could be barking up a forest of wrong trees, don’t forget,” said Strike, sipping his pint.

“All right,” said Robin. “Who are they?”

“Twisted individuals who’ve all got good reason to hate my guts.”

Inside Strike’s head, a frightened, skinny twelve-year-old girl with scarring around her leg surveyed him through lopsided glasses. Had it been her right leg? He couldn’t remember. Jesus, don’t let it be her...

“Who?” Robin said again, losing patience.

“There are two army guys,” said Strike, rubbing his stubbly chin. “They’re both crazy enough and violent enough to — to—”

A gigantic, involuntary yawn interrupted him. Robin waited for cogent speech to resume, wondering whether he had been out with his new girlfriend the previous evening. Elin was an ex-professional violinist, now a presenter on Radio Three, a stunning Nordic-looking blonde who reminded Robin of a more beautiful Sarah Shadlock. She supposed that this was one reason why she had taken an almost immediate dislike to Elin. The other was that she had, in Robin’s hearing, referred to her as Strike’s secretary.

“Sorry,” Strike said. “I was up late writing up notes for the Khan job. Knackered.”

He checked his watch.

“Shall we go downstairs and eat? I’m starving.”

“In a minute. It’s not even twelve. I want to know about these men.”

Strike sighed.

“All right,” he said, dropping his voice as a man passed their table on the way to the bathroom. “Donald Laing, King’s Own Royal Borderers.” He remembered again eyes like a ferret’s, concentrated hatred, the rose tattoo. “I got him life.”

“But then—”

“Out in ten,” said Strike. “He’s been on the loose since 2007. Laing wasn’t your run-of-the-mill nutter, he was an animal, a clever, devious animal; a sociopath — the real deal, if you ask me. I got him life for something I shouldn’t have been investigating. He was about to get off on the original charge. Laing’s got bloody good reason to hate my guts.”

But he did not say what Laing had done or why he, Strike, had been investigating it. Sometimes, and frequently when talking about his career in the Special Investigation Branch, Robin could tell by Strike’s tone when he had come to the point beyond which he did not wish to speak. She had never yet pushed him past it. Reluctantly, she abandoned the subject of Donald Laing.

“Who was the other army guy?”

“Noel Brockbank. Desert Rat.”

“Desert — what?”

“Seventh Armoured Brigade.”

Strike was becoming steadily more taciturn, his expression brooding. Robin wondered whether this was because he was hungry — he was a man who needed regular sustenance to maintain an equable mood — or for some darker reason.

“Shall we eat, then?” Robin asked.

“Yeah,” said Strike, draining his pint and getting to his feet.

The cozy basement restaurant comprised a red-carpeted room with a second bar, wooden tables and walls covered in framed prints. They were the first to sit down and order.

“You were saying, about Noel Brockbank,” Robin prompted Strike when he had chosen fish and chips and she had asked for a salad.

“Yeah, he’s another one with good reason to hold a grudge,” said Strike shortly. He had not wanted to talk about Donald Laing and he was showing even more reluctance to discuss Brockbank. After a long pause in which Strike glared over Robin’s shoulder at nothing, he said, “Brockbank’s not right in the head. Or so he claimed.”

“Did you put him in prison?”

“No,” said Strike.

His expression had become forbidding. Robin waited, but she could tell nothing more was coming on Brockbank, so she asked:

“And the other one?”

This time Strike did not answer at all. She thought he had not heard her.

“Who’s—?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” grunted Strike.

He glowered into his fresh pint, but Robin refused to be intimidated.

“Whoever sent that leg,” she said, “sent it to me.”

“All right,” said Strike grudgingly, after a brief hesitation. “His name’s Jeff Whittaker.”

Robin felt a thrill of shock. She did not need to ask how Strike knew Jeff Whittaker. She already knew, although they had never discussed him.

Cormoran Strike’s early life was documented on the internet and it had been endlessly rehashed by the extensive press coverage of his detective triumphs. He was the illegitimate and unplanned offspring of a rock star and a woman always described as a supergroupie, a woman who had died of an overdose when Strike was twenty. Jeff Whittaker had been her much younger second husband, who had been accused and acquitted of her murder.

They sat in silence until their food arrived.

“Why are you only having a salad? Aren’t you hungry?” asked Strike, clearing his plate of chips. As Robin had suspected, his mood had improved with the ingestion of carbohydrates.

“Wedding,” said Robin shortly.

Strike said nothing. Comments on her figure fell strictly outside the self-imposed boundaries he had established for their relationship, which he had determined from the outset must never become too intimate. Nevertheless, he thought she was becoming too thin. In his opinion (and even the thought fell outside those same boundaries), she looked better curvier.

“Aren’t you even going to tell me,” Robin asked, after several more minutes’ silence, “what your connection with that song is?”

He chewed for a while, drank more beer, ordered another pint of Doom Bar then said, “My mother had the title tattooed on her.”

He did not fancy telling Robin exactly where the tattoo had been. He preferred not to think about that. However, he was mellowing with food and drink: Robin had never showed prurient interest in his past and he supposed she was justified in a request for information today.

“It was her favorite song. Blue Öyster Cult were her favorite band. Well, ‘favorite’ is an understatement. Obsession, really.”

“Her favorite wasn’t the Deadbeats?” asked Robin, without thinking. Strike’s father was the lead singer of the Deadbeats. They had never discussed him, either.

“No,” said Strike, managing a half-smile. “Old Jonny came a poor second with Leda. She wanted Eric Bloom, lead singer of Blue Öyster Cult, but she never got him. One of the very few who got away.”

Robin was not sure what to say. She had wondered before what it felt like to have your mother’s epic sexual history online for anybody to see. Strike’s fresh pint arrived and he took a swig before continuing.

“I was nearly christened Eric Bloom Strike,” he said and Robin choked on her water. He laughed as she coughed into a napkin. “Let’s face it, Cormoran’s not much bloody better. Cormoran Blue—”

“Blue?”

“Blue Öyster Cult, aren’t you listening?”

“God,” said Robin. “You keep that quiet.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“What does it mean, ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt’?”

“Search me. Their lyrics are insane. Science fiction. Crazy stuff.”

A voice in his head: She wanted to die. She was the quicklime girl.

He drank more beer.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard any Blue Öyster Cult,” said Robin.

“Yeah, you have,” Strike contradicted her. “‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’”

“Don’t — what?”

“It was a monster hit for them. ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’”

“Oh, I— I see.”

For one startled moment, Robin had thought that he was giving her advice.

They ate in silence for a while until Robin, unable to keep the question down any longer, though hoping she did not sound scared, asked:

“Why do you think the leg was addressed to me?”

Strike had already had time to ponder this question.

“I’ve been wondering that,” he said, “and I think we’ve got to consider it a tacit threat, so, until we’ve found out—”

“I’m not stopping work,” said Robin fiercely. “I’m not staying at home. That’s what Matthew wants.”

“You’ve spoken to him, have you?”

She had made the call while Strike was downstairs with Wardle.

“Yes. He’s angry with me for signing for it.”

“I expect he’s worried about you,” said Strike insincerely. He had met Matthew on a handful of occasions and disliked him more each time.

“He’s not worried,” snapped Robin. “He just thinks that this is it, that I’ll have to leave now, that I’ll be scared out. I won’t.”

Matthew had been appalled at her news, but even so, she had heard a faint trace of satisfaction in his voice, felt his unexpressed conviction that now, at last, she must see what a ridiculous choice it had been to throw in her lot with a rackety private detective who could not afford to give her a decent salary. Strike had her working unsociable hours that meant she had to have packages sent to work instead of the flat. (“I didn’t get sent a leg because Amazon couldn’t deliver to the house!” Robin had said hotly.) And, of course, on top of everything else, Strike was now mildly famous and a source of fascination to their friends. Matthew’s work as an accountant did not carry quite the same cachet. His resentment and jealousy ran deep and, increasingly, burst their bounds.

Strike was not fool enough to encourage Robin in any disloyalty to Matthew that she might regret when she was less shaken.

“Addressing the leg to you instead of me was an afterthought,” he said. “They put my name on there first. I reckon they were either trying to worry me by showing they knew your name, or trying to frighten you off working for me.”

“Well, I’m not going to be frightened off,” said Robin.

“Robin, this is no time for heroics. Whoever he is, he’s telling us he knows a lot about me, that he knows your name and, as of this morning, exactly what you look like. He saw you up close. I don’t like that.”

“You obviously don’t think my countersurveillance abilities are up to much.”

“Seeing as you’re talking to the man who sent you on the best bloody course I could find,” said Strike, “and who read that fulsome letter of commendation you shoved under my nose—”

“Then you don’t think my self-defense is any good.”

“I’ve never seen any of it and I’ve got only your word that you ever learned any.”

“Have you ever known me lie about what I can and can’t do?” demanded Robin, affronted, and Strike was forced to acknowledge that he had not. “Well then! I won’t take stupid risks. You’ve trained me to notice anyone dodgy. Anyway, you can’t afford to send me home. We’re struggling to cover our cases as it is.”

Strike sighed and rubbed his face with two large hairy-backed hands.

“Nothing after dark,” he said. “And you need to carry an alarm, a decent one.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Anyway, you’re doing Radford from next Monday,” he said, taking comfort from the thought.

Radford was a wealthy entrepreneur who wanted to put an investigator, posing as a part-time worker, into his office to expose what he suspected were criminal dealings by a senior manager. Robin was the obvious choice, because Strike had become more recognizable since their second high-profile murder case. As Strike drained his third pint, he wondered whether he might be able to convince Radford to increase Robin’s hours. He would be glad to know she was safe in a palatial office block, nine to five every day, until the maniac who had sent the leg was caught.

Robin, meanwhile, was fighting waves of exhaustion and a vague nausea. A row, a broken night, the dreadful shock of the severed leg — and now she would have to head home and justify all over again her wish to continue doing a dangerous job for a bad salary. Matthew, who had once been one of her primary sources of comfort and support, had become merely another obstacle to be navigated.

Unbidden, unwanted, the image of the cold, severed leg in its cardboard box came back to her. She wondered when she would stop thinking about it. The fingertips that had grazed it tingled unpleasantly. Unconsciously, she tightened her hand into a fist in her lap.