Career of Evil

42

Fuck-ups happen, Strike told himself. His military career had not been entirely devoid of mishap. You could train as hard as you liked, check every piece of equipment, plan for every contingency and still some random mischance would screw you. Once, in Bosnia, a faulty mobile phone had unexpectedly dumped all its power, triggering a train of mishaps that culminated in a friend of Strike’s barely escaping with his life after driving up the wrong street in Mostar.

None of this altered the fact that if a subordinate in the SIB had been running surveillance and leaned up against the back of a carelessly parked van without first checking that it was empty, Strike would have had a lot to say about it, and loudly. He had not meant to confront Whittaker, or so he told himself, but a period of sober reflection forced him to admit that his actions told a different story. Frustrated by the long hours watching Whittaker’s flat, he had taken few pains to hide himself from the pub windows, and while he could not have known that Whittaker was inside the van, there was a savage retrospective pleasure in knowing that, at last, he had punched the fucker.

God, he had wanted to hurt him. The gloating laugh, the rat’s-tail hair, the Slayer T-shirt, the acrid smell, the clutching fingers around the thin white neck, the taunting talk of mothers: the feelings that had erupted in Strike at the unexpected sight of Whittaker had been those of his eighteen-year-old self, eager to fight, careless of consequences.

Setting aside the pleasure it had been to hurt Whittaker, the encounter had not produced much meaningful information. Try though he might to effect a retrospective comparison, he could neither identify nor rule out Whittaker as the large figure in the beanie hat on looks alone. While the dark silhouette that Strike had chased through Soho had not had Whittaker’s matted locks, long hair can be tied back or tucked into a hat; it had looked burlier than Whittaker, but padded jackets easily add substance. Nor had Whittaker’s reaction on finding Strike outside his van given the detective real clues. The more he thought about it, the less he could decide whether he had read triumph in Whittaker’s gloating expression, or whether the last gesture, the dirty fingers slashing through the air, had been his usual play-acting, a toothless threat, the infantile retaliation of a man determined at all costs to be the worst, the scariest.

In brief, their encounter had revealed that Whittaker remained narcissistic and violent, and given Strike two small pieces of additional information. The first was that Stephanie had aggravated Whittaker by showing curiosity about Strike, and while Strike assumed that this was merely because he had once been Whittaker’s stepson, he did not entirely rule out the possibility that it had been triggered by Whittaker mentioning a desire for retribution, or letting slip that he was seeking it. Secondly, Whittaker had managed to make himself some male friends. While he had always had a, to Strike, incomprehensible attraction for certain women, Whittaker had been almost universally disliked and despised by men in the days that Strike had known him. His own gender had tended to deplore his histrionics, the Satanic bullshit, his craving to be first in all company and, of course, to resent his strange magnetic pull over females. Now, though, Whittaker seemed to have found a crew of sorts, men who shared drugs with him and allowed him to boss them around.

Strike concluded that the one thing he could profitably do in the short term was tell Wardle what had happened and give him the registration number of the van. He did this in the hope that the police would think it worth their while to check for drugs and any other incriminating evidence within the vehicle or, even better, inside that flat over the chippy.

Wardle listened to Strike’s insistence that he had smelled crack fumes without any form of enthusiasm. Strike was forced to admit, when their call had concluded, that if he were in Wardle’s position he would not have considered his own evidence grounds for a search warrant. The policeman clearly thought that Strike had it in for his ex-stepfather, and no amount of pointing out the Blue Öyster Cult connection between himself and Whittaker seemed likely to change Wardle’s mind.

When Robin phoned that night with her usual progress report, Strike found relief and solace in telling her what had happened. Although she had news of her own, she was instantly distracted by the announcement that he had come face to face with Whittaker, and listened to the whole story in eager silence.

“Well, I’m glad you hit him,” she said when Strike had finished castigating himself for allowing the altercation to happen.

“You are?” said Strike, taken aback.

“Of course I am. He was strangling the girl!”

The moment the words left Robin’s mouth she wished she had not said them. She did not want to give Strike any further reason for remembering the thing that she wished she had never told him.

“As knights errant go, I was on the crap side. She fell over with him and cracked her head on the pavement. What I don’t get,” he added, after a short pause for reflection, “is her. That was her chance. She could’ve left: I’d’ve got her to a refuge, I’d’ve seen her right. Why the fuck did she go back to him? Why do women do that?”

In the fractional hesitation before Robin replied, Strike realized that a certain personal interpretation could be put on these words.

“I suppose,” began Robin, and simultaneously Strike said, “I didn’t mean—”

Both stopped.

“Sorry, go on,” said Strike.

“I was only going to say that abused people cling to their abusers, don’t they? They’ve been brainwashed to believe there’s no alternative.”

I was the bloody alternative, standing there, right in front of her!

“Any sign of Laing today?” Strike asked.

“No,” said Robin. “You know, I really don’t think he’s there.”

“I still think it’s worth—”

“Look, I know who’s in every flat except for one of them,” said Robin. “People go in and out of all the others. The last one’s either unoccupied, or someone’s lying in there dead, because the door never opens. I haven’t even seen carers or nurses visit.”

“We’ll give it another week,” said Strike. “It’s the only lead we’ve got for Laing. Listen,” he added irritably, as she tried to protest, “I’ll be in the same position, staking out that strip club.”

“Except we know that Brockbank’s there,” said Robin sharply.

“I’ll believe it when I see him,” retorted Strike.

They said good-bye a few minutes later in poorly concealed mutual dissatisfaction.

All investigations had their slumps and droughts, when information and inspiration ran dry, but Strike was finding it difficult to take a philosophical view. Thanks to the unknown sender of the leg, there was no longer any money coming in to the business. His last paying client, Mad Dad’s wife, no longer needed him. In the hope of persuading a judge that the restraining order was not required, Mad Dad was actually complying with it.

The agency could not survive much longer if the twin stenches of failure and perversity continued to emanate from his office. As Strike had foreseen, his name was now multiplying across the internet in connection with the killing and dismemberment of Kelsey Platt, and the gory details were not only obliterating all mention of his previous successes, they were also eclipsing the simple advertisement of his detective services. Nobody wanted to hire a man so notorious; nobody liked the idea of a detective so intimately connected with unsolved murder.

It was therefore in a mood of determination and slight desperation that Strike set out for the strip club where he hoped to find Noel Brockbank. It turned out to be another converted old pub, which lay on a side street off Commercial Road in Shoreditch. The brick façade was crumbling in parts; its windows had been blacked out and crude white silhouettes of naked women painted upon them. The original name (“The Saracen”) was still picked out in wide golden letters across the peeling black paint over the double doors.

The area had a large proportion of Muslim residents. Strike passed them in their hijabs and taqiyahs, browsing the many cheap clothes shops, all bearing names like International Fashion and Made in Milan and displaying sad mannequins in synthetic wigs wearing nylon and polyester. Commercial Road was crammed with Bangladeshi banks, tatty estate agents, English schools and ramshackle grocers that sold past-its-prime fruit behind grimy windows, but it had no benches to sit on, not even a low, cold wall. Even though he frequently changed his vantage point, Strike’s knee soon began to complain about long stretches spent standing, waiting for nothing, because Brockbank was nowhere to be seen.

The man on the door was squat and neckless, and Strike saw nobody enter or leave the place except punters and strippers. The girls came and went, and like their place of employment, they were shabbier and less polished than those who worked at Spearmint Rhino. Some were tattooed or pierced; several were overweight, and one, who looked drunk as she entered the building at eleven in the morning, appeared distinctly grubby viewed through the window of the kebab shop that lay directly opposite the club. After watching the Saracen for three days, Strike, whose hopes had been high, whatever he had said to Robin, reluctantly concluded that either Brockbank had never worked there, or that he had already been sacked.

Friday morning arrived before the depressing pattern of no leads changed. As he was lurking in the doorway of an especially dismal clothing store named World Flair, Strike’s mobile rang and Robin spoke in his ear:

“Jason’s coming to London tomorrow. The leg guy. From the wannabe amputee website.”

“Great!” said Strike, relieved at the mere prospect of interviewing someone. “Where are we meeting him?”

“It’s ‘them,’” said Robin, with a definite note of reservation in her voice. “We’re meeting Jason and Tempest. She’s—”

“Excuse me?” interrupted Strike. “Tempest?”

“I doubt it’s her birth name,” said Robin drily. “She’s the woman Kelsey was interacting with online. Black hair and glasses.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” repeated Strike, supporting the mobile between jaw and shoulder while he lit a cigarette.

“I’ve just got off the phone with her. She’s a big activist in the transabled community and she’s pretty overwhelming, but Jason thinks she’s wonderful and he seems to feel safer with her there.”

“Fair enough,” said Strike. “So where are we meeting Jason and Tempest?”

“They want to go to Gallery Mess. It’s the café at the Saatchi Gallery.”

“Really?” Strike seemed to remember that Jason worked in an Asda, and was surprised that his first craving on arriving in London was contemporary art.

“Tempest’s in a wheelchair,” said Robin, “and apparently it’s got really good disabled access.”

“OK,” said Strike. “What time?”

“One,” said Robin. “She — er — asked whether we’d be paying.”

“I suppose we’ll have to.”

“And listen — Cormoran — would it be all right if I took the morning off?”

“Yeah, of course. Everything OK?”

“Everything’s fine, I’ve just got some — some wedding stuff to sort out.”

“No problem. Hey,” he added, before she could hang up, “shall we meet up somewhere first, before we question them? Agree our interviewing strategy?”

“That’d be great!” said Robin, and Strike, touched by her enthusiasm, suggested they meet in a sandwich shop on the King’s Road.