Career of Evil

49

The weather remained cool, rain-flecked and faintly blustery as June entered its second week. The blaze of sunlit pageantry that had surrounded the royal wedding had receded into memory: the giddy high tide of romantic fervor had ebbed, the wedding merchandise and congratulatory banners had been removed from shop windows and the capital’s newspapers returned to more mundane matters, including an imminent Tube strike.

Then horror exploded across Wednesday’s front pages. The mutilated body of a young woman had been uncovered beneath bin bags, and within a few hours of the first police appeal for information the world had been informed that a twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London.

Three women had been attacked and mutilated, but the Met appeared to have no leads. In their stampede to cover every possible aspect of the story — maps of London showing the location of each attack, pictures of the three victims — the journalists revealed themselves determined to make up for lost time, aware that they might have arrived a little late at the party. They had previously treated the killing of Kelsey Platt as a lone act of madness and sadism, and the subsequent attack on Lila Monkton, the eighteen-year-old prostitute, had gained virtually no media coverage. A girl who had been selling herself for sex on the day of the royal wedding could hardly expect to oust a new-minted duchess from the front pages.

The murder of Heather Smart, a twenty-two-year-old building society employee from Nottingham, was an entirely different matter. The headlines virtually wrote themselves, for Heather was a wonderfully relatable heroine with her steady job, her innocent desire to see the capital’s landmarks and a boyfriend who was a primary school teacher. Heather had been to see The Lion King the night before her death, had eaten dim sum in Chinatown and posed for photographs in Hyde Park with the Life Guards riding past in the background. Endless column inches could be spun out of the long weekend to celebrate her sister-in-law’s thirtieth birthday, which had culminated in a brutal, sordid death in the back lot of an adult entertainment store.

The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus. There were discussions of the deplorable drunken tendencies of the young British woman, with reciprocal accusations of victim-blaming. There were horror-struck articles about sexual violence, tempered with reminders that these attacks were far less common than in other countries. There were interviews with the distraught, guilt-stricken friends who had accidentally abandoned Heather, which in turn spawned attacks and vilifications on social media, leading back to a defense of the grieving young women.

Overlaying every story was the shadow of the unknown killer, the madman who was hacking women’s bodies apart. The press again descended upon Denmark Street in search of the man who had received Kelsey’s leg. Strike decided that the time had come for Robin to take that much-discussed but daily postponed trip to Masham for a final fitting of her wedding dress, then decamped yet again to Nick and Ilsa’s with a backpack and a crushing sense of his own impotence. A plainclothes officer remained stationed in Denmark Street in case anything suspicious turned up in the post. Wardle was concerned lest another body part addressed to Robin arrived.

Weighed down by the demands of an investigation that was being conducted under the full glare of the national media, Wardle was unable to meet Strike face to face for six days after the discovery of Heather’s body. Strike journeyed again to the Feathers in the early evening, where he found Wardle looking haggard, but looking forward to talking things over with a man who was both inside and outside the case.

“Been a fucker of a week,” sighed Wardle, accepting the pint Strike had bought him. “I’ve started bloody smoking again. April’s really pissed off.”

He took a long draft of lager, then shared with Strike the truth about the discovery of Heather’s body. The press stories, as Strike had already noted, conflicted in many possibly important essentials, though all blamed the police for not finding her for twenty-four hours.

“She and her friends were all shitfaced,” said the policeman, setting the scene with bluntness. “Four of them got into a cab, so ratted they forgot about Heather. They were a street away when they realized she wasn’t with them.

“The cabbie’s hacked off because they’re loud and obnoxious. One of them starts swearing at him when he says he can’t do a U-turn in the middle of the road. There’s a big argument, so it’s a good five minutes before he agrees to go back for Heather.

“When they finally reach the street where they think they left her — they’re from Nottingham, remember, they don’t know London at all — Heather’s nowhere to be seen. They crawl up the road in the cab, shouting for her out of the open window. Then one of them thinks she sees Heather in the distance, getting onto a bus. So two of them get out — there’s no bloody logic to it, they were out of their skulls — and go running down the road screaming after the bus to stop while the other two lean out of the cab screaming at them to get back in, they should follow the bus in the cab. Then the one who got into an argument with the cabbie earlier calls him a stupid Paki, he tells them to get the fuck out of his cab and drives away.

“So basically,” said Wardle wearily, “all this shit we’re taking for not finding her within twenty-four hours is down to alcohol and racism. The silly bitches were convinced Heather had got on that bus so we wasted a day and a half trying to track a woman wearing a similar coat. Then the owner of the Adult Entertainment Centre goes to put his bins out and finds her lying there under a load of bags, nose and ears cut off.”

“So that bit was true,” said Strike.

Her mutilated face had been the one detail all of the papers had agreed on.

“Yeah, that bit was true,” said Wardle heavily. “‘The Shacklewell Ripper.’ It’s got a great ring to it.”

“Witnesses?”

“Nobody saw a bloody thing.”

“What about Devotee and his motorbike?”

“Ruled out,” Wardle admitted, his expression grim. “He’s got a firm alibi for Heather’s killing — family wedding — and we couldn’t make anything stick for either of the other two attacks.”

Strike had the impression that Wardle wanted to tell him something else, and waited receptively.

“I don’t want the press to get wind of this,” Wardle said, dropping his voice, “but we think he might’ve done two more.”

“Jesus,” said Strike, genuinely alarmed. “When?”

“Historic,” said Wardle. “Unsolved murder in Leeds, 2009. Prostitute, originally from Cardiff. Stabbed. He didn’t cut anything off her, but he took a necklace she always wore and dumped her in a ditch out of town. The body wasn’t found for a fortnight.

“Then, last year, a girl was killed and mutilated in Milton Keynes. Sadie Roach, her name was. Her boyfriend went down for it. I’ve looked it all up. The family campaigned hard for his release and he got out on appeal. There was nothing to tie him to it, except that they’d rowed and he once threatened a bloke with a penknife.

“We’ve got the psychologist and forensics on to all five attacks and the conclusion is they’ve got enough features in common to suggest the same perpetrator. It looks like he uses two knives, a carving knife and a machete. The victims were all vulnerable — prostitutes, drunk, emotionally off balance — and all picked up off the street except for Kelsey. He took trophies from all of them. It’s too soon to say whether we’ve got any similar DNA off the women. Odds are, not. It doesn’t look like he had sex with any of them. He gets his kicks a different way.”

Strike was hungry, but something told him not to interrupt Wardle’s moody silence. The policeman drank more beer then said, without quite meeting Strike’s eyes,

“I’m looking into all your guys. Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker.”

About fucking time.

“Brockbank’s interesting,” said Wardle.

“You’ve found him?” asked Strike, freezing with his pint at his lips.

“Not yet, but we know he was a regular attendee at a church in Brixton until five weeks ago.”

“Church? Are you sure it’s the same bloke?”

“Tall ex-soldier, ex-rugby player, long jaw, one of his eyes sunken, cauliflower ear, dark crew cut,” reeled off Wardle. “Name Noel Brockbank. Six foot three or four. Strong northern accent.”

“That’s him,” said Strike. “A bloody church?”

“Hang on,” said Wardle, getting up. “Need a slash.”

And yet, why not a church? Strike thought as he went to the bar for a couple of fresh pints. The pub was filling up around him. He took a menu back to the table as well as the beers, but could not concentrate on it. Young girls in the choir... he wouldn’t be the first...

“Needed that,” said Wardle, rejoining Strike. “I might go out for a fag, join you back—”

“Finish about Brockbank first,” said Strike, pushing the fresh pint across the table.

“To tell you the truth, we found him by accident,” said Wardle, sitting back down and accepting the pint. “One of our guys has been tailing the mother of a local drug lord. We don’t think Mum’s as innocent as she’s claiming to be, so our guy follows her to church and there’s Brockbank standing on the door handing out hymnbooks. He got talking to the copper without knowing who he was, and our guy didn’t have a clue Brockbank was wanted in connection with anything.

“Four weeks later our guy hears me talking about looking for a Noel Brockbank on the Kelsey Platt case and tells me he met a bloke with the same name a month ago in Brixton. See?” said Wardle, with a ghost of his usual smirk. “I do pay attention to your tip-offs, Strike. Be silly not to, after the Landry case.”

You pay attention when you’ve got nothing out of Digger Malley and Devotee, thought Strike, but he made impressed and grateful noises before returning to the main point.

“Did you say Brockbank’s stopped attending church?”

“Yeah,” sighed Wardle. “I went down there yesterday, had a word with the vicar. Young guy, enthusiastic, inner-city church — you know the sort,” said Wardle — inaccurately, because Strike’s contact with the clergy had been mostly limited to military chaplains. “He had a lot of time for Brockbank. Said he’d had a rough deal in life.”

“Brain damage, invalided out of the army, lost his family, all that crap?” asked Strike.

“That was the gist,” said Wardle. “Said he misses his son.”

“Uh huh,” said Strike darkly. “Did he know where Brockbank was living?”

“No, but apparently his girlfriend—”

“Alyssa?”

Frowning slightly, Wardle reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a notebook and consulted it.

“Yeah, it is, as it goes,” he said. “Alyssa Vincent. How did you know that?”

“They’ve both just been sacked from a strip club. I’ll explain in a bit,” said Strike hurriedly, as Wardle showed signs of becoming sidetracked. “Go on about Alyssa.”

“Well, she’s managed to get a council house in east London near her mother. Brockbank told the vicar he was going to move in with her and the kids.”

“Kids?” said Strike, his thoughts flying to Robin.

“Two little girls, apparently.”

“Do we know where this house is?” asked Strike.

“Not yet. The vicar was sorry to see him go,” said Wardle, glancing restlessly towards the pavement, where a couple of men were smoking. “I did get out of him that Brockbank was in church on Sunday the third of April, which was the weekend Kelsey died.”

In view of Wardle’s increasing restlessness, Strike passed no comment except to suggest that they both adjourn to the pavement for a cigarette.

They lit up and smoked side by side for a couple of minutes. Workers walked past in both directions, weary from late hours at the office. Evening was drawing in. Directly above them, between the indigo of approaching night and the neon coral of the setting sun, was a narrow stretch of no-colored sky, of vapid and empty air.

“Christ, I’ve missed this,” said Wardle, dragging on the cigarette as though it was mother’s milk before picking up the thread of their conversation once more. “Yeah, so Brockbank was in church that weekend, making himself useful. Very good with the kids, apparently.”

“I’ll bet he is,” muttered Strike.

“Take some nerve, though, wouldn’t it?” said Wardle, blowing smoke towards the opposite side of the road, his eyes on Epstein’s sculpture Day, which adorned the old London Transport offices. A boy stood before a throned man, his body contorted so that he both managed to embrace the king behind him and display his own penis to onlookers. “To kill and dismember a girl, then turn up in church as though nothing had happened?”

“Are you Catholic?” Strike asked.

Wardle looked startled.

“I am, as it goes,” he said suspiciously. “Why?”

Strike shook his head, smiling slightly.

“I know a psycho wouldn’t care,” said Wardle with a trace of defensiveness. “I’m just saying... anyway, we’ve got people trying to find out where he’s living now. If it’s a council house, and assuming Alyssa Vincent’s her real name, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Great,” said Strike. The police had resources that he and Robin could not match; perhaps now, at last, some definitive information would be forthcoming. “What about Laing?”

“Ah,” said Wardle, grinding out his first cigarette and immediately lighting another, “we’ve got more on him. He’s been living alone in Wollaston Close for eighteen months now. Survives on disability benefits. He had a chest infection over the weekend of the second and third and his friend Dickie came in to help him out. He couldn’t get to the shops.”

“That’s bloody convenient,” said Strike.

“Or genuine,” said Wardle. “We checked with Dickie and he confirmed everything Laing told us.”

“Was Laing surprised the police were asking about his movements?”

“Seemed pretty taken aback at first.”

“Did he let you in the flat?”

“Didn’t arise. We met him crossing the car park on his sticks and we ended up talking to him in a local café.”

“That Ecuadorian place in a tunnel?”

Wardle subjected Strike to a hard stare that the detective returned with equanimity.

“You’ve been staking him out as well, have you? Don’t mess this up for us, Strike. We’re on it.”

Strike might have responded that it had taken press scrutiny and the failure to make anything of his preferred leads to make Wardle commit serious resources to the tracking of Strike’s three suspects. He chose to hold his silence.

“Laing’s not stupid,” Wardle continued. “We hadn’t been questioning him long when he twigged what it was about. He knew you must’ve given us his name. He’d seen in the papers you got sent a leg.”

“What was his view on the matter?”

“There might’ve been an undertone of ‘couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer bloke,’” said Wardle with a slight grin, “but on balance, about what you’d expect. Bit of curiosity, bit of defensiveness.”

“Did he look ill?”

“Yeah,” said Wardle. “He didn’t know we were coming, and we met him shambling along on his sticks. He doesn’t look good close up. Bloodshot eyes. His skin’s kind of cracked. Bit of a mess.”

Strike said nothing. His mistrust of Laing’s illness lingered. In spite of the clear photographic evidence of steroid use, skin plaques and lesions that Strike had seen with his own eyes, he found himself stubbornly resistant to the idea that Laing was genuinely ill.

“What was he doing when the other women were killed?”

“Says he was home alone,” said Wardle. “Nothing to prove or disprove it.”

“Hmn,” said Strike.

They turned back into the pub. A couple had taken their table so they found another beside the floor-to-ceiling window onto the street.

“What about Whittaker?”

“Yeah, we caught up with him last night. He’s roadying for a band.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Strike suspiciously, remembering Shanker’s assertion that Whittaker claimed to be doing so, but was in fact living off Stephanie.

“Yeah, I’m sure. We called in on the druggie girlfriend—”

“Get inside the flat?”

“She talked to us at the door, unsurprisingly,” said Wardle. “The place stinks. Anyway, she told us he was off with the boys, gave us the address of the concert and there he was. Old transit van parked outside and an even older band. Ever heard of Death Cult?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Don’t bother, they’re shit,” said Wardle. “I had to sit through half an hour of the stuff before I could get near Whittaker. Basement of a pub in Wandsworth. I had tinnitus all the next day.

“Whittaker seemed to be half expecting us,” said Wardle. “Apparently he found you outside his van a few weeks ago.”

“I told you about that,” said Strike. “Crack fumes—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Wardle. “Look, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he reckons Stephanie can give him an alibi for the whole day of the royal wedding, so that would rule out the attack on the hooker in Shacklewell, and he claims he was off with Death Cult when both Kelsey and Heather were killed.”

“All three killings covered, eh?” said Strike. “That’s neat. Do Death Cult agree he was with them?”

“They were pretty vague about it, to be honest,” said Wardle. “The lead singer’s got a hearing aid. I don’t know whether he caught everything I asked him. Don’t worry, I’ve got guys checking all their witness statements,” he added in the face of Strike’s frown. “We’ll find out whether he was really there or not.”

Wardle yawned and stretched.

“I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said. “This could be an all-nighter. We’ve got a load of information coming in now the papers are on to it.”

Strike was extremely hungry now, but the pub was noisy and he felt he would rather eat somewhere he could think. He and Wardle headed up the road together, both lighting fresh cigarettes as they walked.

“The psychologist raised something,” said Wardle as the curtain of darkness unrolled across the sky above them. “If we’re right, and we’re dealing with a serial killer, he’s usually an opportunist. He’s got a bloody good m.o. — he must be a planner to a degree, or he couldn’t have got away with it so often — but there was a change in the pattern with Kelsey. He knew exactly where she was staying. The letters and the fact that he knew there wouldn’t be anyone there: it was totally premeditated.

“Trouble is, we’ve had a bloody good look, but we can’t find any evidence that any of your guys have ever been in proximity with her. We virtually took her laptop apart, and there was nothing there. The only people she ever talked to about her leg were those oddballs Jason and Tempest. She had hardly any friends, and the ones she did have were all girls. There was nothing suspicious on her phone. As far as we know, none of your guys has ever lived or worked in Finchley or Shepherd’s Bush, let alone gone anywhere near her school or college. They’ve got no known connection with any of her associates. How the hell could any of them get close enough to manipulate her without her family noticing?”

“We know she was duplicitous,” said Strike. “Don’t forget the pretend boyfriend who turned out to be pretty real when he picked her up from Café Rouge.”

“Yeah,” sighed Wardle. “We’ve still got no leads on that bloody bike. We’ve put out a description in the press, but nothing.

“How’s your partner?” he added, pausing outside the glass doors of his place of work, but apparently determined to smoke the cigarette down to the last millimeter. “Not too shaken up?”

“She’s fine,” said Strike. “She’s back in Yorkshire for a wedding dress fitting. I made her take the time off: she’s been working through the weekend a lot lately.”

Robin had left without complaint. What was there to stay for, with the press staking out Denmark Street, one lousy paying job and the police now covering Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker more efficiently than the agency ever could?

“Good luck,” said Strike as he and Wardle parted. The policeman raised a hand in acknowledgment and farewell, and disappeared into the large building behind the slowly revolving prism glittering with the words New Scotland Yard.

Strike strolled back towards the Tube, craving a kebab and inwardly deliberating the problem that Wardle had just put to him. How could any of his suspects have got close enough to Kelsey Platt to know her movements or gain her trust?

He thought about Laing, living alone in his grim Wollaston Close flat, claiming his disability benefit, overweight and infirm, looking far older than his real age of thirty-four. He had been a funny man, once. Did he still have it in him to charm a young girl to the point that she would have ridden on motorbikes with him or taken him trustingly to a flat in Shepherd’s Bush, about which her family knew nothing?

What about Whittaker, stinking of crack, with his blackened teeth and his thinning, matted hair? True, Whittaker had once had mesmeric charm, and emaciated, drug-addicted Stephanie seemed to find him appealing, but Kelsey’s only known passion had been for a clean-cut blond boy just a few years older than herself.

Then there was Brockbank. To Strike, the massive, swarthy ex-flanker was downright repulsive, as unlike pretty Niall as it was possible to be. Brockbank had been living and working miles from Kelsey’s home and work, and while both had attended churches, their places of worship were on opposite banks of the Thames. The police would surely have unearthed any contact between the two congregations by now.

Did the absence of any known connection between Kelsey and Strike’s three suspects rule each of them out as the killer? While logic seemed to urge the answer yes, something stubborn inside Strike continued to whisper no.