Career of Evil

51

“The public response has been overwhelming. We’re currently following up over twelve hundred leads, some of which look promising,” said Detective Inspector Roy Carver. “We continue to appeal for information on the whereabouts of the red Honda CB750 used to transport part of Kelsey Platt’s body and we remain interested in speaking to anybody who was in Old Street on the night of 5^th June, when Heather Smart was killed.”

The headline POLICE FOLLOW NEW LEADS IN HUNT FOR SHACKLEWELL RIPPER was not really justified, in Robin’s view, by anything in the brief report beneath, although she supposed that Carver would not share details of genuine new developments with the press.

Five photographs of the women now believed to have been victims of the Ripper filled most of the page, their identities and their brutal fates stamped across their chests in black typeface.

Martina Rossi, 28, prostitute, stabbed to death, necklace stolen.

Martina was a plump, dark woman wearing a white tank top. Her blurry photograph looked as though it had been a selfie. A small heart-shaped harp charm hung from a chain around her neck.

Sadie Roach, 25, admin assistant, stabbed to death, mutilated, earrings taken.

She had been a pretty girl with a gamine haircut and hoops in her ears. Judging by cropped figures at the edges of her picture, it had been taken at a family gathering.

Kelsey Platt, 16, student, stabbed to death and dismembered.

Here was the familiar chubby, plain face of the girl who had written to Strike, smiling in her school uniform.

Lila Monkton, 18, prostitute, stabbed, fingers cut off, survived.

A blurred picture of a gaunt girl whose bright red hennaed hair was cut into a shaggy bob, her multiple piercings glinting in the camera flash.

Heather Smart, 22, financial services worker, stabbed to death, nose and ears removed.

She was round-faced and innocent-looking, with wavy mouse-brown hair, freckles and a timid smile.

Robin looked up from the Daily Express with a deep sigh. Matthew had been sent to audit a client in High Wycombe, so he had been unable to give Robin a lift today. It had taken her a full hour and twenty minutes to get to Catford from Ealing on trains crammed with tourists and commuters sweating in the London heat. Now she left her seat and headed for the door, swaying with the rest of the commuters as the train slowed and stopped, yet again, at Catford Bridge station.

Her week back at work with Strike had been strange. Strike, who clearly had no intention to comply with the instruction to keep out of Carver’s investigation, was nevertheless taking the investigating officer seriously enough to be cautious.

“If he can make a case that we’ve buggered up the police investigation, we’re finished as a business,” he said. “And we know he’ll try and say I’ve screwed things up, whether I have or not.”

“So why are we carrying on?”

Robin had been playing devil’s advocate, because she would have been deeply unhappy and frustrated had Strike announced that they were abandoning their leads.

“Because Carver thinks my suspects are bullshit, and I think he’s an incompetent tit.”

Robin’s laugh had ended prematurely when Strike had told her he wanted her to return to Catford and stake out Whittaker’s girlfriend.

“Still?” she asked. “Why?”

“You know why. I want to see whether Stephanie can give him alibis for any of the key dates.”

“You know what?” said Robin, plucking up her courage. “I’ve been in Catford a lot. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do Brockbank. Why don’t I try and get something out of Alyssa?”

“There’s Laing as well, if you want a change,” said Strike.

“He saw me up close when I fell over,” Robin countered at once. “Don’t you think it would be better if you did Laing?”

“I’ve been watching his flat while you’ve been away,” Strike said.

“And?”

“And he mostly stays in, but sometimes he goes to the shops and back.”

“You don’t think it’s him anymore, do you?”

“I haven’t ruled him out,” said Strike. “Why are you so keen to do Brockbank?”

“Well,” said Robin bravely, “I feel like I’ve done a lot of the running on him. I got the Market Harborough address out of Holly and I got Blondin Street out of the nursery—”

“And you’re worried about the kids who’re living with him,” said Strike.

Robin remembered the little black girl with the stiff pigtails who had tripped over, staring at her, in Catford Broadway.

“So what if I am?”

“I’d rather you stuck to Stephanie,” said Strike.

She had been annoyed; so annoyed that she had promptly asked for two weeks off rather more bluntly than she might otherwise have done.

“Two weeks off?” he said, looking up in surprise. He was far more used to her begging to stay at work than asking to leave it.

“It’s for my honeymoon.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yeah. I suppose that’ll be soon, will it?”

“Obviously. The wedding’s on the second.”

“Christ, that’s only — what — three weeks or something?”

She had been annoyed that he had not realized that it was so close.

“Yes,” she had said, getting to her feet and reaching for her jacket. “And would you mind RSVP’ing if you’re coming?”

So she returned to Catford and the busy market stalls, to the smell of incense and raw fish, to pointless hours of standing beneath the crouching stone bears over the stage door of the Broadway Theatre.

Robin had hidden her hair under a straw hat today and was wearing sunglasses, but she still wondered whether she did not see a hint of recognition in the eyes of stallholders as she settled once more to lurk opposite the triple windows of Whittaker and Stephanie’s flat. She had only had a couple of glimpses of the girl since she had resumed her surveillance on her, and on neither occasion had there been the slightest chance of speaking to her. Of Whittaker, there had been no hint at all. Robin settled back against the cool gray stone of the theater wall, prepared for another long day of tedium, and yawned.

By late afternoon she was hot, tired and trying not to resent her mother, who had texted repeatedly throughout the day with questions about the wedding. The last, telling her to ring the florist, who had yet another finicky question for her, arrived just as Robin had decided she needed something to drink. Wondering how Linda would react if she texted back and said she’d decided to have plastic flowers everywhere — on her head, in her bouquet, all over the church — anything to stop having to make decisions — she crossed to the chip shop, which sold chilled fizzy drinks.

She had barely touched the door handle when somebody collided with her, also aiming for the chip-shop door.

“Sorry,” said Robin automatically, and then, “oh my God.”

Stephanie’s face was swollen and purple, one eye almost entirely closed.

The impact had not been hard, but the smaller girl had been bounced off her. Robin reached out to stop her stumbling.

“Jesus — what happened?”

She spoke as though she knew Stephanie. In a sense, she felt she did. Observing the girl’s little routines, becoming familiar with her body language, her clothing and her liking for Coke had fostered a one-sided sense of kinship. Now she found it natural and easy to ask a question hardly any British stranger would ask of another: “Are you all right?”

How she managed it, Robin hardly knew, but two minutes later she was settling Stephanie into a chair in the welcome shade of the Stage Door Café, a few doors along from the chip shop. Stephanie was obviously in pain and ashamed of her appearance, but at the same time she had become too hungry and thirsty to remain upstairs in the flat. Now she had simply bowed to a stronger will, thrown off balance by the older woman’s solicitude, by the offer of a free meal. Robin gabbled nonsensically as she ushered Stephanie down the street, maintaining the fiction that her quixotic offer of sandwiches was due to her guilt at having almost knocked Stephanie over.

Stephanie accepted a cold Fanta and a tuna sandwich with mumbled thanks, but after a few mouthfuls she put her hand to her cheek as though in pain and set the sandwich down.

“Tooth?” asked Robin solicitously.

The girl nodded. A tear trickled out of her unclosed eye.

“Who did this?” Robin said urgently, reaching across the table for Stephanie’s hand.

She was playing a character, growing into the role as she improvised. The straw hat and the long sundress she was wearing had unconsciously suggested a hippyish girl full of altruism who thought that she could save Stephanie. Robin felt a tiny reciprocal squeeze of her fingers even as Stephanie shook her head to indicate that she was not going to give away her attacker.

“Somebody you know?” Robin whispered.

More tears rolled down Stephanie’s face. She withdrew her hand from Robin’s and sipped her Fanta, wincing again as the cold liquid made contact with what Robin thought was probably a cracked tooth.

“Is he your father?” Robin whispered.

It would have been an easy assumption to make. Stephanie could not possibly be older than seventeen. She was so thin that she barely had breasts. Tears had washed away any trace of the kohl that usually outlined her eyes. Her grubby face was infantile, with the suggestion of an overbite, but all was dominated by the purple and gray bruising. Whittaker had pummeled her until the blood vessels in her right eye had burst: the sliver that was visible was scarlet.

“No,” whispered Stephanie. “Boyfriend.”

“Where is he?” Robin asked, reaching again for Stephanie’s hand, now chilly from contact with the cold Fanta.

“Away,” said Stephanie.

“Does he live with you?”

Stephanie nodded and tried to drink more Fanta, keeping the icy liquid away from the damaged side of her face.

“I didn’t wan’ ’im to go,” whispered Stephanie.

As Robin leaned in, the girl’s restraint suddenly dissolved in the face of kindness and sugar.

“I aksed to go wiv ’im and ’e wouldn’t take me. I know ’e’s out tomming, I know ’e is. ’E’s got someone else, I ’eard Banjo saying sumfing. ’E’s got anuvver girl somewhere.”

To Robin’s disbelief, Stephanie’s primary source of pain, far worse than that of her cracked tooth and her bruised and broken face, was the thought that filthy, crack-dealing Whittaker might be somewhere else, sleeping with another woman.

“I on’y wan’ed to go wiv ’im,” Stephanie repeated, and tears slid more thickly down her face, stinging that slit of an eye into a more furious redness.

Robin knew that the kind, slightly dippy girl she had been impersonating would now earnestly beseech Stephanie to leave a man who had beaten her so badly. The trouble was, she was sure that would be the surest way to make Stephanie walk out on her.

“He got angry because you wanted to go with him?” she repeated. “Where has he gone?”

“Says ’e’s wiv the Cult like last — they’re a band,” mumbled Stephanie, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “’E roadies for ’em — bur it’s just an excuse,” she said, crying harder, “to go places an’ find girls to fuck. I said I’d go an’ — cause last time ’e wanted me to — an’ I done the ’ole band for ’im.”

Robin did her very best not to look as though she understood what she had just been told. However, some flicker of anger and revulsion must have contaminated the look of pure kindliness she was trying to project, because Stephanie seemed suddenly to withdraw. She did not want judgment. She met that every day of her life.

“Have you been to a doctor?” Robin asked quietly.

“Wha’? No,” said Stephanie, folding her thin arms around her torso.

“When’s he due back, your boyfriend?”

Stephanie merely shook her head and shrugged. The temporary sympathy Robin had kindled between them seemed to have cooled.

“The Cult,” said Robin, improvising rapidly, her mouth dry, “that isn’t Death Cult, is it?”

“Yeah,” said Stephanie, dimly surprised.

“Which gig? I saw them the other day!”

Don’t ask me where, for God’s sake...

“This was in a pub called the — Green Fiddle, or sumfing. Enfield.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the same gig,” said Robin. “When was yours?”

“Need a pee,” mumbled Stephanie, looking around the café.

She shuffled off towards the bathroom. When the door had closed behind her, Robin frantically keyed search terms into her mobile. It took her several attempts to find what she was looking for: Death Cult had played a pub called the Fiddler’s Green in Enfield on Saturday the fourth of June, the day before Heather Smart had been murdered.

The shadows were lengthening outside the café now, which had emptied apart from themselves. Evening was drawing in. The place would surely close soon.

“Cheers for the sandwich an’ ev’rything,” said Stephanie, who had reappeared beside her. “I’m gonna—”

“Have something else. Some chocolate or something,” Robin urged her, even though the waitress mopping table tops looked ready to throw them out.

“Why?” asked Stephanie, showing the first sign of suspicion.

“Because I really want to talk to you about your boyfriend,” said Robin.

“Why?” repeated the teenager, a little nervous now.

“Please sit down. It isn’t anything bad,” Robin coaxed her. “I’m just worried about you.”

Stephanie hesitated, then sank slowly back into the seat she had vacated. For the first time, Robin noticed the deep red mark around her neck.

“He didn’t — he didn’t try and strangle you, did he?” she asked.

“Wha’?”

Stephanie felt her thin neck and tears welled again in her eyes.

“Oh, tha’s — tha’ was my necklace. ’E give it me an’ then ’e...’cause I ain’t makin’ enough money,” she said, and began to cry in earnest. “’E’s sold it.”

Unable to think what else to do, Robin stretched her other hand across the table and held on to Stephanie’s with both of her own, holding tightly, as though Stephanie were on some moving plateau that was drifting away.

“Did you say he made you... with the whole band?” Robin asked quietly.

“That were f’free,” said Stephanie tearfully, and Robin understood that Stephanie was still thinking of her money-making abilities. “I only blew ’em.”

“After the gig?” asked Robin, releasing one hand to press paper napkins into Stephanie’s.

“No,” said Stephanie, wiping her nose, “next night. We stayed over in the van at the lead singer’s ’ouse. ’E lives in Enfield.”

Robin would not have believed that it was possible to feel simultaneously disgusted and delighted. If Stephanie had been with Whittaker on the night of the fifth of June, Whittaker could not have killed Heather Smart.

“Was he — your boyfriend — was he there?” she asked in a quiet voice. “All the time, while you were — you know—?”

“The fuck’s going on ’ere?”

Robin looked up. Stephanie snatched her hand away, looking frightened.

Whittaker was standing over them. Robin recognized him immediately from the pictures she had seen online. He was tall and broad-shouldered, yet scrawny. His old black T-shirt was washed out almost to gray. The heretic priest’s golden eyes were fascinating in their intensity. In spite of the matted hair, the sunken, yellowing face, in spite of the fact that he repulsed her, she could yet feel the strange, manic aura of him, a magnetic pull like the reek of carrion. He woke the urge to investigate provoked by all dirty, rotten things, no less powerful because it was shameful.

“’Oo are you?” he asked, not aggressively, but with something close to a purr in his voice. He was looking unabashedly right down the front of her sundress.

“I bumped into your girlfriend outside the chippy,” said Robin. “I bought her a drink.”

“Didjoo now?”

“We’re closing,” said the waitress loudly.

The appearance of Whittaker had been a little too much for her, Robin could tell. His flesh tunnels, his tattoos, his maniac’s eyes, his smell would be desirable in very few establishments selling food.

Stephanie looked terrified, even though Whittaker was ignoring her completely. His attention was entirely focused on Robin, who felt absurdly self-conscious as she paid the bill, then stood and walked, Whittaker just behind her, out onto the street.

“Well — good-bye then,” she said weakly to Stephanie.

She wished that she had Strike’s courage. He had urged Stephanie to come away with him right underneath Whittaker’s nose, but Robin’s mouth was suddenly dry. Whittaker was staring at her as though he had spotted something fascinating and rare on a dung heap. Behind them, the waitress was bolting the doors. The sinking sun was throwing cold shadows across the street that Robin only knew as hot and smelly.

“Jus’ bein’ kind, were you, darlin’?” Whittaker asked softly, and Robin could not tell whether there was more malice or sweetness in his voice.

“I suppose I was worried,” said Robin, forcing herself to look into those wide-apart eyes, “because Stephanie’s injuries look quite serious.”

“That?” said Whittaker, putting out a hand to Stephanie’s purple and gray face. “Come off a pushbike, din’choo, Steph? Clumsy little cow.”

Robin suddenly understood Strike’s visceral hatred for this man. She would have liked to hit him too.

“I hope I’ll see you again, Stephanie,” she said.

She did not dare give the girl a number in front of Whittaker. Robin turned and began to walk away, feeling like the worst kind of coward. Stephanie was about to walk back upstairs with the man. She ought to have done more, but what? What could she say that would make a difference? Could she report the assault to the police? Would that constitute an interference with Carver’s case?

Only when she was definitely out of sight of Whittaker did she lose the sensation that invisible ants were crawling up her spine. Robin pulled out her mobile and called Strike.

“I know,” she said, before Strike could start telling her off, “it’s getting late but I’m on my way to the station right now and when you’ve heard what I’ve got, you’ll understand.”

She walked fast, chilly in the increasing cool of the evening, telling him everything that Stephanie had said.

“So he’s got an alibi?” said Strike slowly.

“For Heather’s death, yes, if Stephanie’s telling the truth, and I honestly think she is. She was with him — and the whole of Death Cult, as I say.”

“She definitely said Whittaker was there while she was servicing the band?”

“I think so. She was just answering that when Whittaker turned up and — hang on.”

Robin stopped and looked around. Busy talking, she had taken a wrong turning somewhere on the way back to the station. The sun was setting now. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a shadow move behind a wall.

“Cormoran?”

“Still here.”

Perhaps she had imagined the shadow. She was on a stretch of unfamiliar residential road, but there were lit windows and a couple walking along in the distance. She was safe, she told herself. It was all right. She just needed to retrace her steps.

“Everything OK?” asked Strike sharply.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve taken a wrong turn, that’s all.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“Near Catford Bridge station,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ve ended up here.”

She did not want to mention the shadow. Carefully she crossed the darkening road, so that she would not have to walk past the wall where she thought she had seen it, and after transferring her mobile into her left hand she took a tighter hold of the rape alarm in her right pocket.

“I’m going back the way I came,” she told Strike, wanting him to know where she was.

“Have you seen something?” he demanded.

“I don’t kn — maybe,” she admitted.

Yet when she drew level with the gap between houses where she had thought she had seen the figure, there was nobody there.

“I’m jumpy,” she said, speeding up. “Meeting Whittaker wasn’t fun. There’s definitely something — nasty — about him.”

“Where are you now?”

“About twenty feet away from where I was the last time you asked me. Hang on, I can see a street name. I’m crossing back over, I can see where I’ve gone wrong, I should’ve turned—”

She heard the footsteps only when they were right behind her. Two massive black-clad arms closed around her, pinning hers to her sides, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her mobile slipped out of her hand and fell with a crack onto the pavement.