Career of Evil

59

Strike was standing in shadow, his mobile in his hand, waiting. The deep pocket of his secondhand jacket, which was far too heavy in the warmth of this June evening, bulged and sagged with the weight of an object he was keen to conceal. What he planned would be best accomplished under cover of darkness, but the sun was taking its time to sink behind the ill-assorted rooftops visible from his hiding place.

He knew he ought to be concentrating only upon the dangerous business of the night, but his thoughts kept slinking back to Robin. She had not returned his call. He had set a mental deadline for himself: if she doesn’t ring by the end of this evening, she’s never calling. At twelve o’clock the following day she would be getting married to Matthew in Yorkshire, and Strike was sure that constituted a fatal cut-off point. If they did not speak before that ring landed on her finger, he thought that they were unlikely ever to speak again. If anything in the world had been calculated to make him recognize what he had lost, it had been the truculent, noisy presence of the woman with whom he had shared his office for the last few days, staggeringly good-looking though she was.

To the west, the sky over the rooftops blazed with colors as bright as a parakeet’s wing: scarlet, orange, even a faint trace of green. Behind this flamboyant show came a pale wash of violet faintly strewn with stars. Almost time to move.

As though Shanker had heard his thought, Strike’s mobile vibrated and he looked to see a message:

They had agreed on a code. If all of this came to court, which Strike thought overwhelmingly likely, his intention was to keep Shanker well away from the witness box. There must be no incriminating messages between them tonight. “Pint tomorrow?” meant “he’s in the club.”

Strike slid the mobile back into his pocket and emerged from his hiding place, crossing the dark car park that lay beneath the deserted flat of Donald Laing. The Strata building looked down upon him as he walked, vast and black, its jagged windows reflecting the last traces of bloody light.

Fine netting had been stretched over the front of the balconies of Wollaston Close to prevent birds landing on them and flying in through open doors and windows. Strike moved around to the side entrance, which he had earlier wedged open after a group of teenage girls had left it. Nobody had tampered with the arrangement. People assumed that somebody needed their hands free and feared triggering their wrath. An angry neighbor could be quite as dangerous as an intruder round here, and you had to live with them afterwards.

Halfway up the stairs, Strike stripped off his jacket to reveal a fluorescent one. Carrying the first so that it concealed the canister of propane inside, he proceeded on his way, emerging onto the balcony of Laing’s flat.

Lights shone from the homes sharing the balcony. Laing’s neighbors had opened their windows on this warm summer evening, so that their voices and the sounds of their TVs floated out into the night. Strike walked quietly past towards the dark, empty flat at the end. Outside the door he had so often watched from the car park, he shifted the gas canister wrapped in his jacket into the crook of his left arm and withdrew from his pocket firstly a pair of latex gloves, which he put on, then a mismatched assortment of tools, some of which belonged to Strike himself, but many of which had been lent for the occasion by Shanker. These included a mortice skeleton key, two sets of jigglers and assorted comb picks.

As Strike set to work on the two locks on Laing’s front door a female, American voice floated out into the night through the neighboring window.

“There’s the law and there’s what’s right. I’m gonna do what’s right.”

“What wouldn’t I give to fuck Jessica Alba?” asked a stoned male voice, to laughter and agreement from what sounded like two other men.

“Come on, you bastard,” breathed Strike, fighting with the lower of the two locks and keeping a tight grip on the concealed propane canister. “Move... move...”

The lock turned with a loud click. He pushed the door open.

As he had expected, the place smelled bad. Strike could make out very little in what looked like a dilapidated and unfurnished room. He needed to close the curtains before turning on the lights. Turning left, he immediately knocked into what felt like a box. Something heavy fell off the top and landed with a crash on the floor.

Fuck.

“Oi!” shouted a voice audible through the flimsy dividing wall. “That you, Donnie?”

Strike hastened back to the door, felt frantically up and down the wall beside the doorjamb and found the light switch. Flooded suddenly with light, the room proved to contain nothing except an old, stained double mattress and an orange box on which an iPod dock had clearly been standing, because it now lay on the ground where it had fallen.

“Donnie?” said the voice, now coming from the balcony outside.

Strike pulled out the propane canister, discharged it and shoved it underneath the orange box. Footsteps from the balcony outside were followed by a knock on the door. Strike opened it.

A spotty, greasy-haired man looked hazily at him. He appeared extremely stoned and was holding a can of John Smith’s.

“Jesus,” he said blearily, sniffing. “’S’that fucking smell?”

“Gas,” said Strike in his fluorescent jacket, stern representative of the National Grid. “We’ve had a report from upstairs. Looks like this is where it’s coming from.”

“Bloody hell,” said the neighbor, looking sick. “Not going to blow up, are we?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out,” Strike said sententiously. “You haven’t got any naked flames next door? Not smoking, are you?”

“I’ll go make sure,” said the neighbor, looking suddenly terrified.

“All right. I might be in to check your place when I’ve finished here,” said Strike. “I’m waiting for back-up.”

He regretted that phrase as soon as it had escaped him, but his new acquaintance did not seem to find such language odd from a gas man. As he turned away, Strike asked:

“Owner’s name’s Donnie, is it?”

“Donnie Laing,” said the jittery neighbor, clearly desperate to go and hide his stash and extinguish all naked flames. “He owes me forty quid.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Can’t help with that.”

The man scuttled off and Strike closed the door thanking his lucky stars that he’d had the forethought to provide himself with a cover. All he needed was for the police to be tipped off now, before he could prove anything...

He lifted up the orange box, shut off the hissing propane and then replaced the iPod in its dock on top of the box. About to move deeper into the flat, he had a sudden thought and turned back to the iPod. One delicate poke of his latex-covered forefinger and the tiny screen lit up. “Hot Rails to Hell” by — as Strike knew only too well — Blue Öyster Cult.