Career of Evil

In the blinding relief that the leg had not been Brittany Brockbank’s, he had given less thought to the victim than he would ordinarily have done. Now, for the first time, he wondered about Kelsey and the letter that she had sent him, which he had not bothered to read.

The idea of anybody seeking amputation was repugnant to Strike. Round and round in his hand he turned his mobile, marshaling everything he knew about Kelsey, trying to build a mental picture out of a name and mingled feelings of pity and distaste. She had been sixteen; she had not got on with her sister; she had been studying childcare… Strike reached for his notebook and began to write: Boyfriend at college? Lecturer? She had gone online, asking about him. Why? Where had she got the idea that he, Strike, had amputated his own leg? Or had she evolved a fantasy out of newspaper reports about him?

Mental illness? Fantasist? he wrote.

Wardle was already looking into her online contacts. Strike paused in his writing, remembering the photograph of Kelsey’s head with its full cheeks in the freezer, staring out of its frosted eyes. Puppy fat. He had thought all along that she looked far too young for twenty-four. In truth, she had looked young for sixteen.

He let his pencil fall and continued to turn his mobile over and over in his left hand, thinking…

Was Brockbank a “true” pedophile, as a psychologist Strike had met in the context of another military rape case had put it? Was he a man who was only sexually attracted to children? Or was he a different kind of violent abuser, a man who targeted young girls merely because they were most readily available and easiest to cow into silence, but who had wider sexual tastes if an easy victim became available? In short, was a babyish-looking sixteen-year-old too old to appeal sexually to Brockbank, or would he rape any easily silenced female if he got the chance? Strike had once had to deal with a nineteen-year-old soldier who had attempted to rape a sixty-seven-year-old. Some men’s violent sexual nature required only opportunity.

Strike had not yet called the number that Ingrid had given him for Brockbank. His dark eyes drifted to the tiny window that showed a feebly sunlit sky. Perhaps he should have passed Brockbank’s number to Wardle. Perhaps he ought to call it now…

Yet even as Strike began to scroll down the list of contacts, he reconsidered. What had he achieved so far by confiding his suspicions to Wardle? Nothing. The policeman was busy in his operations room, doubtless sifting leads, busy with his own lines of inquiry and giving Strike’s—as far as the private detective could tell—only slightly more credence than he would have given anyone who had hunches but no proof. The fact that Wardle, with all his resources, had not yet located Brockbank, Laing or Whittaker, did not suggest that he was prioritizing the men.

No, if Strike wanted to find Brockbank he ought surely to maintain the cover that Robin had created: that of the lawyer looking to win the ex-major compensation. The traceable backstory they had created with his sister in Barrow might prove valuable. In fact, thought Strike, sitting up on the bed, it might be an idea to call Robin right now and give her Brockbank’s number. She was alone, he knew, in the Ealing flat, while Matthew was home in Masham. He could call and perhaps—

Oh no you don’t, you silly fucker.

A vision of himself and Robin in the Tottenham had bloomed in his head, a vision of where a phone call might lead. They were both at a loose end. A drink to discuss the case…

On a Saturday night? Piss off.

Strike got up suddenly, as though the bed had become painful to lie on, dressed and headed out to the supermarket.

On his way back into Denmark Street carrying bulging plastic bags he thought he spotted Wardle’s plainclothes policeman, stationed in the area to keep an eye out for large men in beanie hats. The young man in a donkey jacket was hyperaware, his eyes lingering a tad too long on the detective as he walked past, his shopping swinging.

Elin called Strike much later, after he had eaten a solitary evening meal in his flat. As usual, Saturday night was out of bounds for a meeting. He could hear her daughter playing in the background as she talked. They had already arranged to see each other for dinner on Sunday, but she had called to ask whether he fancied meeting her earlier. Her husband was determined to force the sale of the valuable flat in Clarence Terrace and she had started looking for a new property.

“Do you want to come and look at it with me?” she asked. “I’ve got an appointment at the show flat tomorrow at two.”

He knew, or thought he knew, that the invitation sprang, not from some eager hope that he would one day be living with her there—they had only been dating for three months—but because she was a woman who would always choose company when possible. Her air of cool self-sufficiency was misleading. They might never have met had she not preferred to attend a party full of her brother’s unknown colleagues and friends rather than spend a few hours alone. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, nothing wrong with being sociable, except that for a year now Strike had organized his life to suit himself and the habit was hard to break.

“Can’t,” he said, “sorry. I’m on a job until three.”

The lie convincingly told. She took it reasonably well. They agreed to meet at the bistro on Sunday evening as previously planned, which meant that he would be able to watch Arsenal–Liverpool in peace.

After he had hung up, he thought again of Robin, alone in the flat she shared with Matthew. Reaching for a cigarette, he turned on the TV and sank back onto his pillows in the dark.

Robin was having a strange weekend. Determined not to sink into moroseness just because she was alone and Strike had gone off to Elin’s (where had that thought come from? Of course he had gone; after all, it was the weekend, and it was no business of hers where he chose to spend it), she had spent hours on her laptop, doggedly pursuing one old line of inquiry, and one new.

Late on Saturday night she made an online discovery that caused her to jog three victory laps of the tiny sitting room and almost phone Strike to tell him. It took several minutes, with her heart thumping and her breath coming fast, to calm down, and to tell herself that the news would keep until Monday. It would be much more satisfying to tell him in person.

Knowing that Robin was alone, her mother called her twice over the weekend, both times pressing for a date when she could come down to London.

“I don’t know, Mum, not just now,” sighed Robin on Sunday morning. She was sitting in her pajamas on the sofa, laptop open in front of her again, trying to hold an online conversation with a member of the BIID community who called themselves >. She had only picked up her mother’s call because she was afraid ignoring it might result in an unannounced visit.

>: where do you want to be cut?

TransHopeful: mid-thigh

>: both legs?

“What about tomorrow?” asked Linda.

“No,” said Robin at once. Like Strike, she lied with fluent conviction, “I’m midway through a job. The following week’s better.”

TransHopeful: Yes, both. Do you know anyone who’s done it?

>: Can’t share that on msj board. Where you live?

“I haven’t seen him,” said Linda. “Robin, are you typing?”

“No,” lied Robin again, her fingers suspended over the keyboard. “Who haven’t you seen?”

“Matthew, of course!”

“Oh. Well, no, I didn’t think he’d come calling this weekend.”

She tried typing more quietly.

TransHopeful: London

>: Me too. Got a pic?

“Did you go to Mr. Cunliffe’s birthday party?” she asked, trying to drown out the sound of the laptop keys.

“Of course we didn’t!” said Linda. “Well, let me know what day’s best week after next, and I’ll book my ticket. It’s Easter; it’ll be busy.”

Robin agreed, returned Linda’s affectionate good-bye and directed her full attention to >. Unfortunately, after Rob

in refused to give him or her (she was almost positive that he was male) a picture, > lost interest in their back and forth on the noticeboards and went quiet.

She had expected Matthew to return from his father’s on Sunday evening, but he did not. When she checked the calendar in the kitchen at eight, she realized that he had always intended to take Monday off. Presumably she had agreed to this, back when the weekend had been planned, and told Matthew that she would ask Strike for a day’s holiday, too. It was lucky that they had split up, really, she told herself bracingly: she had dodged one more row about her working hours.

However, she cried later, alone in the bedroom that was thick with relics of their shared past: the fluffy elephant he had given her on their first Valentine’s Day together—he had not been so suave in those days; she could remember him turning red as he had produced it—and the jewelry box he had given her for her twenty-first. Then there were all the photographs showing them beaming during holidays in Greece and Spain, and dressed up at Matthew’s sister’s wedding. The biggest picture of the lot showed them arm in arm on Matthew’s graduation day. He was in his academic gown and Robin stood beside him in a summer dress, beaming as she celebrated an achievement of which she had been robbed by a man in a gorilla mask.

31

Nighttime flowers, evening roses,

Bless this garden that never closes.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Tenderloin”

Robin’s mood was buoyed next day by the glorious spring morning that greeted her outside her front door. She did not forget to remain aware of her surroundings as she traveled by Tube towards Tottenham Court Road, but saw no sign of any large man in a beanie hat. What leapt to the eye on her morning commute was the mounting journalistic excitement about the royal wedding. Kate Middleton seemed to be on the front of virtually every newspaper held by her fellow travelers. It made Robin hyperaware all over again of that naked, sensitive place on her third finger where an engagement ring had sat for a year. However, excited as she was about sharing the results of her solo investigative work with Strike, Robin refused to be downcast.

She had just left Tottenham Court Road station when she heard a man shout her name. For a split second she feared an ambush by Matthew, then Strike appeared, forging a path through the crowd, backpack on his shoulder. Robin deduced that he had spent the night with Elin.

“Morning. Good weekend?” he asked. Then, before she could answer: “Sorry. No. Crap weekend, obviously.”

“Bits of it were all right,” said Robin as they wended their way through the usual obstacle course of barriers and holes in the road.

“What have you got?” Strike asked loudly over the interminable drills.

“Sorry?” she shouted.

“What. Have. You. Found. Out?”

“How do you know I’ve found anything out?”

“You’ve got that look,” he said. “The look you get when you’re dying to tell me something.”

She grinned.

“I need a computer to show you.”

They turned the corner into Denmark Street. A man dressed all in black stood outside their office door, holding a gigantic bunch of red roses.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” breathed Robin.

A spasm of fear receded: her mind had momentarily edited out the armful of blooms and seen only the man in black—but it wasn’t the courier, of course. This, she saw as they approached him, was a youth with long hair, an Interflora deliveryman wearing no helmet. Strike doubted the boy had ever handed over fifty red roses to a less enthusiastic recipient.

“His father’s put him up to this,” Robin said darkly, as Strike held open the door for her and she pushed her way inside, being none too gentle with the quivering floral display. “‘All women love roses,’ he’ll have said. That’s all it takes—a bunch of bloody flowers.”

Strike followed her up the metal staircase, amused but careful not to show it. He unlocked the office door and Robin crossed to her desk and dropped the roses unceremoniously onto it, where they quivered in their beribboned polythene bag of greenish water. There was a card. She did not want to open it in front of Strike.

“Well?” he asked, hanging his backpack on the peg beside the door. “What have you found out?”

Before Robin could say a word there was a rap on the door. Wardle’s shape was easily recognizable through the frosted glass: his wavy hair, his leather jacket.

“I was in the area. Not too early, is it? Bloke downstairs let me in.”

Wardle’s eyes traveled immediately to the roses on Robin’s desk.

“Birthday?”

“No,” she said shortly. “Do either of you want coffee?”

“I’ll do it,” said Strike, moving over to the kettle and still speaking to Robin. “Wardle’s got some stuff to show us.”

Robin’s spirits sank: was the policeman about to preempt her? Why hadn’t she called Strike on Saturday night, when she’d found it?

Wardle sat down on the mock-leather sofa that always emitted loud farting noises whenever anyone over a certain weight sat on it. Clearly startled, the policeman repositioned himself gingerly and opened a folder.

“It turns out Kelsey was posting on a website for other people who wanted to get limbs taken off,” Wardle told Robin.

Robin sat down in her usual seat behind her desk. The roses impeded her view of the policeman; she picked them up impatiently and deposited them on the floor beside her.

“She mentioned Strike,” Wardle went on. “Asked if anyone else knew anything about him.”

“Was she using the name Nowheretoturn?” asked Robin, trying to keep her voice casual. Wardle looked up, astonished, and Strike turned, a coffee spoon suspended in midair.

“Yeah, she was,” said the policeman, staring. “How the hell did you know that?”

“I found that message board last weekend,” said Robin. “I thought Nowheretoturn might be the girl who wrote the letter.”

“Christ,” said Wardle, looking from Robin to Strike. “We should offer her a job.”

“She’s got a job,” said Strike. “Go on. Kelsey was posting…”

“Yeah, well, she ended up exchanging email addresses with these two. Nothing particularly helpful, but we’re looking to establish whether they actually met her—you know, in Real Life,” said Wardle.

Strange, thought Strike, how that phrase—so prevalent in childhood to differentiate between the fantasy world of play and the dull adult world of fact—had now come to signify the life that a person had outside the internet. He handed Wardle and Robin their coffees, then went through to his inner office to fetch a chair, preferring not to share the farting sofa with Wardle.

When he returned, Wardle was showing Robin printed screenshots of the Facebook pages of two people.

She examined each of them carefully, then passed them on to Strike. One was a thick-set young woman with a round, pale face, bobbed black hair and glasses. The other was a light-haired man in his twenties with lopsided eyes.

“She blogs about being ‘transabled,’ whatever the fuck that is, and he’s all over message boards asking for help in hacking bits off himself. Both of them have got serious issues, if you ask me. Recognize either of them?”

Strike shook his head, as did Robin. Wardle sighed and took the pictures back.

“Long shot.”

“What about other men she’s been knocking around with? Any boys or lecturers at college?” asked Strike, thinking of the questions that had occurred to him on Saturday.

“Well, the sister says Kelsey claimed to have a mysterious boyfriend they were never allowed to meet. Hazel doesn’t believe he existed. We’ve spoken to a couple of Kelsey’s college friends and none of them ever saw a boyfriend, but we’re following it up.

“Speaking of Hazel,” Wardle went on, picking up his coffee and drinking some before continuing, “I’ve said I’ll pass on a message. She’d like to meet you.”

“Me?” said Strike, surpri

sed. “Why?”

“I dunno,” said Wardle. “I think she wants to justify herself to everyone. She’s in a real state.”

“Justify herself?”

“She’s guilt-ridden because she treated the leg thing as weird and attention-seeking, and feels that’s why Kelsey went looking for someone else to help her with it.”

“She understands I never wrote back? That I never had actual contact with her?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve explained that to her. She still wants to talk to you. I dunno,” said Wardle slightly impatiently, “you got sent her sister’s leg—you know what people are like when they’re in shock. Plus, it’s you, isn’t it?” said Wardle, with a faint edge in his voice. “She probably thinks the Boy Wonder will solve it while the police are blundering.”

Robin and Strike avoided looking at each other and Wardle added grudgingly:

“We could’ve handled Hazel better. Our guys interrogated her partner a bit more aggressively than she liked. It put her on the defensive. She might like the idea of having you on the books: the detective who’s already saved one poor innocent from the nick.”

Strike decided to ignore the defensive undertone.

“Obviously, we had to question the bloke who was living with her,” Wardle added for Robin’s benefit. “That’s routine.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “Of course.”

“No other men in her life, except the sister’s partner and this alleged boyfriend?” asked Strike.

“She was seeing a male counselor, a skinny black guy in his fifties who was visiting family in Bristol on the weekend she died, and there’s a church youth group leader called Darrell,” said Wardle, “fat guy in dungarees. He cried his eyes out all through the interview. He was present and correct at the church on the Sunday; nothing checkable otherwise, but I can’t see him wielding a cleaver. That’s everyone we know about. Her course is nearly all girls.”

“No boys in the church youth group?”

“They’re nearly all girls as well. Oldest boy’s fourteen.”