Career of Evil

8

I seem to see a rose,

I reach out, then it goes.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Lonely Teardrops”

As Strike had been expecting ever since the news of the severed leg hit the media, his old acquaintance Dominic Culpepper of the News of the World had contacted him early on Tuesday morning in a state of advanced ire. The journalist refused to accept that Strike might have had legitimate reasons for choosing not to contact Culpepper the very second he had realized that he was in receipt of a severed limb, and Strike further compounded this offense by declining the invitation to keep Culpepper informed of every fresh development in the case, in return for a hefty retainer. Culpepper had previously put paid work Strike’s way and the detective suspected, by the time the call terminated, that this source of income would henceforth be closed to him. Culpepper was not a happy man.

Strike and Robin did not speak until midafternoon. Strike, who was carrying a backpack, called from a crowded Heathrow Express train.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Pub opposite Spearmint Rhino,” she said. “It’s called the Court. Where are you?”

“Coming back from the airport. Mad Dad got on the plane, thank Christ.”

Mad Dad was a wealthy international banker whom Strike was tailing on behalf of his wife. The couple were having an extremely contentious custody battle. The husband’s departure for Chicago would mean that Strike would have a few nights’ respite from observing him as he sat in his car outside his wife’s house at four in the morning, night-vision goggles trained on his young sons’ window.

“I’ll come and meet you,” said Strike. “Sit tight—unless Platinum cops off with someone, obviously.”

Platinum was the Russian economics student and lap-dancer. Their client was her boyfriend, a man whom Strike and Robin had nicknamed “Two-Times,” partly because this was the second time they had investigated a blonde girlfriend for him, and also because he seemed addicted to finding out where and how his lovers were betraying him. Robin found Two-Times both sinister and pitiable. He had met Platinum at the club Robin was now watching, and Robin and Strike had been given the job of finding out whether any other men were being granted the additional favors she was now giving Two-Times.

The odd thing was that, little though he might believe or like it, Two-Times seemed to have picked an atypically monogamous girlfriend this time. After watching her movements for several weeks, Robin had learned that she was a largely solitary creature, lunching alone with books and rarely interacting with her colleagues.

“She’s obviously working at the club to help pay for her course,” Robin had told Strike indignantly, after a week’s tailing. “If Two-Times doesn’t want other men ogling her, why doesn’t he help her out financially?”

“The main attraction is that she gives other men lap dances,” Strike had replied patiently. “I’m surprised it’s taken him this long to go for someone like her. Ticks all his boxes.”

Strike had been inside the club shortly after they took the job and he had secured the services of a sad-eyed brunette by the unlikely name of Raven to keep an eye on his client’s girlfriend. Raven was to check in once a day, to tell them what Platinum was up to and inform them immediately if the Russian girl appeared to be giving out her phone number or being overattentive to any client. The rules of the club forbade touching or soliciting but Two-Times remained convinced (“Poor, sad bastard,” said Strike) that he was only one among many men taking her out to dinner and sharing her bed.

“I still don’t understand why we have to watch the place,” Robin sighed into the phone, not for the first time. “We could take Raven’s calls anywhere.”

“You know why,” said Strike, who was preparing to disembark. “He likes the photographs.”

“But they’re only of her walking to and from work.”

“Doesn’t matter. Turns him on. Plus, he’s convinced that one of these days she’s going to leave the club with some Russian oligarch.”

“Doesn’t this stuff ever make you feel grubby?”

“Occupational hazard,” said Strike, unconcerned. “See you shortly.”

Robin waited amidst the floral and gilt wallpaper. Brocade chairs and mismatched lampshades contrasted strongly with enormous plasma TVs showing football and Coke ads. The paintwork was the fashionable shade of greige in which Matthew’s sister had recently painted her sitting room. Robin found it depressing. Her view of the club’s entrance was slightly impeded by the wooden banisters of a staircase leading to an upper floor. Outside, a constant stream of traffic flooded left and right, plenty of red double-deckers temporarily obscuring her view of the front of the club.

Strike arrived looking irritable.

“We’ve lost Radford,” he said, dumping his backpack beside the high window table at which she was sitting. “He’s just phoned me.”

“No!”

“Yep. He thinks you’re too newsworthy to plant in his office now.”

The press had had the story of the severed leg since six that morning. Wardle had kept his word to Strike and warned him ahead of time. The detective had been able to leave his attic flat in the small hours with enough clothes in his holdall for a few days’ absence. He knew the press would soon be staking out the office, and not for the first time.

“And,” said Strike, returning to Robin with a pint in his hand and easing himself up onto a bar stool, “Khan’s bottled it too. He’s going to go for an agency that doesn’t attract body parts.”

“Bugger,” said Robin, and then: “What are you smirking about?”

“Nothing.” He did not want to tell her that he always liked it when she said “bugger.” It brought out the latent Yorkshire in her accent.

“They were good jobs!” said Robin.

Strike agreed, his eyes on the front of Spearmint Rhino.

“How’s Platinum? Raven checked in?”

As Raven had just called, Robin was able to inform Strike that there was, as ever, no news. Platinum was popular with punters and had so far that day given three lap dances that had proceeded, judged by the rules of the establishment, in total propriety.

“Read the stories?” he asked, pointing at an abandoned Mirror on a nearby table.

“Only online,” said Robin.

“Hopefully it’ll bring in some information,” said Strike. “Someone must’ve noticed they’re missing a leg.”

“Ha ha,” said Robin.

“Too soon?”

“Yes,” said Robin coldly.

“I did some digging online last night,” said Strike. “Brockbank might’ve been in Manchester in 2006.”

“How d’you know it was the right man?”

“I don’t, but the guy was around the right age, right middle initial—”

“You remember his middle initial?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “It doesn’t look like he’s there anymore, though. Same story with Laing. I’m pretty sure he was at an address in Corby in 2008, but he’s moved on. How long,” Strike added, staring across the street, “has that bloke in the camouflage jacket and shades been in that restaurant?”

“About half an hour.”

As far as Strike could tell, the man in sunglasses was watching him back, staring out across the street through two windows. Broad-shouldered and long-legged, he looked too large for the silver chair. With the sliding reflections of traffic and passersby refracting off the window Strike found it difficult to be sure, but he appeared to be sporting heavy stubble.

“What’s it like in there?” Robin asked, pointing towards the double doors of Spearmint Rhino under their heavy metallic awning.

“In the strip club?” asked Strike, taken aback.

“No, in the Japanese restaurant,” said Robin sarcastically. “Of course in the strip club.”

“It’s all right,” he said, not entirely sure what he was being asked.

“What does it look like?”

“Gold. Mirrors

. Dim lighting.” When she looked at him expectantly, he said, “There’s a pole in the middle, where they dance.”

“Not lap dances?”

“There are private booths for them.”

“What do the girls wear?”

“I dunno—not much—”

His mobile rang: Elin.

Robin turned her face away, toying with what looked like a pair of reading glasses on the table in front of her, but which actually contained the small camera with which she photographed Platinum’s movements. She had found this gadget exciting when Strike first handed it to her, but the thrill had long since worn off. She drank her tomato juice and stared out of the window, trying not to listen to what Strike and Elin were saying to each other. He always sounded matter-of-fact when on the phone to his girlfriend, but then, it was difficult to imagine Strike murmuring endearments to anyone. Matthew called her both “Robsy” and “Rosy-Posy” when he was in the right mood, which was not often these days.

“… at Nick and Ilsa’s,” Strike was saying. “Yeah. No, I agree… yeah… all right… you too.”

He cut the call.

“Is that where you’re going to stay?” Robin asked. “With Nick and Ilsa?”

They were two of Strike’s oldest friends. She had met and liked both of them on a couple of visits to the office.

“Yeah, they say I can stay as long as I want.”

“Why not with Elin?” asked Robin, risking rebuff, because she was perfectly aware of the line Strike preferred to maintain between his personal and professional lives.

“Wouldn’t work,” he said. He didn’t seem annoyed that she had asked, but showed no inclination to elaborate. “I forgot,” he added, glancing back across the street to the Japanese Canteen. The table where the man in camouflage jacket and shades had sat was now unoccupied. “I got you this.”

It was a rape alarm.

“I’ve already got one,” said Robin, pulling it out of her coat pocket and showing him.

“Yeah, but this one’s better,” said Strike, showing her its features. “You want an alarm of at least 120 decibels and it sprays them with indelible red stuff.”

“Mine does 140 decibels.”

“I still think this one’s better.”

“Is this the usual bloke thing of thinking any gadget you’ve chosen must be superior to anything I’ve got?”

He laughed and drained his pint.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting Shanker.”

The name was unfamiliar to her.

“The bloke who sometimes gives me tip-offs I can barter with the Met,” Strike explained. “The bloke who told me who’d stabbed that police informer, remember? Who recommended me as a heavy to that gangster?”

“Oh,” said Robin. “Him. You’ve never told me what he was called.”

“Shanker’s my best chance for finding out where Whittaker is,” said Strike. “He might have some information on Digger Malley as well. He runs with some of the same crowd.”

He squinted across the road.

“Keep an eye out for that camouflage jacket.”

“You’re jumpy.”

“Bloody right I’m jumpy, Robin,” he said, drawing out a pack of cigarettes ready for the short walk to the Tube. “Someone sent us an effing leg.”

9

One Step Ahead of the Devil

Seeing Strike in the mutilated flesh, walking along the opposite pavement towards the Court, had been an unexpected bonus.

What a fat fucker he’d become since they had last seen each other, ambling up the road carrying his backpack like the dumb squaddie he had once been, without realizing that the man who had sent him a leg was sitting barely fifty yards away. So much for the great detective! Into the pub he’d gone to join little Secretary. He was almost certainly fucking her. He hoped so, anyway. That would make what he was going to do to her even more satisfying.

Then, as he had stared through his sunglasses at the figure of Strike sitting just inside the pub window, he thought that Strike turned and looked back. Of course, he couldn’t make out features from across the road, through two panes of glass and his own tinted lenses, but something in the distant figure’s attitude, the full disc of its face turned in his direction, had brought him to a high pitch of tension. They had looked at each other across the road and the traffic growled past in either direction, intermittently blocking them from view.

He had waited until three double-deckers had come crawling end to end into the space between them, then slid out of his chair, through the glass doors of the restaurant and up the side street. Adrenaline coursed through him as he stripped off his camouflage jacket and turned it inside out. There could be no question of binning it: his knives were concealed inside the lining. Around another corner, he broke into a flat-out run.

10

With no love, from the past.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Shadow of California”

The unbroken stream of traffic obliged Strike to stand and wait before crossing Tottenham Court Road, his eyes sweeping the opposite pavement. When he reached the other side of the street he peered through the window of the Japanese restaurant, but there was no camouflage jacket to be seen, nor did any of the men in shirts or T-shirts resemble the sunglasses-wearer in size or shape.

Strike felt his mobile vibrate and pulled it out of his jacket pocket. Robin had texted him:

Get a grip.

Grinning, Strike raised a hand of farewell towards the windows of the Court and headed off towards the Tube.

Perhaps he was just jumpy, as Robin had said. What were the odds that the nutter who had sent the leg would be sitting watching Robin in broad daylight? Yet he had not liked the fixed stare of the big man in the camouflage jacket, nor the fact that he had been wearing sunglasses: the day was not that bright. Had his disappearance while Strike’s view was occluded been coincidental or deliberate?

The trouble was that Strike could place little reliance on his memories of what the three men who were currently preoccupying him looked like, because he had not seen Brockbank for eight years, Laing for nine and Whittaker for sixteen. Any of them might have grown fat or wasted in that time, lost their hair, become bearded or mustached, be incapacitated or newly muscled. Strike himself had lost a leg since he had last set eyes on any of them. The one thing that nobody could disguise was height. All three of the men Strike was concerned about had been six feet tall or over and Camouflage Jacket had looked at least that in his metal chair.

The phone in his pocket buzzed as he walked towards Tottenham Court Road station, and on pulling it out of his pocket he saw, to his pleasure, that it was Graham Hardacre. Drawing aside so as not to impede passersby, he answered.

“Oggy?” said his ex-colleague’s voice. “What gives, mate? Why are people sending you legs?”

“I take it you’re not in Germany?” said Strike.

“Edinburgh, been here six weeks. Just been reading about you in the Scotsman.”

The Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police had an office in Edinburgh Castle: 35 Section. It was a prestigious posting.

“Hardy, I need a favor,” said Strike. “Intel on a couple of guys. D’you remember Noel Brockbank?”

“Hard to forget. Seventh Armoured, if memory serves?”

“That’s him. The other one’s Donald Laing. He was before I knew you. King’s Own Royal Borderers. Knew him in Cyprus.”

“I’ll see what I can do when I get back to the office, mate. I’m in the middle of a plowed field right now.”

A chat about mutual acquaintances was curtailed by the increasing noise of rush-hour traffic. Hardacre promised to ring back once he had had a look at the army records and Strike continued towards the Tube.

He got out at Whitechapel station thirty minutes later to find a text message from the man he was supposed to be meeting.

Sorry Bunsen cant do today ill give you a bell r />

This was both disappointing and inconvenient, but not a surprise. Considering that Strike was not carrying a consignment of drugs or a large pile of used notes, and that he did not require intimidation or beating, it was a mark of great esteem that Shanker had even condescended to fix a time and place for meeting.

Strike’s knee was complaining after a day on his feet, but there were no seats outside the station. He leaned up against the yellow brick wall beside the entrance and called Shanker’s number.

“Yeah, all right, Bunsen?”

Just as he no longer remembered why Shanker was called Shanker, he had no more idea why Shanker called him Bunsen. They had met when they were seventeen and the connection between them, though profound in its way, bore none of the usual stigmata of teenage friendship. In fact, it had not been a friendship in any usual sense, but more like an enforced brotherhood. Strike was sure that Shanker would mourn his passing were he to die, but he was equally certain that Shanker would rob his body of all valuables if left alone with it. What others might not understand was that Shanker would do so in the belief that Strike would be glad, in whatever afterworld he was dwelling, to think that it was Shanker who had his wallet, rather than some anonymous opportunist.

“You’re busy, Shanker?” asked Strike, lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Yeah, Bunsen, no chance today. Woss ’appening?”

“I’m looking for Whittaker.”

“Gonna finish it, are you?”

The change in Shanker’s tone would have alarmed anyone who had forgotten who Shanker was, what he was. To Shanker and his associates, there was no proper end to a grudge other than killing and, in consequence, he had spent half his adult life behind bars. Strike was surprised Shanker had survived into his midthirties.

“I just want to know where he is,” said Strike repressively.

He doubted that Shanker would have heard about the leg. Shanker lived in a world where news was of strictly personal interest and was conveyed by word of mouth.