Career of Evil

If she had to be at home, she supposed she would watch the wedding. Robin staked out a position on the sitting-room sofa early next morning, her laptop open on her knees, her mobile beside her, the TV on in the background. Matthew, too, had the day off work, but he was in the kitchen, keeping out of her way. There had been no solicitous offers of tea today, no questions about her work, no obsequious attentiveness. Robin sensed a change in him since her mother had left. He seemed anxious, wary, more serious. Somehow, during their quiet conversations, Linda appeared to have convinced Matthew that what had happened might never be reparable.

Robin knew perfectly well that she needed to deliver the coup de grâce. Linda’s parting words had increased her sense of urgency. She had not yet found another place to live, but she must nevertheless tell Matthew that she was moving out and agree a form of words to issue to their friends and family. Yet here she sat on the sofa, working rather than dealing with the subject that seemed to fill the small flat, pressing against the walls, keeping the atmosphere perpetually stiff with tension.

Commentators wearing buttonholes and corsages were babbling on screen about the decorations in Westminster Abbey. Famous guests snaked towards the entrance and Robin half listened as she noted down the telephone numbers for lap-dancing clubs, strip joints and massage parlors in and around Shoreditch. Every now and then she scrolled down a page to look through the client reviews on the remote chance that somebody might have mentioned a bouncer called Noel, but no individual was named except the women who worked there. Punters often recommended them on the basis of their reported enthusiasm for their jobs. Mandy from one massage parlor “gives full thirty minutes” with “never any sense of being rushed”; the gorgeous Sherry of Beltway Strippers was always “willing, accommodating and up for a laugh.” “I can thoroughly recommend Zoe,” said one punter, “gorgeous figure and a very ‘happy ending’!!!”

In a different mood — or, perhaps, in a different life — Robin might have found the way they talked about the women funny. So many of the men handing over cash for sex needed to believe that the women’s enthusiasm was real, that they took their time for pleasure, that they were really laughing at punters’ jokes, genuinely enjoying the body-to-body massages and the hand jobs. One reviewer had posted a poem about his favorite girl.

Even as she diligently compiled her list of numbers, Robin thought it unlikely that Brockbank, with his insalubrious record, would have been hired by any of the more upmarket places, whose websites featured artistically lit, airbrushed naked girls and invitations for couples to attend together.

Brothels, Robin knew, were illegal, but you did not have to travel too far into cyberspace to find mention of them. She had become adept at nosing information from out-of-the-way corners of the internet since going to work for Strike and was soon painstakingly cross-referencing mentions of local establishments on ramshackle sites dedicated to the exchange of such information. Here, at the cheapest end of the market, there were no poems: “£60 for anal going rate round here.” “All forigen girls, no english.” “Very young probably still clean. Wouldn put your dick in some of wht you see.”

Often, only an approximate location was available. She knew that Strike would not let her go looking for any of these basements and tenements where “mostly east european grils” or “all Chinese tail” were working.

Taking a break and subconsciously hoping to loosen the tight knot in her chest, she looked up at the television. Princes William and Harry were walking up the aisle together. As Robin watched, the door to the sitting room opened and Matthew walked in, carrying a mug of tea. He had not offered to make her one. He sat down in the armchair, saying nothing, and stared at the television screen.

Robin returned to her work, hyperconscious of Matthew beside her. Joining her without talking was a departure. Acceptance of her separateness — not interrupting her, even with the offer of tea — was also new. So was the fact that he did not pick up the remote control and change the channel.

The cameras returned to the outside of the Goring Hotel, where they were keeping vigil for the first glimpse of Kate Middleton in her wedding dress. Robin took covert glimpses over the top of her laptop while scrolling slowly down a series of barely literate comments about a brothel near Commercial Road.

An outburst of excitable comment and cheering made Robin look up in time to see Kate Middleton climbing into a limousine. Long lace sleeves, just like the ones she had removed from her own wedding dress...