Career of Evil

“Well, she’s drugged up to the eyeballs and can’t remember the actual attack. She thinks he was a big, beefy white guy wearing a hat. Dark jacket. Upturned collar. Couldn’t see much of his face, but she thinks he was a northerner.”

“She does?” said Strike, his heart pounding faster than ever.

“That’s what she said. She’s groggy, though. Oh, and he stopped her getting run over, that’s the last thing she can remember. Pulled her back off the road when a van was coming.”

“What a gent,” said Strike, exhaling smoke at the starry sky.

“Yeah,” said Wardle. “Well, he wanted his body parts pristine, didn’t he?”

“Any chance of a photofit?”

“We’re going to get the artist in to see her tomorrow, but I haven’t got high hopes.”

Strike stood in the darkness, thinking hard. He could tell that Wardle had been shaken by the new attack.

“Any news on any of my guys?” he asked.

“Not yet,” said Wardle tersely. Frustrated, Strike chose not to push it. He needed this open line into the investigation.

“What about your Devotee lead?” Strike asked, turning back to look at the windows of Whittaker’s flat, where nothing seemed to have changed. “How’s that coming along?”

“I’m trying to get the cybercrime lot after him, but I’m being told they’ve got bigger fish to fry just now,” said Wardle, not without bitterness. “Their view is he’s just a common or garden pervert.”

Strike remembered that this had also been Robin’s opinion. There seemed little else to say. He said good-bye to Wardle, then sank back into his niche in the cold wall, smoking and watching Whittaker’s curtained windows as before.

Strike and Robin met in the office by chance the following morning. Strike, who had just left his flat with a cardboard file of pictures of Mad Dad under his arm, had intended to head straight out without entering the office, but the sight of Robin’s blurred form through the frosted glass changed his mind.

“Morning.”

“Hi,” said Robin.

She was pleased to see him and even more pleased to see that he was smiling. Their recent communication had been full of an odd constraint. Strike was wearing his best suit, which made him look thinner.

“Why are you so smart?” she asked.

“Emergency lawyer’s appointment: Mad Dad’s wife wants me to show them everything I’ve got, all the pictures of him lurking outside the school and jumping out at the kids. She called me late last night; he’d just turned up at the house pissed and threatening: she’s going to throw the book at him, try and get an injunction out.”

“Does this mean we’re stopping surveillance on him?”

“I doubt it. Mad Dad won’t go quietly,” said Strike, checking his watch. “Anyway, forget that — I’ve got ten minutes and I’ve got news.”

He told her about the attempted murder of the prostitute in Shacklewell. When he had finished, Robin looked sober and thoughtful.

“He took fingers?”

“Yeah.”

“You said — when we were in the Feathers — you said you didn’t see how Kelsey could have been his first murder. You said you were sure he’d worked up to — what he did to her.”

Strike nodded.

“Do you know whether the police have looked for any other killings where a bit of the woman was cut off?”

“Bound to have,” said Strike, hoping he was right and making a mental note to ask Wardle. “Anyway,” he said, “after this one, they will.”

“And she doesn’t think she’d recognize him again?”

“Like I said, he’d obscured his face. Big white guy, black jacket.”

“Did they get any DNA evidence from her?” asked Robin.

Simultaneously, both of them thought of what Robin herself had been subjected to in hospital after her attack. Strike, who had investigated rapes, knew the form. Robin had a sudden miserable memory of having to pee into a sample bottle, one eye completely closed from where he had punched her, aching all over, her throat swollen from the strangulation, then having to lie down on the examination couch, and the female doctor’s gentleness as she parted Robin’s knees...

“No,” said Strike. “He didn’t — no penetration. Anyway, I’d better get going. You can forget about tailing Mad Dad today: he’ll know he’s blotted his copybook, I doubt he’ll show up at school. If you can keep an eye on Wollaston—”

“Wait! I mean, if you’ve got time,” she added.

“Couple more minutes,” he said, checking his watch again. “What’s up? You’re haven’t spotted Laing?”

“No,” she said, “but I think — just possibly — we might have a lead on Brockbank.”

“You’re kidding!”

“It’s a strip club off Commercial Road; I’ve had a look at it on Google Street View. Looks pretty grotty. I called and asked for Noel Brockbank and a woman said ‘Who?’ and then, ‘Nile, you mean?’ And she put her hand over the mouthpiece and had a bit of discussion with another woman about what the new bouncer was called. He’s obviously only just arrived. So I described him physically and she said, ‘Yeah, that’s Nile.’ Of course,” said Robin self-deprecatingly, “it might not be him at all, it could be a dark man who really is called Nile, but when I described the long jaw, she said immediately—”