Career of Evil

She’d produced a photofit. What a fucking joke! The police were shaven monkeys in uniforms, the lot of them. Did they think this picture would help? It looked nothing like him, nothing at all; it could have been anyone, white or black. He would have laughed out loud if It hadn’t been there, but It wouldn’t like him laughing over a dead hooker and a photofit...

It was pretty bolshy at the moment. He had had to work hard to make up for the fact that he had treated It roughly, had to apologize, play the nice guy. “I was upset,” he had said. “Really upset.” He’d had to cuddle It and buy It fucking flowers and stay home, to make up for being angry, and now It was taking advantage, the way women always did, trying to take more, as much as It could get.

“I don’t like it when you go away.”

I’ll make YOU fucking go away if you keep this up.

He had told her a cock-and-bull story about the chance of a job, but for the first time ever she actually fucking dared question him: Who told you about it? How long will you be gone?

He watched It talking and he imagined drawing back a fist and punching It so hard in It’s ugly fucking face that the bones splintered...

Yet he needed It a little while longer, at least until he did The Secretary.

It still loved him, that was the trump card: he knew he could bring It back into line with the threat of leaving for good. He didn’t want to overplay that one, though. So he pressed on with the flowers, the kisses, the kindness that made the memory of his rage soften and dissolve in It’s stupid, addled memory. He liked to add a little emollient to her drinks, a little extra something to keep her off balance, weeping into his neck, clinging to him.

Patient, kind, but determined.

At last she agreed: a week away, completely away, free to do as he liked.

45

Harvester of eyes, that’s me.

                        Blue Öyster Cult, “Harvester of Eyes”

Detective Inspector Eric Wardle was far from delighted that Jason and Tempest had lied to his men, but Strike found him less angry than he might have expected when they met for a pint, at Wardle’s invitation, on Monday evening in the Feathers. The explanation for his surprising forbearance was simple: the revelation that Kelsey had been picked up from her rendezvous in Café Rouge by a man on a motorbike fitted perfectly with Wardle’s new pet theory.

“You remember the guy called Devotee who was on their website? Got a fetish for amputees, went quiet after Kelsey was killed?”

“Yeah,” said Strike, who recalled Robin saying that she had had an interaction with him.

“We’ve tracked him down. Guess what’s in his garage?”

Strike assumed, from the fact that no arrest had been made, that they had not found body parts, so he obligingly suggested: “Motorbike?”

“Kawasaki Ninja,” said Wardle. “I know we’re looking for a Honda,” he added, forestalling Strike, “but he crapped himself when we came calling.”

“So do most people when CID turn up on their doorstep. Go on.”

“He’s a sweaty little guy, name of Baxter, a sales rep with no alibi for the weekend of the second and third, or for the twenty-ninth. Divorced, no kids, claims he stayed in for the royal wedding, watching it. Would you have watched the royal wedding without a woman in the house?”

“No,” said Strike, who had only caught footage on the news.

“He claims the bike’s his brother’s and he’s just looking after it, but after a bit of questioning he admitted he’s taken it out a few times. So we know he can ride one, and he could have hired or borrowed the Honda.”

“What did he say about the website?”

“He downplayed that completely, says he’s only pissing around, doesn’t mean anything by it, he’s not turned on by stumps, but when we asked whether we could have a look at his computer he didn’t like it at all. Asked to talk to his lawyer before he gave an answer. That’s where we’ve left it, but we’re going back to see him again tomorrow. Friendly chat.”

“Did he admit to talking to Kelsey online?”

“Hard for him to deny it when we’ve got her laptop and all Tempest’s records. He asked Kelsey about her plans for her leg and offered to meet her and she brushed him off — online, anyway. Bloody hell, we’ve got to look into him,” said Wardle in response to Strike’s skeptical look, “he’s got no alibi, a motorbike, a thing for amputation and he tried to meet her!”

“Yeah, of course,” said Strike. “Any other leads?”

“That’s why I wanted to meet you. We’ve found your Donald Laing. He’s in Wollaston Close, in Elephant and Castle.”

“He is?” said Strike, genuinely taken aback.

Savoring the fact that he had surprised Strike for once, Wardle smirked.

“Yeah, and he’s a sick man. We found him through a JustGiving page. We got on to them and got his address.”

That was the difference between Strike and Wardle, of course: the latter still had badges, authority and the kind of power Strike had relinquished when he left the army.

“Have you seen him?” asked Strike.