Career of Evil

When Strike withdrew fifty pounds from a cashpoint prior to entering the Saracen off Commercial Road, the machine churlishly showed him a negative balance in his current account. His expression grim, Strike handed over a tenner to the short-necked bouncer on the door and pushed his way through the strips of black plastic masking the interior, which was dimly lit, but insufficiently to mask the overall impression of shabbiness.

The interior of the old pub had been ripped out in its entirety. The refashioned decor gave the impression of a community center gone bad, dimly lit and soulless. The floor was of polished pine, which reflected the wide neon strip running the length of the bar that took up one side of the room.

It was shortly after midday, but there was already a girl gyrating on a small stage at the far end of the pub. Bathed in red light and standing in front of angled mirrors so that every inch of dimpled flesh could be appreciated, she was removing her bra to the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” A grand total of four men were sitting on high stools, one to each elevated table, dividing their attention between the girl now swinging clumsily around a pole and a big-screen TV showing Sky Sports.

Strike headed straight for the bar, where he found himself facing a sign that read “Any customer caught masturbating will be ejected.”

“What can I get you, love?” asked a girl with long hair, purple eye-shadow and a nose ring.

Strike ordered a pint of John Smith’s and took a seat at the bar. Other than the bouncer, the only other male employee on view was the man sitting behind a turntable beside the stripper. He was stocky, blond, middle-aged and did not remotely resemble Brockbank.

“I was hoping to meet a friend here,” Strike told the barmaid, who, having no further customers, was leaning on the bar, staring dreamily at the television and picking her long nails.

“Yeah?” she said, sounding bored.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “He said he was working here.”

A man in a fluorescent jacket approached the bar and she moved away to serve him without another word.

“Start Me Up” ended and so did the stripper’s act. Naked, she hopped off the stage, grabbed a wrap and disappeared through a curtain at the back of the pub. Nobody clapped.

A woman in a very short nylon kimono and stockings slid out from behind the curtain and began walking around the pub, holding out an empty beer glass to punters, who one by one put their hands in their pockets and gave her some change. She reached Strike last. He dropped in a couple of quid. She headed straight for the stage, where she put her pint glass of coins carefully beside the DJ’s turntable, wriggled out of her kimono and stepped on to the stage in bra, pants, stockings and heels.

“Gentlemen, I think you’re going to enjoy this... Big welcome, please, for the lovely Mia!”

She began to jiggle to Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” There was not the remotest synchronicity between her movements and the track.

The barmaid resumed her lounging position near Strike. The view of the TV was clearest from where he sat.

“Yeah, like I was saying,” Strike began again, “a friend of mine told me he’s working here.”

“Mm-hm,” she said.

“Name of Noel Brockbank.”

“Yeah? I don’t know him.”

“No,” said Strike, making a show of scanning the place, although he had already established that Brockbank was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong place.”

The first stripper pushed her way out from behind the curtain, having changed into a bubblegum-pink spaghetti-strapped minidress that barely skimmed her crotch, and was somehow more indecent than her previous nakedness. She approached the man in the fluorescent jacket and asked him something, but he shook his head. Looking around, she caught Strike’s eye, smiled and approached him.

“Hiya,” she said. Her accent was Irish. Her hair, which he had thought blonde in the red light of the stage, turned out to be vivid copper. Beneath the thick orange lipstick and the thick false eyelashes hid a girl who looked as though she should still have been at school. “I’m Orla. Who’re you?”

“Cameron,” said Strike, which was what people usually called him after failing to grasp his first name.

“D’ya fancy a private dance then, Cameron?”

“Where does that happen?”

“Troo there,” she said, pointing towards the curtain where she had changed. “I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“No. I’m looking for a friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“It’s a him.”

“Yeh’ve come to the wrong place fer hims, darlin’,” she said.

She was so young he felt mildly dirty just hearing her call him darling.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Strike asked.

She hesitated. There was more money in a private dance, but perhaps he was the kind of guy who needed warming up first.

“Go on, then.”