Career of Evil

Robin’s trip home was tinged throughout with the strangest sense of unreality. She felt out of step with everybody, even her mother, who was preoccupied with the wedding arrangements and, while sympathetic to Robin’s constant checking of her phone for any development on the Shacklewell Ripper, a little harassed.

Back in the familiar kitchen where Rowntree snoozed at her feet, the seating plan for the reception spread out on the scrubbed wooden table between them, Robin began to appreciate how fully she had abnegated responsibility for her wedding. Linda was constantly firing questions at her about favors, speeches, the bridesmaids’ shoes, her headdress, when it would be convenient to speak to the vicar, where she and Matt wanted the presents sent, whether Matthew’s Auntie Sue ought to be on the top table or not. Robin had imagined that being at home would be restful. Instead she was required to deal, on the one hand, with a tidal wave of trivial queries from her mother; on the other, a series of questions from her brother Martin, who pored over accounts of the discovery of Heather Smart’s body until Robin lost her temper with what she saw as his ghoulishness, whereupon an overwrought Linda banned all mention of the killer from their house.

Matthew, meanwhile, was angry, though trying not to show it, that Robin had not yet asked Strike for two weeks off for the honeymoon.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Robin at dinner. “We’ve got hardly any work on and Cormoran says the police have taken over all our leads.”

“He still hasn’t confirmed,” said Linda, who had been beadily watching how little Robin was eating.

“Who hasn’t?” asked Robin.

“Strike. No RSVP.”

“I’ll remind him,” said Robin, taking a large slug of wine.

She had not told any of them, not even Matthew, that she kept having nightmares that woke her gasping in the darkness, back in the bed where she had slept in the months following her rape. A massive man kept coming for her in these dreams. Sometimes he burst into the office where she worked with Strike. More frequently he loomed out of the darkness in the backstreets of London, knives shining. That morning he had been on the point of gouging out her eyes when she woke, gasping, to the sound of Matthew drowsily asking her what she had said.

“Nothing,” she had said, pushing sweaty hair off her forehead. “Nothing.”

Matthew had to return to work on Monday. He seemed pleased to leave her behind in Masham, helping Linda with preparations for the wedding. Mother and daughter met the vicar at St. Mary the Virgin for a final discussion about the form of the service on Monday afternoon.

Robin tried hard to concentrate on the minister’s cheerful suggestions, his ecclesiastical pep talk, but all the time he was talking her eyes kept drifting to the large stone crab that appeared to be clinging to the church wall on the right of the aisle.

This crab had fascinated her in her childhood. She had not been able to understand why there was a big carved crab crawling up the stones of their church, and her curiosity on the point had ended up infecting Linda, who had gone to the local library, looked up the records and triumphantly informed her daughter that the crab had been the emblem of the ancient Scrope family, whose memorial sat above it.

Nine-year-old Robin had been disappointed by the answer. In a way, an explanation had never been the point. She had simply liked being the only one who wanted to find out the truth.

She was standing in the dressmaker’s box-like changing room, with its gilt-framed mirror and its new-carpet smell, when Strike called next day. Robin knew that it was Strike because of the unique ringtone that she had attached to his calls. She lunged for her handbag, causing the dressmaker to emit a little cry of annoyance and surprise as the folds of chiffon that she was dexterously repinning were torn from her hands.

“Hello?” said Robin.

“Hi,” said Strike.

The single syllable told her that something bad had happened.

“Oh God, has someone else been killed?” Robin blurted out, forgetting the dressmaker crouching at the hem of her wedding dress. The woman stared at her in the mirror, her mouth full of pins.

“Sorry, could you give me a moment? Not you!” she added to Strike, in case he hung up.

“Sorry,” she repeated as the curtain closed behind the dressmaker and she sank down onto the stool in the corner in her wedding dress, “I was with someone. Has someone else died?”

“Yes,” said Strike, “but it’s not what you think. It’s Wardle’s brother.”

Robin’s tired and overwrought brain tried to join dots that refused to connect.

“It’s nothing to do with the case,” said Strike. “He was knocked down on a zebra crossing by a speeding van.”

“God,” said Robin, utterly fazed. She had temporarily forgotten that death came in any manner other than at the hands of a maniac with knives.

“It’s a fucker, all right. He had three kids, and a fourth on the way. I’ve just spoken to Wardle. Bloody terrible thing to happen.”