Career of Evil

Martina was a plump, dark woman wearing a white tank top. Her blurry photograph looked as though it had been a selfie. A small heart-shaped harp charm hung from a chain around her neck.

Sadie Roach, 25, admin assistant, stabbed to death, mutilated, earrings taken.

She had been a pretty girl with a gamine haircut and hoops in her ears. Judging by cropped figures at the edges of her picture, it had been taken at a family gathering.

Kelsey Platt, 16, student, stabbed to death and dismembered.

Here was the familiar chubby, plain face of the girl who had written to Strike, smiling in her school uniform.

Lila Monkton, 18, prostitute, stabbed, fingers cut off, survived.

A blurred picture of a gaunt girl whose bright red hennaed hair was cut into a shaggy bob, her multiple piercings glinting in the camera flash.

Heather Smart, 22, financial services worker, stabbed to death, nose and ears removed.

She was round-faced and innocent-looking, with wavy mouse-brown hair, freckles and a timid smile.

Robin looked up from the Daily Express with a deep sigh. Matthew had been sent to audit a client in High Wycombe, so he had been unable to give Robin a lift today. It had taken her a full hour and twenty minutes to get to Catford from Ealing on trains crammed with tourists and commuters sweating in the London heat. Now she left her seat and headed for the door, swaying with the rest of the commuters as the train slowed and stopped, yet again, at Catford Bridge station.

Her week back at work with Strike had been strange. Strike, who clearly had no intention to comply with the instruction to keep out of Carver’s investigation, was nevertheless taking the investigating officer seriously enough to be cautious.

“If he can make a case that we’ve buggered up the police investigation, we’re finished as a business,” he said. “And we know he’ll try and say I’ve screwed things up, whether I have or not.”

“So why are we carrying on?”

Robin had been playing devil’s advocate, because she would have been deeply unhappy and frustrated had Strike announced that they were abandoning their leads.

“Because Carver thinks my suspects are bullshit, and I think he’s an incompetent tit.”

Robin’s laugh had ended prematurely when Strike had told her he wanted her to return to Catford and stake out Whittaker’s girlfriend.

“Still?” she asked. “Why?”

“You know why. I want to see whether Stephanie can give him alibis for any of the key dates.”

“You know what?” said Robin, plucking up her courage. “I’ve been in Catford a lot. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do Brockbank. Why don’t I try and get something out of Alyssa?”

“There’s Laing as well, if you want a change,” said Strike.

“He saw me up close when I fell over,” Robin countered at once. “Don’t you think it would be better if you did Laing?”

“I’ve been watching his flat while you’ve been away,” Strike said.

“And?”

“And he mostly stays in, but sometimes he goes to the shops and back.”

“You don’t think it’s him anymore, do you?”

“I haven’t ruled him out,” said Strike. “Why are you so keen to do Brockbank?”

“Well,” said Robin bravely, “I feel like I’ve done a lot of the running on him. I got the Market Harborough address out of Holly and I got Blondin Street out of the nursery—”

“And you’re worried about the kids who’re living with him,” said Strike.

Robin remembered the little black girl with the stiff pigtails who had tripped over, staring at her, in Catford Broadway.

“So what if I am?”

“I’d rather you stuck to Stephanie,” said Strike.

She had been annoyed; so annoyed that she had promptly asked for two weeks off rather more bluntly than she might otherwise have done.

“Two weeks off?” he said, looking up in surprise. He was far more used to her begging to stay at work than asking to leave it.

“It’s for my honeymoon.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yeah. I suppose that’ll be soon, will it?”

“Obviously. The wedding’s on the second.”

“Christ, that’s only — what — three weeks or something?”

She had been annoyed that he had not realized that it was so close.

“Yes,” she had said, getting to her feet and reaching for her jacket. “And would you mind RSVP’ing if you’re coming?”

So she returned to Catford and the busy market stalls, to the smell of incense and raw fish, to pointless hours of standing beneath the crouching stone bears over the stage door of the Broadway Theatre.

Robin had hidden her hair under a straw hat today and was wearing sunglasses, but she still wondered whether she did not see a hint of recognition in the eyes of stallholders as she settled once more to lurk opposite the triple windows of Whittaker and Stephanie’s flat. She had only had a couple of glimpses of the girl since she had resumed her surveillance on her, and on neither occasion had there been the slightest chance of speaking to her. Of Whittaker, there had been no hint at all. Robin settled back against the cool gray stone of the theater wall, prepared for another long day of tedium, and yawned.