Career of Evil

Stephanie looked terrified, even though Whittaker was ignoring her completely. His attention was entirely focused on Robin, who felt absurdly self-conscious as she paid the bill, then stood and walked, Whittaker just behind her, out onto the street.

“Well — good-bye then,” she said weakly to Stephanie.

She wished that she had Strike’s courage. He had urged Stephanie to come away with him right underneath Whittaker’s nose, but Robin’s mouth was suddenly dry. Whittaker was staring at her as though he had spotted something fascinating and rare on a dung heap. Behind them, the waitress was bolting the doors. The sinking sun was throwing cold shadows across the street that Robin only knew as hot and smelly.

“Jus’ bein’ kind, were you, darlin’?” Whittaker asked softly, and Robin could not tell whether there was more malice or sweetness in his voice.

“I suppose I was worried,” said Robin, forcing herself to look into those wide-apart eyes, “because Stephanie’s injuries look quite serious.”

“That?” said Whittaker, putting out a hand to Stephanie’s purple and gray face. “Come off a pushbike, din’choo, Steph? Clumsy little cow.”

Robin suddenly understood Strike’s visceral hatred for this man. She would have liked to hit him too.

“I hope I’ll see you again, Stephanie,” she said.

She did not dare give the girl a number in front of Whittaker. Robin turned and began to walk away, feeling like the worst kind of coward. Stephanie was about to walk back upstairs with the man. She ought to have done more, but what? What could she say that would make a difference? Could she report the assault to the police? Would that constitute an interference with Carver’s case?

Only when she was definitely out of sight of Whittaker did she lose the sensation that invisible ants were crawling up her spine. Robin pulled out her mobile and called Strike.

“I know,” she said, before Strike could start telling her off, “it’s getting late but I’m on my way to the station right now and when you’ve heard what I’ve got, you’ll understand.”

She walked fast, chilly in the increasing cool of the evening, telling him everything that Stephanie had said.

“So he’s got an alibi?” said Strike slowly.

“For Heather’s death, yes, if Stephanie’s telling the truth, and I honestly think she is. She was with him — and the whole of Death Cult, as I say.”

“She definitely said Whittaker was there while she was servicing the band?”

“I think so. She was just answering that when Whittaker turned up and — hang on.”

Robin stopped and looked around. Busy talking, she had taken a wrong turning somewhere on the way back to the station. The sun was setting now. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a shadow move behind a wall.

“Cormoran?”

“Still here.”

Perhaps she had imagined the shadow. She was on a stretch of unfamiliar residential road, but there were lit windows and a couple walking along in the distance. She was safe, she told herself. It was all right. She just needed to retrace her steps.

“Everything OK?” asked Strike sharply.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve taken a wrong turn, that’s all.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“Near Catford Bridge station,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ve ended up here.”

She did not want to mention the shadow. Carefully she crossed the darkening road, so that she would not have to walk past the wall where she thought she had seen it, and after transferring her mobile into her left hand she took a tighter hold of the rape alarm in her right pocket.

“I’m going back the way I came,” she told Strike, wanting him to know where she was.

“Have you seen something?” he demanded.

“I don’t kn — maybe,” she admitted.

Yet when she drew level with the gap between houses where she had thought she had seen the figure, there was nobody there.

“I’m jumpy,” she said, speeding up. “Meeting Whittaker wasn’t fun. There’s definitely something — nasty — about him.”

“Where are you now?”

“About twenty feet away from where I was the last time you asked me. Hang on, I can see a street name. I’m crossing back over, I can see where I’ve gone wrong, I should’ve turned—”

She heard the footsteps only when they were right behind her. Two massive black-clad arms closed around her, pinning hers to her sides, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her mobile slipped out of her hand and fell with a crack onto the pavement.

52

Do not envy the man with the x-ray eyes.

                        Blue Öyster Cult, “X-Ray Eyes”

Strike, who had been standing in the shadow of a warehouse in Bow, keeping watch on Blondin Street, heard Robin’s sudden gasp, the thud of the mobile on the pavement and then the scuffling and skidding of feet on asphalt.

He began to run. The phone connection to Robin was still open, but he could hear nothing. Panic sharpened his mental processes and obliterated all perception of pain as he sprinted down a darkening street in the direction of the nearest station. He needed a second phone.