Career of Evil

The phone rang again: Strike was calling back, trying to make sure that the hanging up had been deliberate rather than accidental. Matthew looked at the mobile, paralyzed with indecision. He dared not answer on Robin’s behalf or tell Strike to fuck off. He knew Strike: he’d keep calling back until he spoke to Robin.

The call went to voicemail. Now Matthew realized that a recorded apology was the worst thing that could happen: Robin could listen to it again and again and finally be worn down and softened by it...

He looked up: Robin was returning from the Ladies. With her phone in his hand he stood up and pretended to be talking into it.

“It’s Dad,” he lied to Robin, placing a hand over the mouthpiece and praying that Strike would not call back again while he was standing in front of her. “Mine’s out of battery... listen, what’s your passcode? I need to look something up for the honeymoon flights — it’s to tell Dad—”

She gave it to him.

“Give me a sec, I don’t want you to hear anything about the honeymoon,” he said and walked away from her, torn between guilt and pride in his own quick thinking.

Once safe inside the men’s bathroom, he opened up her phone. Getting rid of any record of Strike’s calls meant deleting her entire call history — this he did. Then he called voicemail, listened to Strike’s recorded message and deleted that too. Finally, he went into the settings on Robin’s phone and blocked Strike.

Breathing deeply he turned to his handsome reflection in the mirror. Strike had said on the voicemail message that if he did not hear back from her he would not call again. The wedding was in forty-eight hours’ time, and the anxious, defiant Matthew was counting on Strike keeping his word.

58 Deadline

He was pumped up, on edge, pretty sure he had just done something stupid. As the Tube train rattled south, his knuckles whitened because he was clutching the hanging strap so tightly. Behind his shades, his puffy, reddened eyes squinted at the station signs.

It’s shrill voice still seemed to be piercing his eardrum.

“I don’t believe you. Where’s the money, then, if you’ve got night work? No — I want to talk to you — no — you’re not going out again—”

He had hit her. He shouldn’t have done it, he knew that: the vision of her appalled face was taunting him now, her eyes wide with shock, her hand clamped over the cheek where his fingermarks were turning red against the white.

It was her own fucking fault. He hadn’t been able to stop himself, not after the last couple of weeks, during which It had become more and more strident. After he’d come home with his eyes full of red ink he’d pretended to have had an allergic reaction, but there’d been no sympathy from the cold bitch. All It had done was carp about where he’d been and — for the first time — ask where the money was that he claimed to be earning. There hadn’t been much time for theft with the boys lately, not with all his time devoted to hunting.

She’d brought home a newspaper with a news story in it about the fact that the Shacklewell Ripper might now have red ink stains around his eyes. He had burned the paper in the garden, but he couldn’t stop her reading the story elsewhere. The day before yesterday, he thought he’d surprised It watching him with an odd expression on her face. It wasn’t stupid, not really; was It starting to wonder? This anxiety was the last thing he needed when his attempt on The Secretary had left him almost humiliated.

There was no point going after The Secretary anymore, because she had left Strike forever. He had seen the story online, in the internet café where he sometimes whiled away an hour, just to get away from It. He took some consolation from the idea that his machete had frightened her off, that she would bear forever the long scar down her forearm that he had carved there, but that wasn’t good enough.

His months and months of careful planning had all been with the intention of entangling Strike in murder, tarring him with suspicion. Firstly, embroil him in the death of the stupid little bitch who’d wanted her leg cut off, so that the police swarmed all over him and the dumb public thought he’d had something to do with it. Then, murder his Secretary. Let him try and limp away from that untainted. Let him try and be the famous detective after that.

But the bastard kept wriggling free. There had been no mention of the letters in the press, the letter he had carefully written out “from” Kelsey, and which had been supposed to turn Strike into suspect number one. Then the press had colluded with the fucker, not giving out The Secretary’s name, not drawing the connection between her and Strike.

Perhaps it might be wise to stop now... except that he could not stop. He had come too far. He had never in his life put so much planning into anything as he had into the ruination of Strike. The fat, crippled bastard had already advertised for somebody to replace The Secretary, and that didn’t look like a man who was about to go out of business.