Career of Evil

While the distinctive nasal voice of the commentator on the Grand National gabbled incomprehensibly from below, and her brother’s shouts of encouragement became louder, Robin scanned more message boards, seeking any mention of Strike and also searching for a connecting line between this paraphilia and violence.

Robin found it notable that none of the people pouring their amputee and amputation fantasies onto this forum seemed to be aroused by violence or pain. Even the man whose sexual fantasy involved him and his friend cutting off their own legs together was clear and articulate on that subject: the guillotining was merely the necessary precursor to the achievement of stumps.

Would a person aroused by Strike-as-amputee cut off a woman’s leg and send it to him? That was the sort of thing Matthew might think would happen, Robin thought scornfully, because Matthew would assume that anyone odd enough to find stumps attractive would be crazy enough to dismember somebody else: indeed, he would think it likely. However, from what Robin remembered of the letter from RL, and after perusing the online outpourings of his fellow acrotomophiliacs, she thought it much more likely that what RL meant by “making it up” to Strike was likely to mean practices that Strike would probably find a lot less appetizing than the original amputation.

Of course, RL might be both an acrotomophiliac and a psychopath...

“YES! FUCKING YES! FIVE HUNDRED QUID!” screamed Martin. From the rhythmic thumping emanating from the hall, it sounded as though Martin had found the sitting room inadequate for the full performance of a victory dance. Rowntree woke, jumped to his feet and let out a groggy bark. The noise was such that Robin did not hear Matthew approaching until he pushed the door open. Automatically, she clicked the mouse repeatedly, backtracking through the sites devoted to the sexual fetishization of amputees.

“Hi,” she said. “I take it Ballabriggs won.”

“Yeah,” said Matthew.

For the second time that day, he held out a hand. Robin slid the laptop aside and Matthew pulled her to her feet and hugged her. With the warmth of his body came relief, seeping through her, calming her. She could not stand another night’s bickering.

Then he pulled away, his eyes fixed on something over her shoulder.

“What?”

She looked down at the laptop. There in the middle of a glowing white screen of text was a large boxed definition:

Acrotomophilia noun

A paraphilia in which sexual gratification is derived from fantasies or acts involving an amputee.

There was a brief silence.

“How many horses died?” asked Robin in a brittle voice.

“Two,” Matthew answered, and walked out of the room.

14

... you ain’t seen the last of me yet,

I’ll find you, baby, on that you can bet.

                         Blue Öyster Cult, “Showtime”

Half past eight on Sunday evening found Strike standing outside Euston station, smoking what would be his last cigarette until he arrived in Edinburgh in nine hours’ time.

Elin had been disappointed that he was going to miss the evening concert, and instead they had spent most of the afternoon in bed, an alternative that Strike had been more than happy to accept. Beautiful, collected and rather cool outside the bedroom, Elin was considerably more demonstrative inside it. The memory of certain erotic sights and sounds — her alabaster skin faintly damp under his mouth, her pale lips wide in a moan — added savor to the tang of nicotine. Smoking was not permitted in Elin’s spectacular flat on Clarence Terrace, because her young daughter had asthma. Strike’s post-coital treat had instead been to fight off sleep while she showed him a recording of herself talking about the Romantic composers on the bedroom television.

“You know, you look like Beethoven,” she told him thoughtfully, as the camera closed in on a marble bust of the composer.

“With a buggered nose,” said Strike. He had been told it before.

“And why are you going to Scotland?” Elin had asked as he reattached his prosthetic leg while sitting on the bed in her bedroom, which was decorated in creams and whites and yet had none of the depressing austerity of Ilsa and Nick’s spare room.

“Following a lead,” said Strike, fully aware that he was overstating the case. There was nothing except his own suspicions to connect Donald Laing and Noel Brockbank to the severed leg. Nevertheless, and much though he might silently lament the nearly three hundred quid the round-trip was costing him, he did not regret the decision to go.

Grinding the stub of his cigarette under the heel of his prosthetic foot, he proceeded into the station, bought himself a bag of food at the supermarket and clambered onto the overnight train.