Career of Evil

“S’posed to be nice later,” muttered Hardacre as they drove up the steep, cobbled Royal Mile, past shops selling tartan and flags of the lion rampant, restaurants and cafés, boards advertising ghost tours and narrow alleyways affording fleeting glimpses of the city stretched out below to their right.

At the top of the hill the castle came into view: darkly forbidding against the sky, surrounded by high, curved stone walls. Hardacre took a right, away from the crested gates where tourists keen to beat the queues were already lurking. At a wooden booth he gave his name, flashed his pass and drove on, aiming for the entrance cut in the volcanic rock, which led to a floodlit tunnel lined with thick power cables. Leaving the tunnel, they found themselves high above the city, cannons ranged on the battlements beside them, giving on to a misty view of the spires and rooftops of the black and gold city stretching out to the Firth of Forth in the distance.

“Nice,” said Strike, moving to the cannons for a better look.

“Not bad,” agreed Hardacre, with a matter-of-fact glance down at the Scottish capital. “Over here, Oggy.”

They entered the castle through a wooden side door. Strike followed Hardacre along a chilly, narrow stone-flagged corridor and up a couple of flights of stairs that were not easy on the knee joint of Strike’s right leg. Prints of Victorian military men in dress uniforms hung at unequal intervals on the walls.

A door on the first landing led into a corridor lined with offices, carpeted in shabby dark pink, with hospital-green walls. Though Strike had never been there before, it felt instantly familiar in a way that the old squat in Fulbourne Street could not touch. This had been his life: he could have settled down at an unoccupied desk and been back at work within ten minutes.

The walls bore posters, one reminding investigators of the importance of and procedures relating to the Golden Hour — that short period of time after an offense when clues and information were most plentiful and easiest to gather — another showing photographs of Drugs of Abuse. There were whiteboards covered with updates and deadlines for various live cases — “awaiting phone & DNA analysis,” “SPA Form 3 required” — and metal file cases carrying mobile fingerprint kits. The door to the lab stood open. On a high metal table sat a pillow in a plastic evidence bag; it was covered in dark brown bloodstains. A cardboard box next to it contained bottles of spirits. Where there was bloodshed, there was always alcohol. An empty bottle of Bell’s stood in the corner, supporting a red military cap, the very item of clothing after which the corps was nicknamed.

A short-haired blonde in a pin-striped suit approached, going in the opposite direction:

“Strike.”

He did not recognize her immediately.

“Emma Daniels. Catterick, 2002,” she said with a grin. “You called our Staff Sergeant a negligent twat.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, while Hardacre sniggered. “He was. You’ve had your hair cut.”

“And you’ve got famous.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Strike.

A pale young man in shirtsleeves put his head out of an office further down the corridor, interested in the conversation.

“Gotta get on, Emma,” said Hardacre briskly. “Knew they’d be interested if they saw you,” he told Strike, once he had ushered the private detective into his office and closed the door behind them.

The room was rather dark, due largely to the fact that the window looked directly out onto a bare face of craggy rock. Photographs of Hardacre’s kids and a sizable collection of beer steins enlivened the decor, which comprised the same shabby pink carpet and pale green walls as the corridor outside.

“All right, Oggy,” said Hardacre, tapping at his keyboard, then standing back to let Strike sit down at his desk. “Here he is.”

The SIB was able to access records across all three services. There on the computer monitor was a headshot of Noel Campbell Brockbank. It had been taken before Strike met him, before Brockbank had taken the hits to the face that had permanently sunken one of his eye sockets and enlarged one of his ears. A dark crew cut, a long, narrow face, tinged blue around the jaw and with an unusually high forehead: Strike had thought when they had first met that his elongated head and slightly lopsided features made it look as though Brockbank’s head had been squeezed in a vice.

“I can’t let you print anything out, Oggy,” said Hardacre as Strike sat down on the wheeled computer chair, “but you could take a picture of the screen. Coffee?”

“Tea, if you’ve got any. Cheers.”

Hardacre left the room, closing the door carefully behind him, and Strike took out his mobile to take pictures of the screen. When he was confident he had a decent likeness he scrolled down to see Brockbank’s full record, making a note of his date of birth and other personal details.