Career of Evil

Robin’s mobile rang in her coat pocket. Aware of Holly’s eyes on her as she approached, Robin pulled out the phone to check the caller’s name. It was her mother. On the basis that it would look slightly more unusual to switch off the call than to take it, she raised it to her ear.

“Robin?” came Linda’s voice as Robin passed Holly in the doorway without looking at her. “Are you in Barrow-in-Furness?”

“Yes,” said Robin. Confronted by two inner doors, she chose the one on the left, which brought her into a large, high-ceilinged and dingy bar room. Two men in the now-familiar blue overalls were playing pool at a table just inside the door. Robin sensed, rather than saw, the turning of several heads towards the stranger. Avoiding all eye contact, she drifted towards the bar as she continued her call.

“What are you doing there?” asked Linda and, without waiting for a response, “We’ve had the police on the phone, checking whether Dad lent you the car!”

“It was all a misunderstanding,” said Robin. “Mum, I can’t really talk now.”

The door opened behind her and Holly walked past, thickly tattooed arms folded, giving Robin a sideways look of appraisal and, she sensed, animosity. Apart from the short-haired barmaid, they were the only two females in the place.

“We called the flat,” her mother went on, unheeding, “and Matthew said you’d gone away with Cormoran.”

“Yes,” said Robin.

“And when I asked whether you’d have time to drop round for lunch this weekend—”

“Why would I be in Masham this weekend?” Robin asked, confused. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Holly taking a bar stool and chatting to several more blue-overalled men from the BAE factory.

“It’s Matthew’s dad’s birthday,” said her mother.

“Oh, of course it is,” said Robin. She had completely forgotten. There was to be a party. It had been on the calendar so long that she had got used to the sight of it and forgotten that the trip back to Masham was actually going to happen.

“Robin, is everything all right?”

“Like I said, Mum, I can’t really talk right now,” said Robin.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes!” said Robin impatiently. “I’m absolutely fine. I’ll ring you later.”

She hung up and turned to the bar. The barmaid, who was waiting to take her order, wore the same look of shrewd appraisal as the watching neighbor in Stanley Road. There was an extra layer to their caginess around here, but Robin understood, now, that theirs was not the chauvinistic antagonism of the local for the stranger. Rather, it was the protectiveness of a people whose business was confidential. With her heart beating slightly faster than usual, Robin said with an air of forced confidence:

“Hi, I don’t know whether you can help me. I’m looking for Holly Brockbank. I was told she might be in here.”

The barmaid considered Robin’s request, then said, unsmiling:

“Tha’s ’er, down the bar. Can A get th’somethin’?”

“Glass of white wine, please,” said Robin.

The woman whom she was impersonating would drink wine, Robin knew. She would also be unfazed by the edge of mistrust she saw in the barmaid’s eyes, by Holly’s reflexive antagonism, by the up-and-down stares of the pool players. The woman whom she was pretending to be was cool, clearheaded and ambitious.

Robin paid for her drink then headed directly for Holly and the three men chatting to her at the bar. Curious but cagey, they fell silent when it became clear that they were Robin’s destination.

“Hello,” said Robin, smiling. “Are you Holly Brockbank?”

“Yeah,” said Holly, her expression grim. “Whee’re thoo?”

“Sorry?”

Aware of several pairs of amused eyes on her, Robin kept her smile in place by sheer force of will.

“Who — are — yew?” asked Holly, in a mock London accent.

“My name’s Venetia Hall.”

“Ooh, unlucky,” said Holly with a broad grin at the closest workman, who sniggered.

Robin pulled a business card out of her handbag, freshly printed that afternoon on a machine in a shopping center, while Strike remained behind, keeping an eye on Holly in the bakery. It had been Strike’s suggestion that she use her middle name. (“Makes you sound like a poncy southerner.”)

Robin handed over the business card, looked boldly into Holly’s heavily kohled eyes and repeated: “Venetia Hall. I’m a lawyer.”

Holly’s grin evaporated. Scowling, she read the card, one of two hundred Robin had had printed for £4.50.

“I’m looking for your brother Noel,” said Robin. “We—”

“’Ow did thoo know A was ’ere?”

In her mistrust she seemed to be swelling, bristling like a cat.

“A neighbor said you might be.”

Holly’s blue-overalled companions smirked.

“We might have some good news for your brother,” Robin plowed on bravely. “We’re trying to find him.”

“A dunno where ’e is and A don’ care.”