Career of Evil

They met by agreement in the dining room next morning, where Strike blocked Robin from view as she surreptitiously refilled their flask from the urn at the buffet and both loaded their plates with toast. Strike resisted the full English and rewarded himself for his restraint by sliding several Danish pastries into his backpack. At eight o’clock they were back in the Land Rover, driving through the glorious Cumbrian countryside, a rolling panorama of heather moors and peat lands under a hazy blue sky, and joining the M6 South.

“Sorry I can’t share the driving,” said Strike, who was sipping coffee. “That clutch would kill me. It’d kill both of us.”

“I don’t care,” said Robin. “I love driving, you know that.”

They sped on in companionable silence. Robin was the only person whom Strike could stand to be driven by, notwithstanding the fact that he had an ingrained prejudice against women drivers. This was something that he generally kept quiet, but which had its roots in many a negative passenger experience, from his Cornish aunt’s nervous ineptitude, to his sister Lucy’s distractibility, to Charlotte’s reckless courting of danger. An ex-girlfriend from the SIB, Tracey, had been competent behind the wheel and yet had become so paralyzed with fear on a high, narrow alpine road that she had stopped, on the verge of hyperventilating, refusing to cede the wheel to him but unable to drive further.

“Matthew like the Land Rover?” Strike asked as they trundled over a flyover.

“No,” said Robin. “He wants an A3 Cabriolet.”

“Course he does,” said Strike under his breath, inaudible in the rattling car. “Wanker.”

It took them four hours to reach Market Harborough, a town which, as they established en route, neither Strike nor Robin had ever visited. The approach wound through a number of pretty little villages with thatched roofs, seventeenth-century churches, topiary gardens and residential streets with names like Honeypot Lane. Strike remembered the stark, blank wall, barbed wire and looming submarine factory that had formed the view from Noel Brockbank’s childhood home. What could have brought Brockbank here, to bucolic prettiness and charm? What kind of business owned the telephone number that Holly had given Robin, and which was now residing in Strike’s wallet?

The impression of genteel antiquity only increased when they reached Market Harborough itself. The ornate and aged church of St. Dionysius rose proudly in the heart of the town, and beside it, in the middle of the central thoroughfare, stood a remarkable structure resembling a small timbered house on wooden stilts.

They found a parking space to the rear of this peculiar building. Keen to smoke and to stretch his knee, Strike got out, lit up and went to examine a plaque that informed him the stilted edifice was a grammar school that had been built in 1614. Biblical verses painted in gold ran around the structure.

Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

Robin had remained in the Land Rover, examining the map for the best route to Corby, their next stop. When Strike had finished his cigarette he hoisted himself back into the passenger seat.

“OK, I’m going to try the number. If you fancy stretching your legs, I’m nearly out of fags.”

Robin rolled her eyes, but took the proffered tenner and left in search of Benson & Hedges.

The number was engaged the first time Strike tried it. On his second attempt, a heavily accented female voice answered:

“Thai Orchid Massage, how can I help you?”

“Hi,” said Strike. “I’ve been given your number by a friend. Whereabouts are you?”

She gave him a number in St. Mary’s Road, which he saw, after a brief consultation of the map, was mere minutes away.

“Any of your ladies free for me this morning?” he asked.

“What kind you like?” said the voice.

He could see Robin coming back in the wing mirror, her strawberry-blonde hair blowing freely in the breeze, a gold pack of Benson & Hedges glinting in her hand.

“Dark,” said Strike, after a fractional hesitation. “Thai.”

“We have two Thai ladies free for you. What service you look for?”

Robin pulled open the driver’s door and got back in.

“What have you got?” asked Strike.

“One-lady sensual massage with oils, ninety pound. Two-lady sensual massage with oil, one hundred twenty. Full body-to-body naked massage with oil, one hundred fifty. You negotiate extras with lady, OK?”

“OK, I’d like the — er — one lady,” said Strike. “Be with you in a bit.”

He hung up.

“It’s a massage parlor,” he told Robin, examining the map, “but not the kind you’d take your bad knee to.”

“Really?” she said, startled.

“They’re everywhere,” he said. “You know that.”

He understood why she was disconcerted. The scene beyond the windscreen — St. Dionysius, the godly grammar school on stilts, a busy and prosperous high street, a St. George’s Cross rippling in the breeze outside a nearby pub — might have appeared on a poster advertising the town.