Career of Evil

They were holding hands in this picture, which looked as though it had been taken in a beer garden. Lorraine beamed and Laing looked blank, his moon face shrinking his dark eyes to slits. He had the characteristic look of a man on medically prescribed steroids. The hair like a fox’s pelt was the same, but otherwise Strike was hard pressed to make out the features of the fit young boxer who had once bitten his face.

“How long were you together?”

“Ten months. I met him right after Mum died. She was ninety-two — she lived here with me. I was helping with Mrs. Williams next door and all; she was eighty-seven. Senile. Her son’s in America. Donnie was good to her. He mowed her lawn and got shopping.”

Bastard knew which side his bread was buttered, thought Strike. Ill, unemployed and broke as Laing had been at the time, a lonely middle-aged woman without dependents who could cook, who had her own house, who had just inherited money from her mother, must have been a godsend. It would have been worth faking a bit of compassion to get his feet under the table. Laing had had charm when he chose to use it.

“He seemed all right when we met,” said Lorraine morosely. “Couldn’t do enough for me then. He wasn’t well himself. Joints swollen and everything. He had to have injections off the doctor... He got a bit moody later, but I thought that was just his health. You don’t expect ill people to be always cheerful, do you? Not everyone’s like Mum. She was a bloody marvel, her health was that bad and she was always smiling and... and...”

“Let me get you a tissue,” said Robin and she leaned slowly towards the crochet-covered box, so as not to disarrange the Jack Russell, which had its head on her lap.

“Did you report the theft of your jewelry?” Strike asked, once Lorraine had received her tissue, which she plied between deep drags on her Superking.

“No,” she said gruffly. “What was the point? They were never going to find it.”

Robin guessed that Lorraine had not wanted to draw official attention to her humiliation, and sympathized.

“Was he ever violent?” Robin asked gently.

Lorraine looked surprised.

“No. Is that why you’re here? Has he hurt someone?”

“We don’t know,” said Strike.

“I don’t think he’d hurt anyone,” she said. “He wasn’t that kind of man. I said that to the police.”

“Sorry,” said Robin, stroking the now-dozing Jack Russell’s head. “I thought you didn’t report the robbery?”

“This was later,” said Lorraine. “Month or so after he’d gone. Somebody broke into Mrs. Williams’s place, knocked her out and robbed the house. The police wanted to know where Donnie was. I said, ‘He’s long gone, moved out.’ Anyway, he wouldn’t do that, I told them. He’d been good to her. He wouldn’t punch an old lady.”

They had once held hands in a beer garden. He had mowed the old lady’s lawn. She refused to believe Laing had been all bad.

“I assume your neighbor couldn’t give the police a description?” Strike asked.

Lorraine shook her head.

“She never came back, after. Died in a home. Got a family in Northfield now,” said Lorraine. “Three little kids. You should hear the noise — and they’ve got the bloody cheek to complain about the dog!”

They had hit a complete dead end. Lorraine had no idea where Laing had gone next. She could not remember him mentioning any place to which he was connected other than Melrose and she had never met any of his friends. Once she had realized that he was never coming back, she had deleted his mobile number from her phone. She agreed to let them take the two photographs of Laing, but other than that, had no more help to offer.

The Jack Russell protested loudly at Robin withdrawing her warm lap and showed every sign of wishing to take his displeasure out on Strike as the detective rose from his chair.

“Stop it, Tigger,” said Lorraine crossly, holding the struggling dog on the sofa with difficulty.

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Robin shouted over the dog’s frenzied barking. “Thanks so much for all your help!”

They left her there in her cluttered, smoky sitting room, bandaged ankle raised, probably a little sadder and more uncomfortable for their visit. The sound of the hysterical dog followed them all the way up the garden path.

“I feel like we could at least have made her a cup of tea or something,” said Robin guiltily as they got back into the Land Rover.

“She doesn’t know what a lucky escape she’s had,” said Strike bracingly. “Think about the poor old dear in there,” he pointed at Northfield, “beaten to shit for a couple of extra quid.”

“You think that was Laing?”

“Of course it was bloody Laing,” said Strike as Robin turned on the engine. “He’d cased the joint while he was supposedly helping her out, hadn’t he? And you notice that, for all he was supposed to be so ill with his arthritis, he was still capable of mowing lawns and half killing old women.”