Career of Evil

Robin sat in thought for a few minutes, then got off the bed, the newspapers rustling. She approached the dressing table where the white shoebox sat, engraved with the silver words Jimmy Choo, reached out a hand and stroked the pristine surface of the cardboard.

The plan did not come to her like Strike’s epiphany outside the hospital, with the exhilarating force of flame. Instead it rose slowly, dark and dangerous, born of the hateful enforced passivity of the past week and out of ice-cold anger at Strike’s stubborn refusal to act. Strike, who was her friend, had joined the enemy’s ranks. He was a six-foot-three ex-boxer. He would never know what it was like to feel yourself small, weak and powerless. He would never understand what rape did to your feelings about your own body: to find yourself reduced to a thing, an object, a piece of fuckable meat.

Zahara had sounded three at most on the telephone.

Robin remained quite still in front of her dressing table, staring down at the box containing her wedding shoes, thinking. She saw the risks plainly spread beneath her, like the rocks and raging waters beneath a tightrope walker’s feet.

No, she could not save everyone. It was too late for Martina, for Sadie, for Kelsey and for Heather. Lila would spend the rest of her days with two fingers on her left hand and a grisly scar across her psyche that Robin understood only too well. However, there were also two young girls who faced God knows how much more suffering if nobody acted.

Robin turned away from the new shoes, reached for her mobile and dialed a number she had been given voluntarily, but which she had never imagined she would use.

54

And if it’s true it can’t be you,

It might as well be me.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Spy in the House of the Night”

She had three days in which to plan, because she had to wait for her accomplice to get hold of a car and find a gap in his busy schedule. Meanwhile she told Linda that her Jimmy Choos were too tight for her, the style too flashy, and allowed her mother to accompany her as she exchanged them for cash. Then she had to decide what lie she was going to tell Linda and Matthew, to buy sufficient time away from them to put her plan into action.

She ended up telling them that she was to have another police interview. Insisting that Shanker remain in the car when he picked her up was key to maintaining that illusion, as was getting Shanker to pull up alongside the plainclothes policeman still patrolling their street and telling him that she was off to get her stitches out, which in reality would not happen for another two days.

It was now seven o’clock on a cloudless evening and apart from Robin, who was leaning up against the warm brick wall of the Eastway Business Centre, the scene was deserted. The sun was making its slow progress towards the west and on the distant, misty horizon, at the far end of Blondin Street, the Orbit sculpture was rising into existence. Robin had seen plans in the papers: it would soon look like a gigantic candlestick telephone wrapped in its own twisted cord. Beyond it, Robin could just make out the growing outline of the Olympic stadium. The distant view of the gigantic structures was impressive and somehow inhuman, worlds and worlds away from the secrets she suspected were hidden behind the newly painted front door she knew to be Alyssa’s.

Perhaps because of what she had come to do, the silent stretch of houses she was watching u

Footsteps echoed nearby and Robin whipped around, her sweaty fingers tight on her spare rape alarm. Tall, loose-limbed and scarred, Shanker was loping towards her carrying a Mars bar in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“She’s comin’,” he said thickly.

“Are you sure?” said Robin, her heart pounding faster than ever. She was starting to feel light-headed.

“Black girl, two kids, comin’ up the road now. Seen ’er when I was buyin’ this,” he said, waving the Mars bar. “Wan’ some?”

“No thanks,” said Robin. “Er—d’you mind getting out of the way?”

“Sure you don’t wan’ me to come in wiv ya?”

“No,” said Robin. “Only come if you see—him.”

“You sure the cunt’s not already in there?”

“I rang twice. I’m sure he’s not.”

“I’ll be round the corner, then,” said Shanker laconically and he ambled off, alternately taking drags on his cigarette and bites of his Mars bar, to a position out of sight of Alyssa’s door. Robin, meanwhile, hurried off down Blondin Street so that Alyssa would not pass her as she entered the house. Drawing in beneath the overhanging balcony of a block of dark red flats, Robin watched as a tall black woman turned into the street, one hand gripping that of a toddler and trailed by an older girl whom Robin thought must be around eleven. Alyssa unlocked the front door and let herself and her daughters inside.

Robin headed back up the street towards the house. She had dressed in jeans and trainers today: there must be no tripping, no falling over. The newly reco

Her heart was thumping so hard that it hurt as she knocked on Alyssa’s front door. The older daughter peeped out of the bow window to her right as she stood waiting. Robin smiled nervously. The girl ducked out of sight.

The woman who appeared less than a minute later was, by any standards, gorgeous. Tall, black and with a bikini model’s figure, she wore her hair in waist-length twists. The first thought that shot through Robin’s mind was that if a strip joint had been prepared to fire Alyssa, she must indeed be a tricky character.

“Yeah?” she said, frowning at Robin.

“Hi,” said Robin, her mouth dry. “Are you Alyssa Vincent?”

“Yeah. Who’re you?”

“My name’s Robin Ellacott,” said Robin, her mouth dry. “I wonder—could I have a quick word with you about Noel?”

“What about him?” demanded Alyssa.

“I’d rather tell you inside,” said Robin.

Alyssa had the wary, defiant look of one perpetually braced to take the next punch life was going to throw her.

“Please. It’s important,” said Robin, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth because it was so dry. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

Their eyes locked: Alyssa’s a warm caramel brown, Robin’s a clear gray-blue. Robin was sure that Alyssa was going to refuse. Then the thick-lashed eyes widened suddenly and a strange flicker of excitement passed over Alyssa’s face, as though she had just experienced a pleasurable revelation. Without another word, Alyssa stepped backwards into the dimly lit hall and made a strangely extravagant flourish, pointing Robin inside.

Robin did not know why she felt a lurch of misgiving. Only the thought that the two little girls were in there pushed her over the threshold.

A minuscule hall opened onto the sitting room. A TV and a single sofa constituted the only furnishings. A table lamp sat on the floor. There were two photographs in cheap gilt frames hanging on the wall, one showing chubby Zahara, the toddler, who was wearing a turquoise dress with matching butterfly clips in her hair, the other of her big sister in a maroon school uniform. The sister was the image of her beautiful mother. The photographer had not managed to induce a smile.