Career of Evil

She had done what she had meant to do and she had been aware all along that there would almost certainly be collateral damage. Brockbank escaping or being stabbed by Shanker had been possibilities she had foreseen. Her only present certainty was that she could do nothing to prevent either. After taking a couple of deep breaths she stood up again and moved to the sofa to try to comfort the terrified toddler, but unsurprisingly, given that Robin was associated in the little girl’s mind with scenes of violence and hysteria, Zahara screamed harder than ever, and lashed out at Robin with a tiny foot.

“I never knew,” said Alyssa. “Oh God. Oh God. Why didn’t you tell me, Angel? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Evening was drawing in. Robin had turned on the lamp, which threw pale gray shadows up onto the magnolia walls. Three flat hunchbacked ghosts seemed to crouch on the back of the sofa, mimicking Alyssa’s every movement. Angel was curled, sobbing, on her mother’s lap as the pair of them rocked backwards and forwards.

Robin, who had already made two rounds of tea and had cooked spaghetti hoops for Zahara, was sitting on the hard floor beneath the window. She had felt obliged to stay until they could get an emergency joiner to fix the door that Shanker had shouldered in. Nobody had yet called the police. Mother and daughter were still confiding in each other and Robin felt like an interloper, yet could not leave the family until she knew that they had a secure door and a new lock. Zahara was asleep on the sofa beside her mother and sister, curled up with her thumb in her mouth, one chubby hand still clutching the sippy cup.

“He said he’d kill Zahara if I told you,” said Angel into her mother’s neck.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” moaned Alyssa, tears splattering down her daughter’s back. “Oh, sweet Lord.”

The ominous feeling inside Robin was like having a bellyful of crawling, prickle-footed crabs. She had texted her mother and Matthew to say that the police needed to show her more photofits, but both were getting worried about her long absence and she was ru

The joiner arrived at last. Once Robin had given him her credit card details to pay for the damage, she told Alyssa that she had better get going.

Alyssa left Angel and Zahara curled up together on the sofa and accompanied Robin out into the dusky street.

“Listen,” said Alyssa.

There were still tear tracks down her face. Robin could tell that Alyssa was unused to thanking people.

“Thanks, all right?” she said, almost aggressively.

“No problem,” said Robin.

“I never—I mean—I met him at fucking church. I thought I’d found a good bloke at last, y’know… he was really good with the—with the kids—”

She began to sob. Robin considered reaching out to her, but decided against it. She was bruised all over her shoulders where Alyssa had pummeled her and her knife wound was throbbing more than ever.

“Has Brittany really been phoning him?” Robin asked.

“’S’what he told me,” said Alyssa, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “He reckoned his ex-wife framed him, got Brittany to lie… said if ever a young blonde bird turned up she was talking shit and I wasn’t to believe anything she said.”

Robin remembered the low voice in her ear:

Do A know you, little girl?

He had thought that she was Brittany. That was why he had hung up and never called back.

“I’d better be off,” said Robin, worried about how long it would take her to get back to West Ealing. Her body ached all over. Alyssa had landed some powerful blows. “You’ll call the police, right?”

“I s’pose,” said Alyssa. Robin suspected that the idea was a novel one to Alyssa. “Yeah.”

As Robin walked away in the darkness, her fist clenched tightly around her second rape alarm, she wondered what Brittany Brockbank had found to say to her stepfather, and thought she knew: “I haven’t forgotten. Do it again and I’ll report you.” Perhaps it had been a salve to her conscience. She had been frightened that he was still doing to others what he had done to her, but could not face the consequences of a historical accusation.

I put it to you, Miss Brockbank, that your stepfather never touched you, that this story was concocted by yourself and your mother…

Robin knew how it worked. The defense barrister she had faced had been cold and sardonic, his expression vulpine.

You were coming back from the student bar, Miss Ellacott, where you had been drinking, yes?

You had made a public joke about missing the—ah—attentions of your boyfriend, yes?

When you met Mr. Trewin—

I didn’t—

When you met Mr. Trewin outside the halls of residence—

I didn’t meet—

You told Mr. Trewin you were missing—

We never talked—

I put it to you, Miss Ellacott, that you are ashamed of inviting Mr. Trewin—

I didn’t invite—

You had made a joke, Miss Ellacott, hadn’t you, in the bar, about missing the, ah, sexual attentions of—

I said I missed—

How many drinks had you had, Miss Ellacott?

Robin understood only too well why people were scared of telling, of owning up to what had been done to them, of being told that the dirty, shameful, excruciating truth was a figment of their own sick imagination. Neither Holly nor Brittany had been able to face the prospect of open court, and perhaps Alyssa and Angel would be scared away too. Yet nothing, Robin was sure, short of death or incarceration would ever stop Noel Brockbank raping little girls. Even so, she would be glad to know that Shanker had not killed him, because if he had…

“Shanker!” she shouted as a tall, tattooed figure in a shell suit passed under a streetlamp ahead.

“Couldn’t fucking find the bastard, Rob!” came Shanker’s echoing voice. He did not seem to realize that Robin had been sitting on a hard floor in terror for two whole hours, praying for his return. “He can move for a big fucker, can’t ’e?”

“The police’ll find him,” said Robin, whose knees were suddenly weak. “Alyssa’s going to call them, I think. Shanker, will you… please will you drive me home?”

55

Came the last night of sadness

And it was clear she couldn’t go on.

Blue Öyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”

For twenty-four hours Strike remained in ignorance of what Robin had done. She did not answer when he phoned at lunchtime the next day, but as he was wrestling with his own dilemmas and believed her to be safe at home with her mother he neither found this strange nor troubled to call back. His injured partner was one of the few problems that he believed temporarily solved and he did not intend to encourage her in thoughts of returning to his side by confiding in her the revelation he had experienced outside the hospital.

This, however, was now his overriding preoccupation. After all, there was no longer any competition for his time or attention in the solitary, silent room where no clients called or visited. The only sound was the buzzing of a fly zooming between the open windows in the hazy sunlight, as Strike sat chain-smoking Benson & Hedges.

As he looked back over the almost three months since the severed leg had been delivered, the detective saw his mistakes only too clearly. He ought to have known the identity of the killer after visiting Kelsey Platt’s home. If he had only realized, then—if he had not allowed himself to be taken in by the killer’s misdirection, not been distracted by the competing scents of other deranged men—Lila Monkton would still have all ten fingers and Heather Smart might be safe at work in her Nottingham building society, vowing, perhaps, never again to be as drunk as she had been on her sister-in-law’s birthday jaunt to London.