Career of Evil

“Sorry,” he said to Elin, “I think I need to—”

“Strike,” said Carver’s unmistakable South London voice. “Did you send her to do it?”

“What?” said Strike.

“Your fucking partner. Did you send her to Brockbank?”

Strike stood up so suddenly that he hit the edge of the table. A spray of bloodied brown liquid spattered across the heavy white tablecloth, his fillet of beef slid over the edge of the plate and his wineglass toppled, splashing Elin’s pale blue dress. The waiter gaped, as did the refined couple at the next table.

“Where is she? What’s happened?” asked Strike loudly, oblivious to everything except the voice on the end of the line.

“I warned you, Strike,” said Carver, his voice crackling with rage. “I fucking warned you to stay away. You have fucked up royally this time—”

Strike lowered the mobile. A disembodied Carver bellowed into the restaurant, the “cunts” and “fucks” clearly audible to anybody standing nearby. He turned to Elin in her purple-stained dress, with her beautiful face screwed up in mingled perplexity and anger.

“I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. I’ll call you later.”

He did not stay to see how she took it; he did not care.

Limping slightly, because he had twisted his knee in his haste to get up, Strike hurried out of the restaurant, phone to his ear again. Carver was now virtually incoherent, shouting Strike down whenever he attempted to speak.

“Carver, listen,” Strike shouted as he regained Upper Brook Street, “there’s something I want to—fucking listen, will you!”

But the policeman’s obscenity-strewn soliloquy merely became louder and filthier.

“You fucking stupid fucking cunt, he’s gone to ground—I know what you were fucking up to—we’ve found it, you bastard, we found the church co

Strike slogged on through the warm night, his knee protesting, frustration and fury mounting with every step he took.

It took him nearly an hour to reach Robin’s flat in Hastings Road, by which time he was in full possession of the facts. Thanks to Carver, he knew that the police had been with Robin this evening and were perhaps still there, interrogating her about the intrusion into Brockbank’s house that had led to a report of child rape and the flight of their suspect. Brockbank’s photograph had been widely disseminated across the force, but he had not, as yet, been apprehended.

Strike had not warned Robin that he was coming. Turning into Hastings Road as fast as his limp would allow, he saw through the fading light that all the windows of her flat were lit. As he approached, two police officers, unmistakable even in plain clothes, emerged from the front entrance. The sound of the front door closing echoed down the quiet street. Strike moved into the shadows as the police crossed the road to their car, talking quietly to each other. Once they had pulled safely away, he proceeded to the white front door and rang the bell.

“… thought we were done,” said Matthew’s exasperated voice behind the door. Strike doubted that he knew that he could be heard, because when he opened it Robin’s fiancé was wearing an ingratiating smile that vanished the moment he realized who it was.

“What d’you want?”

“I need to talk to Robin,” said Strike.

As Matthew hesitated, with every appearance of wishing to block Strike’s entrance, Linda came out into the hall behind him.

“Oh,” she said at the sight of Strike.

He thought she looked both thi

“Oh,” she said in exactly the same colorless tone as her mother.

“I’d like a word,” said Strike.

“All right,” said Robin with a slightly defiant upwards jerk of her head that made her red-gold hair dance around her shoulders. She glanced at her mother and Matthew, then back at Strike. “D’you want to come into the kitchen, then?”

He followed her down the hall into the small kitchen where a table for two stood crammed into the corner. Robin closed the door carefully behind them. Neither sat down. Dirty dishes were piled by the sink; they had apparently been eating pasta before the police arrived to interrogate Robin. For some reason, this evidence that Robin had been behaving so prosaically in the wake of the chaos she had unleashed increased the rage now battling with Strike’s desire not to lose control.

“I told you,” he said, “not to go anywhere near Brockbank.”

“Yes,” said Robin in a flat voice that aggravated him still further. “I remember.”

Strike wondered whether Linda and Matthew were listening at the door. The small kitchen smelled strongly of garlic and tomatoes. An England Rugby calendar hung on the wall behind Robin. The thirtieth of June was circled thickly, the words HOME FOR WEDDING written beneath the date.

“But you decided to go anyway,” said Strike.

Visions of violent, cathartic action—picking up the pedal bin and throwing it through the steamy window, for instance—were rising chaotically in his mind’s eye. He stood quite still, large feet planted on the scuffed lino, staring at her white and stubborn face.

“I don’t regret it,” she said. “He was raping—”

“Carver’s convinced I sent you. Brockbank’s vanished. You’ve driven him underground. How’re you going to feel if he decides he’d better cut the next one into pieces before she can blab?”

“Don’t you dare put that on me!” said Robin, her voice rising. “Don’t you dare! You’re the one who punched him when you went to arrest him! If you hadn’t hit him he might’ve gone down for Brittany!”

“That makes what you did right, does it?”

He refrained from shouting only because he could hear Matthew lurking in the hall, however quiet the accountant thought he was being.

“I’ve stopped Angel being abused and if that’s a bad thing to do—”

“You’ve driven my business off the edge of a fucking cliff,” said Strike in a quiet voice that stopped her in her tracks. “We were warned away from those suspects, from the whole investigation, but you went storming in and now Brockbank’s gone to ground. The press’ll be all over me for this. Carver’ll tell them I’ve fucked it all up. They’ll bury me. And even if you don’t give a shit about any of that,” said Strike, his face rigid with fury, “how about the fact the police have just found a co

She looked stricken.

“I—I didn’t know—”

“Why wait for the facts?” asked Strike, his eyes dark shadows in the harsh overhead lighting. “Why not just blunder in and tip him off before the police can take him in?”

Appalled, Robin said nothing. Strike was looking at her now as though he never liked her, as though they had never shared any of the experiences that, to her, had constituted a bond like no other. She had been prepared for him to punch walls and cupboards again, even, in the heat of his anger, to—

“We’re finished,” said Strike.

He took some satisfaction from the shrinking movement she could not hide, from the sudden blanching of her face.

“You don’t—”

“I don’t mean it? You think I need a partner who won’t take instruction, who does what I’ve explicitly told her not to do, who makes me look like a trouble-making egotistical prick in front of the police and causes a murder suspect to disappear under the force’s nose?”