Career of Evil

The trouble was that Strike could place little reliance on his memories of what the three men who were currently preoccupying him looked like, because he had not seen Brockbank for eight years, Laing for nine and Whittaker for sixteen. Any of them might have grown fat or wasted in that time, lost their hair, become bearded or mustached, be incapacitated or newly muscled. Strike himself had lost a leg since he had last set eyes on any of them. The one thing that nobody could disguise was height. All three of the men Strike was concerned about had been six feet tall or over and Camouflage Jacket had looked at least that in his metal chair.

The phone in his pocket buzzed as he walked towards Tottenham Court Road station, and on pulling it out of his pocket he saw, to his pleasure, that it was Graham Hardacre. Drawing aside so as not to impede passersby, he answered.

“Oggy?” said his ex-colleague’s voice. “What gives, mate? Why are people sending you legs?”

“I take it you’re not in Germany?” said Strike.

“Edinburgh, been here six weeks. Just been reading about you in the Scotsman.”

The Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police had an office in Edinburgh Castle: 35 Section. It was a prestigious posting.

“Hardy, I need a favor,” said Strike. “Intel on a couple of guys. D’you remember Noel Brockbank?”

“Hard to forget. Seventh Armoured, if memory serves?”

“That’s him. The other one’s Donald Laing. He was before I knew you. King’s Own Royal Borderers. Knew him in Cyprus.”

“I’ll see what I can do when I get back to the office, mate. I’m in the middle of a plowed field right now.”

A chat about mutual acquaintances was curtailed by the increasing noise of rush-hour traffic. Hardacre promised to ring back once he had had a look at the army records and Strike continued towards the Tube.

He got out at Whitechapel station thirty minutes later to find a text message from the man he was supposed to be meeting.

Sorry Bunsen cant do today ill give you a bell

This was both disappointing and inconvenient, but not a surprise. Considering that Strike was not carrying a consignment of drugs or a large pile of used notes, and that he did not require intimidation or beating, it was a mark of great esteem that Shanker had even condescended to fix a time and place for meeting.

Strike’s knee was complaining after a day on his feet, but there were no seats outside the station. He leaned up against the yellow brick wall beside the entrance and called Shanker’s number.

“Yeah, all right, Bunsen?”

Just as he no longer remembered why Shanker was called Shanker, he had no more idea why Shanker called him Bunsen. They had met when they were seventeen and the co

“You’re busy, Shanker?” asked Strike, lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Yeah, Bunsen, no chance today. Woss ’appening?”

“I’m looking for Whittaker.”

“Go

The change in Shanker’s tone would have alarmed anyone who had forgotten who Shanker was, what he was. To Shanker and his associates, there was no proper end to a grudge other than killing and, in consequence, he had spent half his adult life behind bars. Strike was surprised Shanker had survived into his midthirties.

“I just want to know where he is,” said Strike repressively.

He doubted that Shanker would have heard about the leg. Shanker lived in a world where news was of strictly personal interest and was conveyed by word of mouth.

“I can ’ave an ask around.”

“Usual rates,” said Strike, who had a standing arrangement with Shanker for useful bits of information. “And—Shanker?”

His old friend had a habit of hanging up without warning when his attention was diverted.

“’S’there more?” said Shanker, his voice moving from distant to close as he spoke; Strike had been right to think he had removed the mobile from his ear, assuming they were done.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Digger Malley.”

A silence on the end of the line eloquently expressed the fact that, just as Strike never forgot what Shanker was, nor did Shanker ever forget what Strike was.

“Shanker, this is between you and me, no one else. You’ve never discussed me with Malley, have you?”

After a pause, and in his most dangerous voice, Shanker said:

“The fuck would I do that for?”

“Had to ask. I’ll explain when I see you.”

The dangerous silence continued.

“Shanker, when have I ever grassed you up?” asked Strike.

Another, shorter silence, and then Shanker said in what, to Strike, was his normal voice:

“Yeah, all right. Whittaker, huh? See what I can do, Bunsen.”

The line went dead. Shanker did not do good-byes.

Strike sighed and lit up another cigarette. The journey had been pointless. He would get straight back on a train once he had finished his Benson & Hedges.

The station entrance gave onto a kind of concrete forecourt surrounded by the backs of buildings. The Gherkin, that giant black bullet of a building, glinted on the distant horizon. It had not been there twenty years previously, during Strike’s family’s brief sojourn in Whitechapel.

Looking around, Strike felt no sense of homecoming or nostalgia. He could not remember this patch of concrete, these nondescript rears of buildings. Even the station seemed only dimly familiar. The endless series of moves and upheavals that had characterized life with his mother had blurred memories of individual places; he sometimes forgot which corner shop had belonged to which rundown flat, which local pub had adjoined which squat.

He had meant to get back on the Tube and yet before he knew it, he was walking, heading for the one place in London he had avoided for seventeen years: the building where his mother had died. It had been the last of Leda’s squats, two floors of a decrepit building on Fulbourne Street, which was barely a minute from the station. As he walked, Strike began to remember. Of course: he had walked over this metal bridge over the railway line during his A-level year. He remembered the name, Castlemain Street, too… surely one of his fellow A-level students, a girl with a pronounced lisp, had lived there…

He slowed to an amble as he reached the end of Fulbourne Street, experiencing a strange double impression. His vague memory of the place, weakened no doubt by his deliberate attempts to forget, lay like a faded transparency over the scene in front of his eyes. The buildings were as shabby as he remembered them, white plaster peeling away from the frontages, but the businesses and shops were totally unfamiliar. He felt as though he had returned to a dreamscape where the scene had shifted and mutated. Of course, everything was impermanent in the poor areas of London, where fragile, fair-weather businesses grew up and faded away and were replaced: cheap signage tacked up and removed; people passing through, passing away.

It took him a minute or two to identify the door of what had once been the squat, because he had forgotten the number. At last he found it, beside a shop selling cheap clothing of both Asian and Western varieties, which he thought had been a West Indian supermarket in his day. The brass letter box brought back a strange stab of memory. It had rattled loudly whenever anyone went in or out of the door.