Career of Evil

“She’ll come over,” said the old man, with his hand over the receiver. “D’ye want to meet her here? You’re welcome. The wife’ll make tea—”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a couple of things to do,” lied Strike, who doubted the possibility of a successful interview in the presence of this garrulous witness. “Could you see whether she’d be free for lunch at the Ship I

The collie’s determination for its walk tipped the balance in Strike’s favor. The two men left the house and walked back down the hill together, the collie tugging all the way so that Strike was forced into a faster gait than suited him on a steep downward slope. He said good-bye with relief to his helpful acquaintance in Market Square. With a cheery wave, the old man headed off in the direction of the River Tweed and Strike, now limping slightly, walked down the high street, killing time until he needed to return to the Ship.

At the bottom of the road he encountered another explosion of black and acid yellow which, Strike realized, explained the Ship I

Staring out across the expanse of velvety grass, Strike remembered Whittaker, stinking and smoking in the corner of the squat while Leda lay beside him, listening open-mouthed to the tales of his hard life—credulous and greedy as a baby bird, as Strike now saw it, for the yarns Whittaker spun her. From Leda’s point of view, Gordonstoun might as well have been Alcatraz: it was nothing short of outrageous that her slender poet had been forced out into the harsh Scottish winter to be pummeled and knocked about in the mud and the rain.

“Not rugby, darling. Oh, poor baby… you playing rugby!”

And when the seventeen-year-old Strike (sporting a fat lip from the boxing club at the time) had laughed, softly, into his homework, Whittaker had staggered to his feet, shouting in his obnoxious mockney:

“What are you facking laughing about, meathead?”

Whittaker could not stand laughter at his expense. He needed, craved adulation; in its absence, he would take fear or even loathing as evidence of his power, but ridicule was evidence of another’s assumed superiority and consequently unbearable.

“You’d facking love it, wouldn’t you, you stupid little tit? Think you’re facking officer class already, dontcha, out with the rugger buggers. Get his rich daddy to send him to facking Gordonstoun!” Whittaker had yelled at Leda.

“Calm down, darling!” she had said, and then, in slightly more peremptory terms: “No, Corm!”

Strike had stood up, braced, ready and eager to hit Whittaker. That had been the closest he had ever come to doing it, but his mother had staggered between them, a thin, beringed hand on each heaving chest.

Strike blinked and the bright sunlit pitch, a place of i

The sight of that smooth rugby pitch had unleashed another memory: black-haired, dark-eyed Noel Brockbank, ru

A basal skull fracture, that’s what they had called it. Bleeding from the ear. A massive brain injury.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” mumbled Strike under his breath, in time with his own footsteps.

Laing, that’s what you’re here for. Laing.

He passed under the metal galleon with bright yellow sails that hung over the Ship I

He found the place instantly calming: a glow of warm color, shining glass and brass; a carpet that resembled a patchwork of faded browns, reds and greens; walls of warm peach and exposed stone. Everywhere were more indications of Melrose’s sporting obsession: blackboards a

Mindful of the journey back to Edinburgh in Hardacre’s car, he bought himself half a pint of John Smith’s and sat down on a leather-covered sofa facing the bar, perusing the laminated menu and hoping that Margaret Bunyan would be punctual, because he had just realized that he was hungry.

She appeared a mere five minutes later. Although he could barely remember what her daughter looked like and had never met Mrs. Bunyan before, her expression of mingled apprehension and anticipation gave her away as she paused, staring at him, on the doormat.

Strike got up and she stumbled forwards, both hands gripping the strap of a large black handbag.

“It is you,” she said breathlessly.

She was around sixty, small and fragile-looking, wearing metal-framed glasses, her expression anxious beneath tightly permed fair hair.

Strike held out a large hand and shook hers, which trembled slightly, cold and fine-boned.

“Her dad’s over in Hawick today, he can’t come, I rang him, he said to tell you we’ll never forget what you did for Rhona,” she said on a single breath. She sank down beside Strike on the sofa, continuing to observe him with mingled awe and nerves. “We’ve never forgot. We read about you in the papers. We were so sorry about your leg. What you did for Rhona! What you did—”

Her eyes were suddenly brimful of tears.

“—we were so…”

“I’m glad I was able to—”

Find her child tied naked and bloodstained on a bed? Talking to relatives about what the people they loved had endured was one of the worst parts of the job.

“—able to help her.”

Mrs. Bunyan blew her nose on a handkerchief retrieved from the bottom of her black handbag. He could tell that she was of the generation of women who would never usually enter a pub alone and certainly not buy drinks at a bar if a man were there to undertake the ordeal for them.

“Let me get you something.”

“Just an orange juice,” she said breathlessly, dabbing at her eyes.

“And something to eat,” Strike urged, keen to order the beer-battered haddock and chips for himself.

When he had placed their order at the bar and returned to her, she asked what he was doing in Melrose and the source of her nervousness became apparent at once.

“He’s not come back, has he? Do

“Not as far as I know,” said Strike. “I don’t know where he is.”

“D’you think he’s got something to do…?”

Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“We read in the paper… we saw that someone sent you a—a—”

“Yes,” said Strike. “I don’t know whether he’s got anything to do with it, but I’d like to find him. Apparently he’s been back here to see his mother since leaving jail.”

“Och, four or five years ago, that would’ve been,” said Margaret Bunyan. “He turned up on her doorstep, forced his way into the bungalow. She’s got Alzheimer’s now. She couldn’t stop him, but the neighbors called his brothers and they came and threw him out.”

“They did, did they?”

“Do