Career of Evil

“Do you want to come and look at it with me?” she asked. “I’ve got an appointment at the show flat tomorrow at two.”

He knew, or thought he knew, that the invitation sprang, not from some eager hope that he would one day be living with her there—they had only been dating for three months—but because she was a woman who would always choose company when possible. Her air of cool self-sufficiency was misleading. They might never have met had she not preferred to attend a party full of her brother’s unknown colleagues and friends rather than spend a few hours alone. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, nothing wrong with being sociable, except that for a year now Strike had organized his life to suit himself and the habit was hard to break.

“Can’t,” he said, “sorry. I’m on a job until three.”

The lie convincingly told. She took it reasonably well. They agreed to meet at the bistro on Sunday evening as previously pla

After he had hung up, he thought again of Robin, alone in the flat she shared with Matthew. Reaching for a cigarette, he turned on the TV and sank back onto his pillows in the dark.

Robin was having a strange weekend. Determined not to sink into moroseness just because she was alone and Strike had gone off to Elin’s (where had that thought come from? Of course he had gone; after all, it was the weekend, and it was no business of hers where he chose to spend it), she had spent hours on her laptop, doggedly pursuing one old line of inquiry, and one new.

Late on Saturday night she made an online discovery that caused her to jog three victory laps of the tiny sitting room and almost phone Strike to tell him. It took several minutes, with her heart thumping and her breath coming fast, to calm down, and to tell herself that the news would keep until Monday. It would be much more satisfying to tell him in person.

Knowing that Robin was alone, her mother called her twice over the weekend, both times pressing for a date when she could come down to London.

“I don’t know, Mum, not just now,” sighed Robin on Sunday morning. She was sitting in her pajamas on the sofa, laptop open in front of her again, trying to hold an online conversation with a member of the BIID community who called themselves <<Δēvōŧėė>>. She had only picked up her mother’s call because she was afraid ignoring it might result in an una

<<Δēvōŧėė>>: where do you want to be cut?

TransHopeful: mid-thigh

<<Δēvōŧėė>>: both legs?

“What about tomorrow?” asked Linda.

“No,” said Robin at once. Like Strike, she lied with fluent conviction, “I’m midway through a job. The following week’s better.”

TransHopeful: Yes, both. Do you know anyone who’s done it?

<<Δēvōŧėė>>: Can’t share that on msj board. Where you live?

“I haven’t seen him,” said Linda. “Robin, are you typing?”

“No,” lied Robin again, her fingers suspended over the keyboard. “Who haven’t you seen?”

“Matthew, of course!”

“Oh. Well, no, I didn’t think he’d come calling this weekend.”

She tried typing more quietly.

TransHopeful: London

<<Δēvōŧėė>>: Me too. Got a pic?

“Did you go to Mr. Cunliffe’s birthday party?” she asked, trying to drown out the sound of the laptop keys.

“Of course we didn’t!” said Linda. “Well, let me know what day’s best week after next, and I’ll book my ticket. It’s Easter; it’ll be busy.”

Robin agreed, returned Linda’s affectionate good-bye and directed her full attention to <<Δēvōŧėė>>. Unfortunately, after Robin refused to give him or her (she was almost positive that he was male) a picture, <<Δēvōŧėė>> lost interest in their back and forth on the noticeboards and went quiet.

She had expected Matthew to return from his father’s on Sunday evening, but he did not. When she checked the calendar in the kitchen at eight, she realized that he had always intended to take Monday off. Presumably she had agreed to this, back when the weekend had been pla

However, she cried later, alone in the bedroom that was thick with relics of their shared past: the fluffy elephant he had given her on their first Valentine’s Day together—he had not been so suave in those days; she could remember him turning red as he had produced it—and the jewelry box he had given her for her twenty-first. Then there were all the photographs showing them beaming during holidays in Greece and Spain, and dressed up at Matthew’s sister’s wedding. The biggest picture of the lot showed them arm in arm on Matthew’s graduation day. He was in his academic gown and Robin stood beside him in a summer dress, beaming as she celebrated an achievement of which she had been robbed by a man in a gorilla mask.

31

Nighttime flowers, evening roses,

Bless this garden that never closes.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Tenderloin”

Robin’s mood was buoyed next day by the glorious spring morning that greeted her outside her front door. She did not forget to remain aware of her surroundings as she traveled by Tube towards Tottenham Court Road, but saw no sign of any large man in a beanie hat. What leapt to the eye on her morning commute was the mounting journalistic excitement about the royal wedding. Kate Middleton seemed to be on the front of virtually every newspaper held by her fellow travelers. It made Robin hyperaware all over again of that naked, sensitive place on her third finger where an engagement ring had sat for a year. However, excited as she was about sharing the results of her solo investigative work with Strike, Robin refused to be downcast.

She had just left Tottenham Court Road station when she heard a man shout her name. For a split second she feared an ambush by Matthew, then Strike appeared, forging a path through the crowd, backpack on his shoulder. Robin deduced that he had spent the night with Elin.

“Morning. Good weekend?” he asked. Then, before she could answer: “Sorry. No. Crap weekend, obviously.”

“Bits of it were all right,” said Robin as they wended their way through the usual obstacle course of barriers and holes in the road.

“What have you got?” Strike asked loudly over the interminable drills.

“Sorry?” she shouted.

“What. Have. You. Found. Out?”

“How do you know I’ve found anything out?”

“You’ve got that look,” he said. “The look you get when you’re dying to tell me something.”

She gri

“I need a computer to show you.”

They turned the corner into Denmark Street. A man dressed all in black stood outside their office door, holding a gigantic bunch of red roses.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” breathed Robin.

A spasm of fear receded: her mind had momentarily edited out the armful of blooms and seen only the man in black—but it wasn’t the courier, of course. This, she saw as they approached him, was a youth with long hair, an Interflora deliveryman wearing no helmet. Strike doubted the boy had ever handed over fifty red roses to a less enthusiastic recipient.

“His father’s put him up to this,” Robin said darkly, as Strike held open the door for her and she pushed her way inside, being none too gentle with the quivering floral display. “‘All women love roses,’ he’ll have said. That’s all it takes—a bunch of bloody flowers.”