Career of Evil

“You didn’t, did you?” she asked suddenly, point blank. “You didn’t—you didn’t cut—do it—yourself?”

Was that why she had wanted to see him, Strike wondered. In some confused, subconscious ma

“No,” he said. “I was blown up.”

“There you are, you see!” she said, tears erupting again, savagely triumphant. “I could have told her that—I could have told her if she’d only… if she’d asked me… but what she claimed,” said Hazel, gulping, “was that her leg felt like it shouldn’t be there. Like it was wrong to have it and it needed to come off—like a tumor or something. I wouldn’t listen. It was all nonsense. Ray says he tried to talk sense into her. He told her she didn’t know what she was asking for, that she wouldn’t want to be in hospital like he was after he broke his back, laid up for months in plaster, skin sores and infections and all the rest of it. He didn’t get angry with her, though. He’d say to her, come and help me in the garden or something, distract her.

“The police told us she was talking to people online who were like her. We had no idea. I mean, she was sixteen, you can’t go looking on their laptops, can you? Not that I’d know what to look for.”

“Did she ever mention me to you?” Strike asked.

“The police asked that. No. I can’t remember her ever talking about you and nor can Ray. I mean, no offense, but—I remember the Lula Landry trial, but I wouldn’t have remembered your name from that, or recognized you. If she’d brought you up I’d remember. It’s a fu

“What about friends? Did she go out much?”

“She hardly had any friends. She wasn’t the popular sort. She lied to all the kids at school too, and nobody likes that, do they? They bullied her for it. Thought she was strange. She hardly ever went out. When she was meeting this supposed Niall, I don’t know.”

Her anger did not surprise Strike. Kelsey had been an unpla

“Would it be all right if I used your bathroom?” Strike asked.

Dabbing her eyes, she nodded.

“Straight ahead, top of the stairs.”

Strike emptied his bladder while reading a framed citation for “brave and meritorious conduct,” awarded to firefighter Ray Williams, which was hanging over the cistern. He strongly suspected that Hazel had hung that there, not Ray. Otherwise the bathroom displayed little of interest. The same meticulous attention to cleanliness and neatness displayed in the sitting room extended all the way to the inside of the medicine cabinet, where Strike learned that Hazel was still menstruating, that they bulk-bought toothpaste and that one or both of the couple had hemorrhoids.

He left the bathroom as quietly as he could. Faintly, from behind a closed door, came a soft rumbling indicating that Ray was asleep. Strike took two decisive steps to the right and found himself in Kelsey’s box room.

Everything matched, covered in the same shade of lilac: walls, duvet, lampshade and curtains. Strike thought he might have guessed that order had been forcibly imposed on chaos in here, even had he not seen the rest of the house.

A large cork noticeboard ensured that there would be no unsightly pin marks on the walls. Kelsey had plastered the cork with pictures of five pretty young boys whom Strike assumed were One Direction. Their heads and legs protruded outside the frame of the board. There was a particular recurrence of a blond boy. Other than the pictures of One Direction, she had cut out puppies, mostly shih-tzus, random words and acronyms: OCCUPY, FOMO and AMAZEBALLS, and many recurrences of the name NIALL, often stuck onto hearts. The slapdash, random collage told of an attitude completely at odds with the precision with which the duvet had been laid on the bed and the exactly square position of the lilac rug.

Prominent on the narrow bookshelf was what looked like a new One Direction: Forever Young—Our Official X Factor Story. Otherwise the shelves held the Twilight series, a jewelry box, a mess of small trinkets that not even Hazel had managed to make look symmetrical, a plastic tray of cheap makeup and a couple of cuddly toys.

Banking on the fact that Hazel was heavy enough to make a noise coming upstairs, Strike swiftly opened drawers. The police would have taken away anything of interest, of course: the laptop, any scrap of scribbled paper, any telephone number or jotted name, any diary, if she had continued to keep one after Hazel had gone snooping. A mishmash of belongings remained: a box of writing paper like that on which she had written to him, an old Nintendo DS, a pack of false nails, a small box of Guatemalan worry dolls and, in the very bottom drawer of her bedside table, tucked inside a fluffy pencil case, several stiff foil-covered strips of pills. He pulled them out: ovoid capsules in mustard yellow labeled Accutane. He took one of the strips and pocketed it, closed the drawer and headed to her wardrobe, which was untidy and slightly fusty. She had liked black and pink. He felt swiftly among the folds of material, rifling through the pockets of the clothes, but found nothing until he tried a baggy dress in which he found what looked like a crumpled raffle or coat check ticket, numbered 18.

Hazel had not moved since Strike had left her. He guessed that he could have stayed away longer and she would not have noticed. When he reentered the room she gave a little start. She had been crying again.

“Thank you for coming,” she said thickly, getting to her feet. “I’m sorry, I—”

And she began to sob in earnest. Strike put a hand on her shoulder and before he knew it, she had her face on his chest, sobbing, gripping the lapels of his coat, with no trace of coquettishness, but in pure anguish. He put his arms around her shoulders and they stood so for a full minute until, with several heaving breaths, she stepped away again and Strike’s arms fell back to his sides.

She shook her head, no words left, and walked him to the door. He reiterated his condolences. She nodded, her face ghastly in the daylight now falling into the dingy hall.

“Thanks for coming,” she gulped. “I just needed to see you. I don’t know why. I’m ever so sorry.”

35 Dominance and Submission

Since leaving home, he had cohabited with three women, but this one—It—was testing him to his limits. All three dirty bitches had claimed to love him, whatever that was supposed to mean. Their so-called love had turned the first two tractable. At heart, of course, all women were cheating cunts, determined to take more than they gave, but the first two hadn’t been anything like It. He was forced to put up with more than he’d ever put up with before, because It was an essential part of his grand plan.

Nevertheless, he constantly fantasized about killing It. He could imagine It’s stupid face slackening as the knife sank deep into her belly, unable to believe that Baby (It called him Baby) was killing her, even as the hot blood began pouring over his hands, the rusty smell filling the air still shivering with her screams…

Having to play nice was playing havoc with his self-control. Switching on the charm, drawing them in and keeping them sweet was easy, second nature to him, always had been. Sustaining the pose over long periods, though, was something else. The pretense was bringing him to his breaking point. Sometimes, even the sound of It’s breathing was enough to make him want to grab his knife and puncture her fucking lungs…