Career of Evil

A woman in a very short nylon kimono and stockings slid out from behind the curtain and began walking around the pub, holding out an empty beer glass to punters, who one by one put their hands in their pockets and gave her some change. She reached Strike last. He dropped in a couple of quid. She headed straight for the stage, where she put her pint glass of coins carefully beside the DJ’s turntable, wriggled out of her kimono and stepped on to the stage in bra, pants, stockings and heels.

“Gentlemen, I think you’re going to enjoy this… Big welcome, please, for the lovely Mia!”

She began to jiggle to Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” There was not the remotest synchronicity between her movements and the track.

The barmaid resumed her lounging position near Strike. The view of the TV was clearest from where he sat.

“Yeah, like I was saying,” Strike began again, “a friend of mine told me he’s working here.”

“Mm-hm,” she said.

“Name of Noel Brockbank.”

“Yeah? I don’t know him.”

“No,” said Strike, making a show of sca

The first stripper pushed her way out from behind the curtain, having changed into a bubblegum-pink spaghetti-strapped minidress that barely skimmed her crotch, and was somehow more indecent than her previous nakedness. She approached the man in the fluorescent jacket and asked him something, but he shook his head. Looking around, she caught Strike’s eye, smiled and approached him.

“Hiya,” she said. Her accent was Irish. Her hair, which he had thought blonde in the red light of the stage, turned out to be vivid copper. Beneath the thick orange lipstick and the thick false eyelashes hid a girl who looked as though she should still have been at school. “I’m Orla. Who’re you?”

“Cameron,” said Strike, which was what people usually called him after failing to grasp his first name.

“D’ya fancy a private dance then, Cameron?”

“Where does that happen?”

“Troo there,” she said, pointing towards the curtain where she had changed. “I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“No. I’m looking for a friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“It’s a him.”

“Yeh’ve come to the wrong place fer hims, darlin’,” she said.

She was so young he felt mildly dirty just hearing her call him darling.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Strike asked.

She hesitated. There was more money in a private dance, but perhaps he was the kind of guy who needed warming up first.

“Go on, then.”

Strike paid an exorbitant amount for a vodka and lime, which she sipped primly on a seat beside him, most of her breasts hanging out of the dress. The texture of her skin reminded him of the murdered Kelsey: smooth and firm, with plenty of youthful fat. There were three small blue stars inked on her shoulder.

“Maybe you know my friend?” Strike said. “Noel Brockbank.”

She was no fool, little Orla. Suspicion and calculation mingled in the sharp sideways look she gave him. She was wondering, like the masseuse back in Market Harborough, whether he was police.

“He owes me money,” said Strike.

She continued to scrutinize him for a moment, her smooth forehead furrowed, then apparently swallowed the lie.

“Noel,” she repeated. “I tink he’s gone. Hang on—Edie?”

The bored barmaid did not take her eyes from the TV.

“Hmm?”

“What was the name of yer man that Des sacked the other week? Guy who only lasted a few days?”

“Du

“Yeah, I tink it was Noel who was sacked,” Orla told Strike. Then, with a sudden and endearing bluntness, she said: “Gimme a te

With a mental sigh, Strike handed over a note.

“Wait there, now,” said Orla cheerfully. She slipped off her bar stool, tucked the te

“I tort so!” she told Strike. “I wasn’t here when it happened, but he had a fit or sometin’.”

“A fit?” repeated Strike.

“Yeah, it was only his first week on the job. Big guy, wasn’t he? Wit a big chin?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“Yeah, an’ he was late, and Des wasn’t happy. Dat’s Des, over dare,” she added u

Strike doubted that Brockbank would have urinated over himself to escape a dressing down from Des. It sounded as though he had genuinely had an epileptic fit.

“Then what happened?”

“Your mate’s gorlfriend come ru

“What girlfriend’s this?”

“Hang on—Edie?”

“Hm?”

“Who’s dat black gorl, now, with the extensions? The one with the great knockers? The one Des doesn’t like?”

“Alyssa,” said Edie.

“Alyssa,” Orla told Strike. “She come ru

“Did he?”

“Yeah. Dey took yer man away, and Alyssa went with him.”

“And has Brock—has Noel been back since?”

“He’s no bloody use as a bouncer if he’s go

“So Alyssa called Des a tight cunt,” said Edie, emerging suddenly from her listlessness, “and he sacked her too. Silly bitch. She needs the money. She’s got kids.”

“When did all this happen?” Strike asked Orla and Edie.

“Couple of weeks ago,” said Edie. “But he was a creep, that guy. Good riddance.”

“In what way was he a creep?” asked Strike.

“You can always tell,” said Edie with a kind of hard-bitten weariness. “Always. Alyssa’s got fucking terrible taste in men.”

The second stripper was now down to her thong and twerking enthusiastically towards her scanty audience. Two older men had just entered the club and hesitated before approaching the bar, their eyes on the thong, which was clearly about to come off.

“You don’t know where I’d find Noel, do you?” Strike asked Edie, who seemed too bored to demand money for the information.

“He’s living with Alyssa, somewhere in Bow,” said the barmaid. “She got herself a council house but she was always bitching about the place. I don’t know exactly where it is,” she said, forestalling Strike’s question. “I never went round or nothing.”

“I tort she liked it,” said Orla vaguely. “She said there was a good nursery.”

The stripper had wriggled out of her thong and was waving it over her head, lasso-style. Having seen all there was to see, the two new punters drifted to the bar. One of them, a man old enough to be Orla’s grandfather, fixed his rheumy eyes on her cleavage. She sized him up, businesslike, then turned to Strike.

“So, you wa

“I don’t think I will,” said Strike.

Before the words were even fully out of his mouth she had put down her glass, wriggled off the chair and slid towards the sixty-year-old, who gri

A hulking figure appeared at Strike’s side: the neckless bouncer.

“Des wants a word,” he said in what would have been a menacing tone had his voice not been surprisingly high-pitched for a man so broad.

Strike looked around. The DJ, who was glaring across the room at him, beckoned.

“Is there a problem?” Strike asked the bouncer.