Career of Evil

Then horror exploded across Wednesday’s front pages. The mutilated body of a young woman had been uncovered beneath bin bags, and within a few hours of the first police appeal for information the world had been informed that a twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London.

Three women had been attacked and mutilated, but the Met appeared to have no leads. In their stampede to cover every possible aspect of the story—maps of London showing the location of each attack, pictures of the three victims—the journalists revealed themselves determined to make up for lost time, aware that they might have arrived a little late at the party. They had previously treated the killing of Kelsey Platt as a lone act of madness and sadism, and the subsequent attack on Lila Monkton, the eighteen-year-old prostitute, had gained virtually no media coverage. A girl who had been selling herself for sex on the day of the royal wedding could hardly expect to oust a new-minted duchess from the front pages.

The murder of Heather Smart, a twenty-two-year-old building society employee from Nottingham, was an entirely different matter. The headlines virtually wrote themselves, for Heather was a wonderfully relatable heroine with her steady job, her i

The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus. There were discussions of the deplorable drunken tendencies of the young British woman, with reciprocal accusations of victim-blaming. There were horror-struck articles about sexual violence, tempered with reminders that these attacks were far less common than in other countries. There were interviews with the distraught, guilt-stricken friends who had accidentally abandoned Heather, which in turn spawned attacks and vilifications on social media, leading back to a defense of the grieving young women.

Overlaying every story was the shadow of the unknown killer, the madman who was hacking women’s bodies apart. The press again descended upon Denmark Street in search of the man who had received Kelsey’s leg. Strike decided that the time had come for Robin to take that much-discussed but daily postponed trip to Masham for a final fitting of her wedding dress, then decamped yet again to Nick and Ilsa’s with a backpack and a crushing sense of his own impotence. A plainclothes officer remained stationed in Denmark Street in case anything suspicious turned up in the post. Wardle was concerned lest another body part addressed to Robin arrived.

Weighed down by the demands of an investigation that was being conducted under the full glare of the national media, Wardle was unable to meet Strike face to face for six days after the discovery of Heather’s body. Strike journeyed again to the Feathers in the early evening, where he found Wardle looking haggard, but looking forward to talking things over with a man who was both inside and outside the case.

“Been a fucker of a week,” sighed Wardle, accepting the pint Strike had bought him. “I’ve started bloody smoking again. April’s really pissed off.”

He took a long draft of lager, then shared with Strike the truth about the discovery of Heather’s body. The press stories, as Strike had already noted, conflicted in many possibly important essentials, though all blamed the police for not finding her for twenty-four hours.

“She and her friends were all shitfaced,” said the policeman, setting the scene with bluntness. “Four of them got into a cab, so ratted they forgot about Heather. They were a street away when they realized she wasn’t with them.

“The cabbie’s hacked off because they’re loud and obnoxious. One of them starts swearing at him when he says he can’t do a U-turn in the middle of the road. There’s a big argument, so it’s a good five minutes before he agrees to go back for Heather.

“When they finally reach the street where they think they left her—they’re from Nottingham, remember, they don’t know London at all—Heather’s nowhere to be seen. They crawl up the road in the cab, shouting for her out of the open window. Then one of them thinks she sees Heather in the distance, getting onto a bus. So two of them get out—there’s no bloody logic to it, they were out of their skulls—and go ru

“So basically,” said Wardle wearily, “all this shit we’re taking for not finding her within twenty-four hours is down to alcohol and racism. The silly bitches were convinced Heather had got on that bus so we wasted a day and a half trying to track a woman wearing a similar coat. Then the owner of the Adult Entertainment Centre goes to put his bins out and finds her lying there under a load of bags, nose and ears cut off.”

“So that bit was true,” said Strike.

Her mutilated face had been the one detail all of the papers had agreed on.

“Yeah, that bit was true,” said Wardle heavily. “‘The Shacklewell Ripper.’ It’s got a great ring to it.”

“Witnesses?”

“Nobody saw a bloody thing.”

“What about Devotee and his motorbike?”

“Ruled out,” Wardle admitted, his expression grim. “He’s got a firm alibi for Heather’s killing—family wedding—and we couldn’t make anything stick for either of the other two attacks.”

Strike had the impression that Wardle wanted to tell him something else, and waited receptively.

“I don’t want the press to get wind of this,” Wardle said, dropping his voice, “but we think he might’ve done two more.”

“Jesus,” said Strike, genuinely alarmed. “When?”

“Historic,” said Wardle. “Unsolved murder in Leeds, 2009. Prostitute, originally from Cardiff. Stabbed. He didn’t cut anything off her, but he took a necklace she always wore and dumped her in a ditch out of town. The body wasn’t found for a fortnight.

“Then, last year, a girl was killed and mutilated in Milton Keynes. Sadie Roach, her name was. Her boyfriend went down for it. I’ve looked it all up. The family campaigned hard for his release and he got out on appeal. There was nothing to tie him to it, except that they’d rowed and he once threatened a bloke with a penknife.

“We’ve got the psychologist and forensics on to all five attacks and the conclusion is they’ve got enough features in common to suggest the same perpetrator. It looks like he uses two knives, a carving knife and a machete. The victims were all vulnerable—prostitutes, drunk, emotionally off balance—and all picked up off the street except for Kelsey. He took trophies from all of them. It’s too soon to say whether we’ve got any similar DNA off the women. Odds are, not. It doesn’t look like he had sex with any of them. He gets his kicks a different way.”

Strike was hungry, but something told him not to interrupt Wardle’s moody silence. The policeman drank more beer then said, without quite meeting Strike’s eyes,

“I’m looking into all your guys. Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker.”

About fucking time.

“Brockbank’s interesting,” said Wardle.

“You’ve found him?” asked Strike, freezing with his pint at his lips.

“Not yet, but we know he was a regular attendee at a church in Brixton until five weeks ago.”