Career of Evil

“Church? Are you sure it’s the same bloke?”

“Tall ex-soldier, ex-rugby player, long jaw, one of his eyes sunken, cauliflower ear, dark crew cut,” reeled off Wardle. “Name Noel Brockbank. Six foot three or four. Strong northern accent.”

“That’s him,” said Strike. “A bloody church?”

“Hang on,” said Wardle, getting up. “Need a slash.”

And yet, why not a church? Strike thought as he went to the bar for a couple of fresh pints. The pub was filling up around him. He took a menu back to the table as well as the beers, but could not concentrate on it. Young girls in the choir… he wouldn’t be the first…

“Needed that,” said Wardle, rejoining Strike. “I might go out for a fag, join you back—”

“Finish about Brockbank first,” said Strike, pushing the fresh pint across the table.

“To tell you the truth, we found him by accident,” said Wardle, sitting back down and accepting the pint. “One of our guys has been tailing the mother of a local drug lord. We don’t think Mum’s as i

“Four weeks later our guy hears me talking about looking for a Noel Brockbank on the Kelsey Platt case and tells me he met a bloke with the same name a month ago in Brixton. See?” said Wardle, with a ghost of his usual smirk. “I do pay attention to your tip-offs, Strike. Be silly not to, after the Landry case.”

You pay attention when you’ve got nothing out of Digger Malley and Devotee, thought Strike, but he made impressed and grateful noises before returning to the main point.

“Did you say Brockbank’s stopped attending church?”

“Yeah,” sighed Wardle. “I went down there yesterday, had a word with the vicar. Young guy, enthusiastic, i

“Brain damage, invalided out of the army, lost his family, all that crap?” asked Strike.

“That was the gist,” said Wardle. “Said he misses his son.”

“Uh huh,” said Strike darkly. “Did he know where Brockbank was living?”

“No, but apparently his girlfriend—”

“Alyssa?”

Frowning slightly, Wardle reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a notebook and consulted it.

“Yeah, it is, as it goes,” he said. “Alyssa Vincent. How did you know that?”

“They’ve both just been sacked from a strip club. I’ll explain in a bit,” said Strike hurriedly, as Wardle showed signs of becoming sidetracked. “Go on about Alyssa.”

“Well, she’s managed to get a council house in east London near her mother. Brockbank told the vicar he was going to move in with her and the kids.”

“Kids?” said Strike, his thoughts flying to Robin.

“Two little girls, apparently.”

“Do we know where this house is?” asked Strike.

“Not yet. The vicar was sorry to see him go,” said Wardle, glancing restlessly towards the pavement, where a couple of men were smoking. “I did get out of him that Brockbank was in church on Sunday the third of April, which was the weekend Kelsey died.”

In view of Wardle’s increasing restlessness, Strike passed no comment except to suggest that they both adjourn to the pavement for a cigarette.

They lit up and smoked side by side for a couple of minutes. Workers walked past in both directions, weary from late hours at the office. Evening was drawing in. Directly above them, between the indigo of approaching night and the neon coral of the setting sun, was a narrow stretch of no-colored sky, of vapid and empty air.

“Christ, I’ve missed this,” said Wardle, dragging on the cigarette as though it was mother’s milk before picking up the thread of their conversation once more. “Yeah, so Brockbank was in church that weekend, making himself useful. Very good with the kids, apparently.”

“I’ll bet he is,” muttered Strike.

“Take some nerve, though, wouldn’t it?” said Wardle, blowing smoke towards the opposite side of the road, his eyes on Epstein’s sculpture Day, which adorned the old London Transport offices. A boy stood before a throned man, his body contorted so that he both managed to embrace the king behind him and display his own penis to onlookers. “To kill and dismember a girl, then turn up in church as though nothing had happened?”

“Are you Catholic?” Strike asked.

Wardle looked startled.

“I am, as it goes,” he said suspiciously. “Why?”

Strike shook his head, smiling slightly.

“I know a psycho wouldn’t care,” said Wardle with a trace of defensiveness. “I’m just saying… anyway, we’ve got people trying to find out where he’s living now. If it’s a council house, and assuming Alyssa Vincent’s her real name, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Great,” said Strike. The police had resources that he and Robin could not match; perhaps now, at last, some definitive information would be forthcoming. “What about Laing?”

“Ah,” said Wardle, grinding out his first cigarette and immediately lighting another, “we’ve got more on him. He’s been living alone in Wollaston Close for eighteen months now. Survives on disability benefits. He had a chest infection over the weekend of the second and third and his friend Dickie came in to help him out. He couldn’t get to the shops.”

“That’s bloody convenient,” said Strike.

“Or genuine,” said Wardle. “We checked with Dickie and he confirmed everything Laing told us.”

“Was Laing surprised the police were asking about his movements?”

“Seemed pretty taken aback at first.”

“Did he let you in the flat?”

“Didn’t arise. We met him crossing the car park on his sticks and we ended up talking to him in a local café.”

“That Ecuadorian place in a tu

Wardle subjected Strike to a hard stare that the detective returned with equanimity.

“You’ve been staking him out as well, have you? Don’t mess this up for us, Strike. We’re on it.”

Strike might have responded that it had taken press scrutiny and the failure to make anything of his preferred leads to make Wardle commit serious resources to the tracking of Strike’s three suspects. He chose to hold his silence.

“Laing’s not stupid,” Wardle continued. “We hadn’t been questioning him long when he twigged what it was about. He knew you must’ve given us his name. He’d seen in the papers you got sent a leg.”

“What was his view on the matter?”

“There might’ve been an undertone of ‘couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer bloke,’” said Wardle with a slight grin, “but on balance, about what you’d expect. Bit of curiosity, bit of defensiveness.”

“Did he look ill?”

“Yeah,” said Wardle. “He didn’t know we were coming, and we met him shambling along on his sticks. He doesn’t look good close up. Bloodshot eyes. His skin’s kind of cracked. Bit of a mess.”

Strike said nothing. His mistrust of Laing’s illness lingered. In spite of the clear photographic evidence of steroid use, skin plaques and lesions that Strike had seen with his own eyes, he found himself stubbornly resistant to the idea that Laing was genuinely ill.

“What was he doing when the other women were killed?”

“Says he was home alone,” said Wardle. “Nothing to prove or disprove it.”

“Hmn,” said Strike.

They turned back into the pub. A couple had taken their table so they found another beside the floor-to-ceiling window onto the street.

“What about Whittaker?”

“Yeah, we caught up with him last night. He’s roadying for a band.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Strike suspiciously, remembering Shanker’s assertion that Whittaker claimed to be doing so, but was in fact living off Stephanie.