Career of Evil

Martina Rossi, 28, prostitute, stabbed to death, necklace stolen.

Martina was a plump, dark woman wearing a white tank top. Her blurry photograph looked as though it had been a selfie. A small heart-shaped harp charm hung from a chain around her neck.

Sadie Roach, 25, admin assistant, stabbed to death, mutilated, earrings taken.

She had been a pretty girl with a gamine haircut and hoops in her ears. Judging by cropped figures at the edges of her picture, it had been taken at a family gathering.

Kelsey Platt, 16, student, stabbed to death and dismembered.

Here was the familiar chubby, plain face of the girl who had written to Strike, smiling in her school uniform.

Lila Monkton, 18, prostitute, stabbed, fingers cut off, survived.

A blurred picture of a gaunt girl whose bright red he

Heather Smart, 22, financial services worker, stabbed to death, nose and ears removed.

She was round-faced and i

Robin looked up from the Daily Express with a deep sigh. Matthew had been sent to audit a client in High Wycombe, so he had been unable to give Robin a lift today. It had taken her a full hour and twenty minutes to get to Catford from Ealing on trains crammed with tourists and commuters sweating in the London heat. Now she left her seat and headed for the door, swaying with the rest of the commuters as the train slowed and stopped, yet again, at Catford Bridge station.

Her week back at work with Strike had been strange. Strike, who clearly had no intention to comply with the instruction to keep out of Carver’s investigation, was nevertheless taking the investigating officer seriously enough to be cautious.

“If he can make a case that we’ve buggered up the police investigation, we’re finished as a business,” he said. “And we know he’ll try and say I’ve screwed things up, whether I have or not.”

“So why are we carrying on?”

Robin had been playing devil’s advocate, because she would have been deeply unhappy and frustrated had Strike a

“Because Carver thinks my suspects are bullshit, and I think he’s an incompetent tit.”

Robin’s laugh had ended prematurely when Strike had told her he wanted her to return to Catford and stake out Whittaker’s girlfriend.

“Still?” she asked. “Why?”

“You know why. I want to see whether Stephanie can give him alibis for any of the key dates.”

“You know what?” said Robin, plucking up her courage. “I’ve been in Catford a lot. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do Brockbank. Why don’t I try and get something out of Alyssa?”

“There’s Laing as well, if you want a change,” said Strike.

“He saw me up close when I fell over,” Robin countered at once. “Don’t you think it would be better if you did Laing?”

“I’ve been watching his flat while you’ve been away,” Strike said.

“And?”

“And he mostly stays in, but sometimes he goes to the shops and back.”

“You don’t think it’s him anymore, do you?”

“I haven’t ruled him out,” said Strike. “Why are you so keen to do Brockbank?”

“Well,” said Robin bravely, “I feel like I’ve done a lot of the ru

“And you’re worried about the kids who’re living with him,” said Strike.

Robin remembered the little black girl with the stiff pigtails who had tripped over, staring at her, in Catford Broadway.

“So what if I am?”

“I’d rather you stuck to Stephanie,” said Strike.

She had been a

“Two weeks off?” he said, looking up in surprise. He was far more used to her begging to stay at work than asking to leave it.

“It’s for my honeymoon.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yeah. I suppose that’ll be soon, will it?”

“Obviously. The wedding’s on the second.”

“Christ, that’s only—what—three weeks or something?”

She had been a

“Yes,” she had said, getting to her feet and reaching for her jacket. “And would you mind RSVP’ing if you’re coming?”

So she returned to Catford and the busy market stalls, to the smell of incense and raw fish, to pointless hours of standing beneath the crouching stone bears over the stage door of the Broadway Theatre.

Robin had hidden her hair under a straw hat today and was wearing sunglasses, but she still wondered whether she did not see a hint of recognition in the eyes of stallholders as she settled once more to lurk opposite the triple windows of Whittaker and Stephanie’s flat. She had only had a couple of glimpses of the girl since she had resumed her surveillance on her, and on neither occasion had there been the slightest chance of speaking to her. Of Whittaker, there had been no hint at all. Robin settled back against the cool gray stone of the theater wall, prepared for another long day of tedium, and yawned.

By late afternoon she was hot, tired and trying not to resent her mother, who had texted repeatedly throughout the day with questions about the wedding. The last, telling her to ring the florist, who had yet another finicky question for her, arrived just as Robin had decided she needed something to drink. Wondering how Linda would react if she texted back and said she’d decided to have plastic flowers everywhere—on her head, in her bouquet, all over the church—anything to stop having to make decisions—she crossed to the chip shop, which sold chilled fizzy drinks.

She had barely touched the door handle when somebody collided with her, also aiming for the chip-shop door.

“Sorry,” said Robin automatically, and then, “oh my God.”

Stephanie’s face was swollen and purple, one eye almost entirely closed.

The impact had not been hard, but the smaller girl had been bounced off her. Robin reached out to stop her stumbling.

“Jesus—what happened?”

She spoke as though she knew Stephanie. In a sense, she felt she did. Observing the girl’s little routines, becoming familiar with her body language, her clothing and her liking for Coke had fostered a one-sided sense of kinship. Now she found it natural and easy to ask a question hardly any British stranger would ask of another: “Are you all right?”

How she managed it, Robin hardly knew, but two minutes later she was settling Stephanie into a chair in the welcome shade of the Stage Door Café, a few doors along from the chip shop. Stephanie was obviously in pain and ashamed of her appearance, but at the same time she had become too hungry and thirsty to remain upstairs in the flat. Now she had simply bowed to a stronger will, thrown off balance by the older woman’s solicitude, by the offer of a free meal. Robin gabbled nonsensically as she ushered Stephanie down the street, maintaining the fiction that her quixotic offer of sandwiches was due to her guilt at having almost knocked Stephanie over.

Stephanie accepted a cold Fanta and a tuna sandwich with mumbled thanks, but after a few mouthfuls she put her hand to her cheek as though in pain and set the sandwich down.

“Tooth?” asked Robin solicitously.

The girl nodded. A tear trickled out of her unclosed eye.

“Who did this?” Robin said urgently, reaching across the table for Stephanie’s hand.

She was playing a character, growing into the role as she improvised. The straw hat and the long sundress she was wearing had unconsciously suggested a hippyish girl full of altruism who thought that she could save Stephanie. Robin felt a tiny reciprocal squeeze of her fingers even as Stephanie shook her head to indicate that she was not going to give away her attacker.