Career of Evil

“Jus’ bein’ kind, were you, darlin’?” Whittaker asked softly, and Robin could not tell whether there was more malice or sweetness in his voice.

“I suppose I was worried,” said Robin, forcing herself to look into those wide-apart eyes, “because Stephanie’s injuries look quite serious.”

“That?” said Whittaker, putting out a hand to Stephanie’s purple and gray face. “Come off a pushbike, din’choo, Steph? Clumsy little cow.”

Robin suddenly understood Strike’s visceral hatred for this man. She would have liked to hit him too.

“I hope I’ll see you again, Stephanie,” she said.

She did not dare give the girl a number in front of Whittaker. Robin turned and began to walk away, feeling like the worst kind of coward. Stephanie was about to walk back upstairs with the man. She ought to have done more, but what? What could she say that would make a difference? Could she report the assault to the police? Would that constitute an interference with Carver’s case?

Only when she was definitely out of sight of Whittaker did she lose the sensation that invisible ants were crawling up her spine. Robin pulled out her mobile and called Strike.

“I know,” she said, before Strike could start telling her off, “it’s getting late but I’m on my way to the station right now and when you’ve heard what I’ve got, you’ll understand.”

She walked fast, chilly in the increasing cool of the evening, telling him everything that Stephanie had said.

“So he’s got an alibi?” said Strike slowly.

“For Heather’s death, yes, if Stephanie’s telling the truth, and I honestly think she is. She was with him—and the whole of Death Cult, as I say.”

“She definitely said Whittaker was there while she was servicing the band?”

“I think so. She was just answering that when Whittaker turned up and—hang on.”

Robin stopped and looked around. Busy talking, she had taken a wrong turning somewhere on the way back to the station. The sun was setting now. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a shadow move behind a wall.

“Cormoran?”

“Still here.”

Perhaps she had imagined the shadow. She was on a stretch of unfamiliar residential road, but there were lit windows and a couple walking along in the distance. She was safe, she told herself. It was all right. She just needed to retrace her steps.

“Everything OK?” asked Strike sharply.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve taken a wrong turn, that’s all.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“Near Catford Bridge station,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ve ended up here.”

She did not want to mention the shadow. Carefully she crossed the darkening road, so that she would not have to walk past the wall where she thought she had seen it, and after transferring her mobile into her left hand she took a tighter hold of the rape alarm in her right pocket.

“I’m going back the way I came,” she told Strike, wanting him to know where she was.

“Have you seen something?” he demanded.

“I don’t kn—maybe,” she admitted.

Yet when she drew level with the gap between houses where she had thought she had seen the figure, there was nobody there.

“I’m jumpy,” she said, speeding up. “Meeting Whittaker wasn’t fun. There’s definitely something—nasty—about him.”

“Where are you now?”

“About twenty feet away from where I was the last time you asked me. Hang on, I can see a street name. I’m crossing back over, I can see where I’ve gone wrong, I should’ve turned—”

She heard the footsteps only when they were right behind her. Two massive black-clad arms closed around her, pi

52

Do not envy the man with the x-ray eyes.

Blue Öyster Cult, “X-Ray Eyes”

Strike, who had been standing in the shadow of a warehouse in Bow, keeping watch on Blondin Street, heard Robin’s sudden gasp, the thud of the mobile on the pavement and then the scuffling and skidding of feet on asphalt.

He began to run. The phone co

“Need to borrow that, mate!” he bellowed at a pair of ski

Strike’s size and his aura of authority as he pelted towards them made the teenager surrender the phone with a look of fear and bewilderment.

“Come with me!” Strike bellowed at the two boys, ru

“Cheers, mate,” Strike panted, throwing the mobile back into the hands of its owner, who continued to run alongside him for several yards without realizing that he no longer needed to.

Strike hurtled around a corner; Bow was a totally unfamiliar area of London to him. On he ran past the Bow Bells pub, ignoring the red-hot jabs of the ligaments in his knee, moving awkwardly with only one free arm to balance himself, his silent phone still clamped to his ear. Then he heard a rape alarm going off at the other end of the line.

“TAXI!” he bellowed at a distant glowing light. “ROBIN!” he yelled into the phone, sure she could not hear him over the screeching alarm. “ROBIN, I’VE CALLED THE POLICE! THE POLICE ARE ON THEIR WAY. ARE YOU LISTENING, YOU FUCKER?”

The taxi had driven off without him. Drinkers outside the Bow Bells stared at the lunatic hobbling past at high speed, yelling and swearing into his phone. A second taxi appeared.

“TAXI! TAXI!” Strike bellowed and it turned, heading towards him, just as Robin’s voice spoke in his ear, gasping.

“Are… you there?”

“JESUS CHRIST! WHAT’S HAPPENED?”

“Stop… shouting…”

With enormous difficulty he modulated his volume.

“What’s happened?”

“I can’t see,” she said. “I can’t… see anything…”

Strike wrenched open the back door of the cab and threw himself inside.

“Catford Bridge station, hurry! What d’you mean, you can’t—? What’s he done to you? NOT YOU!” he bellowed at the confused cabbie. “Go! Go!”

“No… it’s your bloody… rape alarm… stuff… in my face… oh… shit…”

The taxi was speeding along, but Strike had to physically restrain himself from urging the driver to floor it.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

“A—a bit… there are people here…”

He could hear them now, people surrounding her, murmuring, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

“… hospital…” he heard Robin say, away from the phone.

“Robin? ROBIN?”

“Stop shouting!” she said. “Listen, they’ve called an ambulance, I’m going to—”

“WHAT’S HE DONE TO YOU?”

“Cut me… up my arm… I think it’ll need stitching… God, it stings…”

“Which hospital? Let me speak to someone! I’ll meet you there!”

Strike arrived at the Accident and Emergency Department at University Hospital Lewisham twenty-five minutes later, limping heavily and wearing such an anguished expression that a kindly nurse reassured him that a doctor would be with him shortly.