Prominent on the narrow bookshelf was what looked like a new One Direction: Forever Young—Our Official X Factor Story. Otherwise the shelves held the Twilight series, a jewelry box, a mess of small trinkets that not even Hazel had managed to make look symmetrical, a plastic tray of cheap makeup and a couple of cuddly toys.
Banking on the fact that Hazel was heavy enough to make a noise coming upstairs, Strike swiftly opened drawers. The police would have taken away anything of interest, of course: the laptop, any scrap of scribbled paper, any telephone number or jotted name, any diary, if she had continued to keep one after Hazel had gone snooping. A mishmash of belongings remained: a box of writing paper like that on which she had written to him, an old Nintendo DS, a pack of false nails, a small box of Guatemalan worry dolls and, in the very bottom drawer of her bedside table, tucked inside a fluffy pencil case, several stiff foil-covered strips of pills. He pulled them out: ovoid capsules in mustard yellow labeled Accutane. He took one of the strips and pocketed it, closed the drawer and headed to her wardrobe, which was untidy and slightly fusty. She had liked black and pink. He felt swiftly among the folds of material, rifling through the pockets of the clothes, but found nothing until he tried a baggy dress in which he found what looked like a crumpled raffle or coat check ticket, numbered 18.
Hazel had not moved since Strike had left her. He guessed that he could have stayed away longer and she would not have noticed. When he reentered the room she gave a little start. She had been crying again.
“Thank you for coming,” she said thickly, getting to her feet. “I’m sorry, I—”
And she began to sob in earnest. Strike put a hand on her shoulder and before he knew it, she had her face on his chest, sobbing, gripping the lapels of his coat, with no trace of coquettishness, but in pure anguish. He put his arms around her shoulders and they stood so for a full minute until, with several heaving breaths, she stepped away again and Strike’s arms fell back to his sides.
She shook her head, no words left, and walked him to the door. He reiterated his condolences. She nodded, her face ghastly in the daylight now falling into the dingy hall.
“Thanks for coming,” she gulped. “I just needed to see you. I don’t know why. I’m ever so sorry.”
35
Dominance and Submission
Since leaving home, he had cohabited with three women, but this one—It—was testing him to his limits. All three dirty bitches had claimed to love him, whatever that was supposed to mean. Their so-called love had turned the first two tractable. At heart, of course, all women were cheating cunts, determined to take more than they gave, but the first two hadn’t been anything like It. He was forced to put up with more than he’d ever put up with before, because It was an essential part of his grand plan.
Nevertheless, he constantly fantasized about killing It. He could imagine It’s stupid face slackening as the knife sank deep into her belly, unable to believe that Baby (It called him Baby) was killing her, even as the hot blood began pouring over his hands, the rusty smell filling the air still shivering with her screams…
Having to play nice was playing havoc with his self-control. Switching on the charm, drawing them in and keeping them sweet was easy, second nature to him, always had been. Sustaining the pose over long periods, though, was something else. The pretense was bringing him to his breaking point. Sometimes, even the sound of It’s breathing was enough to make him want to grab his knife and puncture her fucking lungs…
Unless he got to do one soon, he’d fucking explode.
Early on Monday morning he made an excuse to get out, but as he approached Denmark Street, intending to pick up The Secretary’s trail as she arrived for work, something quivered in him, like the twitching of a rat’s whiskers.
He paused beside a telephone box on the opposite side of the road, squinting at a figure standing on the corner of Denmark Street, right outside an instrument shop painted in the garish colors of a circus poster.
He knew the police, knew their moves, their games. The young man standing with his hands in the pockets of his donkey jacket was pretending to be casual, a mere bystander…
He’d invented that fucking game. He could make himself practically invisible. Look at that dickhead, standing on the corner thinking his donkey jacket made him one of the lads… never shit a shitter, pal.
Slowly he turned and walked out of sight behind the telephone box, where he slid the beanie hat off his head… He’d been wearing it when Strike chased him. Donkey Jacket might have a description. He should have thought of that, should have guessed Strike would call in his police mates, cowardly fucker…
There’s been no photofit issued, though, he thought, his self-esteem rising again as he walked back down the street. Strike had come within feet of him, though he didn’t realize it, and still had no fucking idea who he was. God, it would feel good, after he’d done The Secretary, to watch Strike and his fucking business sinking out of sight under the mudslide of the publicity, police and press crawling all over him, tainted by association, unable to protect his staff, suspected of her death, utterly ruined…
He was already planning his next move. He would go to the LSE, where The Secretary often followed the other blonde tart around, and hook up with her there. In the meantime, he’d need a different hat and, perhaps, new sunglasses. He felt in his pockets for money. He had hardly any, as fucking usual. He’d need to force It back out to work. He’d had enough of It whining and bleating and making excuses at home.
In the end he bought two new hats, a baseball cap and a gray woolen beanie to replace the black fleece version he put in a bin at Cambridge Circus. Then he caught the Tube to Holborn.
She wasn’t there. Nor were any students. After searching fruitlessly for a glimpse of red-gold hair, he remembered that today was Easter Monday. The LSE was closed for the bank holiday.
After a couple of hours he returned to Tottenham Court Road, looked for her in the Court and skulked for a while near the entrance to Spearmint Rhino, but could not find her anywhere.
After a run of days when he had been unable to get out and look for her, the disappointment caused him almost physical pain. Agitated, he began walking quiet side streets, hoping that some girl would stroll across his path, any woman at all, it didn’t have to be The Secretary; the knives beneath his jacket would be happy with anything now.
Perhaps she had been so shaken up by his little greetings card that she had resigned. That wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted her terrified and off balance, but working for Strike, because she was his means of getting the bastard.
In bitter disappointment, he returned in the early evening to It. He knew he was going to have to remain with It for the next two days and the prospect was draining him of his last vestiges of control. If he could have used It in the way he planned to use The Secretary, it would have been a different matter, a release: he would have hurried home, knives at the ready—but he dared not. He needed It alive and in thrall to him.
Before forty-eight hours had passed, he was ready to explode with rage and violence. On Wednesday evening he told It that he would have to leave early next day to do a job and advised It bluntly that it was time It got back to work too. The resultant whining and mewling wore at him until he became angry. Cowed by his sudden rage, It tried to placate him. It needed him, It wanted him, It was sorry…
He slept apart from It on the pretense of still being angry. This left him free to masturbate, but that left him unsatisfied. What he wanted, what he needed, was contact with female flesh through sharp steel, to feel his dominance as the blood spurted, to hear total submission in her screams, her pleas, her dying gasps and whimpers. Memories of the times when he had done it were no comfort; they merely inflamed his need. He burned to do it again: he wanted The Secretary.
He rose on Thursday morning at a quarter to five, got dressed, pulled on his baseball cap and left to make his way across London to the flat that she shared with Pretty Boy. The sun had ri
sen by the time he reached Hastings Road. An ancient Land Rover parked a short way from the house gave him cover. He leaned against it, keeping watch through the windscreen at the windows of her flat.
There was movement behind the sitting-room windows at seven and shortly afterwards Pretty Boy left in his suit. He looked drawn and unhappy. You think you’re unhappy now, you silly bastard… wait until I’ve had my fun with your girlfriend…
Then at last she appeared, accompanied by an older woman who greatly resembled her.
For fuck’s sake.
What was she doing, going on outings with her fucking mother? It felt like mockery. Sometimes the whole world seemed like it was out to get him, to stop him doing things he wanted, to keep him down. He fucking hated this feeling that his omnipotence was seeping away, that people and circumstances were hemming him in, reducing him to just another thwarted, seething mortal. Somebody was going to pay for this.
36
I have this feeling that my luck is none too good…
Blue Öyster Cult, “Black Blade”
When his alarm went off on Thursday morning, Strike extended one heavy arm and slapped the button on top of the old clock so hard that it toppled off his bedside table onto the floor. Squinting, he had to concede that the sunlight glowing through his thin curtains seemed to confirm the alarm’s raucous assertion. The temptation to roll over and sink back into sleep was almost overwhelming. He lay with his forearm over his eyes for a few more seconds, blocking out the day, then, with a mingled sigh and groan, he threw back the covers. As he groped for the handle of the bathroom door shortly afterwards, he reflected that he must have averaged three hours’ sleep over the preceding five nights.
As Robin had foreseen, sending her home had meant he had to choose between tailing Platinum and Mad Dad. Having recently witnessed the latter jumping out at his small sons unexpectedly, and seen their tears of fright, Strike had decided that Mad Dad ought to be prioritized. Leaving Platinum to her blameless routine, he had spent large parts of the week covertly photographing the skulking father, racking up image after image of the man spying on his boys and accosting them whenever their mother was not present.
When not covering Mad Dad, Strike had been busy with his own investigations. The police were moving far too slowly for his liking so, still without the slightest proof that Brockbank, Laing or Whittaker had any connection with Kelsey Platt’s death, Strike had packed almost every free hour of the preceding five days with the kind of relentless, round-the-clock police work that he had previously only given the army.
Balanced on his only leg, he wrenched the dial on the shower clockwise and allowed the icy water to pummel him awake, cooling his puffy eyes and raising gooseflesh through the dark hair on his chest, arms and legs. The one good thing about his tiny shower was that, if he slipped, there was no room to fall. Once clean, he hopped back to the bedroom, where he toweled himself roughly and turned on the TV.
The royal wedding would take place the following day and the preparations dominated every news channel he could find. While he strapped on his prosthesis, dressed and consumed tea and toast, presenters and commentators kept up a constant, excitable stream of commentary about the people who were already sitting out in tents along the route and outside Westminster Abbey, and the numbers of tourists pouring into London to witness the ceremony. Strike turned off the television and headed downstairs to the office, yawning widely and wondering how this multimedia barrage of wedding talk would be affecting Robin, whom he had not seen since the previous Friday, when the Jack Vettriano card containing a grisly little surprise had arrived.
In spite of the fact that he had just finished a large mug of tea upstairs, Strike automatically switched on the kettle when he arrived in the office, then put down on Robin’s desk the list of strip joints, lap-dancing clubs and massage parlors he had begun compiling in his few free hours. When Robin arrived, he intended to ask her to continue researching and telephoning all the places she could find in Shoreditch, a job she could do safely from her own home. If he could have enforced her cooperation, he would have sent her back to Masham with her mother. The memory of her white face had haunted him all week.
Stifling a second enormous yawn, he slumped down at Robin’s desk to check his emails. In spite of his intention to send her home, he was looking forward to seeing her. He missed her presence in the office, her enthusiasm, her can-do attitude, her easy, unforced kindness, and he wanted to tell her about the few advances he had made during his dogged pursuit of the three men currently obsessing him.
He had now notched up nearly twelve hours in Catford, trying to glimpse Whittaker entering or leaving his flat over the chip shop, which stood on a busy pedestrian street running along the rear of the Catford Theatre. Fishmongers, wig shops, cafés and bakeries curved around the perimeter of the theater, and each had a flat above it boasting three arched windows in triangular formation. The thin curtains of the flat where Shanker believed Whittaker to be living were constantly closed. Market stalls filled the street by day, providing Strike with useful cover. The mingled smells of incense from the dream-catcher stall and the slabs of raw fish lying on ice nearby filled his nostrils until he barely noticed them.
For three evenings Strike had watched from the stage door of the theater, opposite the flat, seeing nothing but shadowy forms moving behind the flat’s curtains. Then, on Wednesday evening, the door beside the chip shop had opened to reveal an emaciated teenage girl.
Her dark, dirty hair was pulled back off a sunken, rabbity face, which had the violet-shadowed pallor of a consumptive. She wore a crop top, a zip-up gray hoodie and leggings that gave her thin legs the look of pipe cleaners. Arms crossed tightly across her thin torso, she entered the chip shop by leaning on the door until it gave, then half falling into it. Strike hurried across the road so fast that he caught the door as it swung closed and took a place immediately behind her in the queue.
When she reached the counter the man serving addressed her by name.
“All right, Stephanie?”
“Yeah,” she said in a low voice. “Two Cokes, please.”
She had multiple piercings in her ears, nose and lip. After counting out payment in coins she left, head bowed, without looking at Strike.
He returned to his darkened doorway across the road where he ate the chips he had just bought, his eyes never moving from the lit windows above the chippy. Her purchase of two Cokes suggested that Whittaker was up there, perhaps sprawled naked on a mattress, as Strike had so often seen him in his teens. Strike had thought himself detached, but the awareness as he had stood in the chip-shop queue that he might be mere feet from the bastard, separated only by a flimsy wood and plaster ceiling, had made his pulse race. Stubbornly he watched the flat until the lights in the windows went off around one in the morning, but there had been no sign of Whittaker.
He had been no luckier with Laing. Careful perusal of Google Street View suggested that the balcony on which the fox-haired Laing had posed for his JustGiving photograph belonged to a flat in Wollaston Close, a squat, shabby block of flats that stood a short distance from the Strata. Neither phone nor voter registration records for the property revealed any trace of Laing, but Strike still held out hope that he might be living there as the guest of another, or renting and living without a landline. He had spent hours on Tuesday evening keeping watch over the flats, bringing with him a pair of night-vision goggles that enabled him to peer through uncurtained windows once darkness fell, but saw no hint of the Scot entering, leaving or moving around inside any of the flats. Having no wish to tip Laing off that he was after him, Strike had decided against door-to-door inquiries, but had lurked by day near the brick arches of a railway bridge nearby, which had been filled in to create tunnel-like spaces. Small businesses lived here: an Ecuadorian café, a hairdresser’s. Eating and drinking silently among cheerful South Americans, Strike had been conspicuous by his silence and moroseness.
Strike’s fresh yawn turned int
o another groan of tiredness as he stretched in Robin’s computer chair, so that he did not hear the first clanging footsteps on the stairs in the hallway. By the time he had realized that somebody was approaching and checked his watch—it was surely too early for Robin, who had told him her mother’s train would leave at eleven—a shadow was climbing the wall outside the frosted glass. A knock on the door, and to Strike’s astonishment, Two-Times entered the office.
A paunchy middle-aged businessman, he was considerably wealthier than his crumpled, nondescript appearance would suggest. His face, which was entirely forgettable, neither handsome nor homely, was today screwed up in consternation.
“She’s dumped me,” he told Strike without preamble.
He dropped onto the mock-leather sofa in an eruption of fake flatulence that took him by surprise; for the second time, Strike assumed, that day. It must have been a shock to the man to be dumped, when his usual procedure was to collect evidence of infidelity and present it to the blonde in question, thus severing the connection. The better Strike had got to know his client, the more he had understood that, for Two-Times, this constituted some kind of satisfying sexual climax. The man appeared to be a peculiar mixture of masochist, voyeur and control freak.
“Really?” said Strike, getting to his feet and heading towards the kettle; he needed caffeine. “We’ve been keeping a very close eye on her and there hasn’t been a hint of another man.”
In fact, he had done nothing about Platinum all week except to take Raven’s calls, a few of which he had allowed to go to voicemail while he had been tailing Mad Dad. He now wondered whether he had listened to all of them. He hoped to Christ that Raven had not been warning him that another rich man had shown up, ready to defray some of Platinum’s student expenses in return for exclusive privileges, or he would have to say good-bye to Two-Times’s cash for good.