“I was only going to say that abused people cling to their abusers, don’t they? They’ve been brainwashed to believe there’s no alternative.”
I was the bloody alternative, standing there, right in front of her!
“Any sign of Laing today?” Strike asked.
“No,” said Robin. “You know, I really don’t think he’s there.”
“I still think it’s worth—”
“Look, I know who’s in every flat except for one of them,” said Robin. “People go in and out of all the others. The last one’s either unoccupied, or someone’s lying in there dead, because the door never opens. I haven’t even seen carers or nurses visit.”
“We’ll give it another week,” said Strike. “It’s the only lead we’ve got for Laing. Listen,” he added irritably, as she tried to protest, “I’ll be in the same position, staking out that strip club.”
“Except we know that Brockbank’s there,” said Robin sharply.
“I’ll believe it when I see him,” retorted Strike.
They said good-bye a few minutes later in poorly concealed mutual dissatisfaction.
All investigations had their slumps and droughts, when information and inspiration ran dry, but Strike was finding it difficult to take a philosophical view. Thanks to the unknown sender of the leg, there was no longer any money coming in to the business. His last paying client, Mad Dad’s wife, no longer needed him. In the hope of persuading a judge that the restraining order was not required, Mad Dad was actually complying with it.
The agency could not survive much longer if the twin stenches of failure and perversity continued to emanate from his office. As Strike had foreseen, his name was now multiplying across the internet in connection with the killing and dismemberment of Kelsey Platt, and the gory details were not only obliterating all mention of his previous successes, they were also eclipsing the simple advertisement of his detective services. Nobody wanted to hire a man so notorious; nobody liked the idea of a detective so intimately connected with unsolved murder.
It was therefore in a mood of determination and slight desperation that Strike set out for the strip club where he hoped to find Noel Brockbank. It turned out to be another converted old pub, which lay on a side street off Commercial Road in Shoreditch. The brick façade was crumbling in parts; its windows had been blacked out and crude white silhouettes of naked women painted upon them. The original name (“The Saracen”) was still picked out in wide golden letters across the peeling black paint over the double doors.
The area had a large proportion of Muslim residents. Strike passed them in their hijabs and taqiyahs, browsing the many cheap clothes shops, all bearing names like International Fashion and Made in Milan and displaying sad mannequins in synthetic wigs wearing nylon and polyester. Commercial Road was crammed with Bangladeshi banks, tatty estate agents, English schools and ramshackle grocers that sold past-its-prime fruit behind grimy windows, but it had no benches to sit on, not even a low, cold wall. Even though he frequently changed his vantage point, Strike’s knee soon began to complain about long stretches spent standing, waiting for nothing, because Brockbank was nowhere to be seen.
The man on the door was squat and neckless, and Strike saw nobody enter or leave the place except punters and strippers. The girls came and went, and like their place of employment, they were shabbier and less polished than those who worked at Spearmint Rhino. Some were tattooed or pierced; several were overweight, and one, who looked drunk as she entered the building at eleven in the morning, appeared distinctly grubby viewed through the window of the kebab shop that lay directly opposite the club. After watching the Saracen for three days, Strike, whose hopes had been high, whatever he had said to Robin, reluctantly concluded that either Brockbank had never worked there, or that he had already been sacked.
Friday morning arrived before the depressing pattern of no leads changed. As he was lurking in the doorway of an especially dismal clothing store named World Flair, Strike’s mobile rang and Robin spoke in his ear:
“Jason’s coming to London tomorrow. The leg guy. From the wannabe amputee website.”
“Great!” said Strike, relieved at the mere prospect of interviewing someone. “Where are we meeting him?”
“It’s ‘them,’” said Robin, with a definite note of reservation in her voice. “We’re meeting Jason and Tempest. She’s—”
“Excuse me?” interrupted Strike. “Tempest?”
“I doubt it’s her birth name,” said Robin drily. “She’s the woman Kelsey was interacting with online. Black hair and glasses.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” repeated Strike, supporting the mobile between jaw and shoulder while he lit a cigarette.
“I’ve just got off the phone with her. She’s a big activist in the transabled community and she’s pretty overwhelming, but Jason thinks she’s wonderful and he seems to feel safer with her there.”
“Fair enough,” said Strike. “So where are we meeting Jason and Tempest?”
“They want to go to Gallery Mess. It’s the café at the Saatchi Gallery.”
“Really?” Strike seemed to remember that Jason worked in an Asda, and was surprised that his first craving on arriving in London was contemporary art.
“Tempest’s in a wheelchair,” said Robin, “and apparently it’s got really good disabled access.”
“OK,” said Strike. “What time?”
“One,” said Robin. “She—er—asked whether we’d be paying.”
“I suppose we’ll have to.”
“And listen—Cormoran—would it be all right if I took the morning off?”
“Yeah, of course. Everything OK?”
“Everything’s fine, I’ve just got some—some wedding stuff to sort out.”
“No problem. Hey,” he added, before she could hang up, “shall we meet up somewhere first, before we question them? Agree our interviewing strategy?”
“That’d be great!” said Robin, and Strike, touched by her enthusiasm, suggested they meet in a sandwich shop on the King’s Road.
43
Freud, have mercy on my soul.
Blue Öyster Cult, “Still Burnin’”
The next day, Strike had been in Pret A Manger on the King’s Road for five minutes when Robin arrived, carrying a white bag over her shoulder. He was as uninformed about female fashion as most male ex-soldiers, but even he recognized the name Jimmy Choo.
“Shoes,” he said, pointing, after he had ordered her a coffee.
“Well done,” said Robin, grinning. “Shoes. Yes. For the wedding,” she added, because after all, they ought to be able to acknowledge that it was happening. A strange taboo had seemed to exist around the subject since she had resumed her engagement.
“You’re still coming, right?” she added as they took a table beside the window.
Had he ever agreed that he was attending her wedding, Strike wondered. He had been given the reissued invitation, which like the first had been of stiff cream card engraved in black, but he could not remember telling her that he would be there. She watched him expectantly for an answer, and he was reminded of Lucy and her attempts to coerce him into attending his nephew’s birthday party.
“Yeah,” he said unwillingly.
“Shall I RSVP for you?” Robin asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
He supposed that it would entail calling her mother. This, he thought, was how women roped you in. They added you to lists and forced you to confirm and commit. They impressed upon you that if you didn’t show up a plate of hot food would go begging, a gold-backed chair would remain unoccupied, a cardboard place name would sit shamefully upon a table, announcing your rudeness to the world. Offhand, he could think of literally nothing he wanted to do less than watch Robin marry Matthew.
“D’you want—would you like me to invite Elin?” Robin asked valiantly, hoping to see his expression become a degree or two less surly.
“No,” said Strike without hesitation,
but he read in her offer a kind of plea, and his real fondness for her caused his better nature to reassert itself. “Let’s see the shoes then.”
“You don’t want to see the—!”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
Robin lifted the box out of its bag with a reverence that amused Strike, took off the lid and unfolded the tissue paper inside. They were high, glittery champagne-colored heels.
“Bit rock ’n’ roll for a wedding,” said Strike. “I thought they’d be… I dunno… flowery.”
“You’ll hardly see them,” she said, stroking one of the stilettos with a forefinger. “They had some platforms, but—”
She did not finish the sentence. The truth was that Matthew did not like her too tall.
“So how are we going to handle Jason and Tempest?” she said, pushing the lid back down on the shoes and replacing them in the bag.
“You’re going to take the lead,” said Strike. “You’re the one who’s had contact with them. I’ll jump in if necessary.”
“You realize,” said Robin awkwardly, “that Jason’s going to ask you about your leg? That he thinks you—you lied about how you lost it?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“OK. I just don’t want you to get offended or anything.”
“I think I can handle it,” said Strike, amused by her look of concern. “I’m not going to hit him, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Well, good,” said Robin, “because from his pictures you’d probably break him in two.”
They walked side by side up the King’s Road, Strike smoking, to the place where the entrance to the gallery sat a little retired from the road, behind the statue of a bewigged and stockinged Sir Hans Sloane. Passing through an arch in the pale brick wall, they entered a grassy square that might, but for the noise of the busy street behind them, have belonged to a country estate. Nineteenth-century buildings on three sides surrounded the square. Ahead, contained in what might once have been barracks, was Gallery Mess.
Strike, who had vaguely imagined a canteen tacked on to the gallery, now realized that he was entering a far more upmarket space and remembered with some misgivings both his overdraft and his agreement to pay for what was almost certainly going to be lunch for four.
The room they entered was long and narrow, with a second, wider area visible through arched openings to their left. White tablecloths, suited waiters, high-vaulted ceilings and contemporary art all over the walls increased Strike’s dread of how much this was going to cost him as they followed the maître d’ into the inner portion of the room.
The pair they sought was easy to spot among the tastefully dressed, mostly female clientele. Jason was a stringy youth with a long nose who wore a maroon hoodie and jeans and looked as though he might take flight at the slightest provocation. Staring down at his napkin, he resembled a scruffy heron. Tempest, whose black bob had certainly been dyed and who wore thick, square black-rimmed spectacles, was his physical opposite: pale, dumpy and doughy, her small, deep-set eyes like raisins in a bun. Wearing a black T-shirt with a multicolored cartoon pony stretched across an ample chest, she was sitting in a wheelchair adjacent to the table. Both had menus open in front of them. Tempest had already ordered herself a glass of wine.
When she spotted Strike and Robin approaching, Tempest beamed, stretched out a stubby forefinger and poked Jason on the shoulder. The boy looked around apprehensively; Strike registered the pronounced asymmetry of his pale blue eyes, one of which was a good centimeter higher than the other. It gave him an oddly vulnerable look, as though he had been finished in a hurry.
“Hi,” said Robin, smiling and reaching out a hand to Jason first. “It’s nice to meet you at last.”
“Hi,” he muttered, proffering limp fingers. After one quick glance at Strike he looked away, turning red.
“Well, hello!” said Tempest, sticking her own hand out to Strike, still beaming. Deftly she reversed her wheelchair a few inches and suggested that he pull up a chair from a neighboring table. “This place is great. It’s so easy to get around in, and the staff are really helpful. Excuse me!” she said loudly to a passing waiter, “Could we have two more menus, please?”
Strike sat down beside her, while Jason shunted up to make room for Robin beside him.
“Lovely space, isn’t it?” said Tempest, sipping her wine. “And the staff are wonderful about the wheelchair. Can’t help you enough. I’m going to be recommending it on my site; I do a list of disability-friendly venues.”
Jason drooped over his menu, apparently afraid to make eye contact with anyone.
“I’ve told him not to mind what he orders.” Tempest told Strike comfortably. “He didn’t realize how much you’ll have made from solving those cases. I’ve told him: the press will have paid you loads just for your story. I suppose that’s what you do now, try and solve the really high-profile ones?”
Strike thought of his plummeting bank balance, his glorified bedsit over the office and the shattering effect the severed leg had had on his business.
“We try,” he said, avoiding looking at Robin.
Robin chose the cheapest salad and a water. Tempest ordered a starter as well as a main course, urged Jason to imitate her, then collected in the menus to return them to the waiter with the air of a gracious hostess.
“So, Jason,” Robin began.
Tempest at once talked over Robin, addressing Strike.
“Jason’s nervous. He hadn’t really thought through what the repercussions of meeting you might be. I had to point them out to him; we’ve been on the phone day and night, you should see the bills—I should charge you, ha, ha! But seriously—”
Her expression became suddenly grave.
“—we’d really like your assurance up front that we’re not going to be in trouble for not telling the police everything. Because it wasn’t as though we had any useful information. She was just a poor kid with problems. We don’t know anything. We only met up with her once, and we haven’t got a clue who killed her. I’m sure you know much more about it than we do. I was pretty worried when I heard Jason had been talking to your partner, to be honest, because I don’t think anyone really appreciates how much we’re persecuted as a community. I’ve had death threats myself—I should hire you to investigate them, ha ha.”
“Who’s made death threats against you?” asked Robin in polite surprise.
“It’s my website, you see,” said Tempest, ignoring Robin and addressing Strike. “I run it. It’s like I’m den mother—or Mother Superior, ha ha… anyway, I’m the one everyone confides in and comes to for advice, so obviously, I’m the one who gets attacked when ignorant people target us. I suppose I don’t help myself. I fight other people’s battles a lot, don’t I, Jason? Anyway,” she said, pausing only to take a greedy sip of wine, “I can’t advise Jason to talk to you without a guarantee he’s not going to get in any trouble.”
Strike wondered what possible authority she thought he had in the matter. The reality was that both Jason and Tempest had concealed information from the police and, whatever their reasons for doing so, and whether or not the information turned out to be valuable, their behavior had been foolish and potentially harmful.
“I don’t think either of you will be in trouble,” he lied easily.
“Well, OK, that’s good to hear,” said Tempest with some complacency, “because we do want to help, obviously. I mean, I said to Jason, if this man’s preying on the BIID community, which is possible—I mean, bloody hell, it’s our duty to help. It wouldn’t surprise me, either, the abuse we get on the website, the hatred. It’s unbelievable. I mean, obviously it stems from ignorance, but we get abuse from people you’d expect to be on our side, who know exactly what it’s like to be discriminated against.”
Drinks arrived. To Strike’s horror, the Eastern European waiter upended his bottle of Spitfire beer into a glass containing ice.
“Hey!” said Strike sharply.
“The beer isn’t cold,”
said the waiter, surprised by what he clearly felt was Strike’s overreaction.
“For fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, fishing the ice out of his glass. It was bad enough that he was facing a hefty lunch bill, without ice in his beer. The waiter gave Tempest her second glass of wine with a slightly huffy air. Robin seized her chance:
“Jason, when you first made contact with Kelsey—”
But Tempest set down her glass and drowned Robin out.
“Yeah, I checked all my records, and Kelsey first visited the site back in December. Yeah, I told the police that, I let them see everything. She asked about you,” Tempest told Strike in a tone that suggested he ought to be flattered to have secured a mention on her website, “and then she got talking to Jason and they exchanged email addresses, and from then on they were in direct contact, weren’t you, Jason?”
“Yeah,” he said weakly.
“Then she suggested meeting up and Jason got in touch with me—didn’t you, Jason?—and basically he thought he’d feel more comfortable if I came along, because after all, it’s the internet, isn’t it? You never know. She could’ve been anyone. She could’ve been a man.”
“What made you want to meet Kel—?” Robin began to ask Jason, but again, Tempest talked over her.
“They were both interested in you, obviously,” said Tempest to Strike. “Kelsey got Jason interested, didn’t she, Jason? She knew all about you,” said Tempest, smiling slyly as though they shared disreputable secrets.
“So what did Kelsey tell you about me, Jason?” Strike asked the boy.
Jason turned scarlet at being addressed by Strike and Robin wondered suddenly whether he could be gay. From her extensive perusal of the message boards she had detected an erotic undertone to some, though not all, of the posters’ fantasies, > being the most blatant of them.
“She said,” mumbled Jason, “her brother knew you. That he’d worked with you.”
“Really?” said Strike. “Are you sure she said her brother?”
“Yeah.”