Zahara had sounded three at most on the telephone.
Robin remained quite still in front of her dressing table, staring down at the box containing her wedding shoes, thinking. She saw the risks plainly spread beneath her, like the rocks and raging waters beneath a tightrope walker’s feet.
No, she could not save everyone. It was too late for Martina, for Sadie, for Kelsey and for Heather. Lila would spend the rest of her days with two fingers on her left hand and a grisly scar across her psyche that Robin understood only too well. However, there were also two young girls who faced God knows how much more suffering if nobody acted.
Robin turned away from the new shoes, reached for her mobile and dialed a number she had been given voluntarily, but which she had never imagined she would use.
54
And if it’s true it can’t be you,
It might as well be me.
Blue Öyster Cult, “Spy in the House of the Night”
She had three days in which to plan, because she had to wait for her accomplice to get hold of a car and find a gap in his busy schedule. Meanwhile she told Linda that her Jimmy Choos were too tight for her, the style too flashy, and allowed her mother to accompany her as she exchanged them for cash. Then she had to decide what lie she was going to tell Linda and Matthew, to buy sufficient time away from them to put her plan into action.
She ended up telling them that she was to have another police interview. Insisting that Shanker remain in the car when he picked her up was key to maintaining that illusion, as was getting Shanker to pull up alongside the plainclothes policeman still patrolling their street and telling him that she was off to get her stitches out, which in reality would not happen for another two days.
It was now seven o’clock on a cloudless evening and apart from Robin, who was leaning up against the warm brick wall of the Eastway Business Centre, the scene was deserted. The sun was making its slow progress towards the west and on the distant, misty horizon, at the far end of Blondin Street, the Orbit sculpture was rising into existence. Robin had seen plans in the papers: it would soon look like a gigantic candlestick telephone wrapped in its own twisted cord. Beyond it, Robin could just make out the growing outline of the Olympic stadium. The distant view of the gigantic structures was impressive and somehow inhuman, worlds and worlds away from the secrets she suspected were hidden behind the newly painted front door she knew to be Alyssa’s.
Perhaps because of what she had come to do, the silent stretch of houses she was watching unnerved her. They were new, modern and somehow soulless. Barring the grandiose edifices being constructed in the distance, the place lacked character and was devoid of any sense of community. There were no trees to soften the outlines of the low, square houses, many of them sporting “To Let” signs, no corner shop, neither pub nor church. The warehouse against which she was leaning, with its upper windows hung with shroud-like white curtains and its metal garage doors heavily graffitied, offered no cover. Robin’s heart was thudding as though she had been running. Nothing would turn her back now, yet she was afraid.
Footsteps echoed nearby and Robin whipped around, her sweaty fingers tight on her spare rape alarm. Tall, loose-limbed and scarred, Shanker was loping towards her carrying a Mars bar in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“She’s comin’,” he said thickly.
“Are you sure?” said Robin, her heart pounding faster than ever. She was starting to feel light-headed.
“Black girl, two kids, comin’ up the road now. Seen ’er when I was buyin’ this,” he said, waving the Mars bar. “Wan’ some?”
“No thanks,” said Robin. “Er—d’you mind getting out of the way?”
“Sure you don’t wan’ me to come in wiv ya?”
“No,” said Robin. “Only come if you see—him.”
“You sure the cunt’s not already in there?”
“I rang twice. I’m sure he’s not.”
“I’ll be round the corner, then,” said Shanker laconically and he ambled off, alternately taking drags on his cigarette and bites of his Mars bar, to a position out of sight of Alyssa’s door. Robin, meanwhile, hurried off down Blondin Street so that Alyssa would not pass her as she entered the house. Drawing in beneath the overhanging balcony of a block of dark red flats, Robin watched as a tall black woman turned into the street, one hand gripping that of a toddler and trailed by an older girl whom Robin thought must be around eleven. Alyssa unlocked the front door and let herself and her daughters inside.
Robin headed back up the street towards the house. She had dressed in jeans and trainers today: there must be no tripping, no falling over. The newly reconnected tendons throbbed beneath the cast.
Her heart was thumping so hard that it hurt as she knocked on Alyssa’s front door. The older daughter peeped out of the bow window to her right as she stood waiting. Robin smiled nervously. The girl ducked out of sight.
The woman who appeared less than a minute later was, by any standards, gorgeous. Tall, black and with a bikini model’s figure, she wore her hair in waist-length twists. The first thought that shot through Robin’s mind was that if a strip joint had been prepared to fire Alyssa, she must indeed be a tricky character.
“Yeah?” she said, frowning at Robin.
“Hi,” said Robin, her mouth dry. “Are you Alyssa Vincent?”
“Yeah. Who’re you?”
“My name’s Robin Ellacott,” said Robin, her mouth dry. “I wonder—could I have a quick word with you about Noel?”
“What about him?” demanded Alyssa.
“I’d rather tell you inside,” said Robin.
Alyssa had the wary, defiant look of one perpetually braced to take the next punch life was going to throw her.
“Please. It’s important,” said Robin, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth because it was so dry. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
Their eyes locked: Alyssa’s a warm caramel brown, Robin’s a clear gray-blue. Robin was sure that Alyssa was going to refuse. Then the thick-lashed eyes widened suddenly and a strange flicker of excitement passed over Alyssa’s face, as though she had just experienced a pleasurable revelation. Without another word, Alyssa stepped backwards into the dimly lit hall and made a strangely extravagant flourish, pointing Robin inside.
Robin did not know why she felt a lurch of misgiving. Only the thought that the two little girls were in there pushed her over the threshold.
A minuscule hall opened onto the sitting room. A TV and a single sofa constituted the only furnishings. A table lamp sat on the floor. There were two photographs in cheap gilt frames hanging on the wall, one showing chubby Zahara, the toddler, who was wearing a turquoise dress with matching butterfly clips in her hair, the other of her big sister in a maroon school uniform. The sister was the image of her beautiful mother. The photographer had not managed to induce a smile.
Robin heard a lock being turned on the front door. She turned, her trainers screeching on the polished wood floor. Somewhere nearby a loud ping announced that a microwave had just finished its work.
“Mama!” said a shrill voice.
“Angel!” shouted Alyssa, walking into the room. “Get it out for her! All right,” she said, arms folded, “what d’you wanna tell me about Noel, then?”
Robin’s impression that Alyssa was gloating over some private piece of intelligence was reinforced by the nasty smirk that disfigured the lovely face. The ex-stripper stood with her arms crossed, so that her breasts were thrust up like the figurehead of a ship, the long ropes of hair hanging to her waist. She was taller than Robin by two inches.
“Alyssa, I work with Cormoran Strike. He’s a—”
“I know who he is,” said Alyssa slowly. The secret satisfaction she seemed to have gleaned from Robin’s appearance had suddenly gone. “He’s the bastard that give Noel epilepsy! Fucking hell! You’ve gone to him, have you? In it together, are you? Why didn’t you go to the pigs, you lying bitch, if he—really—”
She sma
cked Robin hard in the shoulder and before Robin could defend herself, began punching her with every subsequent word.
“—done—anything—TO—YOU!”
Alyssa was suddenly pummeling her wherever she could land a punch: Robin threw up her left arm to defend herself, trying to protect her right, and kicked out at Alyssa’s knee. Alyssa shrieked in pain and hopped backwards; from somewhere behind Robin the toddler screamed and her older sister came sliding into the room.
“Fucking bitch!” screamed Alyssa, “attacking me in front of my kids—”
And she launched herself at Robin, grabbing her hair and slamming her head into the curtainless window. Robin felt Angel, who was thin and wiry, trying to force the two women apart. Abandoning restraint, Robin managed to land a smack to Alyssa’s ear, causing her to gasp in pain and retreat. Robin seized Angel under the armpits, swung her out of the way, put her own head down and charged at Alyssa, knocking her backwards onto the sofa.
“Leave my mum—leave my mum alone!” shouted Angel, grabbing Robin’s injured forearm and yanking it so that Robin, too, yelled in pain. Zahara was screaming from the doorway, a sippy cup of hot milk held upside down in her hand.
“YOU’RE LIVING WITH A PEDOPHILE!” Robin roared over the racket as Alyssa tried to push herself back off the sofa to renew the fight.
Robin had imagined herself imparting the devastating news in a whisper and watching Alyssa crumble in shock. Not once had she visualized Alyssa looking up at her and snarling:
“Yeah, whatever. D’you think I don’t know who you are, you fucking bitch? Are you not happy ruining his fucking life—”
She launched herself at Robin again: the space was so small that Robin hit the wall again. Locked together they slid sideways into the TV, which toppled off its stand with an ominous crash. Robin felt the wound on her forearm twist and let out another shriek of pain.
“Mama! Mama!” wailed Zahara, while Angel seized the back of Robin’s jeans, hampering her ability to fend Alyssa off.
“Ask your daughters!” shouted Robin as fists and elbows flew and she tried to twist free of Angel’s stubborn grip. “Ask your daughters whether he’s—”
“Don’t you—dare—fucking—bring—my kids—”
“Ask them!”
“Lying fucking bitch—you and your fucking mother—”
“My mother?” said Robin, and with an almighty effort she elbowed Alyssa so hard in the midriff that the taller woman doubled over and collapsed onto the sofa again. “Angel, get off me!” Robin roared, wrenching the girl’s fingers off her jeans, sure that she had seconds before Alyssa returned to the attack. Zahara continued to wail from the doorway. “Who,” Robin panted, standing over Alyssa, “d’you think I am?”
“Very fucking funny!” gasped Alyssa, whom Robin had winded. “You’re fucking Brittany! Phoning him and persecuting him—”
“Brittany?” said Robin in astonishment. “I’m not Brittany!”
She yanked her purse out of her jacket pocket. “Look at my credit card—look at it! I’m Robin Ellacott and I work with Cormoran Strike—”
“The fucker who gave him brain dam—”
“D’you know why Cormoran went to arrest him?”
“’Cause his fucking wife framed—”
“Nobody framed him! He raped Brittany and he’s been sacked from jobs all over the country because he interferes with little girls! He did it to his own sister—I’ve met her!”
“Fucking liar!” shouted Alyssa, making to get up from the sofa again.
“I—am—not—LYING!” roared Robin, shoving Alyssa back against the cushions.
“You mad bitch,” gasped Alyssa, “get out of my fucking house!”
“Ask your daughter whether he’s hurt her! Ask her! Angel?”
“Don’t you dare talk to my kids, you bitch!”
“Angel, tell your mother whether he’s—”
“Th’fook’s going on?”
Zahara had been screaming so loudly that they had not heard the key in the lock.
He was massive, dark-haired and bearded, wearing an all-black tracksuit. One eye socket was sunken, caved in towards his nose, making his stare intense and unnerving. His dark, shadowed eyes on Robin, he bent down slowly and picked up the toddler, who beamed and cuddled close to him. Angel, on the other hand, shrank backwards into the wall. Very slowly, his eyes on Robin, Brockbank lowered Zahara into her mother’s lap.
“Nice t’see thoo,” he said with a smile that was no smile, but a promise of pain.
Cold all over, Robin tried to slide her hand discreetly into her pocket for her rape alarm, but Brockbank was on her in seconds, seizing her wrist and compressing her stitches.
“You’re fookin’ phonin’ no one, sneakly larl bitch—thought A didn’ know it was thoo, din’t thoo—”
She tried to twist away from him, her stitches pulling under his grasp, and screamed:
“SHANKER!”
“A shoulda fuckin’ killed thoo when A ’ad th’chance, larl bitch!”
And then came a splintering crash of wood that was the front door caving in. Brockbank released Robin and whirled around to see Shanker hurtling into the room, knife to the fore.
“Don’t stab him!” gasped Robin, clutching her forearm.
The six people crammed into the small bare box of a room froze for a fraction of a second, even the toddler clinging to her mother. Then a thin voice piped up, desperate, trembling, but liberated at last by the presence of a scarred, gold-toothed man whose tattooed knuckles were tight around a knife.
“He done it to me! He done it to me, Mum, he did! He done it to me!”
“What?” said Alyssa, looking towards Angel. Her face was suddenly slack with shock.
“He done it to me! What that lady said. He done it to me!”
Brockbank made a small, convulsive movement, swiftly curbed as Shanker raised his knife, pointing it at the bigger man’s chest.
“You’re all right, babes,” Shanker said to Angel, his free hand shielding her, his gold tooth glinting in the sun falling slowly behind the houses opposite. “’E ain’t gonna do that no more. You fuckin’ nonce,” he breathed into Brockbank’s face. “I’d like to skin ya.”
“Whatchoo talkin’ abou’, Angel?” said Alyssa, still clutching Zahara, her face now a study in dread. “He never—?”
Brockbank suddenly put his head down and charged Shanker like the flanker he had once been. Shanker, who was less than half his width, was knocked aside like a dummy; they heard Brockbank pushing his way past the caved-in door as Shanker, swearing furiously, gave chase.
“Leave him—leave him!” Robin screamed, watching through the window as the two men streaked off down the street. “Oh God—SHANKER!—the police will—where’s Angel—?”
Alyssa had already left the room in pursuit of her daughter, leaving behind her the much-tried toddler to wail and scream on the sofa. Robin, who knew she could not hope to catch the two men, felt suddenly so shivery that she dropped into a crouch, holding her head as waves of sickness passed over her.
She had done what she had meant to do and she had been aware all along that there would almost certainly be collateral damage. Brockbank escaping or being stabbed by Shanker had been possibilities she had foreseen. Her only present certainty was that she could do nothing to prevent either. After taking a couple of deep breaths she stood up again and moved to the sofa to try to comfort the terrified toddler, but unsurprisingly, given that Robin was associated in the little girl’s mind with scenes of violence and hysteria, Zahara screamed harder than ever, and lashed out at Robin with a tiny foot.
“I never knew,” said Alyssa. “Oh God. Oh God. Why didn’t you tell me, Angel? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Evening was drawing in. Robin had turned on the lamp, which threw pale gray shadows up onto the magnolia walls. Three flat hunchbacked ghosts seemed to crouch on the back of the sofa, mimicking Alyssa’s every movement. Angel was curled, sobbing, on her mother’s l
ap as the pair of them rocked backwards and forwards.
Robin, who had already made two rounds of tea and had cooked spaghetti hoops for Zahara, was sitting on the hard floor beneath the window. She had felt obliged to stay until they could get an emergency joiner to fix the door that Shanker had shouldered in. Nobody had yet called the police. Mother and daughter were still confiding in each other and Robin felt like an interloper, yet could not leave the family until she knew that they had a secure door and a new lock. Zahara was asleep on the sofa beside her mother and sister, curled up with her thumb in her mouth, one chubby hand still clutching the sippy cup.
“He said he’d kill Zahara if I told you,” said Angel into her mother’s neck.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” moaned Alyssa, tears splattering down her daughter’s back. “Oh, sweet Lord.”
The ominous feeling inside Robin was like having a bellyful of crawling, prickle-footed crabs. She had texted her mother and Matthew to say that the police needed to show her more photofits, but both were getting worried about her long absence and she was running out of plausible reasons to stop them coming to meet her. Again and again she checked the mute button on her phone in case somehow she had stopped it ringing. Where was Shanker?
The joiner arrived at last. Once Robin had given him her credit card details to pay for the damage, she told Alyssa that she had better get going.
Alyssa left Angel and Zahara curled up together on the sofa and accompanied Robin out into the dusky street.
“Listen,” said Alyssa.
There were still tear tracks down her face. Robin could tell that Alyssa was unused to thanking people.
“Thanks, all right?” she said, almost aggressively.
“No problem,” said Robin.
“I never—I mean—I met him at fucking church. I thought I’d found a good bloke at last, y’know… he was really good with the—with the kids—”
She began to sob. Robin considered reaching out to her, but decided against it. She was bruised all over her shoulders where Alyssa had pummeled her and her knife wound was throbbing more than ever.