Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil

The walls bore only two framed photographs these days: one of Robin with her old sixth form on their last day of school (Matthew at the back of the shot, the most handsome boy in the year, refusing to pull a face or wear a stupid hat) and the other of Robin, aged twelve, riding her old Highland pony Angus, a shaggy, strong and stubborn creature who had lived on her uncle’s farm and on whom Robin had doted, his naughtiness notwithstanding.

Depleted and exhausted, she blinked away more tears and wiped her wet face with the heels of her hands. Muffled voices rose from the kitchen below her room. Her mother, she was sure, would be advising Matthew to leave her alone for a while. Robin hoped that he would listen. She felt as though she would like to sleep through the rest of the weekend.

An hour later she was still lying on the double bed, staring drowsily out of the window at the top of the lime tree in the garden, when Matthew knocked and entered with a mug of tea.

“Your mum thought you could use this.”

“Thanks,” said Robin.

“We’re all going to watch the National together. Mart’s put a big bet on Ballabriggs.”

No mention of her distress or of Martin’s crass comments; Matthew’s manner implied that she had somehow embarrassed herself and he was offering her a way out. She knew at once that he had no conception of what the sight and feel of that woman’s leg had stirred up in her. No, he was simply annoyed that Strike, whom none of the Ellacotts had ever met, was once again taking up space in weekend conversation. It was Sarah Shadlock at the rugby all over again.

“I don’t like watching horses break their necks,” said Robin. “Anyway, I’ve got some work to do.”

He stood looking down at her, then walked out, closing the door with a little too much force, so that it jumped open again behind him.

Robin sat up, smoothed her hair, took a deep breath and then went to fetch her laptop case from on top of the dressing table. She had felt guilty bringing it along on their trip home, guilty for hoping that she might find time for what she was privately calling her lines of inquiry. Matthew’s air of generous forgiveness had put paid to that. Let him watch the National. She had better things to do.

Returning to the bed, she made a pile of pillows behind her, opened the laptop and navigated to certain bookmarked webpages that she had talked to nobody about, not even Strike, who would no doubt think she was wasting her time.

She had already spent several hours pursuing two separate but related lines of inquiry suggested by the letters that she had insisted Strike should take to Wardle: the communication from the young woman who wished to remove her own leg, and the missive from the person who wished to do things to Strike’s stump that had made Robin feel faintly queasy.

Robin had always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind. Her university career, though cut short, had been dedicated to the study of psychology. The young woman who had written to Strike seemed to be suffering from body integrity identity disorder, or BIID: the irrational desire for the removal of a healthy body part.

Having read several scientific papers online, Robin now knew that sufferers of BIID were rare and that the precise cause of their condition was unknown. Visits to support sites had already shown her how much people seemed to dislike sufferers of the condition. Angry comments peppered the message boards, accusing BIID sufferers of coveting a status that others had had thrust upon them by bad luck and illness, of wanting to court attention in a grotesque and offensive manner. Equally angry retorts followed the attacks: did the writer really think the sufferer wanted to have BIID? Did they not understand how difficult it was to be transabled — wanting, needing, to be paralyzed or amputated? Robin wondered what Strike would think of the BIID sufferers’ stories, were he to read them. She suspected that his reaction would not be sympathetic.

Downstairs, the sitting room door opened and she heard a brief snatch of a commentator’s voice, her father telling their old chocolate Labrador to get out because it had farted and Martin’s laughter.

To her own frustration, the exhausted Robin could not remember the name of the young girl who had written to Strike, asking for advice on cutting off her leg, but she thought it had been Kylie or something similar. Scrolling slowly down the most densely populated support site she had found, she kept an eye out for usernames that might in any way connect to her, because where else would a teenager with an unusual fixation go to share her fantasy, if not cyberspace?

The bedroom door, still ajar since Matthew’s exit, swung open as the banished Labrador, Rowntree, came waddling into the bedroom. He reported to Robin for an absentminded rub of his ears, then flopped down beside the bed. His tail bumped against the floor for a while and then he fell wheezily asleep. To the accompaniment of his snuffling snores, Robin continued to comb the message boards.

Quite suddenly, she experienced one of those jolts of excitement with which she had become familiar since starting work for Strike, and which were the immediate reward of looking for a tiny piece of information that might mean something, nothing or, occasionally, everything.

Nowheretoturn: Does anyone know anything about Cameron Strike?

Holding her breath, Robin opened the thread.

W@nBee: that detective with one leg? yeah, hes a veteran.

Nowheretoturn: I heard he might of done it himself.

W@nBee: No, if you look up he’s was in Afganistan.

That was all. Robin combed more threads on the forum, but Nowheretoturn had not pursued their inquiry, nor did they appear again. That meant nothing; they might have changed their username. Robin searched until satisfied that she had probed every corner of the site, but Strike’s name did not recur.

Her excitement ebbed away. Even assuming that the letter-writer and Nowheretoturn were the same person, her belief that Strike’s amputation had been self-inflicted had been clear in the letter. There weren’t many famous amputees on whom you might be able to pin the hope that their condition was voluntary.

Shouts of encouragement were now emanating from the sitting room below. Abandoning the BIID boards, Robin turned to her second line of inquiry.

She liked to think that she had developed a tougher skin since working at the detective agency. Nevertheless, her first forays into the fantasies of acrotomophiliacs — those who were sexually attracted to amputees — which had been accessed with only a few clicks of the mouse, had left her with a cringing feeling in her stomach that lingered long after she had left the internet. Now she found herself reading the outpourings of a man (she assumed he was a man) whose most exciting sexual fantasy was a woman with all four limbs amputated above the elbow and knee joints. The precise point at which limbs were cut seemed to be a particular preoccupation. A second man (they could not be women, surely) had masturbated since early youth over the idea of accidentally guillotining off his own and his best friend’s legs. Everywhere was discussion of the fascination of the stumps themselves, of the restricted movement of amputees, of what Robin assumed was disability as an extreme manifestation of bondage.

While the distinctive nasal voice of the commentator on the Grand National gabbled incomprehensibly from below, and her brother’s shouts of encouragement became louder, Robin scanned more message boards, seeking any mention of Strike and also searching for a connecting line between this paraphilia and violence.

Robin found it notable that none of the people pouring their amputee and amputation fantasies onto this forum seemed to be aroused by violence or pain. Even the man whose sexual fantasy involved him and his friend cutting off their own legs together was clear and articulate on that subject: the guillotining was merely the necessary precursor to the achievement of stumps.