Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil

He had deposited the Mini in a car park beside the abbey, with its dark red arches rising against a pale blue sky. Beyond, to the south-east, was the triple peak of Eildon Hill, which Strike had noted on the map and which added drama and distinction to the skyline. After a bacon roll purchased at a nearby coffee shop and eaten at an outside table, followed by a cigarette and his second strong tea of the day, Strike had set out on foot in search of the Wynd, the home address Laing had given sixteen years previously when he joined the army and which Strike was not entirely sure how to pronounce. Was it “wind” as in breeze, or “wind” as in clock?

The small town looked prosperous in the sunshine as Strike strolled up the sloping high street to the central square, where a unicorn-topped pillar stood in a basin of flowers. A round stone in the pavement bore the town’s old Roman name, Trimontium, which Strike knew must refer to the triple-peaked hill nearby.

He seemed to have missed the Wynd, which according to the map on his phone led off the high street. He doubled back and found a narrow entrance in the walls to his right, only large enough for a pedestrian, which led to a dim inner courtyard. Laing’s old family home had a bright blue front door and was reached by a short flight of steps.

Strike’s knock was answered almost at once by a pretty, dark-haired woman far too young to be Laing’s mother. When Strike explained his mission, she responded in a soft accent he found attractive:

“Mrs. Laing? She’s no been here for ten years or more.”

Before his spirits had time to sink, she added:

“She stays up in Dingleton Road.”

“Dingleton Road? Is that far?”

“Just up the way.” She pointed behind her, to the right. “I dinnae ken the number, sorry.”

“No problem. Thanks for your help.”

It occurred to him as he walked back along the dingy passageway to the sunlit square that, barring the obscenities the young soldier had muttered into Strike’s ear in the boxing ring, he had never heard Donald Laing speak. Still working undercover on his drugs case, it had been imperative that Strike was not seen wandering in and out of HQ in his beard, so the interrogation of Laing after his arrest had been undertaken by others. Later, when he had successfully concluded the drugs case and was again clean-shaven, Strike had given evidence against Laing in court, but he had been on a plane out of Cyprus by the time that Laing had stood up to deny that he had tied up or tortured his wife. As he crossed Market Square, Strike wondered whether his Borders accent might have been one reason that people had been so willing to believe in Donnie Laing, to forgive him, to like him. The detective seemed to remember reading that advertisers used Scottish accents to suggest integrity and honesty.

The only pub he had spotted so far stood a short distance along a street Strike passed on the way to Dingleton Road. Melrose appeared to be fond of yellow: though the walls were white, the pub’s doors and window were picked out in acid-bright lemon and black. To the Cornish-born Strike’s amusement, given the landlocked situation of the town, the pub was called the Ship Inn. He walked on into Dingleton Road, which snaked under a bridge, became a steep hill and disappeared out of sight.

The term “not far” was a relative one, as Strike had often had occasion to observe since losing his calf and foot. After ten minutes’ walk up the hill he was beginning to regret that he had not returned to the abbey car park for the Mini. Twice he asked women in the street whether they knew where Mrs. Laing lived, but though polite and friendly, neither could tell him. He trudged on, sweating slightly, past a stretch of white bungalows, until he met an elderly man coming the other way, wearing a tweed flat cap and walking a black and white Border collie.

“Excuse me,” said Strike. “Do you happen to know where Mrs. Laing lives? I’ve forgotten the number.”

“Messus Laing?” replied the dog walker, surveying Strike from beneath thick salt and pepper eyebrows. “Aye, she’s my next-door neighbor.”

Thank Christ .

“Three along,” said the man, pointing, “wi’ the stone wishing well oot front.”

“Thanks very much,” said Strike.

As he turned up Mrs. Laing’s drive he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the old man was still standing on the spot, watching him, in spite of the collie trying to tug him downhill.

Mrs. Laing’s bungalow looked clean and respectable. Stone animals of Disneyesque cuteness littered her lawn and peeped out from her flowerbeds. The front door lay at the side of the building, in shadow. Only as he raised his hand to the doorknocker did it occur to Strike that he might, within seconds, come face to face with Donald Laing.

For a whole minute after he knocked, nothing happened except that the elderly dog walker retraced his steps and stood at Mrs. Laing’s gate, unabashedly staring. Strike suspected that the man regretted giving out his neighbor’s address and was checking that the large stranger meant the woman no harm, but he was wrong.

“She’s in,” he called to Strike, who was deliberating as to whether to try again. “But she’s wud.”

“She’s what?” Strike called back as he knocked for a second time.

“Wud. Doolally.”

The dog walker took a few steps down the drive towards Strike.

“Demented,” he translated for the Englishman.

“Ah,” said Strike.

The door opened, revealing a tiny, wizened, sallow-faced old woman wearing a deep blue dressing gown. She glared up at Strike with a kind of unfocused malevolence. There were several stiff whiskers growing out of her chin.

“Mrs. Laing?”

She said nothing, but peered at him out of eyes that he knew, bloodshot and faded though they were, must have been beady and ferret-like in their day.

“Mrs. Laing, I’m looking for your son Donald.”

“No,” she said, with surprising vehemence. “No.”

She retreated and slammed the door.

“Bugger,” said Strike under his breath, which made him think of Robin. She would almost certainly have been better than him at charming the little old woman. Slowly he turned, wondering whether there was anyone else in Melrose who might help — he had definitely seen other Laings listed on 192.com — and found himself face to face with the dog walker, who had proceeded all the way down the drive to meet him and was looking cautiously excited.

“You’re the detective,” he said. “You’re the detective that put her son away.”

Strike was astonished. He could not imagine how he was recognizable to an elderly Scottish man whom he had never met before. His so-called fame was of a very low order when it came to being identified by strangers. He walked the streets of London daily without anyone caring who he was, and unless somebody met him or heard his name in the context of an investigation, was rarely associated with the newspaper stories about his successful cases.

“Aye, you did!” said the elderly man, his excitement rising. “My wife and I are friends of Margaret Bunyan’s.” And in the face of Strike’s mystification he elaborated: “Rhona’s mother.”

It took a few seconds for Strike’s capacious memory to render up the information that Laing’s wife, the young woman whom he had discovered tied to the bed beneath the bloodstained sheet, had been called Rhona.

“When Margaret seen you in the papers she said to us, ‘That’s him, that’s the lad that rescued our Rhona!’ You’ve done very well for yourself, haven’t you? Stop it, Wullie!” he added in a loud aside to the eager collie, which was still pulling on its lead, trying to regain the road. “Oh, aye, Margaret follows everything you do, all the stories in the papers. You found out who killed that model girl — and that writer! Margaret’s never forgot what you did for her girl, never.”