Robert Galbraith - Career of Evil

“I was going to call Wardle this morning anyway.”

“Why?”

“Last night, walking away from Hazlitt’s, I saw a big guy in a black beanie hat lurking down a side street. There was something about his body language I didn’t like. I called out to him — I was going to ask him for a light — and he scarpered. Don’t, ” said Strike, though Robin had not made a sound, “tell me I’m jumpy or imagining things. I think he followed us, and I’ll tell you something else — I think he was in the pub when I arrived. I didn’t see his face, just the back of his head as he left.”

To his surprise, Robin did not dismiss him. Instead she frowned in concentration, trying to recall a vague impression.

“You know... I saw a big bloke in a beanie hat somewhere yesterday, too... yeah, he was in a doorway on Tottenham Court Road. His face was in shadow, though.”

Strike muttered another oath under his breath.

“Please don’t tell me to stop working,” said Robin in a more high-pitched voice than usual. “ Please. I love this job.”

“And if the fucker’s stalking you?”

She could not repress a frisson of fear, but determination overrode it. To help catch this animal, whoever he was, would be worth almost anything...

“I’ll be vigilant. I’ve got two rape alarms.”

Strike did not look reassured.

They disembarked at New Scotland Yard and were shown upstairs at once, into an open-plan office where Wardle stood in his shirtsleeves, talking to a group of subordinates. When he saw Strike and Robin he left his colleagues at once and led the detective and his partner into a small meeting room.

“Vanessa!” he called through the door as Strike and Robin took seats at an oval table, “have you got the letters?”

Detective Sergeant Ekwensi appeared shortly afterwards with two typewritten sheets protected in plastic slips and a copy of what Strike recognized as one of the handwritten letters that he had given Wardle in the Old Blue Last. Detective Sergeant Ekwensi, who greeted Robin with a smile that the latter again found disproportionately reassuring, sat down beside Wardle with a notebook.

“You want coffee or anything?” Wardle asked. Strike and Robin shook their heads. Wardle slid the letters across the table to Strike. He read both before pushing them sideways to Robin.

“I didn’t write either of them,” Strike told Wardle.

“I didn’t think so,” said Wardle. “You didn’t answer on Strike’s behalf, Miss Ellacott?”

Robin shook her head.

The first letter admitted that Strike had indeed arranged the removal of his own leg because he wished to be rid of it, confessing that the story of an Afghan IED was an elaborate cover-up, and that he did not know how Kelsey had found this out, but implored her not to tell anybody else. The fake Strike then agreed to help her with her own “encumbrance” and asked where and when they could meet face to face.

The second letter was brief, confirming that Strike would come and visit her on the third of April at 7 p.m.

Both of the letters were signed Cameron Strike in thick black ink.

“That,” said Strike, who had pulled the second letter back towards him after Robin had finished reading it, “reads as though she wrote back to me suggesting a time and place.”

“That was going to be my next question,” said Wardle. “Did you get a second letter?”

Strike looked towards Robin, who shook her head.

“OK,” said Wardle, “for the record: when did the original letter from—” He checked the photocopy. “Kelsey, she’s signed herself — come in?”

Robin answered.

“I’ve got the envelope back in the nut—” The ghost of a smile passed over Strike’s face. “—in the drawer where we keep unsolicited letters. We can check the postcode, but as far as I can remember it was early this year. Maybe February.”

“OK, excellent,” said Wardle, “we’ll be sending someone over to retrieve that envelope.” He smiled at Robin, who was looking anxious. “Calm down: I believe you. Some total nutter’s trying to frame Strike. None of it hangs together. Why would he stab a woman, dismember her and then mail her leg to his own office? Why would he leave letters from himself in the flat?”

Robin tried to smile back.

“She was stabbed?” interposed Strike.

“They’re working on what actually killed her,” said Wardle, “but there are two deep wounds to the torso they’re pretty sure would have done it before he started cutting her up.”

Beneath the table top, Robin made fists, her nails digging deep into her palms.

“Now,” said Wardle, and Detective Sergeant Ekwensi clicked out the nib of her pen and prepared to write, “does the name Oxana Voloshina mean anything to either of you?”

“No,” said Strike and Robin shook her head.

“It looks like that was the victim’s real name,” Wardle explained. “That’s how she signed her tenancy agreement and the landlady says she provided ID. She was claiming to be a student.”

“Claiming?” said Robin.

“We’re looking into who she really was,” said Wardle.

Of course, thought Robin, he’s expecting her to be a prostitute .

“Her English was good, judging by her letter,” commented Strike. “That’s if she genuinely wrote it.”

Robin looked at him, confused.

“If someone’s faking letters from me, why couldn’t they have faked the letter from her?” Strike asked her.

“To try and get you to genuinely communicate with her, you mean?”

“Yeah — lure me to a rendezvous or lay some kind of paper trail between us that would look incriminating once she was dead.”

“Van, go see if the photos of the body are viewable,” said Wardle.

Detective Sergeant Ekwensi left the room. Her posture was that of a model. Robin’s insides began to crawl with panic. As though Wardle had sensed it, he turned to her and said:

“I don’t think you’ll need to look at them if Strike—”

“She should look,” said Strike.

Wardle looked taken aback and Robin, though she tried not to show it, found herself wondering whether Strike was trying to scare her into compliance with his nothing-after-dark rule.

“Yes,” she said, with a decent show of calm. “I think I should.”

“They’re — not nice,” said Wardle, with uncharacteristic understatement.

“The leg was sent to Robin,” Strike reminded him. “There’s as much chance that she’s seen this woman previously as I have. She’s my partner. We work the same jobs.”

Robin glanced sideways at Strike. He had never before described her as his partner to somebody else, or not within Robin’s hearing. He was not looking at her. Robin switched her attention back to Wardle. Apprehensive though she was, after hearing Strike put her on equal professional footing with himself she knew that, whatever she was about to see, she would not let herself, or him, down. When Detective Sergeant Ekwensi returned holding a sheaf of photographs in her hand Robin swallowed hard and straightened her back.

Strike took them first and his reaction was not reassuring.

“Holy fucking shit.”

“The head’s best preserved,” said Wardle quietly, “because he put it in the freezer.”

Just as she would have withdrawn her hand instinctively from something red hot, Robin now had to fight a powerful urge to turn away, to close her eyes, to flip the photograph over. Instead she took it from Strike and looked down; her intestines became liquid.

The severed head sat on what remained of its neck, staring blindly into the camera, its eyes so frosted their color was invisible. The mouth gaped darkly. Her brown hair was stiff, flecked with ice. The cheeks were full and chubby, the chin and forehead covered in acne. She looked younger than twenty-four.