He ate a sandwich in a shop near the pub chosen for their rendezvous. His mobile rang once, but on seeing that it was his sister, he let the call go to voicemail. He had a vague idea that it would soon be his nephew Jack’s birthday and he had no intention of going to his party, not after the last time, which he remembered mainly for the nosiness of Lucy’s fellow mothers and the ear-splitting screams of overexcited and tantrumming children.
The Old Blue Last stood at the top of Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, a snub-nosed, imposing three-story brick building curved like the prow of a boat. Within Strike’s memory, it had been a strip club and brothel: an old school friend of his and Nick’s had allegedly lost his virginity there to a woman old enough to be his mother.
A sign just inside the doors announced the Old Blue Last’s rebirth as a music venue. From eight o’clock that evening, Strike saw, he would be able to enjoy live performances from the Islington Boys’ Club, Red Drapes, In Golden Tears and Neon Index. There was a wry twist to his mouth as he pushed his way into a dark wood-floored bar, where an enormous antique mirror behind the bar bore gilded letters advertising the pale ales of a previous age. Spherical glass lamps hung from the high ceiling, illuminating a crowd of young men and women, many of whom looked like students and most dressed with a trendiness that was beyond Strike.
Although she was in her soul a lover of stadium bands, his mother had taken him to many such venues in his youth, where bands containing her friends might scrape a gig or two before splitting up acrimoniously, re-forming and appearing at a different pub three months later. Strike found the Old Blue Last a surprising choice of meeting place for Wardle, who had previously only drunk with Strike in the Feathers, which was right beside Scotland Yard. The reason became clear when Strike joined the policeman, who was standing alone with a pint at the bar.
“The wife likes Islington Boys’ Club. She’s meeting me here after work.”
Strike had never met Wardle’s wife, and while he had never given the matter much thought, he would have guessed her to be a hybrid of Platinum (because Wardle’s eyes invariably followed fake tans and scanty clothing) and the only wife of a Met policeman that Strike knew, whose name was Helly and who was primarily interested in her children, her house and salacious gossip. The fact that Wardle’s wife liked an indie band of whom Strike had never heard, notwithstanding the fact that he was already predisposed to despise that very band, made him think that she must be a more interesting person than the one he had expected.
“What’ve you got?” Strike asked Wardle, having secured himself a pint from an increasingly busy barman. By unspoken consent they left the bar and took the last free table for two in the place.
“Forensics are in on the leg,” said Wardle as they sat down. “They reckon it came off a woman aged between midteens and midtwenties and that she was dead when it was cut off—but not long dead, looking at the clotting—and it was kept in a freezer in between cutting it off and handing it to your friend Robin.”
Midteens to midtwenties: by Strike’s calculations, Brittany Brockbank would be twenty-one now.
“Can’t they be any more precise on the age?”
Wardle shook his head.
“That’s as far as they’re prepared to go. Why?”
“I told you why: Brockbank had a stepdaughter.”
“Brockbank,” repeated Wardle in the noncommittal tone that denotes lack of recall.
“One of the guys I thought might’ve sent the leg,” said Strike, failing to conceal his impatience. “Ex–Desert Rat. Big dark guy, cauliflower ear—”
“Yeah, all right,” said Wardle, immediately nettled. “I get passed names all the time, pal. Brockbank—he had the tattoo on his forearm—”
“That’s Laing,” said Strike. “He’s the Scot I landed in jail for ten years. Brockbank was the one who reckoned I’d given him brain damage.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“His stepdaughter, Brittany, had old scarring on her leg. I told you that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
Strike stifled a caustic retort by sipping his pint. He would have felt far more confident that his suspicions were being taken seriously had it been his old SIB colleague Graham Hardacre who sat opposite him, rather than Wardle. Strike’s relationship with Wardle had been tinged from the first with wariness and, latterly, with a faint competitiveness. He rated Wardle’s detective abilities higher than those of several other Met officers whom Strike had run across, but Wardle still regarded his own theories with paternal fondness that he never extended to Strike’s.
“So have they said anything about the scarring on the calf?”
“Old. Long predated the death.”
“Jesus fuck,” said Strike.
The old scarring might be of no particular interest to forensics, but it was of vital importance to him. This was what he had dreaded. Even Wardle, whose habit it was to take the mickey out of Strike on every possible occasion, appeared to be experiencing something like empathy at the sign of the detective’s concern.
“Mate,” he said (and that, too, was new), “it’s not Brockbank. It’s Malley.”
Strike had been afraid of this, afraid that the very mention of Malley would send Wardle careering after him to the exclusion of Strike’s other suspects, excited at the thought of being the man who put away so notorious a gangster.
“Evidence?” Strike said bluntly.
“Harringay Crime Syndicate’s been moving Eastern European prostitutes around London and up in Manchester. I’ve been talking to Vice. They bust into a brothel up the road last week and got two little Ukrainians out of there.” Wardle dropped his voice still lower. “We’ve got female officers debriefing them. They had a friend who thought she was coming to the UK for a modeling job and never took kindly to the work, even when they beat the crap out of her. Digger dragged her out of the house by her hair two weeks ago and they haven’t seen her since. They haven’t seen Digger since, either.”
“All in a day’s work for Digger,” said Strike. “That doesn’t mean it’s her leg. Has anyone ever heard him mention me?”
“Yes,” said Wardle triumphantly.
Strike lowered the pint he had been about to sip. He had not expected an affirmative answer.
“They have?”
“One of the girls Vice got out of the house is clear she heard Digger talking about you not long ago.”
“In what context?”
Wardle uttered a polysyllable: the surname of a wealthy Russian casino owner for whom Strike had indeed done some work at the end of the previous year. Strike frowned. As far as he could see, Digger knowing that he had worked for the casino owner made it no more likely that Digger had found out that he owed his previous stretch of incarceration to Strike’s evidence. All Strike took from this fresh information was that his Russian client moved in extremely insalubrious circles, something of which he had already been aware.
“And how does me taking Arzamastsev’s coin affect Digger?”
“Well, where d’you wanna start?” said Wardle, with what Strike felt was vagueness masquerading as the wide view. “The Syndicate’s got fingers in a lot of pies. Basically, we’ve got a guy you’ve crossed with a history of sending people body parts, and he disappears with a young girl right before you get sent a young girl’s leg.”
“You put it like that, it sounds convincing,” said Strike, who remained entirely unconvinced. “Have you done anything about looking at Laing, Brockbank and Whittaker?”
“Course,” said Wardle. “Got people trying to locate all of them.”
Strike hoped that was true, but refrained from questioning the statement on the basis that it would jeopardize his friendly relations with Wardle.
“We’ve got CCTV of the courier as well,” said Wardle.
“And?”
“Your colleague’s a good witness,” said Wardle. “It was a Honda. Fake plates. Clothes exactly as she described. He drove off south-west—heading towards a r
eal courier depot, as it goes. Last time we caught him on camera was in Wimbledon. No sign of him or the bike since, but like I say, fake plates. Could be anywhere.”
“Fake plates,” repeated Strike. “He did a hell of a lot of planning.”
The pub was filling up all around them. Apparently the band was going to play upstairs: people were squeezing towards the door that led to the first floor and Strike could hear the familiar scream of microphone feedback.
“I’ve got something else for you,” said Strike, without enthusiasm. “I promised Robin I’d give you copies.”
He had returned to his office before daybreak that morning. The press had given up trying to catch him going in or out, though an acquaintance in the guitar shop opposite informed him that photographers had lingered until the previous evening.
Wardle took the two photocopied letters, looking mildly intrigued.
“They’ve both come in the last couple of months,” said Strike. “Robin thinks you should take a look. Want another?” he asked, gesturing to Wardle’s almost empty glass.
Wardle read the letters while Strike bought two more pints. He was still holding the note signed RL when he returned. Strike picked up the other one and read, in clearly legible, rounded schoolgirlish writing:
… that I will only be truly me and truly complete when my leg is gone. Nobody gets that it isn’t and never will be part of me. My need to be an amputee is very hard for my family to accept, they think it is all in my mind, but you understand…
You got that wrong, thought Strike, dropping the photocopy back onto the tabletop and noting as he did so that she had written her address in Shepherd’s Bush as clearly and neatly as possible, so that his reply, advising her on how best to cut off her leg, would be in no danger of going astray. It was signed Kelsey, but with no surname.
Wardle, still deep in the second letter, let out a snort of mingled amusement and disgust.
“Fucking hell, have you read this?”
“No,” said Strike.
More young people were squeezing into the bar. He and Wardle were not the only people in their midthirties, but they were definitely at the older end of the spectrum. He watched a pretty, pale young woman made up like a forties starlet, with narrow black eyebrows, crimson lipstick and powder-blue hair pinned into victory rolls, look around for her date. “Robin reads the nutter letters and gives me a précis if she thinks I need one.”
“‘I want to massage your stump,’” read Wardle aloud. “‘I want you to use me as a living crutch. I want—’ Holy shit. That’s not even physically—”
He flipped over the letter.
“‘RL.’ Can you read that address?”
“No,” said Strike, squinting at it. The handwriting was dense and extremely difficult to read. The only legible word in the cramped address, on a first read, was “Walthamstow.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll be by the bar,’ Eric?”
The young woman with the pale blue hair and crimson lips had appeared at the table beside them, holding a drink. She wore a leather jacket over what looked like a forties summer dress.
“Sorry, babes, talking shop,” said Wardle, unperturbed. “April, Cormoran Strike. My wife,” he added.
“Hi,” said Strike, extending a large hand. He would never have guessed Wardle’s wife looked like this. For reasons he was too tired to analyze, it made him like Wardle better.
“Oh, it’s you!” said April, beaming at Strike while Wardle slid the photocopied letters off the table, folded and pocketed them. “Cormoran Strike! I’ve heard loads about you. Are you staying for the band?”
“I doubt it,” said Strike, though not unpleasantly. She was very pretty.
April seemed reluctant to let him go. They had friends joining them, she told him, and sure enough, within a few minutes of her arrival another six people turned up. There were two unattached women in the group. Strike allowed himself to be talked into moving upstairs with them, where there was a small stage and an already packed room. In response to his questions, April revealed that she was a stylist who had been working on a magazine shoot that very day, and—she said it casually—a part-time burlesque dancer.
“Burlesque?” repeated Strike at the top of his voice, as microphone feedback again screeched through the upper room, to shouts and groans of protest from the assembled drinkers. Isn’t that arty stripping? he wondered, as April shared the information that her friend Coco—a girl with tomato-red hair who smiled at him and wiggled her fingers—was a burlesque dancer too.
They seemed a friendly group and none of the men were treating him with that tiresome chippiness that Matthew exhibited every time he came within Strike’s orbit. He had not watched any live music in a long time. Petite Coco had already expressed a desire to be lifted up so she could see…
However, when the Islington Boys’ Club took to the stage Strike found himself forcibly transported back to times and people he strove not to think about. Stale sweat in the air, the familiar sound of guitars being tweaked and tuned, the humming of the open mic: he could have borne them all, had the lead singer’s posture and his lithe androgyny not recalled Whittaker.
Four bars in and Strike knew he was leaving. There was nothing wrong with their brand of guitar-heavy indie rock: they played well and, in spite of his unfortunate resemblance to Whittaker, the lead singer had a decent voice. However, Strike had been in this environment too often and unable to leave: tonight, he was free to seek peace and clean air, and he intended to exercise that prerogative.
With a shouted farewell to Wardle and a wave and a smile to April, who winked and waved back, he left, large enough to carve an easy path through people already sweaty and breathless. He gained the door as the Islington Boys’ Club finished their first song. The applause overhead sounded like muffled hail on a tin roof. A minute later, he was striding away, with relief, into the swishing sound of traffic.
13
In the presence of another world.
Blue Öyster Cult, “In the Presence of Another World”
On Saturday morning, Robin and her mother took the ancient family Land Rover from their small hometown of Masham to the dressmaker’s in Harrogate where Robin’s wedding dress was being altered. The design had been modified because it had initially been made for a wedding in January and was now to be worn in July.
“You’ve lost more weight,” said the elderly dressmaker, sticking pins down the back of the bodice. “You don’t want to go any thinner. This dress was meant for a bit of curve.”
Robin had chosen the fabric and design of the dress over a year ago, loosely based on an Elie Saab model that her parents, who would also be forking out for half of her elder brother Stephen’s wedding in six months’ time, could never have afforded. Even this cut-price version would have been impossible on the salary Strike paid Robin.
The lighting in the changing room was flattering, yet Robin’s reflection in the gilt-framed mirror looked too pale, her eyes heavy and tired. She was not sure that altering the dress to make it strapless had been successful. Part of what she had liked about the design in the first place had been the long sleeves. Perhaps, she thought, she was simply jaded from having lived with the idea of the dress for so long.
The changing room smelled of new carpet and polish. While Robin’s mother Linda watched the dressmaker pin, tuck and twitch the yards of chiffon Robin, depressed by her own reflection, focused instead on the little corner stand carrying crystal tiaras and fake flowers.
“Remind me, have we fixed on a headdress?” asked the dressmaker, who had the habit of using the first person plural so often found in nursing staff. “We were leaning towards a tiara for the winter wedding, weren’t we? I think it might be worth trying flowers with the strapless.”
“Flowers would be nice,” Linda agreed from the corner of the dressing room.
Mother and daughter closely resembled each other. Though her once slender waist had thickened and the faded red-gold hair piled untidily on
top of her head was now laced with silver, Linda’s blue-gray eyes were her daughter’s and they rested now upon her second child with an expression of concern and shrewdness that would have been comically familiar to Strike.
Robin tried on an array of fake floral headdresses and liked none of them.
“Maybe I’ll stick with the tiara,” she said.
“Or fresh flowers?” suggested Linda.
“Yes,” said Robin, suddenly keen to get away from the carpet smell and her pale, boxed-in reflection. “Let’s go and see whether the florist could do something.”
She was glad to have the changing room to herself for a few minutes. As she worked her way out of the dress and pulled her jeans and sweater back on, she tried to analyze her low mood. While she regretted that she had been forced to miss Strike’s meeting with Wardle, she had been looking forward to putting a couple of hundred miles between her and the faceless man in black who had handed her a severed leg.
Yet she had no sense of escape. She and Matthew had rowed yet again on the train coming north. Even here, in the changing room in James Street, her multiplying anxieties haunted her: the agency’s dwindling caseload, the fear of what would happen if Strike could no longer afford to employ her. Once dressed, she checked her mobile. No messages from Strike.
She was almost monosyllabic among the buckets of mimosa and lilies a quarter of an hour later. The florist fussed and fiddled, holding blooms against Robin’s hair and accidentally letting drops of cold, greenish water fall from the long stem of a rose onto her cream sweater.
“Let’s go to Bettys,” suggested Linda when a floral headdress had at last been ordered.
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