Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(106)

Times had changed. It wasn’t how it had been in the old days. Hookers didn’t need to walk the streets anymore, not with mobile phones and the internet. Buying yourself a woman was as easy as dialing up a takeaway nowadays, but he didn’t want to leave a trail online or on some bitch’s mobile records. Only the dregs were left on the streets and he knew all the areas, but it had to be somewhere that he had no association with, somewhere a long way from It…

By ten to midnight he was in Shacklewell, walking the streets with his lower face concealed by the upturned collar of his jacket, his hat low on his forehead, the knives bouncing heavily against his chest as he walked, one a straightforward carving knife, the other a compact machete. Lit windows of curry houses and more pubs, Union Jack bunting everywhere… if it took all night, he would find her…

On a dark corner stood three women in tiny skirts, smoking, talking. He passed by on the other side of the street and one of them called out to him, but he ignored her, passing on into the darkness. Three was too many: two witnesses left.

Hunting was both easier and more difficult on foot. No worries about number plates caught on camera, but the difficulty was where he took her, not to mention the getaway being so much harder.

He prowled the streets for another hour until he found himself back on that stretch of road where the three whores had stood. Only two of them now. More manageable. A single witness. His face was almost entirely covered. He hesitated, and as he did so a car slowed and the driver had a brief conversation with the girls. One of them got in and the car drove away.

The glorious poison flooded his veins and his brain. It was exactly like the first time he’d killed: then, too, he had been left with the uglier one, to do with whatever he wanted.

No time for hesitation. Either of her mates could come back.

“Back again, babes?”

Her voice was guttural, although she looked young, with red hennaed hair in a shabby bob, piercings in both ears and her nose. Her nostrils were wet and pink, as though she had a cold. Along with her leather jacket and rubber miniskirt, she wore vertiginous heels on which she seemed to have trouble balancing.

“How much?” he asked, barely listening to her answer. What mattered was where.

“We can go to my place if you want.”

He agreed, but he was tense. It had better be a self-contained room or a bedsit: nobody on the stairs, no one to hear or see, just some dirty, dark little nook where a body begged to be. If it turned out to be a communal place, some actual brothel, with other girls and a fat old bitch in charge or, worse, a pimp…

She wobbled out onto the road before the pedestrian light turned green. He seized her arm and yanked her back as a white van went hurtling past.

“My savior!” she giggled. “Ta, babes.”

He could tell she was on something. He’d seen plenty like her. Her raw, weeping nose disgusted him. Their reflection in the dark shop windows they passed could have been father and daughter, she was so short and skinny and he so large, so burly.

“See the wedding?” she asked.

“What?”

“Royal wedding? She looked lovely.”

Even this dirty little whore was wedding-crazy. She babbled on about it as they walked, laughing far too often, teetering on her cheap stilettos, while he remained entirely silent.

“Shame ’is mum never saw ’im marry, though, innit? ’Ere we go,” said the girl, pointing to a tenement a block ahead. “That’s my gaff.”

He could see it in the distance: there were people standing around the lit door, a man sitting on the steps. He stopped dead.

“No.”

“’Smatter? Don’t worry about them, babes, they know me,” she said earnestly.

“No,” he said again, his hand tight around her thin arm, suddenly furious. What was she trying to pull? Did she think he was born yesterday?

“Down there,” he said, pointing to a shadowy space between two buildings.

“Babes, there’s a bed—”

“Down there,” he repeated angrily.

She blinked at him out of heavily made-up eyes, a little fazed, but her thought processes were fogged, the silly bitch, and he convinced her silently, by sheer force of personality.

“Yeah, all right, babes.”

Their footsteps crunched on a surface that seemed to be part gravel. He was afraid there might be security lights or sensors, but a thicker, deeper darkness awaited them twenty yards off the road.

His hands were gloved. He handed over the notes. She unzipped his trousers for him. He was still soft. While she was busy on her knees in the darkness, trying to persuade him into tumescence, he was pulling his knives silently from their hiding place inside his jacket. A slither of nylon lining, one in each hand, his palms sweaty on the plastic handles…

He kicked her so hard in the stomach that she flew backwards through the air. A choking, wheezing gasp then a crunch of gravel told him where she had landed. Lurching forward, his flies still open, his trousers sliding down his hips, he found her by tripping over her and was on her.

The carving knife plunged and plunged: he hit bone, probably rib, and stabbed again. A whistle from her lungs and then, shocking him, she screamed.

Though he was straddling her she was fighting and he could not find her throat to finish her. He gave a mighty left-handed swing with the machete, but incredibly she still had enough life in her to shriek again—