Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(107)

A stream of obscenities poured from his mouth—stab, stab and stab again with the carving knife—he punctured her palm as she tried to stop him and that gave him an idea—slamming her arm down, kneeling on it, he raised his knife—

“You f*cking little cocksucking…”

“Who’s down there?”

Fucking hell and shit.

A man’s voice, coming out of the dark from the direction of the street, said again:

“Who’s there?”

He scrambled off her, pulling up his pants and his trousers, backing away as quietly as he could, two knives in his left hand and what he thought were two of her fingers in his right, still warm, bony and bleeding… She was still moaning and whimpering… then, with a last long wheeze, she fell silent…

He hobbled away into the unknown, away from her motionless form, every sense as sharp as a cat’s to the distant approach of a hound.

“Everything all right down there?” said an echoing male voice.

He had reached a solid wall. He felt his way along it until it turned into wire mesh. By the distant light of a streetlamp he saw the outlines of what looked like a ramshackle car repair shop beyond the fence, the hulking forms of vehicles eerie in the gloom. Somewhere in the space he had just left he heard footsteps: the man had come to investigate the screams.

He must not panic. He must not run. Noise would be fatal. Slowly he edged along the wire enclosure containing the old cars, towards a patch of darkness that might be either an opening onto an adjoining street or a dead end. He slid the bloody knives back inside his jacket, dropped her fingers into his pocket and crept along, trying not to breathe.

An echoing shout from the alleyway:

“Fucking hell! Andy—ANDY!”

He began to run. They would not hear him now, not with their yells echoing off the walls, and as though the universe were once again his friend, it laid soft grassy ground beneath his feet as he lumbered into the new darkness of the opening…

A dead end, a six-foot wall. He could hear traffic on the other side. Nothing else for it: panting, scrambling, wishing he were what he had once been, fit and strong and young, he tried to hoist himself up, his feet trying to find some purchase, his muscles screaming in protest…

Panic can do wonderful things. He was on top of the wall and down again. He landed heavily; his knees protested, but he staggered then regained his balance.

Walk on, walk on… normal… normal… normal…

Cars whooshed past. Surreptitiously he wiped his bloody hands on his jacket. Distant shouting, too muffled to hear… he needed to get away from here as quickly as possible. He would go to the place that It didn’t know about.

A bus stop. He jogged a short distance and joined the queue. It didn’t matter where he went as long as it took him out of here.

His thumb made a bloody mark on the ticket. He pushed it deep into his pocket and made contact with her severed fingers.

The bus rumbled away. He took long slow breaths, trying to calm himself.

Somebody upstairs began singing the national anthem again. The bus sped up. His heart jolted. Slowly his breathing returned to normal.

Staring at his own reflection in the filthy window, he rolled her still-warm little finger between his own. As panic receded, elation took its place. He grinned at his dark reflection, sharing his triumph with the only one who could understand.





39



The door opens both ways…

Blue ?yster Cult, “Out of the Darkness”



“Look at this,” said Elin on Monday morning, standing aghast in front of the television with a bowl of granola in her hands. “Can you believe it!”

Strike had just entered the kitchen, freshly washed and dressed, after their usual Sunday night rendezvous. The spotless cream and white space was full of stainless steel surfaces and subdued lighting, like a space age operating theater. A plasma TV hung on the wall behind the table. President Obama was on screen, standing at a podium, talking.

“They’ve killed Osama bin Laden!” said Elin.

“Bloody hell,” said Strike, stopping dead to read the tickertape running across the bottom of the screen.

Clean clothes and a shave had made little difference to his hangdog look of exhaustion. The hours he was putting in trying to catch a glimpse of Laing or Whittaker were beginning to take their painful toll: his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was tinged with gray.

He crossed to the coffee maker, poured himself a mugful and gulped it down. He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week’s few small achievements that he had finished that job, at least. Now he leaned against the steel-topped island, watching the immaculate President and envying him from his soul. He, at least, had got his man.

The known details of bin Laden’s death gave Elin and Strike something to talk about while she was dropping him off at the Tube.

“I wonder how sure they were it was him,” she said, pulling up outside the station, “before they went in.”

Strike had been wondering that, too. Bin Laden had been physically distinctive, of course: well over six feet tall… and Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker, until Elin recalled them.

“I’ve got work drinks on Wednesday, if you fancy it.” She sounded slightly self-conscious. “Duncan and I have nearly agreed everything. I’m sick of sneaking around.”