Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(12)
“I shopped!” he said when he saw the four bulging shopping bags in her hands and she heard his disappointment that the grand gesture had been undermined. “I sent you a text that I was going to Waitrose!”
“Must’ve missed it,” said Robin. “Sorry.”
She had probably been on the phone to Strike. They might even have been there at the same time, but of course she had spent half her visit skulking among the wine and spirits.
Matthew walked forward, arms outstretched, and pulled her into a hug with what she could not help but feel was infuriating magnanimity. Even so, she had to admit that he looked, as always, wonderfully handsome in his dark suit, his thick tawny hair swept back off his forehead.
“It must’ve been scary,” he murmured, his breath warm in her hair.
“It was,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.
They ate pasta in peace, without a single mention of Sarah Shadlock, Strike or Jacques Burger. The furious ambition of that morning, to make Matthew acknowledge that it had been Sarah, not she, who had voiced admiration of curly hair, had burned out. Robin felt that she was being rewarded for her mature forbearance when Matthew said apologetically:
“I’m going to have to do a bit of work after dinner.”
“No problem,” said Robin. “I wanted an early night anyway.”
She took a low-calorie hot chocolate and a copy of Grazia to bed with her, but she could not concentrate. After ten minutes, she got up and fetched her laptop, took it back to bed with her and Googled Jeff Whittaker.
She had read the Wikipedia entry before, during one of her guilty trawls through Strike’s past, but now she read with greater attention. It started with a familiar disclaimer:
This article has multiple issues.
This article needs additional citations for verification.
This article possibly contains original research.
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker (b.1969) is a musician best known for his marriage to 1970s supergroupie Leda Strike, whom he was charged with killing in 1994.[1] Whittaker is a grandson of diplomat Sir Randolph Whittaker KCMB DSO.
Early Life
Whittaker was raised by his grandparents. His teenage mother, Patricia Whittaker, was schizophrenic.[citation needed] Whittaker never knew who his father was.[citation needed] He was expelled from Gordonstoun School after drawing a knife on a member of staff.[citation needed] He claims that his grandfather locked him in a shed for three days following his expulsion, a charge his grandfather denies.[2] Whittaker ran away from home and lived rough for a period during his teens. He also claims to have worked as a gravedigger.[citation needed]
Musical Career
Whittaker played guitar and wrote lyrics for a succession of thrash metal bands in the late 80s and early 90s, including Restorative Art, Devilheart and Necromantic.[3][4]
Personal Life
In 1991 Whittaker met Leda Strike, ex-girlfriend of Jonny Rokeby and Rick Fantoni, who was working for the record company considering signing Necromantic.[citation needed] Whittaker and Strike were married in 1992. In December of that year she gave birth to a son, Switch LaVey Bloom Whittaker.[5] In 1993 Whittaker was sacked from Necromantic due to his drug abuse.[citation needed]
When Leda Whittaker died of a heroin overdose in 1994, Whittaker was charged with her murder. He was found not guilty.[6][7][8][9]
In 1995 Whittaker was re-arrested for assault and attempted kidnap of his son, who was in the custody of Whittaker’s grandparents. He received a suspended jail sentence for the assault on his grandfather.[citation needed]
In 1998 Whittaker threatened a coworker with a knife and received a three-month jail sentence.[10][11]
In 2002 Whittaker was jailed for preventing the lawful burial of a body. Karen Abraham, with whom he had been living, was found to have died of heart failure, but Whittaker had kept her body in their shared flat for a month.[12][13][14]
In 2005 Whittaker was jailed for dealing crack cocaine.[15]
Robin read the page twice. Her concentration was poor tonight. Information seemed to slide off the surface of her mind, failing to be absorbed. Parts of Whittaker’s history stood out, glaringly strange. Why would anyone conceal a corpse for a month? Had Whittaker feared that he would be charged with murder again, or was there some other reason? Bodies, limbs, pieces of dead flesh… She sipped the hot chocolate and grimaced. It tasted of flavored dust; in the pressure she felt to be slim in her wedding dress, she had forsworn chocolate in its true form for a month now.
She replaced the mug on her bedside cabinet, returned her fingers to the keyboard and searched for images of Jeff Whittaker trial.
A matrix of photographs filled the screen, showing two different Whittakers, photographed eight years apart and entering and exiting two different courts.
The young Whittaker accused of murdering his wife wore dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail. He had a certain seedy glamour in his black suit and tie, tall enough to see over the heads of most of the photographers crowding around him. His cheekbones were high, his skin sallow and his large eyes set unusually far apart: the kind of eyes that might have belonged to an opium-crazed poet, or a heretic priest.
The Whittaker who had been accused of preventing another woman’s burial had lost his vagrant handsomeness. He was heavier, with a brutal crew cut and a beard. Only the wide-set eyes were unchanged, and the aura of unapologetic arrogance.