Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(120)

Her expression became suddenly grave.

“—we’d really like your assurance up front that we’re not going to be in trouble for not telling the police everything. Because it wasn’t as though we had any useful information. She was just a poor kid with problems. We don’t know anything. We only met up with her once, and we haven’t got a clue who killed her. I’m sure you know much more about it than we do. I was pretty worried when I heard Jason had been talking to your partner, to be honest, because I don’t think anyone really appreciates how much we’re persecuted as a community. I’ve had death threats myself—I should hire you to investigate them, ha ha.”

“Who’s made death threats against you?” asked Robin in polite surprise.

“It’s my website, you see,” said Tempest, ignoring Robin and addressing Strike. “I run it. It’s like I’m den mother—or Mother Superior, ha ha… anyway, I’m the one everyone confides in and comes to for advice, so obviously, I’m the one who gets attacked when ignorant people target us. I suppose I don’t help myself. I fight other people’s battles a lot, don’t I, Jason? Anyway,” she said, pausing only to take a greedy sip of wine, “I can’t advise Jason to talk to you without a guarantee he’s not going to get in any trouble.”

Strike wondered what possible authority she thought he had in the matter. The reality was that both Jason and Tempest had concealed information from the police and, whatever their reasons for doing so, and whether or not the information turned out to be valuable, their behavior had been foolish and potentially harmful.

“I don’t think either of you will be in trouble,” he lied easily.

“Well, OK, that’s good to hear,” said Tempest with some complacency, “because we do want to help, obviously. I mean, I said to Jason, if this man’s preying on the BIID community, which is possible—I mean, bloody hell, it’s our duty to help. It wouldn’t surprise me, either, the abuse we get on the website, the hatred. It’s unbelievable. I mean, obviously it stems from ignorance, but we get abuse from people you’d expect to be on our side, who know exactly what it’s like to be discriminated against.”

Drinks arrived. To Strike’s horror, the Eastern European waiter upended his bottle of Spitfire beer into a glass containing ice.

“Hey!” said Strike sharply.

“The beer isn’t cold,” said the waiter, surprised by what he clearly felt was Strike’s overreaction.

“For f*ck’s sake,” muttered Strike, fishing the ice out of his glass. It was bad enough that he was facing a hefty lunch bill, without ice in his beer. The waiter gave Tempest her second glass of wine with a slightly huffy air. Robin seized her chance:

“Jason, when you first made contact with Kelsey—”

But Tempest set down her glass and drowned Robin out.

“Yeah, I checked all my records, and Kelsey first visited the site back in December. Yeah, I told the police that, I let them see everything. She asked about you,” Tempest told Strike in a tone that suggested he ought to be flattered to have secured a mention on her website, “and then she got talking to Jason and they exchanged email addresses, and from then on they were in direct contact, weren’t you, Jason?”

“Yeah,” he said weakly.

“Then she suggested meeting up and Jason got in touch with me—didn’t you, Jason?—and basically he thought he’d feel more comfortable if I came along, because after all, it’s the internet, isn’t it? You never know. She could’ve been anyone. She could’ve been a man.”

“What made you want to meet Kel—?” Robin began to ask Jason, but again, Tempest talked over her.

“They were both interested in you, obviously,” said Tempest to Strike. “Kelsey got Jason interested, didn’t she, Jason? She knew all about you,” said Tempest, smiling slyly as though they shared disreputable secrets.

“So what did Kelsey tell you about me, Jason?” Strike asked the boy.

Jason turned scarlet at being addressed by Strike and Robin wondered suddenly whether he could be gay. From her extensive perusal of the message boards she had detected an erotic undertone to some, though not all, of the posters’ fantasies, <<Δēvō???>> being the most blatant of them.

“She said,” mumbled Jason, “her brother knew you. That he’d worked with you.”

“Really?” said Strike. “Are you sure she said her brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Because she didn’t have one. Only a sister.”

Jason’s lopsided eyes traveled nervously over the objects on the table before returning to Strike.

“I’m pretty sure she said brother.”

“Worked with me in the army, did he?”

“No, not in the army, I don’t think. Later.”

She lied all the time… If it was Tuesday she’d say it was Wednesday.

“Now, I thought she said her boyfriend told her,” said Tempest. “She told us she had a boyfriend called Neil, Jason—remember?”

“Niall,” mumbled Jason.

“Oh, was it? All right, Niall. He picked her up after we had coffee, remember?”

“Hang on,” said Strike, raising a hand, and Tempest paused obediently. “You saw Niall?”