Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(121)

“Yes,” said Tempest. “He picked her up. On his motorbike.”

There was a brief silence.

“A man on a motorbike picked her up from—where did you meet her?” asked Strike, his calm tone belying his suddenly pounding pulse.

“Café Rouge on Tottenham Court Road,” said Tempest.

“That’s not far from our office,” said Robin.

Jason turned an even darker red.

“Oh, Kelsey and Jason knew that, ha ha! You were hoping to see Cormoran pop in, weren’t you, Jason? Ha ha ha,” laughed Tempest merrily as the waiter returned with her starter.

“A man on a motorbike picked her up, Jason?”

Tempest’s mouth was full and, at last, Jason was able to speak.

“Yeah,” he said with a furtive look at Strike. “He was waiting for her along the road.”

“Could you see what he looked like?” asked Strike, correctly anticipating the answer.

“No, he was sort of—sort of tucked around the corner.”

“He kept his helmet on,” said Tempest, washing down a mouthful with wine, the quicker to rejoin the conversation.

“What color was the motorbike, can you remember?” Strike asked.

Tempest rather thought it had been black and Jason was sure it had been red, but they agreed that it had been parked far too far away to recognize the make.

“Can you remember anything else Kelsey said about her boyfriend?” asked Robin.

Both shook their heads.

Their main courses arrived midway through a lengthy explanation by Tempest of the advocacy and support services offered by the website she had developed. Only with her mouth full of chips did Jason finally find the courage to address Strike directly.

“Is it true?” he said suddenly. His face again grew bright red as he said it.

“Is what true?” asked Strike.

“That you—that—”

Chewing vigorously, Tempest leaned towards Strike in her wheelchair, placed her hand on his forearm and swallowed.

“That you did it yourself,” she whispered, with the ghost of a wink.

Her thick thighs had subtly readjusted themselves as she lifted them off the chair, bearing their own weight, instead of hanging behind the mobile torso. Strike had been in Selly Oak Hospital with men left paraplegic and quadriplegic by the injuries they had sustained in war, seen their wasted legs, the compensations they had learned to make in the movement of their upper bodies to accommodate the dead weight below. For the first time, the reality of what Tempest was doing hit him forcibly. She did not need the wheelchair. She was entirely able-bodied.

Strangely, it was Robin’s expression that kept Strike calm and polite, because he found vicarious release in the look of distaste and fury she threw Tempest. He addressed Jason.

“You’ll need to tell me what you’ve been told before I can tell you whether it’s true or not.”

“Well,” said Jason, who had barely touched his Black Angus burger, “Kelsey said you went to the pub with her brother and you got—got drunk and told him the truth. She reckoned you walked off your base in Afghanistan with a gun and you went as far as you could in the dark, then you—shot yourself in the leg, and then you got a doctor to amputate it for you.”

Strike took a large swig of beer.

“And I did this why?”

“What?” said Jason, blinking confusedly.

“Was I trying to get invalided out of the army, or—?”

“Oh, no!” said Jason, looking strangely hurt. “No, you were”—he blushed so hard it seemed unlikely that there was enough blood left in the rest of his body—“like us. You needed it,” he whispered. “You needed to be an amputee.”

Robin suddenly found that she could not look at Strike and pretended to be contemplating a curious painting of a hand holding a single shoe. At least, she thought it showed a hand holding a shoe. It might equally have been a brown plant pot with a pink cactus growing out of it.

“The—brother—who told Kelsey all about me—did he know she wanted to take off her own leg?”

“I don’t think so, no. She said I was the only one she’d ever told.”

“So you think it was just coincidence he mentioned—?”

“People keep it quiet,” said Tempest, shoehorning herself back into the conversation at the first opportunity. “There’s a lot of shame, a lot of shame. I’m not out at work,” she said blithely, waving towards her legs. “I have to say it’s a back injury. If they knew I’m transabled they’d never understand. And don’t get me started on the prejudice from the medical profession, which is absolutely unbelievable. I’ve changed GPs twice; I wasn’t going to put up with being offered bloody psychiatric help again. No, Kelsey told us she’d never been able to tell anyone, poor little love. She had nobody to turn to. Nobody understood. That’s why she reached out to us—and to you, of course,” she told Strike, smiling with a little condescension because, unlike her, he had ignored Kelsey’s appeal. “You’re not alone, mind. Once people have successfully achieved what they’re after they tend to leave the community. We get it—we understand—but it would mean a lot if people hung around just to describe what it feels like to finally be in the body you’re meant to be in.”