Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(122)

Robin was worried that Strike might explode, here in this polite white space where art lovers conversed in soft voices. However, she had reckoned without the self-control that the ex–Special Investigation Branch officer had learned through long years of interrogations. His polite smile to Tempest might have been a little grim, but he merely turned again to Jason and asked:

“So you don’t think it was Kelsey’s brother’s idea for her to contact me?”

“No,” said Jason, “I think that was all her own idea.”

“So what exactly did she want from me?”

“Well, obviously,” interposed Tempest, half-laughing, “she wanted advice on how to do what you’d done!”

“Is that what you think, Jason?” asked Strike and the boy nodded.

“Yeah… she wanted to know how badly she’d have to injure her leg to get it taken off, and I think she had a sort of idea you’d introduce her to the doctor who did yours.”

“That’s the perennial problem,” said Tempest, clearly oblivious to the effect she was having on Strike, “finding reliable surgeons. They’re usually completely unsympathetic. People have died trying to do it themselves. There was a wonderful surgeon in Scotland who performed a couple of amputations on BIID sufferers, but then they stopped him. That was a good ten years ago. People go abroad, but if you can’t pay, if you can’t afford travel… you can see why Kelsey wanted to get her mitts on your contact list!”

Robin let her knife and fork fall with a clatter, feeling on Strike’s behalf all the offense that she assumed him to be experiencing. His contact list! As though his amputation was a rare artefact that Strike had bought on the black market…

Strike questioned both Jason and Tempest for another fifteen minutes before concluding that they knew nothing more of any use. The picture they painted of their one meeting with Kelsey was of an immature and desperate girl whose urge to be amputated was so powerful that she would, by the consent of both of her cyberfriends, have done anything to achieve it.

“Yeah,” sighed Tempest, “she was one of those. She’d already had a go when she was younger, with some wire. We’ve had people so desperate they’ve put their legs on train tracks. One guy tried to freeze his leg off in liquid nitrogen. There was a girl in America who deliberately botched a ski jump, but the danger with that is you might not get exactly the degree of disability you’re after—”

“So what degree are you after?” Strike asked her. He had just put up a hand for the bill.

“I want my spinal cord severed,” said Tempest with total composure. “Paraplegic, yeah. Ideally I’ll have it done by a surgeon. In the meantime, I just get on with it,” she said, gesturing again to her wheelchair.

“Using the disabled bathrooms and stairlifts, the works, eh?” asked Strike.

“Cormoran,” said Robin in a warning voice.

She had thought this might happen. He was stressed and sleep-deprived. She supposed she ought to be glad that they had got all the information they needed first.

“It’s a need,” said Tempest composedly. “I’ve known ever since I was a child. I’m in the wrong body. I need to be paralyzed.”

The waiter had arrived; Robin held out her hand for the bill, because Strike hadn’t noticed him.

“Quickly, please,” she said to the waiter, who looked sullen. He was the man Strike had barked at for putting ice in his beer glass.

“Know many disabled people, do you?” Strike was asking Tempest.

“I know a couple,” she said. “Obviously we’ve got a lot in—”

“You’ve got f*ck all in common. Fuck all.”

“I knew it,” muttered Robin under her breath, snatching the chip and pin machine out of the waiter’s grip and shoving in her Visa card. Strike stood up, towering over Tempest, who looked suddenly unnerved, while Jason shrank back in his seat, looking as though he wanted to disappear inside his hoodie.

“C’mon, Corm—” said Robin, ripping her card out of the machine.

“Just so you know,” said Strike, addressing both Tempest and Jason as Robin grabbed her coat and tried to pull him away from the table, “I was in a car that blew up around me.” Jason had put his hands over his scarlet face, his eyes full of tears. Tempest merely gaped. “The driver was ripped in two—that’d get you some attention, eh?” he said savagely to Tempest. “Only he was dead, so not so f*cking much. The other guy lost half his face—I lost a leg. There was nothing voluntary about—”

“OK,” said Robin, taking Strike’s arm. “We’re off. Thanks very much for meeting us, Jason—”

“Get some help,” said Strike loudly, pointing at Jason as he allowed Robin to pull him away, diners and waiters staring. “Get some f*cking help. With your head.”

They were out in the leafy road, nearly a block away from the gallery, before Strike’s breathing began to return to normal.

“OK,” he said, though Robin had not spoken. “You warned me. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” she said mildly. “We got everything we wanted.”

They walked on in silence for a few yards.

“Did you pay? I didn’t notice.”