Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(132)

He walked for miles until darkness fell, past lit pubs where men and women laughed and flirted, past restaurants and cinemas, looking, waiting, with a hunter’s patience. Sunday night and the workers were returning home early, but it did not matter: there were still tourists everywhere, out-of-towners, drawn by the history and mystery of London…

It was nearly midnight when they leapt to his practiced eye like a cluster of plump mushrooms in long grass: a bunch of squawking, tiddly girls cackling and weaving along the pavement. They were on one of those miserable, rundown streets that were his especial delight, where a drunken tussle and a shrieking girl would be nothing out of the ordinary. He followed, ten yards behind them, watching them pass under streetlamps, elbowing each other and cackling, all except for one of them. She was the drunkest and youngest-looking of them all: ready to throw up, if he knew anything about it. She stumbled on her heels, falling slightly behind her friends, the silly little tart. None of her friends had realized what a state she was in. They were just the right side of legless, snorting and guffawing as they staggered along.

He drifted after them, casual as you please.

If she threw up in the street the noise would attract her friends, who would stop and rally around her. While she fought the urge to vomit, she could not speak. Slowly, the distance between her and her friends increased. She swayed and wobbled, reminding him of the last one, with her stupid high heels. This one must not survive to help make photofits.

A taxi was approaching. He saw the scenario play out before it did. They hailed it loudly, screeching and waving their arms, and in they piled, one by one, fat arse after fat arse. He sped up, head down, face hidden. The streetlamps reflected in the puddles, the “for hire” light extinguished, the growl of the engine…

They had forgotten her. She swayed right into the wall, holding up an arm to support herself.

He might only have seconds. One of her friends would realize any time now that she wasn’t with them.

“You all right, darling? You feeling bad? Come here. This way. You’ll be all right. Just down here.”

She began to retch as he tugged her down a side street. Feebly she tried to pull her arm away, heaving; the vomit splattered down her, gagging her.

“Filthy bitch,” he snarled, one hand already on the handle of his knife under the jacket. He was dragging her forcibly towards a darkened recess between an adult video store and a junk shop.

“No,” she gasped, but she choked on her vomit, heaving.

A door opened across the street, light rippling down a flight of steps. People burst out onto the pavement, laughing.

He slammed her up against the wall and kissed her, pinning her flat while she tried to struggle. She tasted foul, of sick. The door opposite closed, the gaggle of people passed by, their voices echoing in the quiet night, the light extinguished.

“Fucking hell,” he said in disgust, releasing her mouth but keeping her pinned to the wall with his body.

She drew breath to scream, but he had the knife ready and it sank deep between her ribs with ease, nothing like the last one, who’d fought so hard and so stubbornly. The noise died on her stained lips as the hot blood poured over his gloved hand, soaking the material. She jerked convulsively, tried to speak, her eyes rolled upwards into whiteness and her entire body sagged, still pinned by the knife.

“Good girl,” he whispered, pulling the carving knife free as she fell, dying, into his arms.

He dragged her deeper into the recess, where a pile of rubbish sat waiting for collection. Kicking the black bags aside, he dumped her in a corner then pulled out his machete. Souvenirs were imperative, but he only had seconds. Another door might open, or her dozy bitches of friends might come back in their taxi…

He slashed and sawed, put his warm, oozing trophies in his pocket, then piled up the rubbish over and on her.

It had taken less than five minutes. He felt like a king, like a god. Away he walked, knives safely stowed, panting in the cool, clean night air, jogging a little once he was on the main road again. He was already a block away when he heard raucous female voices shouting in the distance.

“Heather! Heather, where are you, you silly cow?”

“Heather can’t hear you,” he whispered into the darkness.

He tried to stop himself laughing, burying his face in his collar, but he could not restrain his jubilation. Deep in his pockets, his sopping fingers were playing with the rubbery cartilage and skin to which her earrings—little plastic ice-cream cones—were still attached.





49



It’s the time in the season for a maniac at night.

Blue ?yster Cult, “Madness to the Method”



The weather remained cool, rain-flecked and faintly blustery as June entered its second week. The blaze of sunlit pageantry that had surrounded the royal wedding had receded into memory: the giddy high tide of romantic fervor had ebbed, the wedding merchandise and congratulatory banners had been removed from shop windows and the capital’s newspapers returned to more mundane matters, including an imminent Tube strike.

Then horror exploded across Wednesday’s front pages. The mutilated body of a young woman had been uncovered beneath bin bags, and within a few hours of the first police appeal for information the world had been informed that a twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London.

Three women had been attacked and mutilated, but the Met appeared to have no leads. In their stampede to cover every possible aspect of the story—maps of London showing the location of each attack, pictures of the three victims—the journalists revealed themselves determined to make up for lost time, aware that they might have arrived a little late at the party. They had previously treated the killing of Kelsey Platt as a lone act of madness and sadism, and the subsequent attack on Lila Monkton, the eighteen-year-old prostitute, had gained virtually no media coverage. A girl who had been selling herself for sex on the day of the royal wedding could hardly expect to oust a new-minted duchess from the front pages.