Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(135)

“Christ, I’ve missed this,” said Wardle, dragging on the cigarette as though it was mother’s milk before picking up the thread of their conversation once more. “Yeah, so Brockbank was in church that weekend, making himself useful. Very good with the kids, apparently.”

“I’ll bet he is,” muttered Strike.

“Take some nerve, though, wouldn’t it?” said Wardle, blowing smoke towards the opposite side of the road, his eyes on Epstein’s sculpture Day, which adorned the old London Transport offices. A boy stood before a throned man, his body contorted so that he both managed to embrace the king behind him and display his own penis to onlookers. “To kill and dismember a girl, then turn up in church as though nothing had happened?”

“Are you Catholic?” Strike asked.

Wardle looked startled.

“I am, as it goes,” he said suspiciously. “Why?”

Strike shook his head, smiling slightly.

“I know a psycho wouldn’t care,” said Wardle with a trace of defensiveness. “I’m just saying… anyway, we’ve got people trying to find out where he’s living now. If it’s a council house, and assuming Alyssa Vincent’s her real name, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Great,” said Strike. The police had resources that he and Robin could not match; perhaps now, at last, some definitive information would be forthcoming. “What about Laing?”

“Ah,” said Wardle, grinding out his first cigarette and immediately lighting another, “we’ve got more on him. He’s been living alone in Wollaston Close for eighteen months now. Survives on disability benefits. He had a chest infection over the weekend of the second and third and his friend Dickie came in to help him out. He couldn’t get to the shops.”

“That’s bloody convenient,” said Strike.

“Or genuine,” said Wardle. “We checked with Dickie and he confirmed everything Laing told us.”

“Was Laing surprised the police were asking about his movements?”

“Seemed pretty taken aback at first.”

“Did he let you in the flat?”

“Didn’t arise. We met him crossing the car park on his sticks and we ended up talking to him in a local café.”

“That Ecuadorian place in a tunnel?”

Wardle subjected Strike to a hard stare that the detective returned with equanimity.

“You’ve been staking him out as well, have you? Don’t mess this up for us, Strike. We’re on it.”

Strike might have responded that it had taken press scrutiny and the failure to make anything of his preferred leads to make Wardle commit serious resources to the tracking of Strike’s three suspects. He chose to hold his silence.

“Laing’s not stupid,” Wardle continued. “We hadn’t been questioning him long when he twigged what it was about. He knew you must’ve given us his name. He’d seen in the papers you got sent a leg.”

“What was his view on the matter?”

“There might’ve been an undertone of ‘couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer bloke,’” said Wardle with a slight grin, “but on balance, about what you’d expect. Bit of curiosity, bit of defensiveness.”

“Did he look ill?”

“Yeah,” said Wardle. “He didn’t know we were coming, and we met him shambling along on his sticks. He doesn’t look good close up. Bloodshot eyes. His skin’s kind of cracked. Bit of a mess.”

Strike said nothing. His mistrust of Laing’s illness lingered. In spite of the clear photographic evidence of steroid use, skin plaques and lesions that Strike had seen with his own eyes, he found himself stubbornly resistant to the idea that Laing was genuinely ill.

“What was he doing when the other women were killed?”

“Says he was home alone,” said Wardle. “Nothing to prove or disprove it.”

“Hmn,” said Strike.

They turned back into the pub. A couple had taken their table so they found another beside the floor-to-ceiling window onto the street.

“What about Whittaker?”

“Yeah, we caught up with him last night. He’s roadying for a band.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Strike suspiciously, remembering Shanker’s assertion that Whittaker claimed to be doing so, but was in fact living off Stephanie.

“Yeah, I’m sure. We called in on the druggie girlfriend—”

“Get inside the flat?”

“She talked to us at the door, unsurprisingly,” said Wardle. “The place stinks. Anyway, she told us he was off with the boys, gave us the address of the concert and there he was. Old transit van parked outside and an even older band. Ever heard of Death Cult?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Don’t bother, they’re shit,” said Wardle. “I had to sit through half an hour of the stuff before I could get near Whittaker. Basement of a pub in Wandsworth. I had tinnitus all the next day.

“Whittaker seemed to be half expecting us,” said Wardle. “Apparently he found you outside his van a few weeks ago.”

“I told you about that,” said Strike. “Crack fumes—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Wardle. “Look, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he reckons Stephanie can give him an alibi for the whole day of the royal wedding, so that would rule out the attack on the hooker in Shacklewell, and he claims he was off with Death Cult when both Kelsey and Heather were killed.”