Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(138)

“He’ll have to follow up Wardle’s lines of investigation, though,” said Robin, “won’t he?”

“Given that he’d clearly rather chop off his own knob than let me solve another of his cases, you’d think he’d be careful to follow up all my leads. Trouble is, I can tell he’s rationalized the Landry case as me getting lucky, and I reckon he thinks me coming up with three suspects in this case is pure showboating. I wish to hell,” said Strike, “we’d got an address for Brockbank before Wardle had to leave.”

As Robin had been silent for a whole minute while she listened to Strike, the dressmaker clearly thought it reasonable to check whether she was ready to resume the fitting, and poked her head in through the curtain. Robin, whose expression was suddenly beatific, waved her away impatiently.

“We have got an address for Brockbank,” Robin told Strike in a triumphant voice as the curtains swung closed again.

“What?”

“I didn’t tell you, because I thought Wardle would already have got it, but I thought, just in case—I’ve been ringing round the local nurseries, pretending I was Alyssa, Zahara’s mum. I said I wanted to check they had our new address right. One of them read it out to me off the parent contact sheet. They’re living on Blondin Street in Bow.”

“Jesus Christ, Robin, that’s f*cking brilliant!”

When the dressmaker returned to her job at last, she found a considerably more radiant bride than she had left. Robin’s lack of enthusiasm for the process of altering her dress had been diminishing the seamstress’s pleasure in her job. Robin was easily the best-looking client on her books and she had hoped to get a photograph for advertising purposes once the dress was finished.

“That’s wonderful,” said Robin, beaming at the seamstress as she tugged the last seam straight and together they contemplated the vision in the mirror. “That’s absolutely wonderful.”

For the first time, she thought that the dress really didn’t look bad at all.





51



Don’t turn your back, don’t show your profile,

You’ll never know when it’s your turn to go.

Blue ?yster Cult, “Don’t Turn Your Back”




“The public response has been overwhelming. We’re currently following up over twelve hundred leads, some of which look promising,” said Detective Inspector Roy Carver. “We continue to appeal for information on the whereabouts of the red Honda CB750 used to transport part of Kelsey Platt’s body and we remain interested in speaking to anybody who was in Old Street on the night of 5th June, when Heather Smart was killed.”



The headline POLICE FOLLOW NEW LEADS IN HUNT FOR SHACKLEWELL RIPPER was not really justified, in Robin’s view, by anything in the brief report beneath, although she supposed that Carver would not share details of genuine new developments with the press.

Five photographs of the women now believed to have been victims of the Ripper filled most of the page, their identities and their brutal fates stamped across their chests in black typeface.


Martina Rossi, 28, prostitute, stabbed to death, necklace stolen.



Martina was a plump, dark woman wearing a white tank top. Her blurry photograph looked as though it had been a selfie. A small heart-shaped harp charm hung from a chain around her neck.


Sadie Roach, 25, admin assistant, stabbed to death, mutilated, earrings taken.



She had been a pretty girl with a gamine haircut and hoops in her ears. Judging by cropped figures at the edges of her picture, it had been taken at a family gathering.


Kelsey Platt, 16, student, stabbed to death and dismembered.



Here was the familiar chubby, plain face of the girl who had written to Strike, smiling in her school uniform.


Lila Monkton, 18, prostitute, stabbed, fingers cut off, survived.



A blurred picture of a gaunt girl whose bright red hennaed hair was cut into a shaggy bob, her multiple piercings glinting in the camera flash.


Heather Smart, 22, financial services worker, stabbed to death, nose and ears removed.



She was round-faced and innocent-looking, with wavy mouse-brown hair, freckles and a timid smile.

Robin looked up from the Daily Express with a deep sigh. Matthew had been sent to audit a client in High Wycombe, so he had been unable to give Robin a lift today. It had taken her a full hour and twenty minutes to get to Catford from Ealing on trains crammed with tourists and commuters sweating in the London heat. Now she left her seat and headed for the door, swaying with the rest of the commuters as the train slowed and stopped, yet again, at Catford Bridge station.

Her week back at work with Strike had been strange. Strike, who clearly had no intention to comply with the instruction to keep out of Carver’s investigation, was nevertheless taking the investigating officer seriously enough to be cautious.

“If he can make a case that we’ve buggered up the police investigation, we’re finished as a business,” he said. “And we know he’ll try and say I’ve screwed things up, whether I have or not.”

“So why are we carrying on?”

Robin had been playing devil’s advocate, because she would have been deeply unhappy and frustrated had Strike announced that they were abandoning their leads.