Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(140)

“Tooth?” asked Robin solicitously.

The girl nodded. A tear trickled out of her unclosed eye.

“Who did this?” Robin said urgently, reaching across the table for Stephanie’s hand.

She was playing a character, growing into the role as she improvised. The straw hat and the long sundress she was wearing had unconsciously suggested a hippyish girl full of altruism who thought that she could save Stephanie. Robin felt a tiny reciprocal squeeze of her fingers even as Stephanie shook her head to indicate that she was not going to give away her attacker.

“Somebody you know?” Robin whispered.

More tears rolled down Stephanie’s face. She withdrew her hand from Robin’s and sipped her Fanta, wincing again as the cold liquid made contact with what Robin thought was probably a cracked tooth.

“Is he your father?” Robin whispered.

It would have been an easy assumption to make. Stephanie could not possibly be older than seventeen. She was so thin that she barely had breasts. Tears had washed away any trace of the kohl that usually outlined her eyes. Her grubby face was infantile, with the suggestion of an overbite, but all was dominated by the purple and gray bruising. Whittaker had pummeled her until the blood vessels in her right eye had burst: the sliver that was visible was scarlet.

“No,” whispered Stephanie. “Boyfriend.”

“Where is he?” Robin asked, reaching again for Stephanie’s hand, now chilly from contact with the cold Fanta.

“Away,” said Stephanie.

“Does he live with you?”

Stephanie nodded and tried to drink more Fanta, keeping the icy liquid away from the damaged side of her face.

“I didn’t wan’ ’im to go,” whispered Stephanie.

As Robin leaned in, the girl’s restraint suddenly dissolved in the face of kindness and sugar.

“I aksed to go wiv ’im and ’e wouldn’t take me. I know ’e’s out tomming, I know ’e is. ’E’s got someone else, I ’eard Banjo saying sumfing. ’E’s got anuvver girl somewhere.”

To Robin’s disbelief, Stephanie’s primary source of pain, far worse than that of her cracked tooth and her bruised and broken face, was the thought that filthy, crack-dealing Whittaker might be somewhere else, sleeping with another woman.

“I on’y wan’ed to go wiv ’im,” Stephanie repeated, and tears slid more thickly down her face, stinging that slit of an eye into a more furious redness.

Robin knew that the kind, slightly dippy girl she had been impersonating would now earnestly beseech Stephanie to leave a man who had beaten her so badly. The trouble was, she was sure that would be the surest way to make Stephanie walk out on her.

“He got angry because you wanted to go with him?” she repeated. “Where has he gone?”

“Says ’e’s wiv the Cult like last—they’re a band,” mumbled Stephanie, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “’E roadies for ’em—bur it’s just an excuse,” she said, crying harder, “to go places an’ find girls to f*ck. I said I’d go an’—cause last time ’e wanted me to—an’ I done the ’ole band for ’im.”

Robin did her very best not to look as though she understood what she had just been told. However, some flicker of anger and revulsion must have contaminated the look of pure kindliness she was trying to project, because Stephanie seemed suddenly to withdraw. She did not want judgment. She met that every day of her life.

“Have you been to a doctor?” Robin asked quietly.

“Wha’? No,” said Stephanie, folding her thin arms around her torso.

“When’s he due back, your boyfriend?”

Stephanie merely shook her head and shrugged. The temporary sympathy Robin had kindled between them seemed to have cooled.

“The Cult,” said Robin, improvising rapidly, her mouth dry, “that isn’t Death Cult, is it?”

“Yeah,” said Stephanie, dimly surprised.

“Which gig? I saw them the other day!”

Don’t ask me where, for God’s sake…

“This was in a pub called the—Green Fiddle, or sumfing. Enfield.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the same gig,” said Robin. “When was yours?”

“Need a pee,” mumbled Stephanie, looking around the café.

She shuffled off towards the bathroom. When the door had closed behind her, Robin frantically keyed search terms into her mobile. It took her several attempts to find what she was looking for: Death Cult had played a pub called the Fiddler’s Green in Enfield on Saturday the fourth of June, the day before Heather Smart had been murdered.

The shadows were lengthening outside the café now, which had emptied apart from themselves. Evening was drawing in. The place would surely close soon.

“Cheers for the sandwich an’ ev’rything,” said Stephanie, who had reappeared beside her. “I’m gonna—”

“Have something else. Some chocolate or something,” Robin urged her, even though the waitress mopping table tops looked ready to throw them out.

“Why?” asked Stephanie, showing the first sign of suspicion.

“Because I really want to talk to you about your boyfriend,” said Robin.

“Why?” repeated the teenager, a little nervous now.