Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(156)

The waitress set his sandwich and coffee in front of him and Strike began to eat with the glazed stare of a man too preoccupied even to taste what he was chewing.

This was as well-publicized a series of crimes as Strike had ever come into contact with: the police would currently be flooded with information and leads, all of which needed following up and none of which (Strike was prepared to bet) would lead anywhere near the real devious and successful killer.

He still had the option of trying to make contact with one of Carver’s superiors, although he was now in such poor odor with the police that he doubted he would be allowed direct speech with a superintendent, whose first loyalty would of course be to his own men. Trying to circumnavigate Carver would do nothing to diminish the impression that he was trying to undermine the head of the investigation.

What was more, Strike did not have evidence, merely a theory about where the evidence was. While there was a remote chance that somebody at the Met might take Strike seriously enough to go looking for what he promised they would find, Strike feared that further delay might cost another life.

He was surprised to find that he had finished his panini. Still extremely hungry, he ordered a second.

No, he thought, with sudden resolve, this is the way it’s got to be.

This animal needed to be stopped as soon as possible. It was time to get out ahead of him for the first time. However, as a sop to his conscience, as a proof to himself that he was motivated primarily by catching a killer rather than by glory, Strike took out his mobile again and called Detective Inspector Richard Anstis, his oldest acquaintance on the force. He was not on the best terms with Anstis these days, but Strike wanted to be certain in his own mind that he had done all he could to allow the Met the chance to do the job for him.

After a long pause, a foreign dialing tone sounded in his ear. Nobody picked up. Anstis was on holiday. Strike debated leaving a voicemail and decided against. Leaving such a message on Anstis’s phone when there was nothing the man could do would definitely ruin his holiday, and from what Strike knew of Anstis’s wife and three children, the man needed one.

Hanging up, he scrolled absentmindedly through his recent calls. Carver had not left his number. Robin’s name sat a few rows beneath. The sight of it stabbed the tired and desperate Strike to the heart because he was simultaneously furious with her and longing to talk to her. Setting the mobile resolutely back onto the table, he shoved his hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a pen and notebook.

Eating his second sandwich as fast as his first, Strike began to write a list.


1) Write to Carver.



This was partly a further sop to his own conscience and partly what he generally termed “arse-covering.” He doubted the ability of an email to find its way to Carver, whose direct address he did not have, through the tsunami of tip-offs now sure to be pouring into Scotland Yard. People were culturally disposed to take ink and paper seriously, especially when it had to be signed for: an old-fashioned letter, sent recorded delivery, would be sure to find its way to Carver’s desk. Strike would then have laid a trail just as the killer had done, demonstrating very clearly that he had tried every possible route to tell Carver how the killer might be stopped. This was likely to be useful when they all found themselves in court, which Strike did not doubt would happen whether or not the plan he had formulated, walking through the dawn in sleepy Covent Garden, was successful.


2) Gas canister (propane?)

3) Fluorescent jacket

4) Woman—who?



He paused, arguing with himself, scowling over the paper. After much thought, he reluctantly wrote:


5) Shanker



This meant that the next item had to be:


6) ￡500 (from where?)



And finally, after a further minute’s thought:


7) Advertise for Robin replacement.





57



Sole survivor, cursed with second sight,

Haunted savior, cried into the night.

Blue ?yster Cult, “Sole Survivor”



Four days passed. Numb with shock and misery, Robin at first hoped and even believed that Strike would call her, that he would regret what he had said to her, that he would realize what a mistake he had made. Linda had left, kind and supportive to the last, but, Robin suspected, secretly happy to think that Robin’s association with the detective had ended.

Matthew had expressed enormous sympathy in the face of Robin’s devastation. He said that Strike did not know how lucky he had been. He had enumerated for her all the things she had done for the detective, foremost of which was accepting a laughably small salary for unreasonably long hours. He reminded Robin that her status as partner in the agency had been entirely illusory, and totted up all the proofs of Strike’s lack of respect for her: the absence of a partnership agreement, the lack of overtime pay, the fact that she always seemed to be the one who made tea and went out to buy sandwiches.

A week previously, Robin would have defended Strike against all such accusations. She would have said that the nature of the work necessitated long hours, that the moment to demand a pay rise was not when the business was fighting for its very survival, that Strike made her mugs of tea quite as often as she made them for him. She might have added that Strike had spent money he could ill afford training her in surveillance and countersurveillance, and that it was unreasonable to expect him, as senior partner, sole investor and founding member of the agency, to place her on absolutely equal legal footing with himself.