Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(163)

“Cheers,” said Strike thickly. He stuffed his nostrils with as much paper as they would hold, then looked down at Laing. “Nice to see you again, Ray.”

The still-winded Laing said nothing. His bald pate was shining faintly in the moonlight that had illuminated his knife.

“Fort you said ’is name was Donald?” asked Shanker curiously as Laing shifted on the ground. Shanker kicked him in the stomach again.

“It is,” said Strike, “and stop bloody kicking him; if you rupture anything I’ll have to answer for it in court.”

“So why you callin’ ’im—?”

“Because,” said Strike, “—and don’t touch anything, either, Shanker, I don’t want your fingerprints in here—because Donnie’s been using a borrowed identity. When he’s not here,” Strike said, approaching the fridge and putting his left hand, with its still-intact latex glove, on the handle, “he’s heroic retired firefighter Ray Williams, who lives in Finchley with Hazel Furley.”

Strike pulled open the fridge door and, still using his left hand, opened the freezer compartment.

Kelsey Platt’s breasts lay inside, dried up now like figs, yellow and leathery. Beside them lay Lila Monkton’s fingers, the nails varnished purple, Laing’s teeth marks imprinted deeply upon them. At the back lay a pair of severed ears from which little plastic ice-cream cones still hung, and a mangled piece of flesh in which nostrils were still distinguishable.

“Holy shit,” said Shanker, who had also bent over to look, from behind him. “Holy shit, Bunsen, they’re bits—”

Strike closed both icebox and fridge door and turned to look at his captive.

Laing lay quiet now. Strike was sure that he was already using that devious fox-like brain to see how he could work this desperate situation to his advantage, how he would be able to argue that Strike had framed him, planted or contaminated evidence.

“Should’ve recognized you, shouldn’t I, Donnie?” said Strike, wrapping his right hand in toilet paper to stem the bleeding. Now, by the dim moonlight falling through the grubby window, Strike could just make out the features of Laing beneath the stones of extra weight that steroids and a lack of regular exercise had packed onto his once thickly muscled frame. His fatness, his dry, lined skin, the beard he had doubtless grown to hide his pockmarks, the carefully shaven head and the shuffling walk he had affected added up to a man at least ten years older than his real age. “Should’ve recognized you the moment you opened the front door to me at Hazel’s,” Strike said. “But you kept your face covered, dabbing away at your f*cking tears, didn’t you? What had you done, rubbed something in them to make them swell up?”

Strike offered his pack to Shanker before lighting up.

“The Geordie accent was a bit overdone, now I think about it. You’ll have picked that up in Gateshead, did you? He’s always been a good mimic, our Donnie,” he told Shanker. “You should have heard his Corporal Oakley. Life and soul, Donnie was, apparently.”

Shanker was staring from Strike to Laing, apparently fascinated. Strike continued to smoke, looking down at Laing. His nose was stinging and throbbing so badly it was making his own eyes water. He wanted to hear the killer speak, once, before he rang the police.

“Beat up and robbed a demented old lady in Corby, didn’t you, Donnie? Poor old Mrs. Williams. You took her son’s award for bravery and I bet you got a good bit of old documentation of his as well. You knew he’d gone abroad. It’s not too hard to steal someone’s identity if you’ve got a bit of ID to start with. Easy to parlay that into enough current identification to hoodwink a lonely woman and a careless policeman or two.”

Laing lay silent on the dirty floor, but Strike could almost feel the frantic workings of his filthy, desperate mind.

“I found Accutane in the house,” Strike told Shanker. “It’s a drug for acne, but it’s for psoriatic arthritis too. I should’ve known then. He kept it hidden in Kelsey’s room. Ray Williams didn’t have arthritis.

“I bet you had lots of little secrets together, didn’t you, Donnie, you and Kelsey? Winding her up about me, getting her exactly where you wanted her? Taking her for motorbike rides to lurk near my office… pretending to post letters for her… bringing her my fake notes…”

“You sick bastard,” said the disgusted Shanker. He leaned over Laing with his cigarette tip close to Laing’s face, clearly yearning to hurt him.

“You’re not burning him either, Shanker,” said Strike, pulling out his mobile. “You’d better get out of here, I’m going to call the cops.”

He rang 999 and gave the address. His story would be that he had followed Laing to the club and back to his flat, that there had been an argument and that Laing had attacked him. Nobody needed to know that Shanker had been involved, nor that Strike had picked Laing’s locks. Of course, the stoned neighbor might talk, but Strike thought it likely that the young man might prefer to stay well out of it rather than have his sobriety and drug history assessed in a court of law.

“Take all this and get rid of it,” Strike told Shanker, peeling off the fluorescent jacket and handing it to him. “And the gas canister through there.”

“Right y’are, Bunsen. Sure you’re gonna be all right with him?” Shanker added, eyes on Strike’s broken nose, his bleeding ear and hand.