Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(43)

“’E’s still around,” said Shanker, ceasing his finger-clicking to pull a pack of Mayfairs out of his pocket. He lit one with a cheap lighter without asking whether Strike minded. With a mental shrug, Strike took out his own Benson & Hedges and borrowed the lighter. “Seen ’is dealer. Geezer says ’e’s in Catford.”

“He’s left Hackney?”

“Unless ’e’s left a clone of ’imself behind ’e musta done, Bunsen. I didn’t check for clones. Gimme another ton an’ I’ll go see.”

Strike gave a short snort of amusement. People underestimated Shanker at their peril. Given that he looked as though he had done every kind of illegal substance in his time, his restlessness often misled acquaintances into assuming he was on something. In fact, he was sharper and soberer than many a businessman at the end of their working day, if incurably criminal.

“Got an address?” said Strike, pulling a notebook towards him.

“Not yet,” said Shanker.

“Is he working?”

“’E tells ev’ryone ’e’s a road manager for some metal band.”

“But?”

“’E’s pimping,” said Shanker matter-of-factly.

There was a knock on the door.

“Anyone want coffee?” asked Robin. Strike could tell that she was deliberately keeping her face out of the light. His eyes found her left hand: the engagement ring was missing.

“Cheers,” said Shanker. “Two sugars.”

“Tea would be great, thanks,” said Strike, watching her move away as he reached into his desk for the old tin ashtray he had swiped from a bar in Germany. He pushed it across to Shanker before the latter could tap his lengthening ash on the floor.

“How d’you know he’s pimping?”

“I know this uvver geezer who met ’im with the brass,” said Shanker. Strike was familiar with the cockney slang: brass nail—“tail.” “Says Whittaker lives with ’er. Very young. Just legal.”

“Right,” said Strike.

He had dealt with prostitution in its various aspects ever since he had become an investigator, but this was different: this was his ex-stepfather, a man whom his mother had loved and romanticized, to whom she had borne a child. He could almost smell Whittaker in the room again: his filthy clothes, his animal stink.

“Catford,” he repeated.

“Yeah. I’ll keep looking if you want,” said Shanker, disregarding the ashtray and flicking his ash onto the floor. “’Ow much is it wurf to you, Bunsen?”

While they were still negotiating Shanker’s fee, a discussion that proceeded with good humor but the underlying seriousness of two men who knew perfectly well that he would do nothing without payment, Robin brought in the coffee. With the light full on her face, she looked ghastly.

“I’ve done the most important emails,” she told Strike, pretending not to notice his inquiring look. “I’ll head off and do Platinum now.”

Shanker looked thoroughly intrigued by this announcement, but nobody explained.

“You OK?” Strike asked her, wishing that Shanker were not present.

“Fine,” said Robin, with a pathetic attempt at a smile. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“‘’Ead off and do platinum’?” repeated Shanker curiously over the sound of the outer door closing.

“It’s not as good as it sounds,” said Strike, leaning back in his seat to look out of the window. Robin left the building in her trench coat and headed off up Denmark Street and out of sight. A large man in a beanie hat came out of the guitar shop opposite and set off in the same direction, but Strike’s attention had already been recalled by Shanker, who said:

“Someone really sent you a f*cking leg, Bunsen?”

“Yep,” said Strike. “Cut it off, boxed it up and delivered it by hand.”

“Fuck me backwards,” said Shanker, whom it took a great deal to shock.

After Shanker had left in possession of a wad of cash for services already rendered, and the promise of the same again for further details on Whittaker, Strike phoned Robin. She did not pick up, but that wasn’t unusual if she was somewhere she couldn’t easily talk. He texted her:


Let me know when you’re somewhere I can meet you




then sat down in her vacated chair, ready to do his fair share of answering inquiries and paying invoices.

However, he found it hard to focus after the second night on a sleeper. Five minutes later he checked his mobile but Robin had not responded, so he got up to make himself another mug of tea. As he raised the mug to his lips he caught a faint whiff of cannabis, transferred from hand to hand as he and Shanker said farewell.

Shanker came originally from Canning Town but had cousins in Whitechapel who, twenty years previously, had become involved in a feud with a rival gang. Shanker’s willingness to help out his cousins had resulted in him lying alone in the gutter at the end of Fulbourne Street, bleeding copiously from the deep gash to his mouth and cheek that disfigured him to this day. It was there that Leda Strike, returning from a late-evening excursion to purchase Rizlas, had found him.

To walk past a boy of her own son’s age while he lay bleeding in the gutter would have been impossible for Leda. The fact that the boy was clutching a bloody knife, that he was screaming imprecations and clearly in the grip of some kind of drug made no difference at all. Shanker found himself being mopped up and talked to as he had not been talked to since his own mother had died when he was eight. When he refused point blank to let the strange woman call an ambulance, for fear of what the police would do to him (Shanker had just stuck his knife through the thigh of his attacker), Leda took what, to her, was the only possible course: she helped him home to the squat and looked after him personally. After cutting up Band Aids and sticking them clumsily over the deep cut in a semblance of stitches, she cooked him a sloppy mess full of cigarette ash and told her bemused son to find a mattress where Shanker could sleep.