Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(54)

Beneath the table top, Robin made fists, her nails digging deep into her palms.

“Now,” said Wardle, and Detective Sergeant Ekwensi clicked out the nib of her pen and prepared to write, “does the name Oxana Voloshina mean anything to either of you?”

“No,” said Strike and Robin shook her head.

“It looks like that was the victim’s real name,” Wardle explained. “That’s how she signed her tenancy agreement and the landlady says she provided ID. She was claiming to be a student.”

“Claiming?” said Robin.

“We’re looking into who she really was,” said Wardle.

Of course, thought Robin, he’s expecting her to be a prostitute.

“Her English was good, judging by her letter,” commented Strike. “That’s if she genuinely wrote it.”

Robin looked at him, confused.

“If someone’s faking letters from me, why couldn’t they have faked the letter from her?” Strike asked her.

“To try and get you to genuinely communicate with her, you mean?”

“Yeah—lure me to a rendezvous or lay some kind of paper trail between us that would look incriminating once she was dead.”

“Van, go see if the photos of the body are viewable,” said Wardle.

Detective Sergeant Ekwensi left the room. Her posture was that of a model. Robin’s insides began to crawl with panic. As though Wardle had sensed it, he turned to her and said:

“I don’t think you’ll need to look at them if Strike—”

“She should look,” said Strike.

Wardle looked taken aback and Robin, though she tried not to show it, found herself wondering whether Strike was trying to scare her into compliance with his nothing-after-dark rule.

“Yes,” she said, with a decent show of calm. “I think I should.”

“They’re—not nice,” said Wardle, with uncharacteristic understatement.

“The leg was sent to Robin,” Strike reminded him. “There’s as much chance that she’s seen this woman previously as I have. She’s my partner. We work the same jobs.”

Robin glanced sideways at Strike. He had never before described her as his partner to somebody else, or not within Robin’s hearing. He was not looking at her. Robin switched her attention back to Wardle. Apprehensive though she was, after hearing Strike put her on equal professional footing with himself she knew that, whatever she was about to see, she would not let herself, or him, down. When Detective Sergeant Ekwensi returned holding a sheaf of photographs in her hand Robin swallowed hard and straightened her back.

Strike took them first and his reaction was not reassuring.

“Holy f*cking shit.”

“The head’s best preserved,” said Wardle quietly, “because he put it in the freezer.”

Just as she would have withdrawn her hand instinctively from something red hot, Robin now had to fight a powerful urge to turn away, to close her eyes, to flip the photograph over. Instead she took it from Strike and looked down; her intestines became liquid.

The severed head sat on what remained of its neck, staring blindly into the camera, its eyes so frosted their color was invisible. The mouth gaped darkly. Her brown hair was stiff, flecked with ice. The cheeks were full and chubby, the chin and forehead covered in acne. She looked younger than twenty-four.

“Do you recognize her?”

Wardle’s voice sounded startlingly close to Robin. She had felt as though she had traveled a long distance as she stared at the severed head.

“No,” said Robin.

She put the picture down and took the next from Strike. A left leg and two arms had been rammed into the fridge, where they had begun to decompose. Having steeled herself for the head she had not thought anything else could be as bad and she was ashamed of the small bleat of distress that escaped her.

“Yeah, it’s bad,” said Detective Sergeant Ekwensi quietly. Robin met her eyes with gratitude.

“There’s a tattoo on the wrist of the left arm,” Wardle pointed out, handing them a third picture in which the relevant arm lay outstretched on a table. Now feeling definitely nauseated, Robin looked and made out “1D” in black ink.

“You don’t need to see the torso,” said Wardle, shuffling the photographs and handing them back to Detective Sergeant Ekwensi.

“Where was it?” asked Strike.

“In the bath,” said Wardle. “That’s where he killed her, the bathroom. It looked like an abattoir in there.” He hesitated. “The leg wasn’t the only thing he cut off her.”

Robin was glad that Strike did not ask what else had gone. She did not think she could stand to hear.

“Who found her?” asked Strike.

“The landlady,” said Wardle. “She’s elderly and she collapsed right after we got there. Looks like a heart attack. They took her to Hammersmith Hospital.”

“What made her go round?”

“Smell,” said Wardle. “Downstairs had rung her. She decided to pop in early before doing her shopping, try and catch this Oxana at home. When she didn’t answer the landlady let herself in.”

“Downstairs hadn’t heard anything—screams—anything?”

“It’s a converted house full of students. Less than bloody useless,” said Wardle. “Loud music, mates coming and going all hours, they gaped like sheep when we asked them if they’d heard anything from upstairs. The girl who’d rung the landlady had total hysterics. She said she’d never forgive herself for not phoning up when she first smelled something bad.”