Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(78)

The blonde and Strike emerged from the café. Ingrid did not seem to want to let Strike go. When he waved farewell she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then sashayed away. Strike caught Robin watching and got back into the car with a kind of bashful grimace.

“That looked interesting,” said Robin.

“Not really,” said Strike, showing her the number now keyed into his phone: NOEL BROCKBANK MOBILE. “She was just chatty.”

If Robin had been a male colleague he would have found it impossible not to add: “I was in there.” Ingrid had flirted shamelessly across the table, scrolling slowly through the contacts on her phone, wondering aloud whether she still had the number so that he started to feel anxious that she had nothing, asking him whether he had ever had a proper Thai massage, probing about what he wanted Noel for, about the cases he had solved, especially that of the beautiful dead model, which had first brought him to public notice, and finally insisting, with a warm smile, that he take her number too, “just in case.”

“D’you want to try Brockbank’s number now?” Robin asked, recalling Strike’s attention from the back view of Ingrid as she walked away.

“What? No. That wants thinking about. We might only have one shot if he picks up.” He checked his watch. “Let’s get going, I don’t want to be too late in Cor—”

The phone in his hand rang.

“Wardle,” said Strike.

He answered, putting the phone onto speaker so that Robin could listen.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve ID’d the body,” said Wardle. A note in his voice warned them that they were about to recognize a name. The tiny pause that followed allowed the image of that little girl with her small bird-like eyes to slide in panic through Strike’s mind.

“She’s called Kelsey Platt and she’s the girl who wrote to you for advice on how to cut off her leg. She was genuine. Sixteen years old.”

Equal amounts of relief and disbelief crashed over Strike. He groped for a pen, but Robin was already writing.

“She was doing a City and Guilds in childcare at some vocational college, which is where she met Oxana Voloshina. Kelsey usually lived in Finchley with her half-sister and the sister’s partner. She told them she was going away on a college placement for two weeks. They didn’t report her missing—they weren’t worried. She wasn’t expected back until tonight.

“Oxana says Kelsey didn’t get on with her sister and asked whether she could stay there for a couple of weeks, get some space. Looks like the girl had it all planned out, writing to you from that address. The sister’s a total mess, understandably. I can’t get much sense out of her yet, but she’s confirmed the handwriting on the letter was genuine and the thing the girl had about wanting to get rid of her leg didn’t seem to come as a total shock to her. We got DNA samples off the girl’s hairbrush. It matches. It’s her.”

With a creak of the passenger seat, Strike leaned closer to Robin to read her notes. She could smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes and a tiny whiff of sandalwood.

“There’s a partner living with the sister?” he asked. “A man?”

“You won’t pin it on him,” said Wardle, and Strike could tell that Wardle had already had a good try. “Forty-five, retired fireman, not in great nick. Knackered lungs and a watertight alibi for the weekend in question.”

“The weekend—?” began Robin.

“Kelsey left her sister’s on the night of April first. We know she must’ve died on the second or third—you got handed her leg on the fourth. Strike, I’m going to need you back in here for more questions. Routine, but we’re going to have to take a formal statement about those letters.”

There seemed little else to be said. After accepting Strike’s thanks for letting them know, Wardle rang off, leaving a silence that seemed to Robin to quiver with aftershocks.





28



… oh Debbie Denise was true to me,

She’d wait by the window, so patiently.

Blue ?yster Cult, “Debbie Denise”

Lyrics by Patti Smith



“This whole trip’s been a wasted detour. It isn’t Brittany. It can’t be Brockbank.”

Strike’s relief was stupendous. The colors of Adam and Eve Street seemed suddenly washed clean, the passersby brighter, more likable than they had been before he had taken the call. Brittany must, after all, be alive somewhere. This was not his fault. The leg had not been hers.

Robin said nothing. She could hear the triumph in Strike’s voice, feel his release. She, of course, had never met or seen Brittany Brockbank, and while she was glad the girl was safe, the fact remained that a girl had died in horrific circumstances. The guilt that had tumbled from Strike seemed to have fallen heavily into her own lap. She was the one who had skim-read Kelsey’s letter and simply filed it in the nutter drawer without response. Would it have made a difference, Robin wondered, if she had contacted Kelsey and advised her to get help? Or if Strike had called her and told her that he had lost his leg in battle, that whatever she had been told about his injury was a lie? Robin’s insides ached with regret.

“Are you sure?” she said aloud after a full minute’s silence, both of them lost in their own private thoughts.