Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)(79)

“Sure about what?” asked Strike, turning to look at her.

“That it can’t be Brockbank.”

“If it’s not Brittany—” began Strike.

“You’ve just told me that girl—”

“Ingrid?”

“Ingrid,” said Robin, with a trace of impatience, “yes. You’ve just told me she says Brockbank’s obsessed with you. He holds you accountable for his brain damage and the loss of his family.”

Strike watched her, frowning, thinking.

“Everything I said last night about the killer wanting to denigrate you and belittle your war record would sit comfortably with everything we know about Brockbank,” Robin went on, “and don’t you think that meeting this Kelsey and perhaps seeing the scarring on her leg that was like Brittany’s, or hearing that she wanted to get rid of it could have—I don’t know—triggered something in him? I mean,” said Robin tentatively, “we don’t know exactly how the brain damage—”

“He’s not that f*cking brain damaged,” snapped Strike. “He was faking in the hospital. I know he was.”

Robin said nothing, but sat behind the wheel and watched shoppers moving up and down Adam and Eve Street. She envied them. Whatever their private preoccupations, they were unlikely to include mutilation and murder.

“You make some good points,” said Strike at last. Robin could tell that she had taken the edge off his private celebration. He checked his watch. “C’mon, we’d better get off to Corby if we’re going to do it today.”

The twelve miles between the two towns were swiftly covered. Robin guessed from his surly expression that Strike was mulling over their discussion about Brockbank. The road was nondescript, the surrounding countryside flat, hedgerows and occasional trees lining the route.

“So, Laing,” said Robin, trying to move Strike out of what seemed an uncomfortable reverie. “Remind me—?”

“Laing, yeah,” said Strike slowly.

She was right to think that he had been lost in thoughts of Brockbank. Now he forced himself to focus, to regroup.

“Well, Laing tied up his wife and used a knife on her; accused of rape twice that I know of, but never done for it—and he tried to bite half my face off in the boxing ring. Basically, a violent, devious bastard,” said Strike, “but, like I told you, his mother-in-law reckons he was ill when he got out of jail. She says he went to Gateshead, but he can’t have stayed there long if he was living in Corby with this woman in 2008,” he said, checking the map again for Lorraine MacNaughton’s road. “Right age, right time frame… we’ll see. If Lorraine’s not in, we’ll go back after five o’clock.”

Following Strike’s directions, Robin drove through the very center of Corby town, which proved to be a sprawl of concrete and brick dominated by a shopping center. A massive block of council offices, on which aerials bristled like iron moss, dominated the skyline. There was no central square, no ancient church and certainly no stilted, half-timbered grammar school. Corby had been planned to house its explosion of migrant workers in the 1940s and 1950s; many of the buildings had a cheerless, utilitarian air.

“Half the street names are Scottish,” said Robin as they passed Argyll Street and Montrose Street.

“Used to call it Little Scotland, didn’t they?” said Strike, noting a sign for Edinburgh House. He had heard that in its industrial heyday, Corby had had the largest Scottish population south of the border. Saltires and lions rampant fluttered from balconies of flats. “You can see why Laing might’ve felt more at home here than in Gateshead. Could’ve had contacts in the area.”

Five minutes later they found themselves in the old part of town, whose pretty stone buildings retained traces of the village that Corby had been before the steelworks arrived. Shortly afterwards they came upon Weldon Road, where Lorraine MacNaughton lived.

The houses stood in solid blocks of six, each pair a mirror image of the other, so that their front doors sat side by side and the layout of the windows was reversed. Carved into the stone lintel over each door was a name.

“That’s hers,” said Strike, pointing at Summerfield, which was twinned with Northfield.

Summerfield’s front garden had been covered in fine gravel. Northfield’s grass needed mowing, which reminded Robin of her own flat back in London.

“I think we’d both better go in,” Strike said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “She’ll probably be more comfortable with you there.”

The doorbell seemed to be out of order. Strike therefore rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles. An explosion of furious barking told them that the house had at least one living inhabitant. Then they heard a woman’s voice, angry but somehow ineffectual.

“Shh! Be quiet! Stop it! Shh! No!”

The door opened and Robin had just caught a glimpse of a hard-faced woman of around fifty when a rough-coated Jack Russell came pelting out, growling and barking with ferocity, and sank its teeth into Strike’s ankle. Fortunately for Strike, but less so for the Jack Russell, its teeth connected with steel. It yelped and Robin capitalized on its shock by stooping swiftly, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and lifting it up. So surprised was the dog at finding itself dangling in midair that it simply hung there.

“No biting,” said Robin.