Nevertheless, he could not always be there. On the day that Leda had died, Shanker had been away on one of his regular, drug-related business trips. Strike would never forget Shanker’s grief, his guilt, his uncontrollable tears when they next met. While Shanker had been negotiating a good price for a kilo of premium Bolivian cocaine in Kentish Town, Leda Strike had been slowly stiffening on a filthy mattress. The finding of the post-mortem was that she had ceased to breathe a full six hours before any of the other squat dwellers tried to rouse her from what they had thought was a profound slumber.
Like Strike, Shanker had been convinced from the first that Whittaker had killed her, and such was the violence of his grief and his desire for instant retribution that Whittaker might well have been glad he was taken into custody before Shanker could get his hands on him. Inadvisably allowed into the witness box to describe a maternal woman who had never touched heroin in her life, Shanker had screamed “That fucker done it!,” attempted to clamber over the barrier towards Whittaker and been bundled unceremoniously out of court.
Consciously pushing away these memories of the long-buried past, which smelled no better for being dug up again, Strike took a swig of hot tea and checked his mobile again. There was still no word from Robin.
19
Workshop of the Telescopes
He had known the second he laid eyes on The Secretary that morning that she was out of kilter, off-balance. Look at her, sitting in the window of the Garrick, the large students’ restaurant serving the LSE. She was plain today. Puffy, red-eyed, pale. He could probably take the seat next to her and the stupid bitch wouldn’t notice. Concentrating on the tart with the silver hair, who was working on a laptop a few tables away, she had no attention to spare for men. Suited him. She’d be noticing him before long. He’d be her last sight on earth.
He didn’t need to look like Pretty Boy today; he never approached them sexually if they were upset. That was when he became the friend in need, the avuncular stranger. Not all men are like that, darling. You deserve better. Let me walk you home. Come on, I’ll give you a lift. You could do almost anything with them if you made them forget you had a dick.
He entered the crowded restaurant, skulking around the counter, buying a coffee and finding himself a corner where he could watch her from behind.
Her engagement ring was missing. That was interesting. It shone a new light on the holdall she had been alternately carrying over her shoulder and hiding under tables. Was she planning to sleep somewhere other than the flat in Ealing? Might she be heading down a deserted street for once, a shortcut with poor lighting, a lonely underpass?
The very first time he’d killed had been like that: a simple question of seizing the moment. He remembered it in snapshots, like a slideshow, because it had been thrilling and new. That was before he had honed it to an art, before he had started playing it like the game it was.
She’d been plump and dark. Her mate had just left, got into a punter’s car and disappeared. The bloke in the car had not known that he was choosing which of them would survive the night.
He, meanwhile, had been driving up and down the street with his knife in his pocket. When he had been sure that she was alone, completely alone, he had drawn up and leaned across the passenger seat to talk to her through the window. His mouth had been dry as he asked for it. She had agreed a price and got in the car. They had driven down a nearby dead end where neither streetlights nor passersby would trouble them.
He got what he’d asked for, then, as she was straightening up, before he had even zipped up his flies, he had punched her, knocking her back into the car door, the back of her head banging off the window. Before she could make a sound he’d pulled out the knife.
The meaty thump of the blade in her flesh—the heat of her blood gushing over his hands—she did not even scream but gasped, moaned, sinking down in the seat as he pounded the blade into her again and again. He had torn the gold pendant from around her neck. He had not thought, then, about taking the ultimate trophy: a bit of her, but instead wiped his hands on her dress while she sat slumped beside him, twitching in her death throes. He had reversed out of the alleyway, trembling with fear and elation, and driven out of town with the body beside him, keeping carefully to the speed limit, looking in his rearview mirror every few seconds. There was a place he had checked out just a few days previously, a stretch of deserted countryside and an overgrown ditch. She had made a heavy, wet thump when he rolled her into it.
He had her pendant still, along with a few other souvenirs. They were his treasure. What, he wondered, would he take from The Secretary?
A Chinese boy near him was reading something on a tablet. Behavioral Economics. Dumb psychological crap. He had seen a psychologist once, been forced to.
“Tell me about your mother.”
The little bald man had literally said it, the joke line, the cliché. They were supposed to be smart, psychologists. He’d played along for the fun of it, telling the idiot about his mother: that she was a cold, mean, screwed-up bitch. His birth had been an inconvenience, an embarrassment to her, and she wouldn’t have cared if he’d lived or died.
“And your father?”
“I haven’t got a father,” he’d said.
“You mean you never see him?”
Silence.
“You don’t know who he is?”