The joiner arrived at last. Once Robin had given him her credit card details to pay for the damage, she told Alyssa that she had better get going.
Alyssa left Angel and Zahara curled up together on the sofa and accompanied Robin out into the dusky street.
“Listen,” said Alyssa.
There were still tear tracks down her face. Robin could tell that Alyssa was unused to thanking people.
“Thanks, all right?” she said, almost aggressively.
“No problem,” said Robin.
“I never — I mean — I met him at fucking church. I thought I’d found a good bloke at last, y’know... he was really good with the — with the kids—”
She began to sob. Robin considered reaching out to her, but decided against it. She was bruised all over her shoulders where Alyssa had pummeled her and her knife wound was throbbing more than ever.
“Has Brittany really been phoning him?” Robin asked.
“’S’what he told me,” said Alyssa, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “He reckoned his ex-wife framed him, got Brittany to lie... said if ever a young blonde bird turned up she was talking shit and I wasn’t to believe anything she said.”
Robin remembered the low voice in her ear:
Do A know you, little girl?
He had thought that she was Brittany. That was why he had hung up and never called back.
“I’d better be off,” said Robin, worried about how long it would take her to get back to West Ealing. Her body ached all over. Alyssa had landed some powerful blows. “You’ll call the police, right?”
“I s’pose,” said Alyssa. Robin suspected that the idea was a novel one to Alyssa. “Yeah.”
As Robin walked away in the darkness, her fist clenched tightly around her second rape alarm, she wondered what Brittany Brockbank had found to say to her stepfather, and thought she knew: “I haven’t forgotten. Do it again and I’ll report you.” Perhaps it had been a salve to her conscience. She had been frightened that he was still doing to others what he had done to her, but could not face the consequences of a historical accusation.
I put it to you, Miss Brockbank, that your stepfather never touched you, that this story was concocted by yourself and your mother...
Robin knew how it worked. The defense barrister she had faced had been cold and sardonic, his expression vulpine.
You were coming back from the student bar, Miss Ellacott, where you had been drinking, yes?
You had made a public joke about missing the — ah — attentions of your boyfriend, yes?
When you met Mr. Trewin—
I didn’t—
When you met Mr. Trewin outside the halls of residence—
I didn’t meet—
You told Mr. Trewin you were missing—
We never talked—
I put it to you, Miss Ellacott, that you are ashamed of inviting Mr. Trewin—
I didn’t invite—
You had made a joke, Miss Ellacott, hadn’t you, in the bar, about missing the, ah, sexual attentions of—
I said I missed—
How many drinks had you had, Miss Ellacott?
Robin understood only too well why people were scared of telling, of owning up to what had been done to them, of being told that the dirty, shameful, excruciating truth was a figment of their own sick imagination. Neither Holly nor Brittany had been able to face the prospect of open court, and perhaps Alyssa and Angel would be scared away too. Yet nothing, Robin was sure, short of death or incarceration would ever stop Noel Brockbank raping little girls. Even so, she would be glad to know that Shanker had not killed him, because if he had...
“Shanker!” she shouted as a tall, tattooed figure in a shell suit passed under a streetlamp ahead.
“Couldn’t fucking find the bastard, Rob!” came Shanker’s echoing voice. He did not seem to realize that Robin had been sitting on a hard floor in terror for two whole hours, praying for his return. “He can move for a big fucker, can’t ’e?”
“The police’ll find him,” said Robin, whose knees were suddenly weak. “Alyssa’s going to call them, I think. Shanker, will you... please will you drive me home?”
55
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn’t go on.
For twenty-four hours Strike remained in ignorance of what Robin had done. She did not answer when he phoned at lunchtime the next day, but as he was wrestling with his own dilemmas and believed her to be safe at home with her mother he neither found this strange nor troubled to call back. His injured partner was one of the few problems that he believed temporarily solved and he did not intend to encourage her in thoughts of returning to his side by confiding in her the revelation he had experienced outside the hospital.
This, however, was now his overriding preoccupation. After all, there was no longer any competition for his time or attention in the solitary, silent room where no clients called or visited. The only sound was the buzzing of a fly zooming between the open windows in the hazy sunlight, as Strike sat chain-smoking Benson & Hedges.
As he looked back over the almost three months since the severed leg had been delivered, the detective saw his mistakes only too clearly. He ought to have known the identity of the killer after visiting Kelsey Platt’s home. If he had only realized, then — if he had not allowed himself to be taken in by the killer’s misdirection, not been distracted by the competing scents of other deranged men — Lila Monkton would still have all ten fingers and Heather Smart might be safe at work in her Nottingham building society, vowing, perhaps, never again to be as drunk as she had been on her sister-in-law’s birthday jaunt to London.
Strike had not come up through the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police without learning to manage the emotional consequences of an investigation. The previous evening had been full of self-directed anger, but even as he castigated himself for not seeing what was right in front of him he had acknowledged the killer’s brazen brilliance. There had been artistry in the way that he had used Strike’s background against him, forcing Strike to second guess and question himself, undermining his trust in his own judgment.
The fact that the killer was indeed one of the men whom he had suspected from the first was cold comfort. Strike could not remember ever being in such agony of mind over an investigation as he was now. Alone in his deserted office, convinced that the conclusion he had reached had neither been given credence by the officer in whom he had confided it, nor passed on to Carver, Strike felt, however unreasonably, that if another killing occurred it would indeed be his fault.
Yet if he went near the investigation again — if he started staking out or tailing his man — Carver would almost certainly see him in court for interfering with the course of a police investigation or obstructing the police in their inquiries. He would have felt the same way himself, had he been in Carver’s shoes — except, thought Strike with a rush of pleasurable anger, that he would have listened to anyone, however infuriating, if he thought they had a shred of credible evidence. You did not solve a case as complex as this by discriminating against witnesses on the grounds that they have previously outwitted you.