Grant returned wordlessly to the kitchen and returned with the envelope and a freezer bag.
‘If you can open the letter and put it and the envelope in the bag, before we read it,’ said Strike. Grant did as he was told, then slid the encased letter across the table.
Robin’s heart was now racing. She leaned towards Strike to read a short paragraph written in the purest example of what Pat would have called ‘nutter writing’ that Strike had ever seen. Small and uneven, with some letters obsessively retraced in dark ink, it looked strangely childlike, or would have seemed so, but for the flawless spelling and the content.
You told me I’m just like you. You made me think you loved me, then dropped me like a piece of shit. If you’d lived, you’d have used and tortured more men for kicks, spitting them out once you were bored. You were an arrogant, hypocritical, despicable cunt and I want these words to rot beside you, your closest, truest epitaph. Look up from Hell and watch while I take control of The Ink Black Heart, Forever.
‘Katya Upcott gave you this?’ said Strike, looking up at Grant.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s disgusting, isn’t it?’ said Heather hotly. ‘Just disgusting. And the fact that Katya copied down all that filth and then handed it over to Grub, knowing what was in there – and Allan Yeoman and Richard Elgar saying she’s such a nice woman – it honestly made me feel sick to hear them, that day at the Arts Club.’
‘Except that Katya Upcott didn’t write this,’ said Strike. ‘This isn’t her handwriting. That’s her handwriting,’ said Strike, pointing at the envelope, on which was written ‘For Edie’ in the same neat, square hand as the list of names Katya had given him weeks previously.
‘So… who wrote that?’ asked Grant, pointing a short, thick finger at the letter. He and Heather both looked scared, now.
‘Anomie,’ said Strike, now taking out his mobile and taking a picture of the letter. He put both phone and notebook back into his pocket and reached for his crutches. ‘You should call the police immediately. Ask for Ryan Murphy of the CID. He needs to see that letter. In the meantime, don’t take it out of that bag.’
Strike managed to get back up onto his crutches with some difficulty: it was always harder to balance after a long period sitting.
‘Good night,’ said Robin quietly to the Ledwells, finding it hard to immediately abandon her good cop persona. She followed Strike back into the house, the yaps of the Pomeranian next door punctuating the shocked silence they left behind them.
105
When mysteries shall be revealed;
All secrets be unsealed;
When things of night, when things of shame,
Shall find at last a name…
‘Right,’ said Strike, as they walked down the Ledwells’ short front path in the gathering darkness. ‘We need to talk to Katya. I want to get to Anomie before he starts smashing up any more hard drives.’
Once they were both back in the BMW and Strike had shoved his crutches onto the back seat, he called Katya, but after a few rings he reached voicemail.
‘No answer.’
‘It’s a quarter to ten,’ said Robin, glancing at the dashboard clock. ‘Maybe she mutes calls at this time of the evening?’
‘Then we’ll go to the house,’ said Strike.
‘Don’t think Inigo’s going to be happy getting a visit from us this late,’ said Robin as she turned on the engine. ‘It’ll take us a good twenty minutes from here.’
‘Hopefully the miserable sod’s still in Whitstable.’
As Robin pulled out of the parking space and accelerated up Battledean Road, she said,
‘Katya can’t have known what she was handing over. She must have thought what Josh had dictated was still in the envelope.’
‘I agree, which means she let that envelope out of her sight at some point between sealing it at the hospital and handing it over to Grant Ledwell. We need to know exactly the journey it took.’
‘There’s still the DNA, as long as the Ledwells haven’t contaminated it too much.’
‘Anomie’s not stupid. I’ll bet he wore gloves, and if there isn’t any DNA on there all we’ve got is the handwriting and potential access to Katya’s handbag.’
As they passed through residential streets, behind whose illuminated windows Robin imagined sane, happy people living, she said quietly,
‘We’re looking at someone really malign, aren’t we? Wanting to put that in her coffin?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, deep in thought, his eyes on the road ahead, ‘this is a deeply disturbed individual.’
‘Who thought Edie loved him.’
‘Or kidded himself she did.’
‘Can I know what that “wire-cutting” comment meant now?’
‘What?’ said Strike, who was following his own train of thought. ‘Oh – I was talking about cutting through barbed wire to breach the enemy’s trenches.’
‘And the wire in this case is…?’
‘Those satellite accounts Anomie made on Twitter. The arrogant fucker never thought anyone would get interested in all these minor accounts, so he got a bit slack with the names… Give me just one more minute, and I’ll tell you where I think they’re pointing,’ said Strike, taking out his mobile again. ‘I know I’ve seen the name John Baldwin somewhere other than Twitter…’
Though feeling both impatient and anxious, Robin obediently fell silent as she turned the car onto the Holloway Road, which would take them north-west, towards Hampstead and Highgate. Beside her, Strike was hunched over his mobile, scowling, intermittently typing and thinking.
‘Got him!’ said Strike so loudly that Robin jumped. ‘He’s on Reddit, the “Track Criminal Bitches” page and – fuck.’
‘What?’ said Robin, whose heart was still hammering.
‘He reported Marcus Barrett’s sister.’
‘What?’
‘“Lying bitch Darcy Olivia Barrett made false sexual assault accusation against boyfriend. Living at 4b Lancaster Drive, Hoxteth”… He gives all her social media accounts… That’ll be why I couldn’t find any for her. I bet she wiped the lot once this appeared.’
‘Strike, tell me about the names,’ said Robin. ‘What do they give away?’
‘Well, for a start, Marc Lépine shot fourteen women. Anomie’s favourite number’s fourteen. Julius-I-am-Evola tells us Anomie is, or was, at North Grove.’
‘I thought you said Evola was the kind of writer the far right—?’
‘I was wrong. If Anomie’s Lepine’s Disciple, he’s I am Evola, as well. Then we’ve got Max Reger, nineteenth-century German composer – I should’ve spotted that: I saw a book of his music on the bloody keyboard.’
‘Wait—’
‘John Baldwin, sixteenth-century British composer; Zoltán Kodály, early twentieth-century Hungarian composer. Scaramouche: straight out of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Which means somebody who listens to Queen, and the Beatles, possibly because he hasn’t got a—’
Strike’s mobile rang over the car’s Bluetooth: Katya was ringing him back. He answered the call, but had uttered one syllable of ‘hello’ before a high-pitched scream rang through the speaker.
‘Help us, help us, help—!’