Career of Evil

The pair they sought was easy to spot among the tastefully dressed, mostly female clientele. Jason was a stringy youth with a long nose who wore a maroon hoodie and jeans and looked as though he might take flight at the slightest provocation. Staring down at his napkin, he resembled a scruffy heron. Tempest, whose black bob had certainly been dyed and who wore thick, square black-rimmed spectacles, was his physical opposite: pale, dumpy and doughy, her small, deep-set eyes like raisins in a bun. Wearing a black T-shirt with a multicolored cartoon pony stretched across an ample chest, she was sitting in a wheelchair adjacent to the table. Both had menus open in front of them. Tempest had already ordered herself a glass of wine.

When she spotted Strike and Robin approaching, Tempest beamed, stretched out a stubby forefinger and poked Jason on the shoulder. The boy looked around apprehensively; Strike registered the pronounced asymmetry of his pale blue eyes, one of which was a good centimeter higher than the other. It gave him an oddly vulnerable look, as though he had been finished in a hurry.

“Hi,” said Robin, smiling and reaching out a hand to Jason first. “It’s nice to meet you at last.”

“Hi,” he muttered, proffering limp fingers. After one quick glance at Strike he looked away, turning red.

“Well, hello!” said Tempest, sticking her own hand out to Strike, still beaming. Deftly she reversed her wheelchair a few inches and suggested that he pull up a chair from a neighboring table. “This place is great. It’s so easy to get around in, and the staff are really helpful. Excuse me!” she said loudly to a passing waiter, “Could we have two more menus, please?”

Strike sat down beside her, while Jason shunted up to make room for Robin beside him.

“Lovely space, isn’t it?” said Tempest, sipping her wine. “And the staff are wonderful about the wheelchair. Can’t help you enough. I’m going to be recommending it on my site; I do a list of disability-friendly venues.”

Jason drooped over his menu, apparently afraid to make eye contact with anyone.

“I’ve told him not to mind what he orders.” Tempest told Strike comfortably. “He didn’t realize how much you’ll have made from solving those cases. I’ve told him: the press will have paid you loads just for your story. I suppose that’s what you do now, try and solve the really high-profile ones?”

Strike thought of his plummeting bank balance, his glorified bedsit over the office and the shattering effect the severed leg had had on his business.

“We try,” he said, avoiding looking at Robin.

Robin chose the cheapest salad and a water. Tempest ordered a starter as well as a main course, urged Jason to imitate her, then collected in the menus to return them to the waiter with the air of a gracious hostess.

“So, Jason,” Robin began.

Tempest at once talked over Robin, addressing Strike.

“Jason’s nervous. He hadn’t really thought through what the repercussions of meeting you might be. I had to point them out to him; we’ve been on the phone day and night, you should see the bills — I should charge you, ha, ha! But seriously—”

Her expression became suddenly grave.

“—we’d really like your assurance up front that we’re not going to be in trouble for not telling the police everything. Because it wasn’t as though we had any useful information. She was just a poor kid with problems. We don’t know anything. We only met up with her once, and we haven’t got a clue who killed her. I’m sure you know much more about it than we do. I was pretty worried when I heard Jason had been talking to your partner, to be honest, because I don’t think anyone really appreciates how much we’re persecuted as a community. I’ve had death threats myself — I should hire you to investigate them, ha ha.”

“Who’s made death threats against you?” asked Robin in polite surprise.

“It’s my website, you see,” said Tempest, ignoring Robin and addressing Strike. “I run it. It’s like I’m den mother — or Mother Superior, ha ha... anyway, I’m the one everyone confides in and comes to for advice, so obviously, I’m the one who gets attacked when ignorant people target us. I suppose I don’t help myself. I fight other people’s battles a lot, don’t I, Jason? Anyway,” she said, pausing only to take a greedy sip of wine, “I can’t advise Jason to talk to you without a guarantee he’s not going to get in any trouble.”

Strike wondered what possible authority she thought he had in the matter. The reality was that both Jason and Tempest had concealed information from the police and, whatever their reasons for doing so, and whether or not the information turned out to be valuable, their behavior had been foolish and potentially harmful.

“I don’t think either of you will be in trouble,” he lied easily.