Career of Evil

“Donnie’s the youngest. He’s got four older brothers. They’re hard men,” said Mrs. Bunyan, “all of them. Jamie stays in Selkirk — he came tearing through to get Donnie out of his mother’s house. They say he knocked him senseless.”

She took a tremulous sip of her orange juice and continued:

“We heard all about it. Our friend Brian, who you just met, he saw the fight happening out on the street. Four of them onto one, all of them shouting and yelling. Someone called the police. Jamie got a caution. He didn’t care,” said Mrs. Bunyan. “They didn’t want him anywhere near them, or their mother. They ran him out of town.

“I was terrified,” she continued. “For Rhona. He’d always said he’d find her when he got out.”

“And did he?” asked Strike.

“Och, yes,” said Margaret Bunyan miserably. “We knew he would. She’d moved tae Glasgow, got a job in a travel agent’s. He still found her. Six months she lived in fear of him turning up and then one day he did. Came to her flat one night, but he’d been ill. He wasn’t the same.”

“Ill?” repeated Strike sharply.

“I can’t remember what it was he’d got, some kind of arthritis, I think, and Rhona said he’d put on a lot of weight. He turned up at her flat at night, he’d tracked her down, but thanks be to God,” said Mrs. Bunyan fervently, “her fiancé was staying over. His name’s Ben,” she added, with a triumphal flourish, the color high in her faded cheeks, “and he’s a policeman.”

She said it as though she thought Strike would be especially glad to hear this, as though he and Ben were comembers of some great investigative brotherhood.

“They’re married now,” said Mrs. Bunyan. “No kids, because — well, you know why—”

And without warning, a torrent of tears burst forth, streaming down Mrs. Bunyan’s face behind her glasses. The horror of what had happened a decade ago was suddenly fresh and raw, as though a pile of offal had been dumped on the table in front of them.

“—Laing stuck a knife up inside her,” whispered Mrs. Bunyan.

She confided in him as though Strike were a doctor or a priest, telling him the secrets that weighed on her, but which she could not tell her friends: he already knew the worst. As she groped again for the handkerchief in her square black bag, Strike remembered the wide patch of blood on the sheets, the excoriated skin on her wrist where Rhona had tried to free herself. Thank God her mother could not see inside his head.

“He stuck a knife inside — and they tried to — you know — repair—”

Mrs. Bunyan took a deep, shuddering breath as two plates of food appeared in front of them.

“But she and Ben have lovely holidays,” she whispered frantically, dabbing repeatedly at her hollow cheeks, lifting her glasses to reach her eyes. “And they breed — they breed German — German Shepherds.”

Hungry though he was, Strike could not eat in the immediate aftermath of discussing what had been done to Rhona Laing.

“She and Laing had a baby, didn’t they?” he asked, remembering its feeble whimpering from beside its bloodstained, dehydrated mother. “The kid must be, what, ten by now?”

“He d-died,” she whispered, tears dripping off the end of her chin. “C-cot death. He was always sickly, the bairn. It happened two d-days after they put D-Donnie away. And h-he — Donnie — he telephoned her out of the jail and told her he knew she’d killed — killed — the baby — and that he’d kill her when he got out—”

Strike laid a large hand briefly on the sobbing woman’s shoulder, then hoisted himself to his feet and approached the young barmaid who was watching them with her mouth open. Brandy seemed too strong for the sparrow-like creature behind him. Strike’s Aunt Joan, who was only a little older than Mrs. Bunyan, always regarded port as medicinal. He ordered a glass and took it back to her.

“Here. Drink this.”

His reward was a recrudescence of tears, but after much more dabbing with the sodden handkerchief she said shakily, “You’re very kind,” sipped it, gave a little gasping sigh and blinked at him, her fair-lashed eyes pink like a piglet’s.

“Have you got any idea where Laing went after turning up at Rhona’s?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Ben put out feelers through work, through the probation office. Apparently he went to Gateshead, but I don’t know whether he’s still there.”

Gateshead. Strike remembered the Donald Laing he had found online. Had he moved from Gateshead to Corby? Or were they different men?

“Anyway,” said Mrs. Bunyan, “he’s never bothered Rhona and Ben again.”

“I’ll bet he hasn’t,” said Strike, picking up his knife and fork. “A copper and German Shepherds, eh? He’s not stupid.”

She seemed to take courage and comfort from his words, and with a timid, tearful smile began to pick at her macaroni cheese.

“They married young,” commented Strike, who was keen to hear anything he could about Laing, anything that might give a lead on his associations or habits.

She nodded, swallowed and said: