Cormoran Strike, illegitimate son of rock star Jonny Rokeby and wealthy Londoners’ favourite private detective, is alleged to have hired Candy, a 23-year-old sex worker, to entrap a married man and, when the scheme failed, attempted to force her into sex with himself…
‘It was in 2013 and I thought he must be a good guy, he’d caught that strangler who went after working girls… I was kind of excited, actually. I thought I was going to help him do something good…
‘… doesn’t seem fair naming the target, he didn’t want to do anything with me. But when I asked Strike for my money, he said he’d only give it me if I slept with him…’
… this newspaper’s recent report on Cormoran Strike, in which a second woman claimed that she’d been used by the detective to procure information needed in a case…
… son of rock star Jonny Rokeby and 70s super-groupie Leda Strike, who died of a heroin overdose in 1994…
‘This is yet more proof, as if we needed it, that private detectives are operating in an unregulated Wild West that needs urgent legislative attention,’ says Lord Oliver Branfoot ‘… the grubby tactics used by these detectives need to be addressed for the good of the public…’
We asked Cormoran Strike for comment.
Strike sat motionless, staring at the screen, every muscle tensed, a roaring in his ears, his guts full of lava. Culpepper had crossed over the line into pure invention; this story was entirely without foundation. Was the girl – her face was pixelated in the two pictures accompanying the story, but her body was clearly visible, in its skimpy red underwear – a chimera, too? Or had Culpepper paid some real sex worker a fee to become Candy, in print?
Strike looked away from the screen and his eyes fell on the fisherman’s priest which lay quiescent on the windowsill, a worn relic of Ted, a man of whom nobody could ever have believed this kind of sleaze. Strike then glanced down at his mobile. Nobody had texted him. Doubtless his friends and his family were wondering whether it could be true, whether this was how he conducted his professional life, whether this was his dirty little secret.
He got to his feet, feeling as though his heart was attempting to knock its way through his ribs, grabbed his keys and left the flat, slamming the door behind him.
32
Robert Browning
Robin had seen the online article about Strike just before boarding the Tube that morning, and consequently spent most of her journey to Denmark Street staring fixedly at the passenger opposite’s feet and thinking about what she’d just read, instead of the discovery she’d made the previous evening and which she’d been looking forward to sharing with Strike.
She told herself the Candy story must be false, but could she be completely sure? Back in 2013 she and Strike had been by no means as close as they were now; there’d been pockets of his life that had remained totally mysterious to her. A voice in her head kept insisting
No, Strike wouldn’t be the first man to have done something nobody around him believed him capable of, and the pit of Robin’s stomach felt as though it was teeming with wriggling maggots, and she just wanted to get to the office and have the thing out with him, believing (but could she count even on that?) that if she could look him in the eye, she’d know the truth.
Robin had just left Tottenham Court Road when her mobile rang.
‘There are journalists outside the office, he wanted you to know,’ said Pat.
‘How many?’ said Robin.
‘Two.’
‘What’s going on there?’
‘I think he’s going to do something silly,’ said Pat.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He’s trying to get hold of that journalist who wrote the thing.’
‘I’ll be there in five,’ said Robin, speeding up.
As she rounded the corner into Denmark Street she heard a man calling her name. She bowed her head and kept walking; there didn’t seem to be a photographer, thank God—
‘Miss Ellacott? Miss Ellacott? Anything to say about Lord Branfoot’s comments? Anything to say about Candy, Miss Ellacott?’