The Silkworm

Strike thought of Succuba, the ‘well-worn whore’, and found himself despising Owen Quine.

‘I wanted to ask you about Talgarth Road.’

‘I don’t know why he went there,’ she said immediately. ‘He hated it. He wanted to sell it for years but that Fancourt wouldn’t.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that.’

Orlando had slid onto the chair beside him, one bare leg twisted underneath her as she added vibrantly coloured fins to a picture of a large fish with a pack of crayons she appeared to have pulled from thin air.

‘How come Michael Fancourt’s been able to block the sale all these years?’

‘It’s something to do with how it was left to ’em by that bloke Joe. Something about how it was to be used. I dunno. You’d have to ask Liz, she knows all about it.’

‘When was the last time Owen was there, do you know?’

‘Years ago,’ she said. ‘I dunno. Years.’

‘I want more paper to draw,’ Orlando announced.

‘I haven’t got any more,’ said Leonora. ‘It’s all in Daddy’s study. Use the back of this.’

She seized a circular from the cluttered work surface and pushed it across the table to Orlando, but her daughter shoved it away and left the kitchen at a languid walk, the orang-utan swinging from her neck. Almost at once they heard her trying to force the door of the study.

‘Orlando, no!’ barked Leonora, jumping up and hurrying into the hall. Strike took advantage of her absence to lean back and pour away most of his milky tea into the sink; it spattered down the bouquet clinging traitorously to the cellophane.

‘No, Dodo. You can’t do that. No. We’re not allowed – we’re not allowed, get off it—’

A high-pitched wail and then a loud thudding proclaimed Orlando’s flight upstairs. Leonora reappeared in the kitchen with a flushed face.

‘I’ll be paying for that all day now,’ she said. ‘She’s unsettled. Don’t like the police here.’

She yawned nervously.

‘Have you slept?’ Strike asked.

‘Not much. Cos I keep thinking, Who? Who’d do it to him? He upsets people, I know that,’ she said distractedly, ‘but that’s just how he is. Temperamental. He gets angry over little things. He’s always been like that, he don’t mean anything by it. Who’d kill him for that?

‘Michael Fancourt must still have a key to the house,’ she went on, twisting her fingers together as she jumped subject. ‘I thought that last night when I couldn’t sleep. I know Michael Fancourt don’t like him, but that’s ages ago. Anyway, Owen never did that thing Michael said he did. He never wrote it. But Michael Fancourt wouldn’t kill Owen.’ She looked up at Strike with clear eyes as innocent as her daughter’s. ‘He’s rich, isn’t he? Famous… he wouldn’t.’

Strike had always marvelled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.

‘And that bloody Chard,’ burst out Leonora, ‘sending Owen threatening letters. Owen never liked him. And then he signs the card and says if there’s anything he can do… where’s that card?’

The card with the picture of violets had vanished from the table.

‘She’s got it,’ said Leonora, flushing angrily. ‘She’s taken it.’ And so loudly that it made Strike jump she bellowed ‘DODO!’ at the ceiling.

It was the irrational anger of a person in the first raw stages of grief and, like her upset stomach, revealed just how she was suffering beneath the surly surface.

‘DODO!’ shouted Leonora again. ‘What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong—?’

Orlando reappeared with startling suddenness in the kitchen, still cuddling her orang-utan. She must have crept back down without them hearing, as quiet as a cat.

‘You took my card!’ said Leonora angrily. ‘What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong to you? Where is it?’

‘I like the flowers,’ said Orlando, producing the glossy but now crumpled card, which her mother snatched from her.

‘It’s mine,’ she told her daughter. ‘See,’ she went on, addressing Strike and pointing to the longest handwritten message, which was in precise copperplate: ‘“Do let me know if there is anything you need. Daniel Chard.” Bloody hypocrite.’

‘Daddy didn’t like Dannulchar,’ said Orlando. ‘He told me.’

‘He’s a bloody hypocrite, I know that,’ said Leonora, who was squinting at the other signatures.

‘He give me a paintbrush,’ said Orlando, ‘after he touched me.’

There was a short, pregnant silence. Leonora looked up at her. Strike had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t like him touching me.’

‘What are you talking about? Who touched you?’

‘At Daddy’s work.’

‘Don’t talk so silly,’ said her mother.

‘When Daddy took me and I saw—’

‘He took her in a month ago or more, because I had a doctor’s appointment,’ Leonora told Strike, flustered, on edge. ‘I don’t know what she’s on about.’

‘… and I saw the pictures for books that they put on, all coloured,’ said Leonora, ‘an’ Dannulchar did touch—’

‘You don’t even know who Daniel Chard is,’ said Leonora.

‘He’s got no hair,’ said Orlando. ‘And after Daddy took me to see the lady an’ I gave her my best picture. She had nice hair.’

‘What lady? What are you talking—?’

‘When Dannulchar touched me,’ said Orlando loudly. ‘He touched me and I shouted and after he gave me a paintbrush.’

‘You don’t want to go round saying things like that,’ said Leonora and her strained voice cracked. ‘Aren’t we in enough – Don’t be stupid, Orlando.’

Orlando grew very red in the face. Glaring at her mother, she left the kitchen. This time she slammed the door hard behind her; it did not close, but bounced open again. Strike heard her stamping up the stairs; after a few steps she started shrieking incomprehensibly.

‘Now she’s upset,’ said Leonora dully, and tears toppled out of her pale eyes. Strike reached over to the ragged kitchen roll on the side, ripped some off and pressed it into her hand. She cried silently, her thin shoulders shaking, and Strike sat in silence, drinking the dregs of his horrible tea.

‘Met Owen in a pub,’ she mumbled unexpectedly, pushing up her glasses and blotting her wet face. ‘He was there for the festival. Hay-on-Wye. I’d never heard of him, but I could tell he was someone, way he was dressed and talking.’

And a faint glow of hero worship, almost extinguished by years of neglect and unhappiness, of putting up with his airs and tantrums, of trying to pay the bills and care for their daughter in this shabby little house, flickered again behind her tired eyes. Perhaps it had rekindled because her hero, like all the best heroes, was dead; perhaps it would burn for ever now, like an eternal flame, and she would forget the worst and cherish the idea of him she had once loved… as long as she did not read his final manuscript, and his vile depiction of her…

‘Leonora, I wanted to ask you something else,’ Strike said gently, ‘and then I’ll be off. Have you had any more dog excrement through your letter box in the last week?’

‘In the last week?’ she repeated thickly, still dabbing her eyes. ‘Yeah. Tuesday we did, I think. Or Wednesday, was it? But yeah. One more time.’

‘And have you seen the woman you thought was following you?’

She shook her head, blowing her nose.

‘Maybe I imagined it, I dunno…’

‘And are you all right for money?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, blotting her eyes. ‘Owen had life insurance. I made him take it out, cos of Orlando. So we’ll be all right. Edna’s

offered to lend me till it comes through.’

‘Then I’ll be off,’ said Strike, pushing himself back to his feet.

She trailed him up the dingy hall, still sniffing, and before the door had closed behind him he heard her calling:

‘Dodo! Dodo, come down, I didn’t mean it!’

The young policeman outside stood partially blocking Strike’s path. He looked angry.

‘I know who you are,’ he said. His mobile phone was still clutched in his hand. ‘You’re Cormoran Strike.’

‘No flies on you, are there?’ said Strike. ‘Out of the way now, sonny, some of us have got proper work to do.’

22

… what murderer, hell-hound, devil can this be?

Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman

Forgetting that getting up was the difficult part when his knee was sore, Strike dropped into a corner seat on the Tube train and rang Robin.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘have those journalists gone?’

‘No, they’re still hanging round outside. You’re on the news, did you know?’

‘I saw the BBC website. I rang Anstis and asked him to help play down the stuff about me. Has he?’

He heard her fingers tapping on the keyboard.

‘Yeah, he’s quoted: “DI Richard Anstis has confirmed rumours that the body was found by private investigator Cormoran Strike, who made news earlier this year when he—”’

‘Never mind that bit.’

‘“Mr Strike was employed by the family to find Mr Quine, who often went away without informing anyone of his whereabouts. Mr Strike is not under suspicion and police are satisfied with his account of the discovery of the body.”’

‘Good old Dickie,’ said Strike. ‘This morning they were implying I conceal bodies to drum up business. Surprised the press are this interested in a dead fifty-eight-year-old has-been. It’s not as though they know how grisly the killing was yet.’

‘It isn’t Quine who’s got them interested,’ Robin told him. ‘It’s you.’

The thought gave Strike no pleasure. He did not want his face in the papers or on the television. The photographs of him that had appeared in the wake of the Lula Landry case had been small (room had been required for pictures of the stunning model, preferably partially clothed); his dark, surly features did not reproduce well in smudgy newsprint and he had managed to avoid a full-face picture as he entered court to give evidence against Landry’s killer. They had dredged up old photographs of him in uniform, but these had been years old, when he had been several stone lighter. Nobody had recognised him on appearance alone since his brief burst of fame and he had no wish to further endanger his anonymity.

‘I don’t want to run into a bunch of hacks. Not,’ he added wryly, as his knee throbbed, ‘that I could run if you paid me. Could you meet me—’

His favourite local was the Tottenham, but he did not want to expose it to the possibility of future press incursions.

‘—in the Cambridge in about forty minutes?’

‘No problem,’ she said.

Only after he had hung up did it occur to Strike, first, that he ought to have asked after the bereaved Matthew, and second, that he ought to have asked her to bring his crutches.

The nineteenth-century pub stood on Cambridge Circus. Strike found Robin upstairs on a leather banquette among brass chandeliers and gilt-framed mirrors.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked in concern as he limped towards her.

‘Forgot I didn’t tell you,’ he said, lowering himself gingerly into the chair opposite her with a groan. ‘I knackered my knee again on Sunday, trying to catch a woman who was following me.’

‘What woman?’

‘She tailed me from Quine’s house to the Tube station, where I fell over like a tit and she took off. She matches the description of a woman Leonora says has been hanging around since Quine disappeared. I could really use a drink.’

‘I’ll get it,’ said Robin, ‘as it’s your birthday. And I got you a present.’

She lifted onto the table a small basket covered in cellophane, adorned with ribbon and containing Cornish food and drink: beer, cider, sweets and mustard. He felt ridiculously touched.

‘You didn’t have to do that…’

But she was already out of earshot, at the bar. When she returned, carrying a glass of wine and a pint of London Pride, he said, ‘Thanks very much.’

‘You’re welcome. So do you think this strange woman’s been watching Leonora’s house?’

Strike took a long, welcome pull on his pint.

‘And possibly putting dog shit through her front door, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I can’t see what she had to gain from following me, though, unless she thought I was going to lead her to Quine.’

He winced as he raised the damaged leg onto a stool under the table.

‘I’m supposed to be doing surveillance on Brocklehurst and Burnett’s husband this week. Great bloody time to knacker my leg.’

‘I could follow them for you.’

The excited offer was out of Robin’s mouth before she knew it, but Strike gave no evidence of having heard her.

‘How’s Matthew doing?’

‘Not great,’ said Robin. She could not decide whether Strike had registered her suggestion or not. ‘He’s gone home to be with his dad and sister.’

‘Masham, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘We’re going to have to postpone the wedding.’

‘Sorry.’

She shrugged.

‘We couldn’t do it so soon… it’s been a horrible shock for the family.’

‘Did you get on well with Matthew’s mother?’ Strike asked.

‘Yes, of course. She was…’

But in fact, Mrs Cunliffe had always been difficult; a hypochondriac, or so Robin had thought. She had been feeling guilty about that in the last twenty-four hours.

‘… lovely,’ said Robin. ‘So how’s poor Mrs Quine doing?’

Strike described his visit to Leonora, including the brief appearance of Jerry Waldegrave and his impressions of Orlando.

‘What exactly’s wrong with her?’ Robin asked.

‘Learning difficulties they call it, don’t they?’

He paused, remembering Orlando’s ingenuous smile, her cuddly orang-utan.

‘She said something strange while I was there and it seemed to be news to her mother. She told us she went into work with her father once, and that the head of Quine’s publisher touched her. Name of Daniel Chard.’

He saw reflected in Robin’s face the unacknowledged fear that the words had conjured back in the dingy kitchen.

‘How, touched her?’

‘She wasn’t specific. She said, “He touched me” and “I don’t like being touched”. And that he gave her a paintbrush after he’d done it. It might not be that,’ said Strike in response to Robin’s loaded silence, her tense expression. ‘He might’ve accidentally knocked into her and given her something to placate her. She kept going off on one while I was there, shrieking because she didn’t get what she wanted or her mum had a go at her.’

Hungry, he tore open the cellophane on Robin’s gift, pulled out a chocolate bar and unwrapped it while Robin sat in thoughtful silence.

‘Thing is,’ said Strike, breaking the silence, ‘Quine implied in Bombyx Mori that Chard’s gay. I think that’s what he’s saying, anyway.’

‘Hmm,’ said Robin, unimpressed. ‘And do you believe everything Quine wrote in that book?’

‘Well, judging by the fact that he set lawyers on Quine, it upset Chard,’ said Strike, breaking off a large chunk of chocolate and putting it in his mouth. ‘Mind you,’ he continued thickly, ‘the Chard in Bombyx Mori’s a murderer, possibly a rapist and his knob’s falling off, so the gay stuff might not have been what got his goat.’

‘It’s a constant theme in Quine’s work, sexual duality,’ said Robin and Strike stared at her, chewing, his brows raised. ‘I nipped into Foyle

s on the way to work and bought a copy of Hobart’s Sin,’ she explained. ‘It’s all about a hermaphrodite.’

Strike swallowed.

‘He must’ve had a thing about them; there’s one in Bombyx Mori too,’ he said, examining the cardboard covering of his chocolate bar. ‘This was made in Mullion. That’s down the coast from where I grew up… How’s Hobart’s Sin – any good?’

‘I wouldn’t be fussed about reading past the first few pages if its author hadn’t just been murdered,’ admitted Robin.

‘Probably do wonders for his sales, getting bumped off.’

‘My point is,’ Robin pressed on doggedly, ‘that you can’t necessarily trust Quine when it comes to other people’s sex lives, because his characters all seem to sleep with anyone and anything. I looked him up on Wikipedia. One of the key features of his books is how characters keep swapping their gender or sexual orientation.’

‘Bombyx Mori’s like that,’ grunted Strike, helping himself to more chocolate. ‘This is good, want a bit?’

‘I’m supposed to be on a diet,’ said Robin sadly. ‘For the wedding.’

Strike did not think she needed to lose any weight at all, but said nothing as she took a piece.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Robin diffidently, ‘about the killer.’

‘Always keen to hear from the psychologist. Go on.’

‘I’m not a psychologist,’ she half laughed.

She had dropped out of her psychology degree. Strike had never pressed her for an explanation, nor had she ever volunteered one. It was something they had in common, dropping out of university. He had left when his mother had died of a mysterious overdose and, perhaps because of this, he had always assumed that something traumatic had made Robin leave too.

‘I’ve just been wondering why they tied his murder so obviously to the book. On the surface it looks like a deliberate act of revenge and malice, to show the world that Quine got what he deserved for writing it.’

‘Looks like that,’ agreed Strike, who was still hungry; he reached over to a neighbouring table and plucked a menu off it. ‘I’m going to have steak and chips, want something?’