The Silkworm

‘His daughter grabbed at a mock-up cover – grubby hands – I seized her wrist to stop her ruining it—’ He mimed the action in mid-air; with the remembrance of this act of near desecration came a look of distaste. ‘It was instinctive, you know, a desire to protect the image, but it upset her very much. There was a scene. Very embarrassing and uncomfortable,’ mumbled Chard, who seemed to suffer again in retrospect. ‘She became almost hysterical. Owen was furious. That, no doubt, was my crime. That, and bringing Michael Fancourt back to Roper Chard.’

‘Who,’ Strike asked, ‘would you think had most reason to be upset at their depiction in Bombyx Mori?’

‘I really don’t know,’ said Chard. After a short pause he said, ‘Well, I doubt Elizabeth Tassel was delighted to see herself portrayed as parasitic, after all the years of shepherding Owen out of parties to stop him making a drunken fool of himself, but I’m afraid,’ said Chard coldly, ‘I haven’t got much sympathy for Elizabeth. She allowed that book to go out unread. Criminal carelessness.’

‘Did you contact Fancourt after you’d read the manuscript?’ asked Strike.

‘He had to know what Quine had done,’ said Chard. ‘Better by far that he heard it from me. He was just home from receiving the Prix Prévost in Paris. I did not make that call with relish.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Michael’s resilient,’ muttered Chard. ‘He told me not to worry, said that Owen had done himself more harm than he had done us. Michael rather enjoys his enmities. He was perfectly calm.’

‘Did you tell him what Quine had said, or implied, about him in the book?’

‘Of course,’ said Chard. ‘I couldn’t let him hear it from anyone else.’

‘And he didn’t seem upset?’

‘He said, “The last word will be mine, Daniel. The last word will be mine.”’

‘What did you understand by that?’

‘Oh, well, Michael’s a famous assassin,’ said Chard, with a small smile. ‘He can flay anyone alive in five well chosen – when I say “assassin”,’ said Chard, suddenly and comically anxious, ‘naturally, I’m talking in literary—’

‘Of course,’ Strike reassured him. ‘Did you ask Fancourt to join you in legal action against Quine?’

‘Michael despises the courts as a means of redress in such matters.’

‘You knew the late Joseph North, didn’t you?’ asked Strike conversationally.

The muscles in Chard’s face tightened: a mask beneath the darkening skin.

‘A very – that was a very long time ago.’

‘North was a friend of Quine’s, wasn’t he?’

‘I turned down Joe North’s novel,’ said Chard. His thin mouth was working. ‘That’s all I did. Half a dozen other publishers did the same. It was a mistake, commercially speaking. It had some success, posthumously. Of course,’ he added dismissively, ‘I think Michael largely rewrote it.’

‘Quine resented you turning his friend’s book down?’

‘Yes, he did. He made a lot of noise about it.’

‘But he came to Roper Chard anyway?’

‘There was nothing personal in my turning down Joe North’s book,’ said Chard, with heightened colour. ‘Owen came to understand that, eventually.’

There was another uncomfortable pause.

‘So… when you’re hired to find a – a criminal of this type,’ said Chard, changing subject with palpable effort, ‘do you work with the police on that, or—?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike, with a wry remembrance of the animosity he had recently encountered from the force, but delighted that Chard had played so conveniently into his hands. ‘I’ve got great contacts at the Met. Your movements don’t seem to be giving them any cause for concern,’ he said, with faint emphasis on the personal pronoun.

The provocative, slippery phrasing had its full effect.

‘The police have looked into my movements?’

Chard spoke like a frightened boy, unable to muster even a pretence of self-protective sangfroid.

‘Well, you know, everyone depicted in Bombyx Mori was bound to come in for scrutiny from the police,’ said Strike casually, sipping his tea, ‘and everything you people did after the fifth, when Quine walked out on his wife, taking the book with him, will be of interest to them.’

And to Strike’s great satisfaction, Chard began at once to review his own movements aloud, apparently for his own reassurance.

‘Well, I didn’t know anything about the book at all until the seventh,’ he said, staring at his bound-up foot again. ‘I was down here when Jerry called me… I headed straight back up to London – Manny drove me. I spent the night at home, Manny and Nenita can confirm that… on the Monday I met with my lawyers at the office, talked to Jerry… I was at a dinner party that night – close friends in Notting Hill – and again Manny drove me home… I turned in early on Tuesday because on Wednesday morning I was going to New York. I was there until the thirteenth… home all day the fourteenth… on the fifteenth…’

Chard’s mumbling deteriorated into silence. Perhaps he had realised that there was not the slightest need for him to explain himself to Strike. The darting look he gave the detective was suddenly cagey. Chard had wanted to buy an ally; Strike could tell that he had suddenly awoken to the double-edged nature of such a relationship. Strike was not worried. He had gained more from the interview than he had expected; to be unhired now would cost him only money.

Manny came padding back across the floor.

‘You want lunch?’ he asked Chard curtly.

‘In five minutes,’ Chard said, with a smile. ‘I must say goodbye to Mr Strike first.’

Manny stalked away on rubber-soled shoes.

‘He’s sulking,’ Chard told Strike, with an uncomfortable half-laugh. ‘They don’t like it down here. They prefer London.’

He retrieved his crutches from the floor and pushed himself back up into a standing position. Strike, with more effort, imitated him.

‘And how is – er – Mrs Quine?’ Chard said, with an air of belatedly ticking off the proprieties as they swung, like strange three-legged animals, back towards the front door. ‘Big red-headed woman, yes?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘Thin. Greying hair.’

‘Oh,’ said Chard, without much interest. ‘I met someone else.’

Strike paused beside the swing doors that led to the kitchen. Chard halted too, looking aggrieved.

‘I’m afraid I need to get on, Mr Strike—’

‘So do I,’ said Strike pleasantly, ‘but I don’t think my assistant would thank me for leaving her behind.’

Chard had evidently forgotten the existence of Robin, whom he had so peremptorily dismissed.

‘Oh, yes, of course – Manny! Nenita!’

‘She’s in the bathroom,’ said the stocky woman, emerging from the kitchen holding the linen bag containing Robin’s shoes.

The wait passed in a faintly uncomfortable silence. At last Robin appeared, her expression stony, and slipped her feet back into her shoes.

The cold air bit their warm faces as the front door swung open while Strike shook hands with Chard. Robin moved directly to the car and climbed into the driver’s seat without speaking to anyone.

Manny reappeared in his thick coat.

‘I’ll come down with you,’ he told Strike. ‘To check the gates.’

‘They can buzz the house if they’re stuck, Manny,’ said Chard, but the young man paid no attention, clambering into the car as before.

The three of them rode in silence back down the black-and-white drive, through the falling snow. Manny pressed the remote control he had brought with him and the gates slid open without difficulty.

‘Thanks,’ said Strike, turning to look at him in the back seat. ‘’Fraid you’ve got a cold walk back.’

Manny sniffed, got out of the car and slammed the door. Robin had just shifted into first gear when Manny appeared at Strike’s window. She applied the brake.

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, winding the window down.

‘I didn’t push him,’ said Manny fiercely.

‘Sorry?’

‘Down the stairs,’ said Manny. ‘I didn’t push him. He’s lying.’

Strike and Robin stared at him.

‘You believe me?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘OK then,’ said Manny, nodding at them. ‘OK.’

He turned and walked, slipping a little in his rubber-soled shoes, back up to the house.

30

… as an earnest of friendship and confidence, I’ll acquaint you with a design that I have. To tell truth, and speak openly one to another…

William Congreve, Love for Love

At Strike’s insistence, they stopped for lunch at the Burger King at Tiverton Services.

‘You need to eat something before we go up the road.’

Robin accompanied him inside with barely a word, making no reference even to Manny’s recent, startling assertion. Her cold and slightly martyred air did not entirely surprise Strike, but he was impatient with it. She queued for their burgers, because he could not manage both tray and crutches, and when she had set down the loaded tray at the small Formica table he said, trying to defuse the tension:

‘Look, I know you expected me to tell Chard off for treating you like staff.’

‘I didn’t,’ Robin contradicted him automatically. (Hearing him say it aloud made her feel petulant, childish.)

‘Have it your own way,’ said Strike with an irritable shrug, taking a large bite of his first burger.

They ate in disgruntled silence for a minute or two, until Robin’s innate honesty reasserted itself.

‘All right, I did, a bit,’ she said.

Mellowed by greasy food and touched by her admission, Strike said:

‘I was getting good stuff out of him, Robin. You don’t start picking arguments with interviewees when they’re in full flow.’

‘Sorry for my amateurishness,’ she said, stung all over again.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘Who’s calling you—?’

‘What were you intending, when you took me on?’ she demanded suddenly, letting her unwrapped burger fall back onto the tray.

The latent resentment of weeks had suddenly burst its bounds. She did not care what she heard; she wanted the truth. Was she a typist and a receptionist, or was she something more? Had she stayed with Strike, and helped him climb out of penury, merely to be shunted aside like domestic staff?

‘Intending?’ repeated Strike, staring at her. ‘What d’you mean, intend—?’

‘I thought you meant me to be – I thought I was going to get some – some training,’ said Robin, pink-cheeked and unnaturally bright-eyed. ‘You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but then lately you’ve been talking about getting someone else in. I took a pay cut,’ she said tremulously. ‘I turned down better-paid jobs. I thought you meant me to be—’

Her anger, so long suppressed, was bringing her to the verge of tears, but she was determined not to give in to them. The fictional partner whom she had been imagining for Strike would never cry; not that no-nonsense ex-policewoman, tough and unemotional through every crisis…

‘I thought you meant me to be – I didn’t think I was just going to answer the phone.’

‘You don’t just answer the phone,’ said Strike, who had just finished his first burger and was watching her struggle with her anger from beneath his heavy brows. ‘You’ve been casing murder suspects’ houses with me this week. You just saved both our lives on the motorway.’

But Robin was not to be deflected.

‘What were you expecting me to do when you kept me on?’

‘I don’t know that I had any particular plan,’ Strike said slowly and untruthfully. ‘I didn’t know you were this serious about the job – looking for training—’

‘How could I not be serious?’ demanded Robin loudly.

A family of four in the corner of the tiny restaurant was staring at them. Robin paid them no attention. She was suddenly livid. The long cold journey, Strike eating all the food, his surprise that she could drive properly, her relegation to the kitchen with Chard’s servants and now this—

‘You give me half – half – what that human resources job would have paid! Why do you think I stayed? I helped you. I helped you solve the Lula Landry—’

‘OK,’ said Strike, holding up a large, hairy-backed hand. ‘OK, here it is. But don’t blame me if you don’t like what you’re about to hear.’

She stared at him, flushed, straight-backed on her plastic chair, her food untouched.

‘I did take you on thinking I could train you up. I didn’t have any money for courses, but I thought you could learn on the job until I could afford it.’

Refusing to feel mollified until she heard what was coming next, Robin said nothing.

‘You’ve got a lot of aptitude for the job,’ said Strike, ‘but you’re getting married to someone who hates you doing it.’

Robin opened her mouth and closed it again. A sensation of having been unexpectedly winded had robbed her of the power of speech.

‘You leave on the dot every day—’

‘I do not!’ said Robin, furious. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I turned down a day off to be here now, driving you all the way to Devon—’

‘Because he’s away,’ said Strike. ‘Because he won’t know.’

The feeling of having been winded intensified. How could Strike know that she had lied to Matthew, if not in fact, then by omission?

‘Even if that – whether that’s true or not,’ she said unsteadily, ‘it’s up to me what I do with my – it’s not up to Matthew what career I have.’

‘I was with Charlotte sixteen years, on and off,’ said Strike, picking up his second burger. ‘Mostly off. She hated my job. It’s what kept breaking us up – one of the things that kept breaking us up,’ he corrected himself, scrupulously honest. ‘She couldn’t understand a vocation. Some people can’t; at best, work’s about status and pay cheques for them, it hasn’t got value in itself.’

He began unwrapping the burger while Robin glared at him.

‘I need a partner who can share the long hours,’ said Strike. ‘Someone who’s OK with weekend work. I don’t blame Matthew for worrying about you—’

‘He doesn’t.’

The words were out of her mouth before Robin could consider them. In her blanket desire to refute everything that Strike was saying she had let an unpalatable truth escape her. The fact was that Matthew had very little imagination. He had not seen Strike covered in blood after the killer of Lula Landry had stabbed him. Even her description of Owen Quine lying trussed and disembowelled seemed to have been blurred for him by the thick miasma of jealousy through which he heard everything connected to Strike. His antipathy for her job owed nothing to protectiveness and she had never admitted as much to herself before.

‘It can be dangerous, what I do,’ said Strike through another huge bite of burger, as though he had not heard her.

‘I’ve been useful to you,’ said Robin, her voice thicker than his, though her mouth was empty.

‘I know you have. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t had you,’ said Strike. ‘Nobody was ever more grateful than me for a temping agency’s mistake. You’ve been incredible, I couldn’t have – don’t bloody cry, that family’s gawping enough already.’

‘I don’t give a monkey’s,’ said Robin into a handful of paper napkins and Strike laughed.

‘If it’s what you want,’ he told the top of her red-gold head, ‘you can go on a surveillance course when I’ve got the money. But if you’re my partner-in-training, there’ll be times that I’m going to have to ask you to do stuff that Matthew might not like. That’s all I’m saying. You’re the one who’s going to have to work it out.’

‘And I will,’ said Robin, fighting to contain the urge to bawl. ‘That’s what I want. That’s why

I stayed.’

‘Then cheer the fuck up and eat your burger.’

Robin found it hard to eat with the huge lump in her throat. She felt shaken but elated. She had not been mistaken: Strike had seen in her what he possessed himself. They were not people who worked merely for the pay cheque…

‘So, tell me about Daniel Chard,’ she said.

He did so while the nosy family of four gathered up their things and left, still throwing covert glances at the couple they could not quite work out (had it been a lovers’ tiff? A family row? How had it been so speedily resolved?).

‘Paranoid, bit eccentric, self-obsessed,’ concluded Strike five minutes later, ‘but there might be something in it. Jerry Waldegrave could’ve collaborated with Quine. On the other hand, he might’ve resigned because he’d had enough of Chard, who I don’t think would be an easy bloke to work for.

‘D’you want a coffee?’

Robin glanced at her watch. The snow was still falling; she feared delays on the motorway that would prevent her catching the train to Yorkshire, but after their conversation she was determined to demonstrate her commitment to the job, so she agreed to one. In any case, there were things she wished to say to Strike while she was still sitting opposite him. It would not be nearly as satisfying to tell him while in the driver’s seat, where she could not watch his reaction.

‘I found out a bit about Chard myself,’ she said when she had returned with two cups and an apple pie for Strike.

‘Servants’ gossip?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘They barely said a word to me while I was in the kitchen. They both seemed in foul moods.’

‘According to Chard, they don’t like it in Devon. Prefer London. Are they brother and sister?’

‘Mother and son, I think,’ said Robin. ‘He called her Mamu.

‘Anyway, I asked to go to the bathroom and the staff loo’s just next to an artist’s studio. Daniel Chard knows a lot about anatomy,’ said Robin. ‘There are prints of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings all over the walls and an anatomical model in one corner. Creepy – wax. And on the easel,’ she said, ‘was a very detailed drawing of Manny the Manservant. Lying on the ground, in the nude.’