The Silkworm

The cab was gliding beneath the Christmas lights of Oxford Street, large, fragile parcels of silver wrapped with golden bows, and Strike fought his ruffled temper as they travelled, feeling no pleasure at the thought of his imminent dinner date. Again and again Robin called him, but he could not feel the mobile vibrating because it was deep in his coat pocket, which lay beside him on the seat.

‘Hi,’ said Nina with a forced smile when she opened the door to her flat half an hour after the agreed time.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Strike, limping over the threshold. ‘I had an accident leaving the house. My leg.’

He had not brought her anything, he realised, standing there in his overcoat. He should have brought wine or chocolates and he felt her notice it as her big eyes roved over him; she had good manners herself and he felt, suddenly, a little shabby.

‘And I’ve forgotten the wine I bought you,’ he lied. ‘This is crap. Chuck me out.’

As she laughed, though unwillingly, Strike felt the phone vibrate in his pocket and automatically pulled it out.

Robin. He could not think why she wanted him on a Saturday.

‘Sorry,’ he told Nina, ‘gotta take this – urgent, it’s my assistant—’

Her smile slipped. She turned and walked out of the hall, leaving him there in his coat.

‘Robin?’

‘Are you all right? What happened?’

‘How did you—?’

‘I’ve got a voicemail that sounds like a recording of you being attacked!’

‘Christ, did I call you? Must’ve been when I dropped the phone. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was—’

Five minutes later, having told Robin what had happened, he hung up his coat and followed his nose to the sitting room, where Nina had laid a table for two. The room was lamp-lit; she had tidied, put fresh flowers around the place. A strong smell of burnt garlic hung in the air.

‘Sorry,’ he repeated as she returned carrying a dish. ‘Wish I had a nine-to-five job sometimes.’

‘Help yourself to wine,’ she said coolly.

The situation was deeply familiar. How often had he sat opposite a woman who was irritated by his lateness, his divided attention, his casualness? But here, at least, it was being played out in a minor key. If he had been late for dinner with Charlotte and taken a call from another woman as soon as he had arrived he might have expected a face full of wine and flying crockery. That thought made him feel more kindly towards Nina.

‘Detectives make shit dates,’ he told her as he sat down.

‘I wouldn’t say “shit”,’ she replied, softening. ‘I don’t suppose it’s the sort of job you can leave behind.’

She was watching him with her huge mouse-like eyes.

‘I had a nightmare about you last night,’ she said.

‘Getting off to a flying start, aren’t we?’ said Strike, and she laughed.

‘Well, not really about you. We were together looking for Owen Quine’s intestinal tract.’

She took a big swig of wine, gazing at him.

‘Did we find it?’ Strike asked, trying to keep things light.

‘Yes.’

‘Where? I’ll take any leads at this point.’

‘In Jerry Waldegrave’s bottom desk drawer,’ said Nina and he thought he saw her repress a shudder. ‘It was horrible, actually. Blood and guts when I opened it… and you hit Jerry. It woke me up, it was so real.’

She drank more wine, not touching her food. Strike, who had already taken several hearty mouthfuls (far too much garlic, but he was hungry), felt he was being insufficiently sympathetic. He swallowed hastily and said:

‘Sounds creepy.’

‘It’s because of what was on the news yesterday,’ she said, watching him. ‘Nobody realised, nobody knew he’d – he’d been killed like that. Like Bombyx Mori. You didn’t tell me,’ she said, and a whiff of accusation reached him through the garlic fumes.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Strike. ‘It’s up to the police to release that kind of information.’

‘It’s on the front page of the Daily Express today. He’d have liked that, Owen. Being a headline. But I wish I hadn’t read it,’ she said, with a furtive look at him.

He had met these qualms before. Some people recoiled once they realised what he had seen, or done, or touched. It was as though he carried the smell of death on him. There were always women who were attracted by the soldier, the policeman: they experienced a vicarious thrill, a voluptuous appreciation at the violence a man might have seen or perpetrated. Other women were repelled. Nina, he suspected, had been one of the former, but now that the reality of cruelty, sadism and sickness had been forced on her she was discovering that she might, after all, belong in the second camp.

‘It wasn’t fun at work yesterday,’ she said. ‘Not after we heard that. Everyone was… It’s just, if he was killed that way, if the killer copied the book… It limits the possible suspects, doesn’t it? Nobody’s laughing about Bombyx Mori any more, I can tell you that. It’s like one of Michael Fancourt’s old plots, back when the critics said he was too grisly… And Jerry’s resigned.’

‘I heard.’

‘I don’t know why,’ she said restlessly. ‘He’s been at Roper Chard ages. He’s not being himself at all. Angry all the time, and he’s usually so lovely. And he’s drinking again. A lot.’

She was still not eating.

‘Was he close to Quine?’ Strike asked.

‘I think he was closer than he thought he was,’ said Nina slowly. ‘They’d worked together quite a long time. Owen drove him mad – Owen drove everyone mad – but Jerry’s really upset, I can tell.’

‘I can’t imagine Quine enjoying being edited.’

‘I think he was tricky sometimes,’ said Nina, ‘but Jerry won’t hear a word against Owen now. He’s obsessed by his breakdown theory. You heard him at the party, he thinks Owen was mentally ill and Bombyx Mori wasn’t really his fault. And he’s still raging against Elizabeth Tassel for letting the book out. She came in the other day to talk about one of her other authors—’

‘Dorcus Pengelly?’ Strike asked, and Nina gave a little gasp of laughter.

‘You don’t read that crap! Heaving bosoms and shipwrecks?’

‘The name stuck in my mind,’ said Strike, grinning. ‘Go on about Waldegrave.’

‘He saw Liz coming and slammed his office door as she walked past. You’ve seen it, it’s glass and he nearly broke it. Really unnecessary and obvious, it made everyone jump out of their skins. She looks ghastly,’ added Nina. ‘Liz Tassel. Awful. If she’d been on form, she’d have stormed into Jerry’s office and told him not to be so bloody rude—’

‘Would she?’

‘Are you crazy? Liz Tassel’s temper is legendary.’

Nina glanced at her watch.

‘Michael Fancourt’s being interviewed on the telly this evening; I’m recording it,’ she said, re-filling both their glasses. She still had not touched her food.

‘Wouldn’t mind watching that,’ said Strike.

She threw him an oddly calculating look and Strike guessed that she was trying to assess how much his presence was due to a desire to pick her brains, how much designs on her slim, boyish body.

His mobile rang again. For several seconds he weighed the offence he might cause if he answered it, versus the possibility that it might herald something more useful than Nina’s opinions about Jerry Waldegrave.

‘Sorry,’ he said and pulled it out of his pocket. It was his brother, Al.

‘Corm!’ said the voice over a noisy line. ‘Great to hear from you, bruv!’

‘Hi,’ said Strike repressively. ‘How are you?’

‘Great! I’m in New York, only just got your message. What d’you need?’

He knew that Strike would only call if he wanted something, but unlike Nina, Al did not seem to resent the fact.

‘Wondering if you fancied dinner this Friday,’ said Strike, ‘but if you’re in New York—’

‘I’m coming back Wednesday, that’d be cool. Want me to book somewhere?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘It’s got to be the River Café.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ said Al without asking why: perhaps he assumed that Strike merely had a yen for good Italian. ‘Text you the time, yeah? Look forward to it!’

Strike hung up, the first syllable of an apology already on his lips, but Nina had left for the kitchen. The atmosphere had undoubtedly curdled.

34

O Lord! what have I said? my unlucky tongue!

William Congreve, Love for Love

‘Love is a mirage,’ said Michael Fancourt on the television screen. ‘A mirage, a chimera, a delusion.’

Robin was sitting between Matthew and her mother on the faded, sagging sofa. The chocolate Labrador lay on the floor in front of the fire, his tail thumping lazily on the rug in his sleep. Robin felt drowsy after two nights of very little sleep and days of unexpected stresses and emotion, but she was trying hard to concentrate on Michael Fancourt. Beside her Mrs Ellacott, who had expressed the optimistic hope that Fancourt might let drop some bons mots that would help with her essay on Webster, had a notebook and pen on her lap.

‘Surely,’ began the interviewer, but Fancourt talked over him.

‘We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.’

Mr Ellacott was asleep, his head back in the armchair closest to the fire and the dog. Gently he snored, with his spectacles halfway down his nose. All three of Robin’s brothers had slid discreetly from the house. It was Saturday night and their mates were waiting in the Bay Horse on the square. Jon had come home from university for the funeral but did not feel he owed it to his sister’s fiancé to forgo a few pints of Black Sheep with his brothers, sitting at the dimpled copper tables by the open fire.

Robin suspected that Matthew had wanted to join them but that he had felt it would be unseemly. Now he was stuck watching a literary programme he would never have tolerated at home. He would have turned over without asking her, taking it for granted that she could not possibly be interested in what this sour-looking, sententious man was saying. It was not easy to like Michael Fancourt, thought Robin. The curve of both his lip and his eyebrows implied an ingrained sense of superiority. The presenter, who was well known, seemed a little nervous.

‘And that is the theme of your new—?’

‘One of the themes, yes. Rather than castigating himself for his foolishness when the hero realises that he has simply imagined his wife into being, he seeks to punish the flesh-and-blood woman whom he believes has duped him. His desire for revenge drives the plot.’

‘Aha,’ said Robin’s mother softly, picking up her pen.

‘Many of us – most, perhaps,’ said the interviewer, ‘consider love a purifying ideal, a source of selflessness rather than—’

‘A self-justifying lie,’ said Fancourt. ‘We are mammals who need sex, need companionship, who seek the protective enclave of the family for reasons of survival and reproduction. We select a so-called loved one for the most primitive reasons – my hero’s preference for a pear-shaped woman is self-explanatory, I think. The loved one laughs or smells like the parent who gave one youthful succour and all else is projected, all else is invented—’

‘Friendship—’ began the interviewer a little desperately.

‘If I could have brought myself to have sex with any of my male friends, I would have had a happier and more productive life,’ said Fancourt. ‘Unfortunately, I’m programmed to desire the female form, however fruitlessly. And so I tell myself that one woman is more fascinating, more attuned to my needs and desires, than another. I am a complex, highly evolved and imaginative creature who feels compelled to justify a choice made on the crudest grounds. This is the truth that we’ve buried under a thousand years of courtly bullshit.’

Robin wondered what on earth Fancourt’s wife (for she seemed to remember that he was married) would make of this interview. Beside her, Mrs Ellacott had written a few words on her notepad.

‘He’s not talking about revenge,’ Robin muttered.

Her mother showed her the notepad. She had written: What a shit he is. Robin giggled.

Beside her, Matthew leaned over to the Daily Express that Jonathan had left abandoned on a chair. He turned past the front three pages, where Strike’s name appeared several times in the text alongside Owen Quine’s, and began to read a piece on how a high street chain of stores had banned Cliff Richard’s Christmas songs.

‘You’ve been criticised,’ said the interviewer bravely, ‘for your depiction of women, most particularly—’

‘I can hear the critics’ cockroach-like scurrying for their pens as we speak,’ said Fancourt, his lip curling in what passed for a smile. ‘I can think of little that interests me less than what critics say about me or my work.’

Matthew turned a page of the paper. Robin glanced sideways at a picture of an overturned tanker, an upside-down Honda Civic and a mangled Mercedes.

‘That’s the crash we were nearly in!’

‘What?’ said Matthew.

She had said it without thinking. Robin’s brain froze.

‘That happened on the M4,’ Matthew said, half laughing at her for thinking she could have been involved, that she could not recognise a motorway when she saw one.

‘Oh – oh yes,’ said Robin, pretending to peer more closely at the text beneath the picture.

But he was frowning now, catching up.

‘Were you nearly in a car crash yesterday?’

He was speaking quietly, trying not to disturb Mrs Ellacott, who was following Fancourt’s interview. Hesitation was fatal. Choose.

‘Yes, I was. I didn’t want to worry you.’

He stared at her. On Robin’s other side she could feel her mother making more notes.

‘This one?’ he said, pointing at the picture, and she nodded. ‘Why were you on the M4?’

‘I had to drive Cormoran to an interview.’

‘I’m thinking of women,’ said the interviewer, ‘your views on women—’

‘Where the hell was the interview?’

‘Devon,’ said Robin.

‘Devon?’

‘He’s buggered his leg again. He couldn’t have got there by himself.’

‘You drove him to Devon?’

‘Yes, Matt, I drove him to—’

‘So that’s why you didn’t come up yesterday? So you could—’

‘Matt, of course not.’

He flung down the paper, pulled himself up and strode from the room.

Robin felt sick. She looked around at the door, which he had not slammed, but closed firmly enough to make her father stir and mutter in his sleep and the Labrador wake up.

‘Leave him,’ advised her mother, her eyes still on the screen.

Robin swung round, desperate.

‘Cormoran had to get to Devon and he couldn’t drive with only one leg—’

‘There’s no need to defend yourself to me,’ said Mrs Ellacott.

‘But now he thinks I lied about not being able to get home yesterday.’

‘Did you?’ her mother asked, her eyes still fixed beadily upon Michael Fancourt. ‘Get down, Rowntree, I can’t see over you.’

‘Well, I could’ve come if I’d got a first-class ticket,’ Robin admitted as the Labrador yawned, stretched and resettled himself on the hearthrug. ‘But I’d already paid for the sleeper.’

‘Matt’s always going on about how much more money you would have made if you’d taken that HR job,’ said her mother, her eyes on the TV screen. ‘I’d have thought he’d appreciate you saving the pennies. Now shush, I want to hear about revenge.’

The interviewer was trying to formulate a question.

‘But where women are concerned, you haven’t always – contempora

ry mores, so-called political correctness – I’m thinking particularly of your assertion that female writers—’

‘This again?’ said Fancourt, slapping his knees with his hands (the interviewer perceptibly jumped). ‘I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.’

Robin was twisting her engagement ring on her finger, torn between her desire to follow Matt and persuade him she had done nothing wrong and anger that any such persuasion should be required. The demands of his job came first, always; she had never known him apologise for late hours, for jobs that took him to the far side of London and brought him home at eight o’clock at night…

‘I was going to say,’ the interviewer hurried on, with an ingratiating smile, ‘that this book might give those critics pause. I thought the central female character was treated with great understanding, with real empathy. Of course’ – he glanced down at his notes and up again; Robin could feel his nerves – ‘parallels are bound to be drawn – in dealing with the suicide of a young woman, I expect you’re braced – you must be expecting—’

‘That stupid people will assume that I have written an autobiographical account of my first wife’s suicide?’

‘Well, it’s bound to be seen as – it’s bound to raise questions—’

‘Then let me say this,’ said Fancourt, and paused.

They were sitting in front of a long window looking out onto a sunny, windswept lawn. Robin wondered fleetingly when the programme had been filmed – before the snows had come, clearly – but Matthew dominated her thoughts. She ought to go and find him, yet somehow she remained on the sofa.