‘I don’t know whether you believe this paranoid bollocks—’

‘We know what’s going on!’ shouted Pippa.

‘Shut up. Nobody except the killer knew Quine was dead when you started stalking me. You followed me the day I found the body and I know you were following Leonora for a week before that. Why?’ And when she did not answer, he repeated: ‘Last chance: why did you follow me from Leonora’s?’

‘I thought you might lead me to where he was,’ said Pippa.

‘Why did you want to know where he was?’

‘So I could fucking kill him!’ yelled Pippa, and Robin was confirmed in her impression that Pippa shared Martin’s almost total lack of self-preservation.

‘And why did you want to kill him?’ asked Strike, as though she had said nothing out of the ordinary.

‘Because of what he did to us in that horrible fucking book! You know – you’ve read it – Epicoene – that bastard, that bastard—’

‘Bloody calm down! So you’d read Bombyx Mori by then?’

‘Yeah, of course I had—’

‘And that’s when you started putting shit through Quine’s letter box?’

‘Shit for a shit!’ she shouted.

‘Witty. When did you read the book?’

‘Kath read the bits about us on the phone and then I went round and—’

‘When did she read you the bits on the phone?’

‘W-when she came home and found it lying on her doormat. Whole manuscript. She could hardly get the door open. He’d fed it through her door with a note,’ said Pippa Midgley. ‘She showed me.’

‘What did the note say?’

‘It said “Payback time for both of us. Hope you’re happy! Owen.”’

‘“Payback time for both of us”?’ repeated Strike, frowning. ‘D’you know what that meant?’

‘Kath wouldn’t tell me but I know she understood. She was d-devastated,’ said Pippa, her chest heaving. ‘She’s a – she’s a wonderful person. You don’t know her. She’s been like a m-mother to me. We met on his writing course and we were like – we became like—’ She caught up her breath and whimpered: ‘He was a bastard. He lied to us about what he was writing, he lied about – about everything—’

She began to cry again, wailing and sobbing, and Robin, worried about Mr Crowdy, said gently:

‘Pippa, just tell us what he lied about. Cormoran only wants the truth, he’s not trying to frame anyone…’

She did not know whether Pippa had heard or believed her; perhaps she simply wanted to relieve her overwrought feelings, but she took a great shuddering breath and out spilled a torrent of words:

‘He said I was like his second daughter, he said that to me; I told him everything, he knew my mum threw me out and everything. And I showed him m-m-my book about my life and he w-was so k-kind and interested and he said he’d help me get it p-published and he t-told us both, me and Kath, that we were in his n-new novel and he said I w-was a “b-beautiful lost soul” – that’s what he said to me,’ gasped Pippa, her mobile mouth working, ‘and he p-pretended to read a bit out to me one day, over the phone, and it was – it was lovely and then I r-read it and he’d – he’d written that… Kath was in b-bits… the cave… Harpy and Epicoene…’

‘So Kathryn came home and found it all over the doormat, did she?’ said Strike. ‘Came home from where – work?’

‘From s-sitting in the hospice with her dying sister.’

‘And that was when?’ said Strike for the third time.

‘Who cares when it—?’

‘I fucking care!’

‘Was it the ninth?’ Robin asked. She had brought up Kathryn Kent’s blog on her computer, the screen angled away from the sofa where Pippa was sitting. ‘Could it have been Tuesday the ninth, Pippa? The Tuesday after bonfire night?’

‘It was… yeah, I think it was!’ said Pippa, apparently awestruck by Robin’s lucky guess. ‘Yeah, Kath went away on bonfire night because Angela was so ill—’

‘How d’you know it was bonfire night?’ Strike asked.

‘Because Owen told Kath he c-couldn’t see her that night, because he had to do fireworks with his daughter,’ said Pippa. ‘And Kath was really upset, because he was supposed to be leaving! He’d promised her, he’d promised at long bloody last he’d leave his bitch of a wife, and then he says he’s got to play sparklers with the reta—’

She drew up short, but Strike finished for her.

‘With the retard?’

‘It’s just a joke,’ muttered Pippa, shamefaced, showing more regret about her use of the word than she had about trying to stab Strike. ‘Just between me and Kath: his daughter was always the excuse why Owen couldn’t leave and be with Kath…’

‘What did Kathryn do that night, instead of seeing Quine?’ asked Strike.

‘I went over to hers. Then she got the call that her sister Angela was a lot worse and she left. Angela had cancer. It had gone everywhere.’

‘Where was Angela?’

‘In the hospice in Clapham.’

‘How did Kathryn get there?’

‘Why’s that matter?’

‘Just answer the bloody question, will you?’

‘I don’t know – Tube, I s’pose. And she stayed with Angela for three days, sleeping on a mattress on the floor by her bed because they thought Angela was going to die any moment, but Angela kept hanging on so Kath had to go home for clean clothes and that’s when she found the manuscript all over the doormat.’

‘Why are you sure she came home on the Tuesday?’ Robin asked and Strike, who had been about to ask the same thing, looked at her in surprise. He did not know about the old man in the bookshop and the German sinkhole.

‘Because on Tuesday nights I work on a helpline,’ said Pippa, ‘and I was there when Kath called me in f-floods, because she’d put the manuscript in order, and read what he’d written about us—’

‘Well, this is all very interesting,’ said Strike, ‘because Kathryn Kent told the police that she’d never read Bombyx Mori.’

Pippa’s horrified expression might, under other circumstances, have been amusing.

‘You fucking tricked me!’

‘Yeah, you’re a really tough nut to crack,’ said Strike. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he added, standing over her as she tried to get up.

‘He was a – a shit!’ shouted Pippa seething with impotent rage. ‘He was a user! Pretending to be interested in our work and using us all along, that l-lying b-bastard… I thought he understood what my life’s been about – we used to talk for hours about it and he encouraged me with my life story – he t-told me he was going to help me get a publishing deal—’

Strike felt a sudden weariness wash over him. What was this mania to appear in print?

‘—and he was just trying to keep me sweet, telling him all my most private thoughts and feelings, and Kath – what he did to Kath – you don’t understand – I’m glad his bitch wife killed him! If she hadn’t—’

‘Why,’ demanded Strike, ‘d’you keep saying his wife killed Quine?’

‘Because Kath’s got proof!’

A short pause.

‘What proof?’ asked Strike.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ shouted Pippa with a cackle of hysterical laughter. ‘Never you mind!’

‘If she’s got proof, why hasn’t she taken it to the police?’

‘Out of compassion!’ shouted Pippa. ‘Something you wouldn’t—’

‘Why,’ came a plaintive voice from outside the glass door, ‘is there still all this shouting?’

‘Oh bloody hell,’ said Strike as the fuzzy outline of Mr Crowdy from downstairs pressed close to the glass.

Robin moved to unlock the door.

‘Very sorry, Mr Crow—’

Pippa was off the sofa in an instant. Strike made a grab for her but his knee buckled agonisingly as he lunged. Knocking Mr Crowdy aside she was gone, clattering down the stairs.

‘Leave her!’ Strike said to Robin, who looked braced to give chase. ‘Least I’ve got her knife.’

‘Knife?’ yelped Mr Crowdy and it took them fifteen minutes to persuade him not to contact the landlord (for the publicity following the Lula Landry case had unnerved the graphic designer, who lived in dread that another murderer might come seeking Strike and perhaps wander by mistake into the wrong office).

‘Jesus H. Christ,’ said Strike when they had at last persuaded Crowdy to leave. He slumped down on the sofa; Robin took her computer chair and they looked at each other for a few seconds before starting to laugh.

‘Decent good cop, bad cop routine we had going there,’ said Strike.

‘I wasn’t faking,’ said Robin, ‘I really did feel a bit sorry for her.’

‘I noticed. What about me, getting attacked?’

‘Did she really want to stab you, or was it play-acting?’ asked Robin sceptically.

‘She might’ve liked the idea of it more than the reality,’ acknowledged Strike. ‘Trouble is, you’re just as dead if you’re knifed by a self-dramatising twat as by a professional. And what she thought she’d gain by stabbing me—’

‘Mother love,’ said Robin quietly.

Strike stared at her.

‘Her own mother’s disowned her,’ said Robin, ‘and she’s going through a really traumatic time, I expect, taking hormones and God knows what else she’s got to do before she has the operation. She thought she had a new family, didn’t she? She thought Quine and Kathryn Kent were her new parents. She told us Quine said she was a second daughter to him and he put her in the book as Kathryn Kent’s daughter. But in Bombyx Mori he revealed her to the world as half male, half female. He also suggested that, beneath all the filial affection, she wanted to sleep with him.

‘Her new father,’ said Robin, ‘had let her down very badly. But her new mother was still good and loving, and she’d been betrayed as well, so Pippa set out to get even for both of them.’

She could not stop herself grinning at Strike’s looked of stunned admiration.

‘Why the hell did you give up that psychology degree?’

‘Long story,’ said Robin, looking away towards the computer monitor. ‘She’s not very old… twenty, d’you think?’

‘Looked about that,’ agreed Strike. ‘Pity we never got round to asking her about her movements in the days after Quine disappeared.’

‘She didn’t do it,’ said Robin with certainty, looking back at him.

‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ sighed Strike, ‘if only because shoving dog shit through his letter box might’ve felt a bit anticlimactic after carving out his guts.’

‘And she doesn’t seem very strong on planning or efficiency, does she?’

‘An understatement,’ he agreed.

‘Are you going to call the police about her?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. But shit,’ he said, thumping himself on the forehead, ‘we didn’t even find out why she was bloody singing in the book!’

‘I think I might know,’ said Robin after a short burst of typing and reading the results on her computer monitor. ‘Singing to soften the voice… vocal exercises for transgendered people.’

‘Was that all?’ asked Strike in disbelief.

‘What are you saying – that she was wrong to take offence?’ said Robin. ‘Come on – he was jeering at something really personal in a public—’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Strike.

He frowned out of the window, thinking. The snow was falling thick and fast.

After a while he said:

‘What happened at the Bridlington Bookshop?’

‘God, yes, I nearly forgot!’

She told him all about the assistant and his confusion between the first and the eighth of November.

‘Stupid old sod,’ said Strike.

‘That’s a bit mean,’ said Robin.

‘Cocky, wasn’t he? Mondays are always the same, goes to his friend Charles every Monday…’

‘But how do we know whether it was the Anglican bishop night or the sinkhole night?’

‘You say he claims Charles interrupted him with the sinkhole story while he was telling him about Quine coming into the shop?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Then it’s odds on Quine was in the shop on the first, not the eighth. He remembers those two bits of information as connected. Silly bugger’s got confused. He wanted to have seen Quine after he’d disappeared, he wanted to be able to help establish time of death, so he was subconsciously looking for reasons to think it was the Monday in the time frame for the murder, not an irrelevant Monday a whole week before anyone was interested in Quine’s movements.’

‘There’s still something odd, though, isn’t there, about what he claims Quine said to him?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah, there is,’ said Strike. ‘Buying reading matter because he was going away for a break… so he was already planning to go away, four days before he rowed with Elizabeth Tassel? Was he already planning to go to Talgarth Road, after all those years he was supposed to have hated and avoided the place?’

‘Are you going to tell Anstis about this?’ Robin asked.

Strike gave a wry snort of laughter.

‘No, I’m not going to tell Anstis. We’ve got no real proof Quine was in there on the first instead of the eighth. Anyway, Anstis and I aren’t on the best terms just now.’

There was another long pause, and then Strike startled Robin by saying:

‘I’ve got to talk to Michael Fancourt.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘A lot of reasons,’ said Strike. ‘Things Waldegrave said to me over lunch. Can you get on to his agent or whatever contact you can find for him?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, making a note for herself. ‘You know, I watched that interview back just now and I still couldn’t—’

‘Look at it again,’ said Strike. ‘Pay attention. Think.’

He lapsed into silence again, glaring now at the ceiling. Not wishing to break his train of thought, Robin merely set to work on the computer to discover who represented Michael Fancourt.

Finally Strike spoke over the tapping of her keyboard.

‘What does Kathryn Kent think she’s got on Leonora?’

‘Maybe nothing,’ said Robin, concentrating on the results she had uncovered.

‘And she’s withholding it “out of compassion”…’

Robin said nothing. She was perusing the website of Fancourt’s literary agency for a contact number.

‘Let’s hope that was just more hysterical bullshit,’ said Strike.

But he was worried.

38

That in so little paper

Should lie th’ undoing…

John Webster, The White Devil

Miss Brocklehurst, the possibly unfaithful PA, was still claiming to be incapacitated by her cold. Her lover, Strike’s client, found this excessive and the detective was inclined to agree with him. Seven o’clock the following morning found Strike stationed in a shadowy recess opposite Miss Brocklehurst’s Battersea flat, wrapped up in coat, scarf and gloves, yawning widely as the cold penetrated his extremities and enjoying the second of three Egg McMuffins he had picked up from McDonald’s on his way.

There had been a severe weather warning for the whole of the south-east. Thick dark blue snow already lay over the entire street and the first tentative flakes of the day were drifting down from a starless sky as he waited, moving his toes from time to time to check that he could still feel them. One by one the occupants left for work, slipping and sliding off towards the station or clambering into cars whose exhausts sounded particularly loud in the muffled quiet. Three Christmas trees sparkled at Strike from living-room windows, though December would only start the following day, tangerine, emerald and neon blue lights winking garishly as he leaned against the wall, his eyes on the windows of Miss Brocklehurst’s flat, laying bets with himself as to whether she wo

uld leave the house at all in this weather. His knee was still killing him, but the snow had slowed the rest of the world to a pace that matched his own. He had never seen Miss Brocklehurst in heels lower than four inches. In these conditions, she might well be more incapacitated than he was.

In the last week the search for Quine’s killer had started to eclipse all his other cases, but it was important to keep up with them unless he wanted to lose business. Miss Brocklehurst’s lover was a rich man who was likely to put plenty more jobs Strike’s way if he liked the detective’s work. The businessman had a predilection for youthful blondes, a succession of whom (as he had freely confessed to Strike at their first meeting) had taken large amounts of money and sundry expensive gifts from him only to leave or betray him. As he showed no sign of developing better judgement of character, Strike anticipated many more lucrative hours spent tailing future Miss Brocklehursts. Perhaps it was the betrayal that thrilled his client, reflected Strike, his breath rising in clouds through the icy air; he had known other such men. It was a taste that found its fullest expression in those who became infatuated with hookers.

At ten to nine the curtains gave a small twitch. Faster than might have been expected from his attitude of casual relaxation, Strike raised the night-vision camera he had been concealing at his side.

Miss Brocklehurst stood briefly exposed to the dim snowy street in bra and pants, though her cosmetically enhanced breasts had no need of support. Behind her in the darkness of the bedroom walked a paunchy, bare-chested man who briefly cupped one breast, earning himself a giggled reproof. Both turned away into the bedroom.

Strike lowered his camera and checked his handiwork. The most incriminating image he had managed to capture showed the clear outline of a man’s hand and arm, Miss Brocklehurst’s face half turned in a laugh, but her embracer’s face was in shadow. Strike suspected that he might be about to leave for work, so he stowed the camera in an inside pocket, ready to give slow and cumbersome chase, and set to work on his third McMuffin.