The Silkworm

Strike seemed energised by his crazy theory, but if by any remote chance he was right, Robin thought, the killing had grotesque features even beyond that carved-out corpse…

They headed up the front path of the house beside the Quines’, bringing them within feet of the watchful PC. Strike rang the bell, and after a short wait the door opened revealing a short, anxious-looking woman in her early sixties who was wearing a housecoat and wool-trimmed slippers.

‘Are you Edna?’ Strike asked.

‘Yes,’ she said timidly, looking up at him.

When Strike introduced himself and Robin Edna’s furrowed brow relaxed, to be replaced by a look of pathetic relief.

‘Oh, it’s you, I’ve heard all about you. You’re helping Leonora, you’re going to get her out, aren’t you?’

Robin felt horribly aware of the handsome PC, listening to all of it, feet away.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Edna, backing out of their way and beckoning them enthusiastically inside.

‘Mrs – I’m sorry, I don’t know your surname,’ began Strike, wiping his feet on the doormat (her house was warm, clean and much cosier than the Quines’, though identical in layout).

‘Call me Edna,’ she said, beaming at him.

‘Edna, thank you – you know, you ought to ask to see ID before you let anyone into your house.’

‘Oh, but,’ said Edna, flustered, ‘Leonora told me all about you…’

Strike insisted, nevertheless, on showing her his driving licence before following her down the hall into a blue-and-white kitchen much brighter than Leonora’s.

‘She’s upstairs,’ said Edna when Strike explained that they had come to see Orlando. ‘She’s not having a good day. Do you want coffee?’

As she flitted around fetching cups she talked non-stop in the pent-up fashion of the stressed and lonely.

‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having her, poor lamb, but…’ She looked hopelessly between Strike and Robin then blurted out, ‘But how long for? They’ve no family, you see. There was a social worker round yesterday, checking on her; she said if I couldn’t keep her she’d have to go in a home or something; I said, you can’t do that to Orlando, they’ve never been apart, her and her mum, no, she can stay with me, but…’

Edna glanced at the ceiling.

‘She’s very unsettled just now, very upset. Just wants her mum to come home and what can I say to her? I can’t tell her the truth, can I? And there they are next door, digging up the whole garden, they’ve gone and dug up Mr Poop…’

‘Dead cat,’ Strike muttered under his breath to Robin as tears bubbled behind Edna’s spectacles and bounced down her round cheeks.

‘Poor lamb,’ she said again.

When she had given Strike and Robin their coffees Edna went upstairs to fetch Orlando. It took ten minutes for her to persuade the girl to come downstairs, but Strike was glad to see Cheeky Monkey clutched in her arms when she appeared, today dressed in a grubby tracksuit and wearing a sullen expression.

‘He’s called like a giant,’ she announced to the kitchen at large when she saw Strike.

‘I am,’ said Strike, nodding. ‘Well remembered.’

Orlando slid into the chair that Edna pulled out for her, holding her orang-utan tightly in her arms.

‘I’m Robin,’ said Robin, smiling at her.

‘Like a bird,’ said Orlando at once. ‘Dodo’s a bird.’

‘It’s what her mum and dad called her,’ explained Edna.

‘We’re both birds,’ said Robin.

Orlando gazed at her, then got up and walked out of the kitchen without speaking.

Edna sighed deeply.

‘She takes upset over anything. You never know what she’s—’

But Orlando had returned with crayons and a spiral-bound drawing pad that Strike was sure had been bought by Edna to try to keep her happy. Orlando sat down at the kitchen table and smiled at Robin, a sweet, open smile that made Robin feel unaccountably sad.

‘I’m going to draw you a robin,’ she announced.

‘I’d love that,’ said Robin.

Orlando set to work with her tongue between her teeth. Robin said nothing, but watched the picture develop. Feeling that Robin had already forged a better rapport with Orlando than he had managed, Strike ate a chocolate biscuit offered by Edna and made small talk about the snow.

Eventually Orlando finished her picture, tore it out of the pad and pushed it across to Robin.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Robin, beaming at her. ‘I wish I could draw a dodo, but I can’t draw at all.’ This, Strike knew, was a lie. Robin drew very well; he had seen her doodles. ‘I’ve got to give you something, though.’

She rummaged in her bag, watched eagerly by Orlando, and eventually pulled out a small round make-up mirror decorated on the back with a stylised pink bird.

‘There,’ said Robin. ‘Look. That’s a flamingo. Another bird. You can keep that.’

Orlando took her gift with parted lips, staring at it.

‘Say thank you to the lady,’ prompted Edna.

‘Thank you,’ said Orlando and she slid the mirror inside the pyjama case.

‘Is he a bag?’ asked Robin with bright interest.

‘My monkey,’ said Orlando, clutching the orang-utan closer. ‘My daddy give him to me. My daddy died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Robin quietly, wishing that the image of Quine’s body had not slid instantly into her mind, his torso as hollow as a pyjama case…

Strike surreptitiously checked his watch. The appointment with Fancourt was drawing ever closer. Robin sipped some coffee and asked:

‘Do you keep things in your monkey?’

‘I like your hair,’ said Orlando. ‘It’s shiny and yellow.’

‘Thank you,’ said Robin. ‘Have you got any other pictures in there?’

Orlando nodded.

‘C’n I have a biscuit?’ she asked Edna.

‘Can I see your other pictures?’ Robin asked as Orlando munched.

And after a brief pause for consideration, Orlando opened up her orang-utan.

A sheaf of crumpled pictures came out, on an assortment of different sized and coloured papers. Neither Strike nor Robin turned them over at first, but made admiring comments as Orlando spread them out across the table, Robin asking questions about the bright starfish and the dancing angels that Orlando had drawn in crayon and felt tip. Basking in their appreciation, Orlando dug deeper into her pyjama case for her working materials. Up came a used typewriter cartridge, oblong and grey, with a thin strip tape carrying the reversed words it had printed. Strike resisted the urge to palm it immediately as it disappeared beneath a tin of coloured pencils and a box of mints, but kept his eye on it as Orlando laid out a picture of a butterfly through which could be seen traces of untidy adult writing on the back.

Encouraged by Robin, Orlando now brought out more: a sheet of stickers, a postcard of the Mendip Hills, a round fridge magnet that read Careful! You may end up in my novel! Last of all she showed them three images on better-quality paper: two proof book illustrations and a mocked-up book cover.

‘My daddy gave me them from his work,’ Orlando said. ‘Dannulchar touched me when I wanted it,’ she said, pointing at a brightly coloured picture that Strike recognised: Kyla the Kangaroo Who Loved to Bounce. Orlando had added a hat and handbag to Kyla and coloured in the line drawing of a princess talking to a frog with neon felt tips.

Delighted to see Orlando so chatty, Edna made more coffee. Conscious of the time, but aware of the need not to provoke a row and a protective grab of all her treasures, Robin and Strike chatted as they picked up and examined each of the pieces of paper on the table. Whenever she thought something might be helpful, Robin slid it sideways to Strike.

There was a list of scribbled names on the back of the butterfly picture:

Sam Breville. Eddie Boyne? Edward Baskinville? Stephen Brook?

The postcard of the Mendip Hills had been sent i

n July and carried a brief message:

Weather great, hotel disappointing, hope the book’s going well! V xx

Other than that, there was no trace of handwriting. A few of Orlando’s pictures were familiar to Strike from his last visit. One had been drawn on the reverse of a child’s restaurant menu, another on the Quines’ gas bill.

‘Well, we’d better head off,’ said Strike, draining his coffee cup with a decent show of regret. Almost absent-mindedly he continued to hold the cover image for Dorcus Pengelly’s Upon the Wicked Rocks. A bedraggled woman lay supine on the stony sands of a steep cliff-enclosed cove, with the shadow of a man falling across her midriff. Orlando had drawn thickly lined black fish in the seething blue water. The used typewriter cassette lay beneath the image, nudged there by Strike.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ Orlando told Robin, suddenly tense and tearful.

‘It’s been lovely, hasn’t it?’ said Robin. ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again. You’ll keep your flamingo mirror, won’t you, and I’ve got my robin picture—’

But Orlando had begun to wail and stamp. She did not want another goodbye. Under cover of the escalating furore Strike wrapped the typewriter cassette smoothly in the cover illustration for Upon the Wicked Rocks and slid it into his pocket, unmarked by his fingerprints.

They reached the street five minutes later, Robin a little shaken because Orlando had wailed and tried to grab her as she headed down the hall. Edna had had to physically restrain Orlando from following them.

‘Poor girl,’ said Robin under her breath, so that the staring PC could not hear them. ‘Oh God, that was dreadful.’

‘Useful, though,’ said Strike.

‘You got that typewriter ribbon?’

‘Yep,’ said Strike, glancing over his shoulder to check that the PC was out of sight before taking out the cassette, still wrapped in Dorcus’s cover, and tipping it into a plastic evidence bag. ‘And a bit more than that.’

‘You did?’ said Robin, surprised.

‘Possible lead,’ said Strike, ‘might be nothing.’

He glanced again at his watch and sped up, wincing as his knee throbbed in protest.

‘I’m going to have to get a move on if I’m not going to be late for Fancourt.’

As they sat on the crowded Tube train carrying them back to central London twenty minutes later, Strike said:

‘You’re clear about what you’re doing this afternoon?’

‘Completely clear,’ said Robin, but with a note of reservation.

‘I know it’s not a fun job—’

‘That’s not what’s bothering me.’

‘And like I say, it shouldn’t be dangerous,’ he said, preparing to stand as they approached Tottenham Court Road. ‘But…’

Something made him reconsider, a slight frown between his heavy eyebrows.

‘Your hair,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ said Robin, raising her hand self-consciously.

‘It’s memorable,’ said Strike. ‘Haven’t got a hat, have you?’

‘I – I could buy one,’ said Robin, feeling oddly flustered.

‘Charge it to petty cash,’ he told her. ‘Can’t hurt to be careful.’

43

Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!

William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

Strike walked up crowded Oxford Street, past snatches of canned carols and seasonal pop songs, and turned left into the quieter, narrower Dean Street. There were no shops here, just block-like buildings packed together with their different faces, white, red and dun, opening into offices, bars, pubs or bistro-type restaurants. Strike paused to allow boxes of wine to pass from delivery van to catering entrance: Christmas was a more subtle affair here in Soho, where the arts world, the advertisers and publishers congregated, and nowhere more so than at the Groucho Club.

A grey building, almost nondescript, with its black-framed windows and small topiaries sitting behind plain, convex balustrades. Its cachet lay not in its exterior but in the fact that relatively few were allowed within the members-only club for the creative arts. Strike limped over the threshold and found himself in a small hall area, where a girl behind a counter said pleasantly:

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m here to meet Michael Fancourt.’

‘Oh yes – you’re Mr Strick?’

‘That’s me,’ said Strike.

He was directed through a long bar room with leather seats packed with lunchtime drinkers and up the stairs. As he climbed Strike reflected, not for the first time, that his Special Investigation Branch training had not envisaged him conducting interviews without official sanction or authority, on a suspect’s own territory, where his interviewee had the right to terminate the encounter without reason or apology. The SIB required its officers to organise their questioning in a template of people, places, things… Strike never lost sight of the effective, rigorous methodology, but these days it was essential to disguise the fact that he was filing facts in mental boxes. Different techniques were required when interviewing those who thought they were doing you a favour.

He saw his quarry immediately he stepped into a second wooden-floored bar, where sofas in primary colours were set along the wall beneath paintings by modern artists. Fancourt was sitting slantwise on a bright red couch, one arm along its back, a leg a little raised in an exaggerated pose of ease. A Damien Hirst spot painting hung right behind his over-large head, like a neon halo.

The writer had a thick thatch of greying dark hair, his features were heavy and the lines beside his generous mouth deep. He smiled as Strike approached. It was not, perhaps, the smile he would have given someone he considered an equal (impossible not to think in those terms, given the studied affectation of ease, the habitually sour expression), but a gesture to one whom he wished to be gracious.

‘Mr Strike.’

Perhaps he considered standing up to shake hands, but Strike’s height and bulk often dissuaded smaller men from leaving their seats. They shook hands across the small wooden table. Unwillingly, but left with no choice unless he wanted to sit on the sofa with Fancourt – a far too cosy situation, particularly with the author’s arm lying along the back of it – Strike sat down on a solid round pouffe that was unsuited both to his size and his sore knee.

Beside them was a shaven-headed ex-soap star who had recently played a soldier in a BBC drama. He was talking loudly about himself to two other men. Fancourt and Strike ordered drinks, but declined menus. Strike was relieved that Fancourt was not hungry. He could not afford to buy anyone else lunch.

‘How long’ve you been a member of this place?’ he asked Fancourt, when the waiter had left.

‘Since it opened. I was an early investor,’ said Fancourt. ‘Only club I’ve ever needed. I stay overnight here if I need to. There are rooms upstairs.’

Fancourt fixed Strike with a consciously intense stare.

‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. The hero of my next novel is a veteran of the so-called war on terror and its military corollaries. I’d like to pick your brains once we’ve got Owen Quine out of the way.’

Strike happened to know a little about the tools available to the famous when they wished to manipulate. Lucy’s guitarist father, Rick, was less famous than either Strike’s father or Fancourt, but still celebrated enough to cause a middle-aged woman to gasp and tremble at the sight of him queuing for ice creams in St Mawes – ‘ohmigod – what are you doing here?’ Rick had once confided in the adolescent Strike that the one sure way to get a woman into bed was to tell her you were writing a song about her. Michael Fancourt’s pronouncement that he was interested in capturing something of Strike in his next novel felt like a variation on the same theme. He had clearly not appreciated that seeing himself in print was neither a novelty to Strike, nor something he had ever chased. With an unenthusiastic nod to acknowledge Fancourt’s request, Strike took out a notebook.

‘D’you mind if

I use this? Helps me remember what I want to ask you.’

‘Feel free,’ said Fancourt, looking amused. He tossed aside the copy of the Guardian that he had been reading. Strike saw the picture of a wizened but distinguished-looking old man who was vaguely familiar even upside-down. The caption read: Pinkelman at Ninety.

‘Dear old Pinks,’ said Fancourt, noticing the direction of Strike’s gaze. ‘We’re giving him a little party at the Chelsea Arts Club next week.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, hunting for a pen.

‘He knew my uncle. They did their national service together,’ said Fancourt. ‘When I wrote my first novel, Bellafront – I was fresh out of Oxford – my poor old Unc, trying to be helpful, sent a copy to Pinkelman, who was the only writer he’d ever met.’

He spoke in measured phrases, as though some invisible third party were taking down every word in shorthand. The story sounded pre-rehearsed, as though he had told it many times, and perhaps he had; he was an oft-interviewed man.

‘Pinkelman – at that time author of the seminal Bunty’s Big Adventure series – didn’t understand a word I’d written,’ Fancourt went on, ‘but to please my uncle he forwarded it to Chard Books, where it landed, most fortuitously, on the desk of the only person in the place who could understand it.’

‘Stroke of luck,’ said Strike.

The waiter returned with wine for Fancourt and a glass of water for Strike.

‘So,’ said the detective, ‘were you returning a favour when you introduced Pinkelman to your agent?’

‘I was,’ said Fancourt, and his nod held the hint of patronage of a teacher glad to note that one of his pupils had been paying attention. ‘In those days Pinks was with some agent who kept “forgetting” to hand on his royalties. Whatever you say about Elizabeth Tassel, she’s honest – in business terms, she’s honest,’ Fancourt amended, sipping his wine.

‘She’ll be at Pinkelman’s party too, won’t she?’ said Strike, watching Fancourt for his reaction. ‘She still represents him, doesn’t she?’