The Silkworm

‘It doesn’t matter to me if Liz is there. Does she imagine that I’m still burning with malice towards her?’ asked Fancourt, with his sour smile. ‘I don’t think I give Liz Tassel a thought from one year’s end to the next.’

‘Why did she refuse to ditch Quine when you asked her to?’ asked Strike.

Strike did not see why he should not deploy the direct attack to a man who had announced an ulterior motive for meeting within seconds of their first encounter.

‘It was never a question of me asking her to drop Quine,’ said Fancourt, still in measured cadences for the benefit of that invisible amanuensis. ‘I explained that I could not remain at her agency while he was there, and left.’

‘I see,’ said Strike, who was well used to the splitting of hairs. ‘Why d’you think she let you leave? You were the bigger fish, weren’t you?’

‘I think it’s fair to say that I was a barracuda compared to Quine’s stickleback,’ said Fancourt with a smirk, ‘but, you see, Liz and Quine were sleeping together.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that,’ said Strike, clicking out the nib of his pen.

‘Liz arrived at Oxford,’ said Fancourt, ‘this strapping great girl who’d been helping her father castrate bulls and the like on sundry northern farms, desperate to get laid, and nobody fancied the job much. She had a thing for me, a very big thing – we were tutorial partners, juicy Jacobean intrigue calculated to get a girl going – but I never felt altruistic enough to relieve her of her virginity. We remained friends,’ said Fancourt, ‘and when she started her agency I introduced her to Quine, who notoriously preferred to plumb the bottom of the barrel, sexually speaking. The inevitable occurred.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Strike. ‘Is this common knowledge?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Fancourt. ‘Quine was already married to his – well, his murderess, I suppose we have to call her now, don’t we?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’d imagine “murderess” trumps “wife” when defining a close relationship? And Liz would have threatened him with dire consequences if he’d been his usual indiscreet self about her bedroom antics, on the wild off-chance that I might yet be persuaded to sleep with her.’

Was this blind vanity, Strike wondered, a matter of fact, or a mixture of both?

‘She used to look at me with those big cow eyes, waiting, hoping…’ said Fancourt, a cruel twist to his mouth. ‘After Ellie died she realised that I wasn’t going to oblige her even when grief-stricken. I’d imagine she was unable to bear the thought of decades of future celibacy, so she stood by her man.’

‘Did you ever speak to Quine again after you left the agency?’ Strike asked.

‘For the first few years after Ellie died he’d scuttle out of any bar I entered,’ said Fancourt. ‘Eventually he got brave enough to remain in the same restaurant, throwing me nervous looks. No, I don’t think we ever spoke to each other again,’ said Fancourt, as though the matter were of little interest. ‘You were injured in Afghanistan, I think?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

It might work on women, Strike reflected, the calculated intensity of the gaze. Perhaps Owen Quine had fixed Kathryn Kent and Pippa Midgley with the identical hungry, vampiric stare when he told them he would be putting them into Bombyx Mori… and they had been thrilled to think of part of themselves, their lives, forever encased in the amber of a writer’s prose…

‘How did it happen?’ asked Fancourt, his eyes on Strike’s legs.

‘IED,’ said Strike. ‘What about Talgarth Road? You and Quine were co-owners of the house. Didn’t you ever need to communicate about the place? Did you ever run into each other there?’

‘Never.’

‘Haven’t you been there to check on it? You’ve owned it – what—?’

‘Twenty, twenty-five years, something like that,’ said Fancourt indifferently. ‘No, I haven’t been inside since Joe died.’

‘I suppose the police have asked you about the woman who thinks she saw you outside on the eighth of November?’

‘Yes,’ said Fancourt shortly. ‘She was mistaken.’

Beside them, the actor was still in full and loud flow.

‘… thought I’d bloody had it, couldn’t see where the fuck I was supposed to be running, sand in my bloody eyes…’

‘So you haven’t been in the house since eighty-six?’

‘No,’ said Fancourt impatiently. ‘Neither Owen nor I wanted it in the first place.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because our friend Joe died there in exceptionally squalid circumstances. He hated hospitals, refused medication. By the time he fell unconscious the place was in a disgusting state and he, who had been the living embodiment of Apollo, was reduced to a sack of bones, his skin… it was a grisly end,’ said Fancourt, ‘made worse by Daniel Ch—’

Fancourt’s expression hardened. He made an odd chewing motion as though literally eating unspoken words. Strike waited.

‘He’s an interesting man, Dan Chard,’ said Fancourt, with a palpable effort at reversing out of a cul-de-sac into which he had driven himself. ‘I thought Owen’s treatment of him in Bombyx Mori was the biggest missed opportunity of all – though future scholars are hardly going to look to Bombyx Mori for subtlety of characterisation, are they?’ he added with a short laugh.

‘How would you have written Daniel Chard?’ Strike asked and Fancourt seemed surprised by the question. After a moment’s consideration he said:

‘Dan’s the most unfulfilled man I’ve ever met. He works in a field where he’s competent but unhappy. He craves the bodies of young men but can bring himself to do no more than draw them. He’s full of inhibitions and self-disgust, which explains his unwise and hysterical response to Owen’s caricature of him. Dan was dominated by a monstrous socialite mother who wanted her pathologically shy son to take over the family business. I think,’ said Fancourt, ‘I’d have been able to make something interesting of all that.’

‘Why did Chard turn down North’s book?’ Strike asked.

Fancourt made the chewing motion again, then said:

‘I like Daniel Chard, you know.’

‘I had the impression that there had been a grudge at some point,’ said Strike.

‘What gave you that idea?’

‘You said that you “certainly didn’t expect to find yourself” back at Roper Chard when you spoke at their anniversary party.’

‘You were there?’ said Fancourt sharply and when Strike nodded he said: ‘Why?’

‘I was looking for Quine,’ said Strike. ‘His wife had hired me to find him.’

‘But, as we now know, she knew exactly where he was.’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘I don’t think she did.’

‘You genuinely believe that?’ asked Fancourt, his large head tilted to one side.

‘Yeah, I do,’ said Strike.

Fancourt raised his eyebrows, considering Strike intently as though he were a curiosity in a cabinet.

‘So you didn’t hold it against Chard that he turned down North’s book?’ Strike asked, returning to the main point.

After a brief pause Fancourt said:

‘Well, yes, I did hold it against him. Exactly why Dan changed his mind about publishing it only Dan could tell you, but I think it was because there was a smattering of press around Joe’s condition, drumming up middle-England disgust about the unrepentant book he was about to publish, and Dan, who had not realised that Joe now had full-blown Aids, panicked. He didn’t want to be associated with bathhouses and Aids, so he told Joe he didn’t want the book after all. It was an act of great cowardice and Owen and I—’

Another pause. How long had it been since Fancourt had bracketed himself and Quine together in amity?

‘Owen and I believed that it killed Joe. He could hardly hold a pen, he was virtually blind, but he was trying desperately to finish the book before he died. We felt that was all that was keeping him alive. Then Chard’s letter arrived cancelling their contract

; Joe stopped work and within forty-eight hours he was dead.’

‘There are similarities,’ said Strike, ‘with what happened to your first wife.’

‘They weren’t the same thing at all,’ said Fancourt flatly.

‘Why not?’

‘Joe’s was an infinitely better book.’

Yet another pause, this time much longer.

‘That’s considering the matter,’ said Fancourt, ‘from a purely literary perspective. Naturally, there are other ways of looking at it.’

He finished his glass of wine and raised a hand to indicate to the barman that he wanted another. The actor beside them, who had barely drawn breath, was still talking.

‘… said, “Screw authenticity, what d’you want me to do, saw my own bloody arm off?”’

‘It must have been a very difficult time for you,’ said Strike.

‘Yes,’ said Fancourt waspishly. ‘Yes, I think we can call it “difficult”.’

‘You lost a good friend and a wife within – what – months of each other?’

‘A few months, yes.’

‘You were writing all through that time?’

‘Yes,’ said Fancourt, with an angry, condescending laugh, ‘I was writing all through that time. It’s my profession. Would anyone ask you whether you were still in the army while you were having private difficulties?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Strike, without rancour. ‘What were you writing?’

‘It was never published. I abandoned the book I was working on so that I could finish Joe’s.’

The waiter set a second glass in front of Fancourt and departed.

‘Did North’s book need much doing to it?’

‘Hardly anything,’ said Fancourt. ‘He was a brilliant writer. I tidied up a few rough bits and polished the ending. He’d left notes about how he wanted it done. Then I took it to Jerry Waldegrave, who was with Roper.’

Strike remembered what Chard had said about Fancourt’s over-closeness to Waldegrave’s wife and proceeded with some caution.

‘Had you worked with Waldegrave before?’

‘I’ve never worked with him on my own stuff, but I knew of him by reputation as a gifted editor and I knew that he’d liked Joe. We collaborated on Towards the Mark.’

‘He did a good job on it, did he?’

Fancourt’s flash of bad temper had gone. If anything, he looked entertained by Strike’s line of questioning.

‘Yes,’ he said, taking a sip of wine, ‘very good.’

‘But you didn’t want to work with him now you’ve moved to Roper Chard?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Fancourt, still smiling. ‘He drinks a lot these days.’

‘Why d’you think Quine put Waldegrave in Bombyx Mori?’

‘How can I possibly know that?’

‘Waldegrave seems to have been good to Quine. It’s hard to see why Quine felt the need to attack him.’

‘Is it?’ asked Fancourt, eyeing Strike closely.

‘Everyone I talk to seems to have a different angle on the Cutter character in Bombyx Mori.’

‘Really?’

‘Most people seem outraged that Quine attacked Waldegrave at all. They can’t see what Waldegrave did to deserve it. Daniel Chard thinks the Cutter shows that Quine had a collaborator,’ said Strike.

‘Who the hell does he think would have collaborated with Quine on Bombyx Mori?’ asked Fancourt, with a short laugh.

‘He’s got ideas,’ said Strike. ‘Meanwhile Waldegrave thinks the Cutter’s really an attack on you.’

‘But I’m Vainglorious,’ said Fancourt with a smile. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘Why would Waldegrave think that the Cutter is about you?’

‘You’ll need to ask Jerry Waldegrave,’ said Fancourt, still smiling. ‘But I’ve got a funny feeling you think you know, Mr Strike. And I’ll tell you this: Quine was quite, quite wrong – as he really should have known.’

Impasse.

‘So in all these years, you’ve never managed to sell Talgarth Road?’

‘It’s been very difficult to find a buyer who satisfies the terms of Joe’s will. It was a quixotic gesture of Joe’s. He was a romantic, an idealist.

‘I set down my feelings about all of this – the legacy, the burden, the poignancy of his bequest – in House of Hollow,’ said Fancourt, much like a lecturer recommending additional reading. ‘Owen had his say – such as it was –’ added Fancourt, with the ghost of a smirk, ‘in The Balzac Brothers.’

‘The Balzac Brothers was about the house in Talgarth Road, was it?’ asked Strike, who had not gleaned that impression during the fifty pages he had read.

‘It was set there. Really it’s about our relationship, the three of us,’ said Fancourt. ‘Joe dead in the corner and Owen and I trying to follow in his footsteps, make sense of his death. It was set in the studio where I think – from what I’ve read – you found Quine’s body?’

Strike said nothing, but continued to take notes.

‘The critic Harvey Bird called The Balzac Brothers “wincingly, jaw-droppingly, sphincter-clenchingly awful”.’

‘I just remember a lot of fiddling with balls,’ said Strike and Fancourt gave a sudden, unforced girlish titter.

‘You’ve read it, have you? Oh yes, Owen was obsessed with his balls.’

The actor beside them had paused for breath at last. Fancourt’s words rang in the temporary silence. Strike grinned as the actor and his two dining companions stared at Fancourt, who treated them to his sour smile. The three men began talking hurriedly again.

‘He had a real idée fixe,’ said Fancourt, turning back to Strike. ‘Picasso-esque, you know, his testicles the source of his creative power. He was obsessed in both his life and his work with machismo, virility, fertility. Some might say it was an odd fixation for a man who liked to be tied up and dominated, but I see it as a natural consequence… the yin and yang of Quine’s sexual persona. You’ll have noticed the names he gave us in the book?’

‘Vas and Varicocele,’ said Strike and he noted again that slight surprise in Fancourt that a man who looked like Strike read books, or paid attention to their contents.

‘Vas – Quine – the duct that carries sperm from balls to penis – the healthy, potent, creative force. Varicocele – a painful enlargement of a vein in the testicle, sometimes leading to infertility. A typically crass Quine-esque allusion to the fact that I contracted mumps shortly after Joe died and in fact was too unwell to go to the funeral, but also to the fact that – as you’ve pointed out – I was writing under difficult circumstances around that time.’

‘You were still friends at this point?’ Strike clarified.

‘When he started the book we were still – in theory – friends,’ said Fancourt, with a grim smile. ‘But writers are a savage breed, Mr Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.’

Strike smiled. Fancourt said with detached pleasure:

‘The Balzac Brothers received some of the worst reviews I’ve ever read.’

‘Did you review it?’

‘No,’ said Fancourt.

‘You were married to your first wife at this point?’ Strike asked.

‘That’s right,’ said Fancourt. The flicker of his expression was like the shiver of an animal’s flank when a fly touches it.

‘I’m just trying to get the chronology right – you lost her shortly after North died?’

‘Euphemisms for death are so interesting, aren’t they?’ said Fancourt lightly. ‘I didn’t “lose” her. On the contrary, I tripped over her in the dark, dead in our kitchen with her head in the oven.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Strike formally.

‘Yes, well…’

Fancourt called for another drink. Strike could tell that a delicate point had been reached, where a flow of information might eithe

r be tapped, or run forever dry.

‘Did you ever talk to Quine about the parody that caused your wife’s suicide?’

‘I’ve already told you, I never talked to him again about anything after Ellie died,’ said Fancourt calmly. ‘So, no.’

‘You were sure he wrote it, though?’

‘Without question. Like a lot of writers without much to say, Quine was actually a good literary mimic. I remember him spoofing some of Joe’s stuff and it was quite funny. He wasn’t going to jeer publicly at Joe, of course, it did him too much good hanging around with the pair of us.’

‘Did anyone admit to seeing the parody before publication?’

‘Nobody said as much to me, but it would have been surprising if they had, wouldn’t it, given what it caused? Liz Tassel denied to my face that Owen had shown it to her, but I heard on the grapevine that she’d read it pre-publication. I’m sure she encouraged him to publish. Liz was insanely jealous of Ellie.’

There was a pause, then Fancourt said with an assumption of lightness:

‘Hard to remember these days that there was a time when you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.’

‘Quine always denied writing it, didn’t he?’ Strike asked.

‘Yes he did, gutless bastard that he was,’ said Fancourt, apparently unconscious of any lack of taste. ‘Like a lot of soi-disant mavericks, Quine was an envious, terminally competitive creature who craved adulation. He was terrified that he was going to be ostracised after Ellie died. Of course,’ said Fancourt, with unmistakable pleasure, ‘it happened anyway. Owen had benefited from a lot of reflected glory, being part of a triumvirate with Joe and me. When Joe died and I cut him adrift, he was seen for what he was: a man with a dirty imagination and an interesting style who had barely an idea that wasn’t pornographic. Some authors,’ said Fancourt, ‘have only one good book in them. That was Owen. He shot his bolt – an expression he would have approved of – with Hobart’s Sin. Everything after that was pointless rehashes.’

‘Didn’t you say you thought Bombyx Mori was “a maniac’s masterpiece”?’