‘Here,’ said Robin kindly, delving into her handbag for tissues.

‘No,’ said Kathryn roughly, pushing herself off the sofa and disappearing into the kitchen. She came back with a handful of kitchen roll.

‘He said,’ she repeated, ‘he wanted it to be a surprise. That bastard,’ she said, sitting back down. ‘Bastard.’

She dabbed at her eyes and shook her head, the long mane of red hair swaying, while Pippa rubbed her back.

‘Pippa told me,’ said Strike, ‘that Quine put a copy of the manuscript through your door.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kathryn.

It was clear that Pippa had already confessed to this indiscretion.

‘Jude next door saw him doing it. She’s a nosy bitch, always keeping tabs on me.’

Strike, who had just put an additional twenty through the nosy neighbour’s letter box as a thank-you for keeping him informed of Kathryn’s movements, asked:

‘When?’

‘Early hours of the sixth,’ said Kathryn.

Strike could almost feel Robin’s tension and excitement.

‘Were the lights outside your front door working then?’

‘Them? They’ve been out for months.’

‘Did she speak to Quine?’

‘No, just peered out the window. It was two in the morning or something, she wasn’t going to go outside in her nightie. But she’d seen him come and go loads of times. She knew what he l-looked like,’ said Kathryn on a sob, ‘in his s-stupid cloak and hat.’

‘Pippa said there was a note,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah – “Payback time for both of us”,’ said Kathryn.

‘Have you still got it?’

‘I burned it,’ said Kathryn.

‘Was it addressed to you? “Dear Kathryn”?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘just the message and a bloody kiss. Bastard!’ she sobbed.

‘Shall I go and get us some real drink?’ volunteered Robin surprisingly.

‘There’s some in the kitchen,’ said Kathryn, her reply muffled by application of the kitchen roll to her mouth and cheeks. ‘Pip, you get it.’

‘You were sure the note was from him?’ asked Strike as Pippa sped off in pursuit of alcohol.

‘Yeah, it was his handwriting, I’d know it anywhere,’ said Kathryn.

‘What did you understand by it?’

‘I dunno,’ said Kathryn weakly, wiping her overflowing eyes. ‘Payback for me because he had a go at his wife? And payback for him on everyone… even me. Gutless bastard,’ she said, unconsciously echoing Michael Fancourt. ‘He could’ve told me he didn’t want… if he wanted to end it… why do that? Why? And it wasn’t just me… Pip… making out he cared, talking to her about her life… she’s had an awful time… I mean, her memoir’s not great literature or anything, but—’

Pippa returned carrying clinking glasses and a bottle of brandy, and Kathryn fell silent.

‘We were saving this for the Christmas pudding,’ said Pippa, deftly uncorking the cognac. ‘There you go, Kath.’

Kathryn took a large brandy and swigged it down in one. It seemed to have the desired effect. With a sniff, she straightened her back. Robin accepted a small measure. Strike declined.

‘When did you read the manuscript?’ he asked Kathryn, who was already helping herself to more brandy.

‘Same day I found it, on the ninth, when I got home to grab some more clothes. I’d been staying with Angela at the hospice, see… he hadn’t picked up any of my calls since bonfire night, not one, and I’d told him Angela was really bad, I’d left messages. Then I came home and found the manuscript all over the floor. I thought, Is that why he’s not picking up, he wants me to read this first? I took it back to the hospice with me and read it there, while I was sitting by Angela.’

Robin could only imagine how it would have felt to read her lover’s depiction of her while she sat beside her dying sister’s bed.

‘I called Pip – didn’t I?’ said Kathryn; Pippa nodded, ‘—and told her what he’d done. I kept calling him, but he still wouldn’t pick up. Well, after Angela had died I thought, Screw it. I’m coming to find you.’ The brandy had given colour to Kathryn’s wan cheeks. ‘I went to their house but when I saw her – his wife – I could tell she was telling the truth. He wasn’t there. So I told her to tell him Angela was dead. He’d met Angela,’ said Kathryn, her face crumpling again. Pippa set down her own glass and put her arms around Kathryn’s shaking shoulders, ‘I thought he’d realise at least what he’d done to me when I was losing… when I’d lost…’

For over a minute there were no sounds in the room but Kathryn’s sobs and the distant yells of the youths in the courtyard below.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Strike formally.

‘It must have been awful for you,’ said Robin.

A fragile sense of comradeship bound the four of them now. They could agree on one thing, at least; that Owen Quine had behaved very badly.

‘It’s your powers of textual analysis I’m really here for,’ Strike told Kathryn when she had again dried her eyes, now swollen to slits in her face.

‘What d’you mean?’ she asked, but Robin heard gratified pride behind the curtness.

‘I don’t understand some of what Quine wrote in Bombyx Mori.’

‘It isn’t hard,’ she said, and again she unknowingly echoed Fancourt: ‘It won’t win prizes for subtlety, will it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Strike. ‘There’s one very intriguing character.’

‘Vainglorious?’ she said.

Naturally, he thought, she would jump to that conclusion. Fancourt was famous.

‘I was thinking of the Cutter.’

‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ she said, with a sharpness that took Robin aback. Kathryn glanced at Pippa and Robin recognised the mutual glow, poorly disguised, of a shared secret.

‘He pretended to be better than that,’ said Kathryn. ‘He pretended there were some things that were sacred. Then he went and…’

‘Nobody seems to want to interpret the Cutter for me,’ said Strike.

‘That’s because some of us have some decency,’ said Kathryn.

Strike caught Robin’s eye. He was urging her to take over.

‘Jerry Waldegrave’s already told Cormoran that he’s the Cutter,’ she said tentatively.

‘I like Jerry Waldegrave,’ said Kathryn defiantly.

‘You met him?’ asked Robin.

‘Owen took me to a party, Christmas before last,’ she said. ‘Waldegrave was there. Sweet man. He’d had a few,’ she said.

‘Drinking even then, was he?’ interjected Strike.

It was a mistake; he had encouraged Robin to take over because he guessed that she seemed less frightening. His interruption made Kathryn clam up.

‘Anyone else interesting at the party?’ Robin asked, sipping her brandy.

‘Michael Fancourt was there,’ said Kathryn at once. ‘People say he’s arrogant, but I thought he was charming.’

‘Oh – did you speak to him?’

‘Owen wanted me to stay well away,’ she said, ‘but I went to the Ladies and on the way back I just told him how much I’d loved House of Hollow. Owen wouldn’t have liked that,’ she said with pathetic satisfaction. ‘Always going on about Fancourt being overrated, but I think he’s marvellous. Anyway, we talked for a while and then someone pulled him away, but yes,’ she repeated defiantly, as though the shade of Owen Quine were in the room and could hear her praising his rival, ‘he was charming to me. Wished me luck with my writing,’ she said, sipping her brandy.

‘Did you tell him you were Owen’s girlfriend?’ asked Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Kathryn, with a twist to her smile, ‘and he laughed and said, “You have my commiserations.” It didn’t bother him. He didn’t care about Owen any more, I could tell. No, I think he’s a nice man and a marvellous writer. People are envious, aren’t they, when you’re successful?’

She poured her

self more brandy. She was holding it remarkably well. Other than the flush it had brought to her face, there was no sign of tipsiness at all.

‘And you liked Jerry Waldegrave,’ said Robin, almost absent-mindedly.

‘Oh, he’s lovely,’ said Kathryn, on a roll now, praising anyone that Quine might have attacked. ‘Lovely man. He was very, very drunk, though. He was in a side room and people were steering clear, you know. That bitch Tassel told us to leave him to it, that he was talking gibberish.’

‘Why do you call her a bitch?’ asked Robin.

‘Snobby old cow,’ said Kathryn. ‘Way she spoke to me, to everyone. But I know what it was: she was upset because Michael Fancourt was there. I said to her – Owen had gone off to see if Jerry was all right, he wasn’t going to leave him passed out in a chair, whatever that old bitch said – I told her: “I’ve just been talking to Fancourt, he was charming.” She didn’t like that,’ said Kathryn with satisfaction. ‘Didn’t like the idea of him being charming to me when he hates her. Owen told me she used to be in love with Fancourt and he wouldn’t give her the time of day.’

She relished the gossip, however old. For that night, at least, she had been an insider.

‘She left soon after I told her that,’ said Kathryn with satisfaction. ‘Horrible woman.’

‘Michael Fancourt told me,’ said Strike, and the eyes of Kathryn and Pippa were instantly riveted on him, eager to hear what the famous writer might have said, ‘that Owen Quine and Elizabeth Tassel once had an affair.’

One moment of stupefied silence and then Kathryn Kent burst out laughing. It was unquestionably genuine: raucous, almost joyful, shrieks filled the room.

‘Owen and Elizabeth Tassel?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Pippa beamed at the sight and sound of Kathryn Kent’s exuberant, unexpected mirth. She rolled against the back of the sofa, trying to catch her breath; brandy slopped onto her trousers as she shook with what seemed entirely genuine amusement. Pippa caught the hysteria from her and began to laugh too.

‘Never,’ panted Kathryn, ‘in… a… million… years…’

‘This would have been a long time ago,’ said Strike, but her long red mane shook as she continued to roar with unfeigned laughter.

‘Owen and Liz… never. Never, ever… you don’t understand,’ she said, now dabbing at eyes wet with mirth. ‘He thought she was awful. He would’ve told me… Owen talked about everyone he’d slept with, he wasn’t a gentleman like that, was he, Pip? I’d have known if they’d ever… I don’t know where Michael Fancourt got that from. Never,’ said Kathryn Kent, with unforced merriment and total conviction.

The laughter had loosened her up.

‘But you don’t know what the Cutter really meant?’ Robin asked her, setting her empty brandy glass down on the pine coffee table with the finality of a guest about to take their leave.

‘I never said I didn’t know,’ said Kathryn, still out of breath from her protracted laughter. ‘I do know. It was just awful, to do it to Jerry. Such a bloody hypocrite… Owen tells me not to mention it to anyone and then he goes and puts it in Bombyx Mori…’

Robin did not need Strike’s look to tell her to remain silent and let Kathryn’s brandy-fuelled good humour, her enjoyment of their undivided attention and the reflected glory of knowing sensitive secrets about literary figures do their work.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right, here it is…

‘Owen told me as we were leaving. Jerry was very drunk that night and you know his marriage is on the rocks, has been for years… he and Fenella had had a really terrible row the night before the party and she’d told him that their daughter might not be his. That she might be…’

Strike knew what was coming.

‘… Fancourt’s,’ said Kathryn, after a suitably dramatic pause. ‘The dwarf with the big head, the baby she thought of aborting because she didn’t know whose it was, d’you see? The Cutter with his cuckold’s horns…

‘And Owen told me to keep my mouth shut. “It’s not funny,” he said, “Jerry loves his daughter, only good thing he’s got in his life.” But he talked about it all the way home. On and on about Fancourt and how much he’d hate finding out he had a daughter, because Fancourt never wanted kids… All that bullshit about protecting Jerry! Anything to get at Michael Fancourt. Anything.’

46

Leander strived; the waves about him wound,

And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground

Was strewed with pearl…

Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander

Grateful for the effect of cheap brandy and to Robin’s particular combination of clear-headedness and warmth, Strike parted from her with many thanks half an hour later. Robin travelled home to Matthew in a glow of gratification and excitement, looking more kindly on Strike’s theory as to the killer of Owen Quine than she had done before. This was partly because nothing that Kathryn Kent had said had contradicted it, but mainly because she felt particularly warm towards her boss after the shared interrogation.

Strike returned to his attic rooms in a less elevated frame of mind. He had drunk nothing but tea and believed more strongly than ever in his theory, but all the proof he could offer was a single typewriter cassette: it would not be enough to overturn the police case against Leonora.

There were hard frosts overnight on Saturday and Sunday, but during the daytime glimmers of sunshine pierced the cloud blanket. Rain turned some of the accumulated snow in the gutters to sliding slush. Strike brooded alone between his rooms and his office, ignoring a call from Nina Lascelles and turning down an invitation to dinner at Nick and Ilsa’s, pleading paperwork but actually preferring solitude without pressure to discuss the Quine case.

He knew that he was acting as though he were held to a professional standard that had ceased to apply when he had left the Special Investigation Branch. Though legally free to gossip to whomever he pleased about his suspicions, he continued to treat them as confidential. This was partly longstanding habit, but mainly because (much as others might jeer) he took extremely seriously the possibility that the killer might hear what he was thinking and doing. In Strike’s opinion, the safest way of ensuring that secret information did not leak was not to tell anybody about it.

On Monday he was visited again by the boss and boyfriend of the faithless Miss Brocklehurst, whose masochism now extended to a wish to know whether she had, as he strongly suspected, a third lover hidden away somewhere. Strike listened with half his mind on the activities of Dave Polworth, who was starting to feel like his last hope. Robin’s endeavours remained fruitless, in spite of the hours she was spending pursuing the evidence he had asked her to find.

At half past six that evening, as he sat in his flat watching the forecast, which predicted a return of arctic weather by the end of the week, his phone rang.

‘Guess what, Diddy?’ said Polworth down a crackling line.

‘You’re kidding me,’ said Strike, his chest suddenly tight with anticipation.

‘Got the lot, mate.’

‘Holy shit,’ breathed Strike.

It had been his own theory, but he felt as astonished as if Polworth had done it all unaided.

‘Bagged up here, waiting for you.’

‘I’ll send someone for it first thing tomorrow—’

‘And I’m gonna go home and have a nice hot bath,’ said Polworth.

‘Chum, you’re a bloody—’

‘I know I am. We’ll talk about my credit later. I’m fucking freezing, Diddy, I’m going home.’

Strike called Robin with the news. Her elation matched his own.

‘Right, tomorrow!’ she said, full of determination. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to get it, I’m going to make sure—’

‘Don’t go getting careless,’ Strike talked over her. ‘It’s not a competition.’

He barely slept that night.

Robin made no appearance at the office until one in the afternoon, but the ins

tant he heard the glass door bang and heard her calling him, he knew.

‘You haven’t—?’

‘Yes,’ she said breathlessly.

She thought he was going to hug her, which would be crossing a line he had never even approached before, but the lunge she had thought might be meant for her was really for the mobile on his desk.

‘I’m calling Anstis. We’ve done it, Robin.’

‘Cormoran, I think—’ Robin started to say, but he did not hear her. He had hurried back into his office and closed the door behind him.

Robin lowered herself into her computer chair, feeling uneasy. Strike’s muffled voice rose and fell beyond the door. She got up restlessly to visit the bathroom, where she washed her hands and stared into the cracked and spotted mirror over the sink, observing the inconveniently bright gold of her hair. Returning to the office, she sat down, could not settle to anything, noticed that she had not switched on her tiny tinsel Christmas tree, did so, and waited, absent-mindedly biting her thumbnail, something she had not done for years.

Twenty minutes later, his jaw set and his expression ugly, Strike emerged from the office.

‘Stupid fucking dickhead!’ were his first words.

‘No!’ gasped Robin.

‘He’s having none of it,’ said Strike, too wound up to sit, but limping up and down the enclosed space. ‘He’s had that bloody rag in the lock-up analysed and it’s got Quine’s blood on it – big effing deal, could’ve cut himself months ago. He’s so in love with his own effing theory—’

‘Did you say to him, if he just gets a warrant—?’

‘DICKHEAD!’ roared Strike, punching the metal filing cabinet so that it reverberated and Robin jumped.

‘But he can’t deny – once forensics are done—’

‘That’s the bleeding point, Robin!’ he said, rounding on her. ‘Unless he searches before he gets forensics done, there might be nothing there to find!’

‘But did you tell him about the typewriter?’

‘If the simple fact that it’s there doesn’t hit the prick between the eyes—’