The Silkworm

‘A silkworm?’

‘Yeah, and you know what? I always thought they were like spiders spinning their webs, but you know how they get silk from the worms?’

‘Can’t say I do.’

‘They boil them,’ said Robin. ‘Boil them alive, so that they don’t damage their cocoons by bursting out of them. It’s the cocoons that are made of silk. Not very nice, really, is it? Why did you want to know about silkworms?’

‘I wanted to know why Owen Quine might have called his novel Bombyx Mori,’ said Strike. ‘Can’t say I’m any the wiser.’

He spent the afternoon on tedious paperwork relating to a surveillance case and hoping the weather might improve: he would need to go out as he had virtually nothing to eat upstairs. After Robin had left, Strike continued working while the rain pounding his window became steadily heavier. Finally he pulled on his overcoat and walked, in what was now a downpour, down a sodden, dark Charing Cross Road to buy food at the nearest supermarket. There had been too many takeaways lately.

On the way back up the road, with bulging carrier bags in both hands, he turned on impulse into a second-hand bookshop that was about to close. The man behind the counter was unsure whether they had a copy of Hobart’s Sin, Owen Quine’s first book and supposedly his best, but after a lot of inconclusive mumbling and an unconvincing perusal of his computer screen, offered Strike a copy of The Balzac Brothers by the same author. Tired, wet and hungry, Strike paid two pounds for the battered hardback and took it home to his attic flat.

Having put away his provisions and cooked himself pasta, Strike stretched out on his bed as night pressed dense, dark and cold at his windows, and opened the missing man’s book.

The style was ornate and florid, the story gothic and surreal. Two brothers by the names of Varicocele and Vas were locked inside a vaulted room while the corpse of their older brother decayed slowly in a corner. In between drunken arguments about literature, loyalty and the French writer Balzac, they attempted to co-author an account of their decomposing brother’s life. Varicocele constantly palpated his aching balls, which seemed to Strike to be a clumsy metaphor for writer’s block; Vas seemed to be doing most of the work.

After fifty pages, and with a murmur of ‘Bollocks is right’, Strike threw the book aside and began the laborious process of turning in.

The deep and blissful stupor of the previous night eluded him. Rain hammered against the window of his attic room and his sleep was disturbed; confused dreams of catastrophe filled the night. Strike woke in the morning with the uneasy aftermath clinging over him like a hangover. The rain was still pounding on his window, and when he turned on his TV he saw that Cornwall had been hit by severe flooding; people were trapped in cars, or evacuated from their homes and now huddled in emergency centres.

Strike snatched up his mobile phone and called the number, familiar to him as his own reflection in the mirror, that all his life had represented security and stability.

‘Hello?’ said his aunt.

‘It’s Cormoran. You all right, Joan? I’ve just seen the news.’

‘We’re all right at the moment, love, it’s up the coast it’s bad,’ she said. ‘It’s wet, mind you, blowing up a storm, but nothing like St Austell. Just been watching it on the news ourselves. How are you, Corm? It’s been ages. Ted and I were just saying last night, we haven’t heard from you, and we were wanting to say, why don’t you come for Christmas as you’re on your own again? What do you think?’

He was unable to dress or to fasten on his prosthesis while holding the mobile. She talked for half an hour, an unstoppable gush of local chat and sudden, darting forays into personal territory he preferred to leave unprobed. At last, after a final blast of interrogation about his love life, his debts and his amputated leg, she let him go.

Strike arrived in the office late, tired and irritable. He was wearing a dark suit and tie. Robin wondered whether he was going to meet the divorcing brunette for lunch after his meeting with Elizabeth Tassel.

‘Heard the news?’

‘Floods in Cornwall?’ Strike asked, switching on the kettle, because his first tea of the day had grown cold while Joan gabbled.

‘William and Kate are engaged,’ said Robin.

‘Who?’

‘Prince William,’ said Robin, amused, ‘and Kate Middleton.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike coldly. ‘Good for them.’

He had been among the ranks of the engaged himself until a few months ago. He did not know how his ex-fiancée’s new engagement was proceeding, nor did he enjoy wondering when it was going to end. (Not as theirs had ended, of course, with her clawing her betrothed’s face and revealing her betrayal, but with the kind of wedding he could never have given her; more like the one William and Kate would no doubt soon enjoy.)

Robin judged it safe to break the moody silence only once Strike had had half a mug of tea.

‘Lucy called just before you came down, to remind you about your birthday dinner on Saturday night, and to ask whether you want to bring anyone.’

Strike’s spirits slipped several more notches. He had forgotten all about the dinner at his sister’s house.

‘Right,’ he said heavily.

‘Is it your birthday on Saturday?’ Robin asked.

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘When is it?’

He sighed. He did not want a cake, a card or presents, but her expression was expectant.

‘Tuesday,’ he said.

‘The twenty-third?’

‘Yeah.’

After a short pause, it occurred to him that he ought to reciprocate.

‘And when’s yours?’ Something in her hesitation unnerved him. ‘Christ, it’s not today, is it?’

She laughed.

‘No, it’s gone. October the ninth. It’s all right, it was a Saturday,’ she said, still smiling at his pained expression. ‘I wasn’t sitting here all day expecting flowers.’

He grinned back. Feeling he ought to make a little extra effort, because he had missed her birthday and never considered finding out when it was, he added:

‘Good thing you and Matthew haven’t set a date yet. At least you won’t clash with the Royal Wedding.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, blushing, ‘we have set a date.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the – the eighth of January. I’ve got your invitation here,’ she said, stooping hurriedly over her bag (she had not even asked Matthew about inviting Strike, but too late for that). ‘Here.’

‘The eighth of January?’ Strike said, taking the silver envelope. ‘That’s only – what? – seven weeks away.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

There was a strange little pause. Strike could not remember immediately what else he wanted her to do; then it came back to him, and as he spoke he tapped the silver envelope against his palm, businesslike.

‘How’s it going with the Hiltons?’

‘I’ve done a few. Quine isn’t there under his own name and nobody’s recognised the description. There are loads of them, though, so I’m just working my way through the list. What are you up to after you see Elizabeth Tassel?’ she asked casually.

‘Pretending I want to buy a flat in Mayfair. Looks like somebody’s husband’s trying to realise some capital and take it offshore before his wife’s lawyers can stop him.

‘Well,’ he said, pushing the unopened wedding invitation deep into his overcoat pocket, ‘better be off. Got a bad author to find.’

8

I took the book and so the old man vanished.

John Lyly, Endymion: or, the Man in the Moon

It occurred to Strike as he travelled, standing, the one Tube stop to Elizabeth Tassel’s office (he was never fully relaxed on these short journeys, but braced to take the strain on his false leg, wary of falls) that Robin had not reproached him for taking on the Quine case. Not, of course, that it was her place to reproach her employer, but she had turned down a much high

er salary to throw her lot in with his and it would not have been unreasonable for her to expect that once the debts were paid, a raise might be the least he could do for her. She was unusual in her lack of criticism, or critical silence; the only female in Strike’s life who seemed to have no desire to improve or correct him. Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you.

So she was marrying in seven weeks’ time. Seven weeks left until she became Mrs Matthew… but if he had ever known her fiancé’s surname, he could not recall it.

As he waited for the lift at Goodge Street, Strike experienced a sudden, crazy urge to call his divorcing brunette client – who had made it quite clear that she would welcome such a development – with a view to screwing her tonight in what he imagined would be her deep, soft, heavily perfumed bed in Knightsbridge. But the idea occurred only to be instantly dismissed. Such a move would be insanity; worse than taking on a missing-person case for which he was unlikely ever to see payment…

And why was he wasting time on Owen Quine? he asked himself, head bowed against the biting rain. Curiosity, he answered inwardly after a few moments’ thought, and perhaps something more elusive. As he headed down Store Street, squinting through the downpour and concentrating on maintaining his footing on the slippery pavements, he reflected that his palate was in danger of becoming jaded by the endless variations on cupidity and vengefulness that his wealthy clients kept bringing him. It had been a long time since he had investigated a missing-person case. There would be satisfaction in restoring the runaway Quine to his family.

Elizabeth Tassel’s literary agency lay in a mostly residential mews of dark brick, a surprisingly quiet cul-de-sac off busy Gower Street. Strike pressed a doorbell beside a discreet brass plaque. A light thumping sound ensued and a pale young man in an open-necked shirt opened the door at the foot of red-carpeted stairs.

‘Are you the private detective?’ he asked with what seemed to be a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Strike followed him, dripping all over the threadbare carpet, up the stairs to a mahogany door and into a large office space that had once, perhaps, been a separate hall and sitting room.

Aged elegance was slowly disintegrating into shabbiness. The windows were misty with condensation and the air heavy with old cigarette smoke. A plethora of overstocked wooden bookcases lined the walls and the dingy wallpaper was almost obscured by framed literary caricatures and cartoons. Two heavy desks sat facing each other across a scuffed rug, but neither was occupied.

‘Can I take your coat?’ the young man asked, and a thin and frightened-looking girl jumped up from behind one of the desks. She was holding a stained sponge in one hand.

‘I can’t get it out, Ralph!’ she whispered frantically to the young man with Strike.

‘Bloody thing,’ Ralph muttered irritably. ‘Elizabeth’s decrepit old dog’s puked under Sally’s desk,’ he confided, sotto voce, as he took Strike’s sodden Crombie and hung it on a Victorian coat-stand just inside the door. ‘I’ll let her know you’re here. Just keep scrubbing,’ he advised his colleague as he crossed to a second mahogany door and opened it a crack.

‘That’s Mr Strike, Liz.’

There was a loud bark, followed immediately by a deep, rattling human cough that could have plausibly issued from the lungs of an old coal miner.

‘Grab him,’ said a hoarse voice.

The door to the agent’s office opened, revealing Ralph, who was holding tight to the collar of an aged but evidently still feisty Dobermann pinscher, and a tall, thick-set woman of around sixty, with large, uncompromisingly plain features. The geometrically perfect steel-grey bob, a black suit of severe cut and a slash of crimson lipstick gave her a certain dash. She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.

‘You’d better take him out, Ralph,’ said the agent, her olive-dark eyes on Strike. The rain was still pelting against the windows. ‘And don’t forget the poo bags, he’s a bit soft today.

‘Come in, Mr Strike.’

Looking disgusted, her assistant dragged the big dog, with its head like a living Anubis, out of her office; as Strike and the Dobermann passed each other, it growled energetically.

‘Coffee, Sally,’ the agent shot at the frightened-looking girl who had concealed her sponge. As she jumped up and vanished through a door behind her desk, Strike hoped she would wash her hands thoroughly before making drinks.

Elizabeth Tassel’s stuffy office was a kind of concentration of the outer room: it stank of cigarettes and old dog. A tweed bed for the animal sat under her desk; the walls were plastered with old photographs and prints. Strike recognised one of the largest: a reasonably well-known and elderly writer of illustrated children’s books called Pinkelman, whom he was not sure was still alive. After indicating wordlessly that Strike should take the seat opposite her, from which he had first to remove a stack of papers and old copies of the Bookseller, the agent took a cigarette from a box on the desk, lit it with an onyx lighter, inhaled deeply then broke into a protracted fit of rattling, wheezing coughs.

‘So,’ she croaked when these had subsided and she had returned to the leather chair behind the desk, ‘Christian Fisher tells me that Owen’s put in another of his famous vanishing acts.’

‘That’s right,’ said Strike. ‘He disappeared the night that you and he argued about his book.’

She began to speak, but the words disintegrated immediately into further coughs. Horrible, tearing noises issued from deep in her torso. Strike waited in silence for the fit to pass.

‘Sounds nasty,’ he said at last, when she had coughed herself into silence again and, incredibly, taken another deep drag of her cigarette.

‘Flu,’ she rasped. ‘Can’t shake it. When did Leonora come to you?’

‘The day before yesterday.’

‘Can she afford you?’ she croaked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you come cheap, the man who solved the Landry case.’

‘Mrs Quine suggested that you might pay me,’ said Strike.

The coarse cheeks purpled and her dark eyes, watery from so much coughing, narrowed.

‘Well, you can go straight back to Leonora’ – her chest began to heave beneath the smart black jacket as she fought off the desire to cough again – ‘and tell her that I won’t pay a p-penny to get that bastard back. He’s no – no longer my client. Tell her – tell her—’

She was overtaken by another giant explosion of coughing.

The door opened and the thin female assistant entered, struggling under the weight of a heavy wooden tray laden with cups and a cafetière. Strike got up to take it from her; there was barely room on the desk to set it down. The girl attempted to make a space. In her nerves, she knocked over a stack of papers.

A furious admonitory gesture from the coughing agent sent the girl scuttling from the room in fright.

‘Use-useless – little—’ wheezed Elizabeth Tassel.

Strike put the tray down on the desk, ignoring the scattered papers all over the carpet, and resumed his seat. The agent was a bully in a familiar mould: one of those older women who capitalised, whether consciously or not, on the fact that they awoke in those who were susceptible, childhood memories of demanding and all-powerful mothers. Strike was immune to such intimidation. For one thing, his own mother, whatever her faults, had been young and openly adoring; for another, he sensed vulnerability in this apparent dragon. The chain-smoking, the fading photographs and the old dog basket suggested a more sentimental, less self-assured woman than her young hirelings might think.

When at last she had finished coughing, he handed her a cup of coffee he had poured.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered gruffly.

‘So you’ve sacked Quine?’ he asked. ‘Did you tell him so, the night you had dinner?’

‘I can’t remember,’ she croaked. ‘Things got heated very quickly. Owen stood up in the middl

e of the restaurant, the better to shout at me, then flounced out leaving me to pay the bill. You’ll find plenty of witnesses to what was said, if you’re interested. Owen made sure it was a nice, public scene.’

She reached for another cigarette and, as an afterthought, offered Strike one. After she had lit both, she said:

‘What’s Christian Fisher told you?’

‘Not much,’ said Strike.

‘I hope for both your sakes that’s true,’ she snapped.

Strike said nothing, but smoked and drank his coffee while Elizabeth waited, clearly hoping for more information.

‘Did he mention Bombyx Mori?’ she asked.

Strike nodded.

‘What did he say about it?’

‘That Quine’s put a lot of recognisable people in the book, thinly disguised.’

There was a charged pause.

‘I hope Chard does sue him. That’s his idea of keeping his mouth shut, is it?’

‘Have you tried to contact Quine since he walked out of – where was it you were having dinner?’ Strike asked.

‘The River Café,’ she croaked. ‘No, I haven’t tried to contact him. There’s nothing left to say.’

‘And he hasn’t contacted you?’

‘No.’

‘Leonora says you told Quine his book was the best thing he’d ever produced, then changed your mind and refused to represent it.’

‘She says what? That’s not what – not – what I s—’

It was her worst paroxysm of coughing yet. Strike felt a strong urge to forcibly remove the cigarette from her hand as she hacked and spluttered. Finally the fit passed. She drank half a cup of hot coffee straight off, which seemed to bring her some relief. In a stronger voice, she repeated:

‘That’s not what I said. “The best thing he’d ever written” – is that what he told Leonora?’

‘Yes. What did you really say?’

‘I was ill,’ she said hoarsely, ignoring the question. ‘Flu. Off work for a week. Owen rang the office to tell me the novel was finished; Ralph told him I was at home in bed, so Owen couriered the manuscript straight to my house. I had to get up to sign for it. Absolutely typical of him. I had a temperature of a hundred and four and could barely stand. His book was finished so I was expected to read it immediately.’