The Silkworm (29 page)

Even with snow chains on its tyres the old family Land Rover driven by Robin’s mother had had a hard job of it between York station and Masham. The wipers made fan-shaped windows, swiftly obliterated, onto roads familiar to Robin since childhood, now transformed by the worst winter she had seen in many years. The snow was relentless and the journey, which should have taken an hour, lasted nearly three. There had been moments when Robin had thought she might yet miss the funeral. At least she had been able to speak to Matthew on her mobile, explaining that she was close. He had told her that several others were still miles away, that he was afraid his aunt from Cambridge might not make it at all.

At home Robin had dodged the slobbering welcome of their old chocolate Labrador and hurtled upstairs to her room, pulling on the black dress and coat without bothering to iron them, laddering her first pair of tights in her haste, then running back downstairs to the hall where her parents and brothers were waiting for her.

They walked together through the swirling snow beneath black umbrellas, up the gentle hill Robin had climbed every day of her primary school years and across the wide square that was the ancient heart of her tiny home town, their backs to the giant chimney of the local brewery. The Saturday market had been cancelled. Deep channels had been made in the snow by those few brave souls who had crossed the square that morning, footprints converging near the church where Robin could see a crowd of black-coated mourners. The roofs of the pale gold Georgian houses lining the square wore mantels of bright, frozen icing, and still the snow kept coming. A rising sea of white was steadily burying the large square tombstones in the cemetery.

Robin shivered as the family edged towards the doors of St Mary the Virgin, past the remnant of a ninth-century round-shafted cross that had a curiously pagan appearance, and then, at last, she saw Matthew, standing in the porch with his father and sister, pale and heart-stoppingly handsome in his black suit. As Robin watched, trying to catch his eye over the queue, a young woman reached up and embraced him. Robin recognised Sarah Shadlock, Matthew’s old friend from university. Her greeting was a little more lascivious, perhaps, than was appropriate in the circumstances, but Robin’s guilt about having come within ten seconds of missing the overnight train, about not having seen Matthew in nearly a week, made her feel she had no right to resent it.

‘Robin,’ he said urgently when he saw her and he forgot to shake three people’s hands as he held out his arms to her. As they hugged she felt tears prickle beneath her eyelids. This was real life, after all, Matthew and home…

‘Go and sit at the front,’ he told her and she obeyed, leaving her family at the back of the church to sit in the front pew with Matthew’s brother-in-law, who was dandling his baby daughter on his knee and greeted Robin with a morose nod.

It was a beautiful old church and Robin knew it well from the Christmas, Easter and harvest services she had attended all her life with her primary school and family. Her eyes travelled slowly from familiar object to familiar object. High above her over the chancel arch was a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (or, at the very least, the
school
of Joshua Reynolds) and she fixed upon it, trying to compose her mind. A misty, mystical image, the boy-angel contemplating the distant vision of a cross emitting golden rays… Who had really done it, she wondered, Reynolds or some studio acolyte? And then she felt guilty that she was indulging her perennial curiosity instead of feeling sad about Mrs Cunliffe…

She had thought that she would be marrying here in a few weeks’ time. Her wedding dress was hanging ready in the spare room’s wardrobe, but instead, here was Mrs Cunliffe’s coffin coming up the aisle, shining black with silver handles, Owen Quine still in the morgue… no shiny coffin for his disembowelled body yet, rotted and burned…

Don’t think about that
, she told herself sternly as Matthew sat down beside her, the length of his leg warm against hers.

The last twenty-four hours had been so packed with incident that it was hard for Robin to believe she was here, at home. She and Strike might have been in hospital, they had come close to slamming head first into that overturned lorry… the driver covered in blood… Mrs Cunliffe was probably unscathed in her silk-lined box…
Don’t think about that
…

It was as though her eyes were being stripped of a comfortable soft focus. Maybe seeing things like bound and disembowelled bodies did something to you, changed the way you saw the world.

She knelt a little late for prayer, the cross-stitched hassock rough beneath her freezing knees.
Poor Mrs Cunliffe
…
except that Matthew’s mother had never much liked her.
Be kind
, Robin implored herself, even though it was true. Mrs Cunliffe had not liked the idea of Matthew being tied to the same girlfriend for so long. She had mentioned, within Robin’s hearing, how good it was for young men to play the field, sow their wild oats… The way in which Robin had left university had tainted her, she knew, in Mrs Cunliffe’s eyes.

The statue of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill was facing Robin from mere feet away. As she stood for the hymn he seemed to be staring at her in his Jacobean dress, life-sized and horizontal on his marble shelf, propped up on his elbow to face the congregation. His wife lay beneath him in an identical pose. They were oddly real in their irreverent poses, cushions beneath their elbows to keep their marble bones comfortable, and above them, in the spandrels, allegorical figures of death and mortality.
Till
death do
us part
…
and her thoughts drifted again: she and Matthew, tied together for ever until they died…
no, not tied
…
don’t think tied
…
What’s wrong with you?
She was exhausted. The train had been overheated and jerky. She had woken on the hour, afraid that it would get stuck in the snow.

Matthew reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers.

The burial took place as quickly as decency allowed, the snow falling thick around them. There was no lingering at the graveside; Robin was not the only one perceptibly shivering.

Everyone went back to the Cunliffes’ big brick house and milled around in the welcome warmth. Mr Cunliffe, who was always a little louder than the occasion warranted, kept filling glasses and greeting people as though it were a party.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s been horrible without you.’

‘Me too,’ said Robin. ‘I wish I could have been here.’

Lying again.
 

‘Auntie Sue’s staying tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘I thought I could maybe come over to your place, be good to get away for a bit. It’s been full on this week…’

‘Great, yes,’ said Robin, squeezing his hand, grateful that she would not have to stay at the Cunliffes’. She found Matthew’s sister hard work and Mr Cunliffe overbearing.

But you could have put up with it for a night
, she told herself sternly. It felt like an undeserved escape.

And so they returned to the Ellacotts’ house, a short walk from the square. Matthew liked her family; he was glad to change out of his suit into jeans, to help her mother lay the kitchen table for dinner. Mrs Ellacott, an ample woman with Robin’s red-gold hair tucked up in an untidy bun, treated him with gentle kindness; she was a woman of many interests and enthusiasms, currently doing an Open University degree in English Literature.

‘How’re the studies going, Linda?’ Matthew asked as he lifted the heavy casserole dish out of the oven for her.

‘We’re doing Webster,
The Duchess of Malfi
: “And I am grown mad with ’t.”’

‘Difficult, is it?’ asked Matthew.

‘That’s a quotation, love. Oh,’ she dropped the serving spoons onto the side with a clatter, ‘that reminds me
–
I bet I’ve missed it—’

She crossed the kitchen and snatched up a copy of the
Radio Times
, always present in their house.

‘No, it’s on at nine. There’s an interview with Michael Fancourt I want to watch.’

‘Michael Fancourt?’ said Robin, looking round. ‘Why?’

‘He’s very influenced by all those Revenge Tragedians,’ said her mother. ‘I’m hoping he’ll explain the appeal.’

‘Seen this?’ said Robin’s youngest brother, Jonathan, fresh back from the corner shop with the extra milk requested by his mother. ‘It’s on the front page, Rob. That writer with his guts ripped out—’

‘Jon!’ said Mrs Ellacott sharply.

Robin knew that her mother was not reprimanding her son out of any suspicion that Matthew would not appreciate mention of her job, but because of a more general aversion to discussing sudden death in the aftermath of the burial.

‘What?’ said Jonathan, oblivious to the proprieties, shoving the
Daily Express
under Robin’s nose.

Quine had made the front page now that the press knew what had been done to him.

HORROR
AUTHOR
WROTE
OWN
MURDER
.
 

Horror author
, Robin thought,
he was hardly that
…
but it makes a good headline
.

‘Is your boss gonna solve it, d’you reckon?’ Jonathan asked her, thumbing through the paper. ‘Show up the Met again?’

She began to read the account over Jonathan’s shoulder, but caught Matthew’s eye and moved away.

A buzzing issued from Robin’s handbag, discarded in a sagging chair in the corner of the flagged kitchen, as they ate their meal of stew and baked potatoes. She ignored it. Only when they had finished eating and Matthew was dutifully helping her mother clear the table did Robin wander to her bag to check her messages. To her great surprise she saw a missed call from Strike. With a surreptitious glance at Matthew, who was busily stacking plates in the dishwasher, she called voicemail while the others chatted.

You have one new message. Received today at seven twenty p.m.
 

The crackle of an open line, but no speech.

Then a thud. A yell in the distance from Strike:

‘No you don’t, you fucking—’

A bellow of pain.

Silence. The crackle of the open line. Indeterminate crunching, dragging sounds. Loud panting, a scraping noise, the line dead.

Robin stood aghast, the phone pressed against her ear.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked her father, glasses halfway down his nose as he paused on the way to the dresser, knives and forks in his hand.

‘I think – I think my boss has – has had an accident—’

She pressed Strike’s number with shaking fingers. The call went straight to voicemail. Matthew was standing in the middle of the kitchen watching her, his displeasure undisguised.

Strike did not hear Robin calling because, unbeknownst to him, his mobile had been knocked onto silent when it had hit the ground fifteen minutes previously. Nor was he aware that his thumb had hit Robin’s number as the phone slipped through his fingers.

He had only just left his building when it happened. The door onto the street had swung shut behind him and he had had two seconds, with his mobile in his hand (waiting for a ring-back from the cab he had reluctantly ordered) when the tall figure in the black coat had come running at him through the darkness. A blur of pale skin beneath a hood and a scarf, her arm outstretched, inexpert but determined, with the knife pointing directly at him in a wavering clutch.

Bracing himself to meet her he had almost slipped again but, slamming his hand to the door, he steadied himself and the mobile fell. Shocked and furious with her, whoever she was, for the damage her pursuit had already done to his knee he bellowed – she checked for a split-second, then came at him once more.

As he swung his stick at the hand in which he had already seen the Stanley knife his knee twisted again. He let out a roar of pain and she leapt back, as though she had stabbed him without knowing it, and then, for the second time, she had panicked and taken flight, sprinting away through the snow leaving a furious and frustrated Strike unable to give chase, and with no choice but to scrabble around in the snow for his phone.

Fuck this leg!
 

When Robin called him he was sitting in a crawling taxi, sweating with pain. It was small consolation that the tiny triangular blade he had seen glinting in his pursuer’s hand had not pierced him. His knee, to which he had felt obliged to fit the prosthesis before setting out for Nina’s, was excruciating once more and he was burning with rage at his inability to give chase to his mad stalker. He had never hit a woman, never knowingly hurt one, but the sight of the knife coming at him through the dark had rendered such scruples void. To the consternation of the taxi driver, who was watching his large, furious-looking passenger in the rear-view mirror, Strike kept twisting in his seat in case he saw her walking along the busy Saturday-night pavements, round-shouldered in her black coat, her knife concealed in her pocket.

The cab was gliding beneath the Christmas lights of Oxford Street, large, fragile parcels of silver wrapped with golden bows, and Strike fought his ruffled temper as they travelled, feeling no pleasure at the thought of his imminent dinner date. Again and again Robin called him, but he could not feel the mobile vibrating because it was deep in his coat pocket, which lay beside him on the seat.

‘Hi,’ said Nina with a forced smile when she opened the door to her flat half an hour after the agreed time.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Strike, limping over the threshold. ‘I had an accident leaving the house. My leg.’

He had not brought her anything, he realised, standing there in his overcoat. He should have brought wine or chocolates and he felt her notice it as her big eyes roved over him; she had good manners herself and he felt, suddenly, a little shabby.

‘And I’ve forgotten the wine I bought you,’ he lied. ‘This is crap. Chuck me out.’

As she laughed, though unwillingly, Strike felt the phone vibrate in his pocket and automatically pulled it out.

Robin. He could not think why she wanted him on a Saturday.

‘Sorry,’ he told Nina, ‘gotta take this – urgent, it’s my assistant—’

Her smile slipped. She turned and walked out of the hall, leaving him there in his coat.

‘Robin?’

‘Are you all right? What happened?’

‘How did you—?’

‘I’ve got a voicemail that sounds like a recording of you being attacked!’

‘Christ, did I call you? Must’ve been when I dropped the phone. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was—’

Five minutes later, having told Robin what had happened, he hung up his coat and followed his nose to the sitting room, where Nina had laid a table for two. The room was lamp-lit; she had tidied, put fresh flowers around the place. A strong smell of burnt garlic hung in the air.

‘Sorry,’ he repeated as she returned carrying a dish. ‘Wish I had a nine-to-five job sometimes.’

‘Help yourself to wine,’ she said coolly.

The situation was deeply familiar. How often had he sat opposite a woman who was irritated by his lateness, his divided attention, his casualness? But here, at least, it was being played out in a minor key. If he had been late for dinner with Charlotte and taken a call from another woman as soon as he had arrived he might have expected a face full of wine and flying crockery. That thought made him feel more kindly towards Nina.

‘Detectives make shit dates,’ he told her as he sat down.

‘I wouldn’t say “shit”,’ she replied, softening. ‘I don’t suppose it’s the sort of job you can leave behind.’

She was watching him with her huge mouse-like eyes.

‘I had a nightmare about you last night,’ she said.

‘Getting off to a flying start, aren’t we?’ said Strike, and she laughed.

‘Well, not really about you. We were together looking for Owen Quine’s intestinal tract.’

She took a big swig of wine, gazing at him.

‘Did we find it?’ Strike asked, trying to keep things light.

‘Yes.’

‘Where? I’ll take any leads at this point.’

‘In Jerry Waldegrave’s bottom desk drawer,’ said Nina and he thought he saw her repress a shudder. ‘It was horrible, actually. Blood and guts when I opened it… and you hit Jerry. It woke me up, it was so real.’

She drank more wine, not touching her food. Strike, who had already taken several hearty mouthfuls (far too much garlic, but he was hungry), felt he was being insufficiently sympathetic. He swallowed hastily and said:

‘Sounds creepy.’

‘It’s because of what was on the news yesterday,’ she said, watching him. ‘Nobody realised, nobody knew he’d – he’d been killed like that. Like
Bombyx Mori
. You didn’t tell me,’ she said, and a whiff of accusation reached him through the garlic fumes.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Strike. ‘It’s up to the police to release that kind of information.’

‘It’s on the front page of the
Daily Express
today. He’d have liked that, Owen. Being a headline. But I wish I hadn’t read it,’ she said, with a furtive look at him.

He had met these qualms before. Some people recoiled once they realised what he had seen, or done, or touched. It was as though he carried the smell of death on him. There were always women who were attracted by the soldier, the policeman: they experienced a vicarious thrill, a voluptuous appreciation at the violence a man might have seen or perpetrated. Other women were repelled. Nina, he suspected, had been one of the former, but now that the reality of cruelty, sadism and sickness had been forced on her she was discovering that she might, after all, belong in the second camp.

‘It wasn’t fun at work yesterday,’ she said. ‘Not after we heard that. Everyone was… It’s just, if he was killed that way, if the killer copied the book… It limits the possible suspects, doesn’t it? Nobody’s laughing about
Bombyx Mori
any more, I can tell you that. It’s like one of Michael Fancourt’s old plots, back when the critics said he was too grisly… And Jerry’s resigned.’

‘I heard.’

‘I don’t know why,’ she said restlessly. ‘He’s been at Roper Chard ages. He’s not being himself at all. Angry all the time, and he’s usually so lovely. And he’s drinking again. A lot.’

She was still not eating.

‘Was he close to Quine?’ Strike asked.

‘I think he was closer than he thought he was,’ said Nina slowly. ‘They’d worked together quite a long time. Owen drove him mad – Owen drove everyone mad – but Jerry’s really upset, I can tell.’

‘I can’t imagine Quine enjoying being edited.’

‘I think he was tricky sometimes,’ said Nina, ‘but Jerry won’t hear a word against Owen now. He’s obsessed by his breakdown theory. You heard him at the party, he thinks Owen was mentally ill and
Bombyx Mori
wasn’t really his fault. And he’s still
raging
against Elizabeth Tassel for letting the book out. She came in the other day to talk about one of her other authors—’

‘Dorcus Pengelly?’ Strike asked, and Nina gave a little gasp of laughter.

‘You don’t read that crap! Heaving bosoms and shipwrecks?’

‘The name stuck in my mind,’ said Strike, grinning. ‘Go on about Waldegrave.’

‘He saw Liz coming and slammed his office door as she walked past. You’ve seen it, it’s glass and he nearly broke it. Really unnecessary and obvious, it made everyone jump out of their skins. She looks ghastly,’ added Nina. ‘Liz Tassel. Awful. If she’d been on form, she’d have stormed into Jerry’s office and told him not to be so bloody rude—’

‘Would she?’

‘Are you crazy? Liz Tassel’s temper is legendary.’

Nina glanced at her watch.

‘Michael Fancourt’s being interviewed on the telly this evening; I’m recording it,’ she said, re-filling both their glasses. She still had not touched her food.

‘Wouldn’t mind watching that,’ said Strike.

She threw him an oddly calculating look and Strike guessed that she was trying to assess how much his presence was due to a desire to pick her brains, how much designs on her slim, boyish body.

His mobile rang again. For several seconds he weighed the offence he might cause if he answered it, versus the possibility that it might herald something more useful than Nina’s opinions about Jerry Waldegrave.

‘Sorry,’ he said and pulled it out of his pocket. It was his brother, Al.

‘Corm!’ said the voice over a noisy line. ‘Great to hear from you, bruv!’

‘Hi,’ said Strike repressively. ‘How are you?’

‘Great! I’m in New York, only just got your message. What d’you need?’

He knew that Strike would only call if he wanted something, but unlike Nina, Al did not seem to resent the fact.

‘Wondering if you fancied dinner this Friday,’ said Strike, ‘but if you’re in New York—’

‘I’m coming back Wednesday, that’d be cool. Want me to book somewhere?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘It’s got to be the River Café.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ said Al without asking why: perhaps he assumed that Strike merely had a yen for good Italian. ‘Text you the time, yeah? Look forward to it!’

Strike hung up, the first syllable of an apology already on his lips, but Nina had left for the kitchen. The atmosphere had undoubtedly curdled.