The Silkworm (38 page)

Robin arrived at work on Monday morning feeling tired and vaguely battle-weary, but proud of herself.

She and Matthew had spent most of the weekend discussing her job. In some ways (strange to think this, after nine years together) it had been the deepest and most serious conversation that they had ever had. Why had she not admitted for so long that her secret interest in investigative work had long pre-dated meeting Cormoran Strike? Matthew had seemed stunned when she had finally confessed to him that she had had an ambition to work in some form of criminal investigation since her early teens.

‘I’d have thought it would’ve been the last thing…’ Matthew had mumbled, tailing off but referring obliquely, as Robin knew, to the reason she had dropped out of university.

‘I just never knew how to say it to you,’ she told him. ‘I thought you’d laugh. So it wasn’t Cormoran making me stay, or anything to do with him as a – as a person’ (she had been on the verge of saying ‘as a man’, but saved herself just in time). ‘It was me. It’s what I want to do. I love it. And now he says he’ll train me, Matt, and that’s what I always wanted.’

The discussion had gone on all through Sunday, the disconcerted Matthew shifting slowly, like a boulder.

‘How much weekend work?’ he had asked her suspiciously.

‘I don’t know; when it’s needed. Matt, I love the job, don’t you understand? I don’t want to pretend any more. I just want to do it, and I’d like your support.’

In the end he had put his arms around her and agreed. She had tried not to feel grateful that his mother had just died, making him, she could not help thinking, just a little more amenable to persuasion than he might usually have been.

Robin had been looking forward to telling Strike about this mature development in her relationship but he was not in the office when she arrived. Lying on the desk beside her tiny tinsel tree was a short note in his distinctive, hard-to-read handwriting:

Robin gasped. Seizing the phone, she called Strike’s mobile, only to hear the engaged signal.

Hamleys would not open until ten but Robin did not think she could bear to wait that long. Again and again she pressed redial while she opened and sorted the post, but Strike was still on the other call. She opened emails, the phone clamped to one ear; half an hour passed, then an hour, and still the engaged tone emanated from Strike’s number. She began to feel irritated, suspecting that it was a deliberate ploy to keep her in suspense.

At half past ten a soft ping from the computer announced the arrival of an email from an unfamiliar sender called [email protected], who had sent nothing but an attachment labelled
FYI
.

Robin clicked on it automatically, still listening to the engaged tone. A large black-and-white picture swelled to fill her computer monitor.

The backdrop was stark; an overcast sky and the exterior of an old stone building. Everyone in the picture was out of focus except the bride, who had turned to look directly at the camera. She was wearing a long, plain, slim-fitting white gown with a floor-length veil held in place by a thin diamond band. Her black hair was flying like the folds of tulle in what looked like a stiff breeze. One hand was clasped in that of a blurred figure in a morning suit who appeared to be laughing, but her expression was unlike any bride’s that Robin had ever seen. She looked broken, bereft, haunted. Her eyes staring straight into Robin’s as though they alone were friends, as though Robin were the only one who might understand.

Robin lowered the mobile she had been listening to and stared at the picture. She had seen that extraordinarily beautiful face before. They had spoken once, on the telephone: Robin remembered a low, attractively husky voice. This was Charlotte, Strike’s ex-fiancée, the woman she had once seen running from this very building.

She was
so
beautiful. Robin felt strangely humbled by the other woman’s looks, and awed by her profound sadness. Sixteen years, on and off, with Strike – Strike, with his pube-like hair, his boxer’s profile and his half a leg… not that those things mattered, Robin told herself, staring transfixed at this incomparably stunning, sad bride…

The door opened. Strike was suddenly there beside her, two carrier bags of toys in his hands, and Robin, who had not heard him coming up the stairs, jumped as though she had been caught pilfering from the petty cash.

‘Morning,’ he said.

She reached hastily for the computer mouse, trying to close down the picture before he could see it, but her scramble to cover up what she was viewing drew his eyes irresistibly to the screen. Robin froze, shamefaced.

‘She sent it a few minutes ago, I didn’t know what it was when I opened it. I’m… sorry.’

Strike stared at the picture for a few seconds then turned away, setting the bags of toys down on the floor by her desk.

‘Just delete it,’ he said. He sounded neither sad nor angry, but firm.

Robin hesitated, then closed the file, deleted the email and emptied the trash folder.

‘Cheers,’ he said, straightening up, and by his manner informed her that there would be no discussion of Charlotte’s wedding picture. ‘I’ve got about thirty missed calls from you on my phone.’

‘Well, what do you expect?’ said Robin with spirit. ‘Your note – you said—’

‘I had to take a call from my aunt,’ said Strike. ‘An hour and ten minutes on the medical complaints of everyone in St Mawes, all because I told her I’m going home for Christmas.’

He laughed at the sight of her barely contained frustration.

‘All right, but we’ve got to be quick. I’ve just realised there’s something we could do this morning before I meet Fancourt.’

Still wearing his coat he sat down on the leather sofa and talked for ten solid minutes, laying his theory before her in detail.

When he had finished there was a long silence. The misty, mystical image of the boy-angel in her local church floated into Robin’s mind as she stared at Strike in near total disbelief.

‘Which bit’s causing you problems?’ asked Strike kindly.

‘Er…’ said Robin.

‘We already agreed that Quine’s disappearance might not’ve been spontaneous, right?’ Strike asked her. ‘If you add together the mattress at Talgarth Road – convenient, in a house that hasn’t been used in twenty-five years – and the fact that a week before he vanished Quine told that bloke in the bookshop he was going away and bought himself reading material – and the waitress at the River Café saying Quine wasn’t really angry when he was shouting at Tassel, that he was enjoying himself – I think we can hypothesise a staged disappearance.’

‘OK,’ she said. This part of Strike’s theory seemed the least outlandish to her. She did not know where to begin in telling him how implausible she found the rest of it, but the urge to pick holes made her say, ‘Wouldn’t he have told Leonora what he was planning, though?’

‘Course not. She can’t act to save her life; he
wanted
her worried, so she’d be convincing when she went round telling everyone he’d disappeared. Maybe she’d involve the police. Make a fuss with the publisher. Start the panic.’

‘But that had never worked,’ said Robin. ‘He was always flouncing off and nobody cared – surely even he must have realised that he wasn’t going to get massive publicity just for running away and hiding in his old house.’

‘Ah, but this time he was leaving behind him a book he thought was going to be the talk of literary London, wasn’t he? He’d drawn as much attention to it as he could by rowing with his agent in the middle of a packed restaurant, and making a public threat to self-publish. He goes home, stages the grand walkout in front of Leonora and slips off to Talgarth Road. Later that evening he lets in his accomplice without a second thought, convinced that they’re in it together.’

After a long pause Robin said bravely (because she was not used to challenging Strike’s conclusions, which she had never known to be wrong):

‘But you haven’t got a single bit of evidence that there
was
an accomplice, let alone… I mean… it’s all… opinion.’

He began to reiterate points he had already made, but she held up her hand to stop him.

‘I heard all that the first time, but… you’re extrapolating from things people have said. There’s no – no
physical
evidence at all.’

‘Of course there is,’ said Strike. ‘
Bombyx Mori
.’

‘That’s not—’

‘It’s the single biggest piece of evidence we’ve got.’

‘You’re the one,’ said Robin, ‘who’s always telling me:
means and opportunity
. You’re the one who’s always saying motive doesn’t—’

‘I haven’t said a word about motive,’ Strike reminded her. ‘As it happens, I’m not sure what the motive was, although I’ve got a few ideas. And if you want more physical evidence, you can come and help me get it right now.’

She looked at him suspiciously. In all the time she had worked for him he had never asked her to collect a physical clue.

‘I want you to come and help me talk to Orlando Quine,’ he said, pushing himself back off the sofa. ‘I don’t want to do it on my own, she’s… well, she’s tricky. Doesn’t like my hair. She’s in Ladbroke Grove with the next-door neighbour, so we’d better get a move on.’

‘This is the daughter with learning difficulties?’ Robin asked, puzzled.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘She’s got this monkey, plush thing, hangs round her neck. I’ve just seen a pile of them in Hamleys – they’re really pyjama cases. Cheeky Monkeys, they call them.’

Robin was staring at him as though fearful for his sanity.

‘When I met her she had it round her neck and she kept producing things out of nowhere – pictures, crayons and a card she sneaked off the kitchen table. I’ve just realised she was pulling it all out of the pyjama case. She nicks things from people,’ Strike went on, ‘and she was in and out of her father’s study all the time when he was alive. He used to give her paper to draw on.’

‘You’re hoping she’s carrying around a clue to her father’s killer inside her pyjama case?’

‘No, but I think there’s reasonable chance that she picked up a bit of
Bombyx Mori
while she was skulking around in Quine’s office, or that he gave her the back of an early draft to draw on. I’m looking for scraps of paper with notes on them, a discarded couple of paragraphs, anything. Look, I know it’s a long shot,’ said Strike, correctly reading her expression, ‘but we can’t get into Quine’s study, the police have already been through everything in there and come up with nothing and I’m betting the notebooks and drafts Quine took away with him have been destroyed. Cheeky Monkey’s the last place I can think of to look, and,’ he checked his watch, ‘we haven’t got much time if we’re going to Ladbroke Grove and back before I meet Fancourt.

‘Which reminds me…’

He left the office. Robin heard him heading upstairs and thought he must be going to his flat, but then the sounds of rummaging told her that he was searching the boxes of his possessions on the landing. When he returned, he was holding a box of latex gloves that he had clearly filched before leaving the SIB for good, and a clear plastic evidence bag of exactly the size that airlines provided to hold toiletries.

‘There’s another crucial bit of physical evidence I’d like to get,’ he said, taking out a pair of gloves and handing them to an uncomprehending Robin. ‘I thought you could have a bash at getting hold of it while I’m with Fancourt this afternoon.’

In a few succinct words he explained what he wanted her to get, and why.

Not altogether to Strike’s surprise, a stunned silence followed his instructions.

‘You’re joking,’ said Robin faintly.

‘I’m not.’

She raised one hand unconsciously to her mouth.

‘It won’t be dangerous,’ Strike reassured her.

‘That’s not what’s worrying me. Cormoran, that’s – that’s
horrific
. You – are you really serious?’

‘If you’d seen Leonora Quine in Holloway last week, you wouldn’t ask that,’ said Strike darkly. ‘We’re going to have to be bloody clever to get her out of there.’

Clever?
thought Robin, still fazed as she stood with the limp gloves dangling from her hand. His suggestions for the day’s activities seemed wild, bizarre and, in the case of the last, disgusting.

‘Look,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t know what to tell you except I can feel it.
I can smell it, Robin.
Someone deranged, bloody dangerous but efficient lurking behind all this. They got that idiot Quine exactly where they wanted him by playing on his narcissism, and I’m not the only one who thinks so either.’

Strike threw Robin her coat and she put it on; he was tucking evidence bags into his inside pocket.

‘People keep telling me there was someone else involved: Chard says it’s Waldegrave, Waldegrave says it’s Tassel, Pippa Midgley’s too stupid to interpret what’s staring her in the face and Christian Fisher – well, he’s got more perspective, not being in the book,’ said Strike. ‘He put his finger on it without realising it.’

Robin, who was struggling to keep up with Strike’s thought processes and sceptical of those parts she could understand, followed him down the metal staircase and out into the cold.

‘This murder,’ said Strike, lighting a cigarette as they walked down Denmark Street together, ‘was months if not years in the planning. Work of genius, when you think about it, but it’s over-elaborate and that’s going to be its downfall. You can’t plot murder like a novel. There are always loose ends in real life.’