The Silkworm(23)

The door of the Quines' house was a peeling sludge green. Everything about the frontage was dilapidated, including the gate hanging on by only one hinge. Strike thought of Quine's predilection for comfortable hotel rooms as he rang the doorbell and his opinion of the missing man fell a little further.

You were quick,' was Leonora's gruff greeting on opening the door. Come in.'

He followed her down a dim, narrow hallway. To the left, a door stood ajar onto what was clearly Owen Quine's study. It looked untidy and dirty. Drawers hung open and an old electric typewriter sat skewed on the desk. Strike could picture Quine tearing pages from it in his rage at Elizabeth Tassel.

Any luck with the key?' Strike asked Leonora as they entered the dark, stale-smelling kitchen at the end of the hall. The appliances all looked as though they were at least thirty years old. Strike had an idea that his Aunt Joan had owned the identical dark brown microwave back in the eighties.

Well, I found them,' Leonora told him, gesturing towards half a dozen keys lying on the kitchen table. I dunno whether any of them's the right one.'

None of them was attached to a key ring and one of them looked too big to open anything but a church door.

What number Talgarth Road?' Strike asked her.

Hundred and seventy-nine.'

When were you last there?'

Me? I never been there,' she said with what seemed genuine indifference. I wasn't int'rested. Silly thing to do.'

What was?'

Leaving it to them.' In the face of Strike's politely enquiring face she said impatiently, That Joe North, leaving it to Owen and Michael Fancourt. He said it was for them to write in. They've never used it since. Useless.'

And you've never been there?'

No. They got it round the time I had Orlando. I wasn't int'rested,' she repeated.

Orlando was born then?' Strike asked, surprised. He had been vaguely imagining Orlando as a hyperactive ten-year-old.

In eighty-six, yeah,' said Leonora. But she's handicapped.'

Oh,' said Strike. I see.'

Upstairs sulking now, cos I had to tell her off,' said Leonora, in one of her bursts of expansiveness. She nicks things. She knows it's wrong but she keeps doing it. I caught her taking Edna-Next-Door's purse out of her bag when she come round yesterday. It wasn't cos of the money,' she said quickly, as though he had made an accusation. It's cos she liked the colour. Edna understands cos she knows her, but not everyone does. I tell her it's wrong. She knows it's wrong.'

All right if I take these and try them, then?' Strike asked, scooping the keys into his hand.

If y'want,' said Leonora, but she added defiantly, He won't be there.'

Strike pocketed his haul, turned down Leonora's afterthought offer of tea or coffee and returned to the cold rain.

He found himself limping again as he walked towards Westbourne Park Tube station, which would mean a short journey with minimal changes. He had not taken as much care as usual in attaching his prosthesis in his haste to get out of Nina's flat, nor had he been able to apply any of those soothing products that helped protect the skin beneath it.

Eight months previously (on the very day that he had later been stabbed in his upper arm) he had taken a bad fall down some stairs. The consultant who had examined it shortly afterwards had informed him that he had done additional, though probably reparable, damage to the medial ligaments in the knee joint of his amputated leg and advised ice, rest and further investigation. But Strike had not been able to afford rest and had not wished for further tests, so he had strapped up the knee and tried to remember to elevate his leg when sitting. The pain had mostly subsided but occasionally, when he had done a lot of walking, it began to throb and swell again.

The road along which Strike was trudging curved to the right. A tall, thin, hunched figure was walking behind him, its head bowed so that only the top of a black hood was visible.

Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to go home, now, and rest his knee. It was Sunday. There was no need for him to go marching all over London in the rain.

He won't be there, said Leonora in his head.

But the alternative was returning to Denmark Street, listening to the rain hammering against the badly fitting window beside his bed under the eaves, with photo albums full of Charlotte too close, in the boxes on the landing …

Better to move, to work, to think about other people's problems …

Blinking in the rain, he glanced up at the houses he was passing and glimpsed in his peripheral vision the figure following twenty yards behind him. Though the dark coat was shapeless, Strike had the impression from the short, quick steps, that the figure was female.

Now Strike noticed something curious about the way she was walking, something unnatural. There was none of the self-preoccupation of the lone stroller on a cold wet day. Her head was not bowed in protection against the elements, nor was she maintaining a steady pace with the simple view of achieving a destination. She kept adjusting her speed in tiny but, to Strike, noticeable increments, and every few steps the hidden face beneath the hood presented itself to the chilly onslaught of the driving rain, then vanished again into shadow. She was keeping him in her sights.

What had Leonora said at their first meeting?

I think I've been followed. Tall, dark girl with round shoulders.

Strike experimented by speeding up and slowing down infinitesimally. The space between them remained constant; her hidden face flickered up and down more frequently, a pale pink blur, to check his position.

She was not experienced at following people. Strike, who was an expert, would have taken the opposite pavement, pretended to be talking on a mobile phone; concealed his focused and singular interest in the subject …

For his own amusement, he faked a sudden hesitation, as though he had been caught by a doubt as to the right direction. Caught off guard, the dark figure stopped dead, paralysed. Strike strolled on again and after a few seconds heard her footsteps echoing on the wet pavement behind him. She was too foolish even to realise that she had been rumbled.

Westbourne Park station came into sight a little way ahead: a long, low building of golden brick. He would confront her there, ask her the time, get a good look at her face.

Turning into the station, he drew quickly to the far side of the entrance, waiting for her, out of sight.

Some thirty seconds later he glimpsed the tall, dark figure jogging towards the entrance through the glittering rain, hands still in her pockets; she was frightened that she might have missed him, that he was already on a train.

He took a swift, confident step out into the doorway to face her  –  the false foot slipped on the wet tiled floor and skidded.

Fuck!'

With an undignified descent into half-splits, he lost his footing and fell; in the long, slow-motion seconds before he reached the dirty wet floor, landing painfully on the bottle of whisky in his carrier bag, he saw her freeze in silhouette in the entrance, then vanish like a startled deer.

Bollocks,' he gasped, lying on the sopping tiles while people at the ticket machines stared. He had twisted his leg again as he fell; it felt as though he might have torn a ligament; the knee that had been merely sore was now screaming in protest. Inwardly cursing imperfectly mopped floors and prosthetic ankles of rigid construction, Strike tried to get up. Nobody wanted to approach him. No doubt they thought he was drunk  –  Nick and Ilsa's whisky had now escaped the carrier bag and was rolling clunkily across the floor.

Finally a London Underground employee helped him to his feet, muttering about there being a sign warning of the wet floor; hadn't the gentleman seen it, wasn't it prominent enough? He handed Strike his whisky. Humiliated, Strike muttered a thank you and limped over to the ticket barriers, wanting only to escape the countless staring eyes.

Safely on a southbound train he stretched out his throbbing leg and probed his knee as best he could through his suit trousers. It felt tender and sore, exactly as it had after he had fallen down those stairs last spring. Furious, now, with the girl who had been following him, he tried to make sense of what had happened.
 
 

 

When had she joined him? Had she been watching the Quine place, seen him go inside? Might she (an unflattering possibility) have mistaken Strike for Owen Quine? Kathryn Kent had certainly done so, briefly, in the dark …

Strike got to his feet some minutes before changing at Hammersmith to better prepare himself for what might be a perilous descent. By the time he reached his destination of Barons Court, he was limping heavily and wishing that he had a stick. He made his way out of a ticket hall tiled in Victorian pea green, placing his feet with care on the floor covered in grimy wet prints. Too soon he had left the dry shelter of the small jewel of a station, with its art nouveau lettering and stone pediments, and proceeded in the relentless rain towards the rumbling dual carriageway that lay close by.

To his relief and gratitude, he realised that he had emerged on that very stretch of Talgarth Road where the house he sought stood.

Though London was full of these kinds of architectural anomalies, he had never seen buildings that jarred so obviously with their surroundings. The old houses sat in a distinctive row, dark red brick relics of a more confident and imaginative time, while traffic rumbled unforgivingly past them in both directions, for this was the main artery into London from the west.

They were ornate late-Victorian artists' studios, their lower windows leaded and latticed and oversized arched north-facing windows on their upper floors, like fragments of the vanished Crystal Palace. Wet, cold and sore though he was, Strike paused for a few seconds to look up at number 179, marvelling at its distinctive architecture and wondering how much the Quines would stand to make if Fancourt ever changed his mind and agreed to sell.