The Silkworm(28)

It's been kept in a safe at Roper Chard that half the company seems to know the code for,' he went on. That's how I got hold of it.'

But don't you think the killer's likely to be someone who's in the-?'

Robin's mobile rang again. She glanced down at it: Matthew. Again, she pressed ignore'.

Not necessarily,' said Strike, answering her unfinished question. But the people he's written about are going to be high on the list when the police start interviewing. Of the characters I recognise, Leonora claims not to have read it, so does Kathryn Kent-'

Do you believe them?' asked Robin.

I believe Leonora. Not sure about Kathryn Kent. How did the line go? "To see thee tortur'd would give me pleasure"?'

I can't believe a woman would have done that,' said Robin at once, glancing at Strike's mobile now lying on the desk between them.

Did you never hear about the Australian woman who skinned her lover, decapitated him, cooked his head and buttocks and tried to serve him up to his kids?'

You're not serious.'

I'm totally serious. Look it up on the net. When women turn, they really turn,' said Strike.

He was a big man … '

If it was a woman he trusted? A woman he met for sex?'

Who do we know for sure has read it?'

Christian Fisher, Elizabeth Tassel's assistant Ralph, Tassel herself, Jerry Waldegrave, Daniel Chard  –  they're all characters, except Ralph and Fisher. Nina Lascelles-'

Who are Waldegrave and Chard? Who's Nina Lascelles?'

Quine's editor, the head of his publisher and the girl who helped me nick this,' said Strike, giving the manuscript a slap.

Robin's mobile rang for the third time.

Sorry,' she said impatiently, and picked it up. Yes?'

Robin.'

Matthew's voice sounded strangely congested. He never cried and he had never before shown himself particularly overcome by remorse at an argument.

Yes?' she said, a little less sharply.

Mum's had another stroke. She's  –  she's-'

An elevator drop in the pit of her stomach.

Matt?'

He was crying.

Matt?' she repeated urgently.

'S dead,' he said, like a little boy.

I'm coming,' said Robin. Where are you? I'll come now.'

Strike was watching her face. He saw tidings of death there and hoped it was nobody she loved, neither of her parents, none of her brothers …

All right,' she was saying, already on her feet. Stay there. I'm coming.

It's Matt's mother,' she told Strike. She's died.'

It felt utterly unreal. She could not believe it.

They were only talking on the phone last night,' she said. Remembering Matt's rolling eyes and the muffled voice she had just heard, she was overwhelmed with tenderness and sympathy. I'm so sorry but-'

Go,' said Strike. Tell him I'm sorry, will you?'

Yes,' said Robin, trying to fasten her handbag, her fingers grown clumsy in her agitation. She had known Mrs Cunliffe since primary school. She slung her raincoat over her arm. The glass door flashed and closed behind her.

Strike's eyes remained fixed for a few seconds on the place where Robin had vanished. Then he looked down at his watch. It was barely nine o'clock. The brunette divorcée whose emeralds lay in his safe was due at the office in just over half an hour.

He cleared and washed the mugs, then took out the necklace he had recovered, locked up the manuscript of Bombyx Mori in the safe instead, refilled the kettle and checked his emails.

They'll postpone the wedding.

He did not want to feel glad about it. Pulling out his mobile, he called Anstis, who answered almost at once.

Bob?'

Anstis, I don't know whether you've already got this, but there's something you should know. Quine's last novel describes his murder.'

Say that again?'

Strike explained. It was clear from the brief silence after he had finished speaking that Anstis had not yet had the information.

Bob, I need a copy of that manuscript. If I send someone over-?'

Give me three quarters of an hour,' said Strike.

He was still photocopying when his brunette client arrived.

Where's your secretary?' were her first words, turning to him with a coquettish show of surprise, as though she was sure he had arranged for them to be alone.

Off sick. Diarrhoea and vomiting,' said Strike repressively. Shall we go through?'





20




Is Conscience a comrade for an old Soldier?

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The False One



Late that evening Strike sat alone at his desk while the traffic rumbled through the rain outside, eating Singapore noodles with one hand and scribbling a list for himself with the other. The rest of the day's work over, he was free to turn his attention fully to the murder of Owen Quine and in his spiky, hard-to-read handwriting was jotting down those things that must be done next. Beside some of them he had jotted the letter A for Anstis, and if it had crossed Strike's mind that it might be considered arrogant or deluded of a private detective with no authority in the investigation to imagine he had the power to delegate tasks to the police officer in charge of the case, the thought did not trouble him.
 
 

 

Having worked with Anstis in Afghanistan, Strike did not have a particularly high opinion of the police officer's abilities. He thought Anstis competent but unimaginative, an efficient recogniser of patterns, a reliable pursuer of the obvious. Strike did not despise these traits  –  the obvious was usually the answer and the methodical ticking of boxes the way to prove it  –  but this murder was elaborate, strange, sadistic and grotesque, literary in inspiration and ruthless in execution. Was Anstis capable of comprehending the mind that had nurtured a plan of murder in the fetid soil of Quine's own imagination?

Strike's mobile rang, piercing in the silence. Only when he had put it to his ear and heard Leonora Quine did he realise that he had been hoping it would be Robin.

How are you?' he asked.

I've had the police here,' she said, cutting through the social niceties. They've been all through Owen's study. I didn't wanna, but Edna said I should let 'em. Can't we be left in peace after what just happened?'

They've got grounds for a search,' said Strike. There might be something in Owen's study that'll give them a lead on his killer.'

Like what?'

I don't know,' said Strike patiently, but I think Edna's right. It was best to let them in.'

There was a silence.

Are you still there?' he asked.

Yeah,' she said, and now they've left it locked up so I can't get in it. And they wanna come back. I don't like them being here. Orlando don't like it. One of 'em,' she sounded outraged, asked if I wanted to move out of the house for a bit. I said, "No, I bloody don't." Orlando's never stayed anywhere else, she couldn't deal with it. I'm not going anywhere.'

The police haven't said they want to question you, have they?'

No,' she said. Only asked if they can go in the study.'

Good. If they want to ask you questions-'

I should get a lawyer, yeah. That's what Edna said.'

Would it be all right if I come and see you tomorrow morning?' he asked.

Yeah.' She sounded glad. Come round ten, I need to go shopping first thing. Couldn't get out all day. I didn't wanna leave them in the house without me here.'

Strike hung up, reflecting again that Leonora's manner was unlikely to be standing her in good stead with the police. Would Anstis see, as Strike did, that Leonora's slight obtuseness, her failure to produce what others felt was appropriate behaviour, her stubborn refusal to look at what she did not wish to look at  –  arguably the very qualities that had enabled her to endure the ordeal of living with Quine  –  would have made it impossible for her to kill him? Or would her oddities, her refusal to show normal grief reactions because of an innate though perhaps unwise honesty, cause the suspicion already lying in Anstis's mundane mind to swell, obliterating other possibilities?

There was an intensity, almost a feverishness, about the way Strike returned to his scribbling, left hand still shovelling food into his mouth. Thoughts came fluently, cogently: jotting down the questions he wanted answered, locations he wanted cased, the trails he wanted followed. It was a plan of action for himself and a means of nudging Anstis in the right direction, of helping open his eyes to the fact that it was not always the wife when a husband was killed, even if the man had been feckless, unreliable and unfaithful.

At last Strike cast his pen down, finished the noodles in two large mouthfuls and cleared his desk. His notes he put into the cardboard folder with Owen Quine's name on the spine, having first crossed out Missing Person' and substituted the word Murder'. He turned off the lights and was on the point of locking the glass door when he thought of something and returned to Robin's computer.

And there it was, on the BBC website. Not headline news, of course, because whatever Quine might have thought, he had not been a very famous man. It came three stories below the main news that the EU had agreed a bailout for the Irish Republic.



The body of a man believed to be writer Owen Quine, 58, has been found in a house in Talgarth Road, London. Police have launched a murder inquiry following the discovery, which was made yesterday by a family friend.



There was no photograph of Quine in his Tyrolean cloak, nor were there details of the horrors to which the body had been subjected. But it was early days; there was time.

Upstairs in his flat, some of Strike's energy deserted him. He dropped onto his bed and rubbed his eyes wearily, then fell backwards and lay there, fully dressed, his prosthesis still attached. Thoughts he had managed to keep at bay now pressed in upon him …