The Silkworm(35)

Right on cue, their son reappeared and announced that he was hungry. To Strike's disappointment, it was Anstis who left the table to deal with him, leaving Helly staring beadily at Strike over a forkful of boeuf bourguignon.

So she's getting married on the fourth. I can't even imagine what that feels like for you.'

Who's getting married?' Strike asked.

Helly looked amazed.

Charlotte,' she said.

Dimly, down the stairs, came the sound of his godson wailing.

Charlotte's getting married on the fourth of December,' said Helly, and with her realisation that she was the first to give him the news came a look of burgeoning excitement; but then something in Strike's expression seemed to unnerve her.

I …  I heard,' she said, dropping her gaze to her plate as Anstis returned.

Little bugger,' he said. I've told him I'll smack his bum for him if he gets out of bed again.'

He's just excited,' said Helly, who still seemed flustered by the anger she had sensed in Strike, because Cormy's here.'

The casserole had turned to rubber and polystyrene in Strike's mouth. How could Helly Anstis know when Charlotte was getting married? The Anstises hardly moved in the same circles as her or her future husband, who (as Strike despised himself for remembering) was the son of the Fourteenth Viscount of Croy. What did Helly Anstis know about the world of private gentlemen's clubs, of Savile Row tailoring and coked-up supermodels of which the Hon. Jago Ross had been a habitué all his trust-funded life? She knew no more than Strike himself. Charlotte, to whom it was native territory, had joined Strike in a social no-man's-land when they had been together, a place where neither was comfortable with the other's social set, where two utterly disparate norms collided and everything became a struggle for common ground.

Timothy was back in the kitchen, crying hard. Both his parents stood up this time and jointly moved him back towards his bedroom while Strike, hardly aware that they had gone, was left to disappear into a fug of memories.

Charlotte had been volatile to the point that one of her stepfathers had once tried to have her committed. She lied as other women breathed; she was damaged to her core. The longest consecutive period that she and Strike had ever managed together was two years, yet as often as their trust in each other had splintered they had been drawn back together, each time (so it seemed to Strike) more fragile than they had been before, but with the longing for each other strengthening. For sixteen years Charlotte had defied the disbelief and disdain of her family and friends to return, over and over again, to a large, illegitimate and latterly disabled soldier. Strike would have advised any friend to leave and not look back, but he had come to see her like a virus in his blood that he doubted he would ever eradicate; the best he could hope for was to control its symptoms. The final breach had come eight months previously, just before he had become newsworthy through the Landry case. She had finally told an unforgivable lie, he had left her for good and she had retreated into a world where men still went grouse shooting and women had tiaras in the family vault; a world she had told him she despised (although it looked as though that had been a lie too … ).

The Anstises returned, minus Timothy but with a sobbing and hiccupping Tilly.

Bet you're glad you haven't got any, aren't you?' said Helly gaily, sitting back down at the table with Tilly on her lap. Strike grinned humourlessly and did not contradict her.

There had been a baby: or more accurately the ghost, the promise of a baby and then, supposedly, the death of a baby. Charlotte had told him that she was pregnant, refused to consult a doctor, changed her mind about dates, then announced that all was over without a shred of proof that it had ever been real. It was a lie most men would have found impossible to forgive and for Strike it had been, as surely she must have known, the lie to end all lies and the death of that tiny amount of trust that had survived years of her mythomania.

Marrying on the fourth of December, in eleven days' time …  how could Helly Anstis know?

He was perversely grateful, now, for the whining and tantrums of the two children, which effectively disrupted conversation all through a pudding of rhubarb flan and custard. Anstis's suggestion that they take fresh beers into his study to go over the forensic report was the best Strike had heard all day. They left a slightly sulky Helly, who clearly felt that she had not had her money's worth out of Strike, to manage the now very sleepy Tilly and the unnervingly wide-awake Timothy, who had reappeared to announce that he had spilled his drinking water all over his bed.

Anstis's study was a small, book-lined room off the hall. He offered Strike the computer chair and sat on an old futon. The curtains were not drawn; Strike could see a misty rain falling like dust motes in the light of an orange street lamp.

Forensics say it's as hard a job as they've ever had,' Anstis began, and Strike's attention was immediately all his. All this is unofficial, mind, we haven't got everything in yet.'

Have they been able to tell what actually killed him?'

Blow to the head,' said Anstis. The back of his skull's been stoved in. It might not've been instantaneous, but the brain trauma alone would've killed him. They can't be sure he was dead when he was carved open, but he was almost certainly unconscious.'

Small mercies. Any idea whether he was tied up before or after he was knocked out?'

There's some argument about that. There's a patch of skin under the ropes on one of his wrists that's bruised, which they think indicates he was tied up before he was killed, but we've no indication whether he was still conscious when the ropes were put on him. The problem is, all that bloody acid everywhere's taken away any marks on the floor that might've shown a struggle, or the body being dragged. He was a big, heavy guy-'

Easier to handle if he was trussed up,' agreed Strike, thinking of short, thin Leonora, but it'd be good to know the angle he was hit at.'

From just above,' said Anstis, but as we don't know whether he was hit standing, sitting or kneeling … '

I think we can be sure he was killed in that room,' said Strike, following his own train of thought. I can't see anyone being strong enough to carry a body that heavy up those stairs.'

The consensus is that he died more or less on the spot where the body was found. That's where the greatest concentration of the acid is.'

D'you know what kind of acid it was?'

Oh, didn't I say? Hydrochloric.'

Strike struggled to remember something of his chemistry lessons. Don't they use that to galvanise steel?'

Among other things. It's as caustic a substance as you can legally buy and it's used in a load of industrial processes. Heavy-duty cleaning agent as well. One weird thing about it is, it occurs naturally in humans. In our gastric acid.'

Strike sipped his beer, considering.

In the book, they pour vitriol on him.'

Vitriol's sulphuric acid, and hydrochloric acid derives from it. Seriously corrosive to human tissue  –  as you saw.'

Where the hell did the killer get that amount of the stuff?'

Believe it or not, it looks like it was already in the house.'

Why the hell-?'

Still haven't found anyone who can tell us. There were empty gallon containers on the kitchen floor, and dusty containers of the same description in a cupboard under the stairs, full of the stuff and unopened. They came from an industrial chemicals company in Birmingham. There were marks on the empty ones that looked as though they'd been made by gloved hands.'

Very interesting,' said Strike, scratching his chin.
 
 

 

We're still trying to check when and how they were bought.'

What about the blunt object that bashed his head in?'

There's an old-fashioned doorstop in the studio  –  solid iron and shaped like one, with a handle: almost certainly that. It fits with the impression in his skull. That's had hydrochloric acid poured all over it like nearly everything else.'

How's time of death looking?'

Yeah, well, that's the tricky bit. The entomologist won't commit himself, says the condition of the corpse throws out all the usual calculations. The fumes from the hydrochloric acid alone would've kept insects away for a while, so you can't date the death from infestation. No self-respecting blowfly wants to lay eggs in acid. We had a maggot or two on bits of the body that weren't doused in the stuff, but the usual infestation didn't occur.

Meanwhile, the heating in the house had been cranked right up, so the body might've rotted a bit faster than it would ordinarily have done in this weather. But the hydrochloric acid would've tended to mess with normal decomposition. Parts of him are burned to the bone.

The deciding factor would have been the guts, last meal and so on, but they'd been lifted clean out of the body. Looks like they left with the killer,' said Anstis. I've never heard of that being done before, have you? Pounds of raw intestine taken away.'

No,' said Strike, it's a new one on me.'

Bottom line: forensics are refusing to commit themselves to a time frame except to say he's been dead at least ten days. But I had a private word with Underhill, who's the best of them, and he told me off the record that he thinks Quine's been dead a good two weeks. He reckons, though, even when they've got everything in the evidence'll still be equivocal enough to give defending counsel a lot to play with.'

What about pharmacology?' asked Strike, his thoughts circling back to Quine's bulk, the difficulty of handling a body that big.

Well, he might've been drugged,' agreed Anstis. We haven't had blood results back yet and we're analysing the contents of the bottles in the kitchen as well. But'  –  he finished his beer and set down the glass with a flourish  –  there's another way he could've made things easy for a killer. Quine liked being tied up  –  sex games.'