The Silkworm

10

Robin emerged from the Tube the following morning, clutching a redundant umbrella and feeling sweaty and uncomfortable. After days of downpours, of Tube trains full of the smell of wet cloth, of slippery pavements and rain-speckled windows, the sudden switch to bright, dry weather had taken her by surprise. Other spirits might have lightened in the respite from the deluge and lowering gray clouds, but not Robin’s. She and Matthew had had a bad row.

It was almost a relief, when she opened the glass door engraved with Strike’s name and job title, to find that her boss was already on the telephone in his own office, with the door closed. She felt obscurely that she needed to pull herself together before she faced him, because Strike had been the subject of last night’s argument.

“You’ve invited him to the wedding?” Matthew had said sharply.

She had been afraid that Strike might mention the invitation over drinks that evening, and that if she did not warn Matthew first, Strike would bear the brunt of Matthew’s displeasure.

“Since when are we just asking people without telling each other?” Matthew had said.

“I meant to tell you. I thought I had.”

Then Robin had felt angry with herself: she never lied to Matthew.

“He’s my boss, he’ll expect to be invited!”

Which wasn’t true; she doubted that Strike cared one way or the other.

“Well, I’d like him there,” she said, which, at last, was honesty. She wanted to tug the working life that she had never enjoyed so much closer to the personal life that currently refused to meld with it; she wanted to stitch the two together in a satisfying whole and to see Strike in the congregation, approving (approving! Why did he have to approve?) of her marrying Matthew.

She had known that Matthew would not be happy, but she had hoped that by this time the two men would have met and liked each other, and it was not her fault that that had not happened yet.

“After all the bloody fuss we had when I wanted to invite Sarah Shadlock,” Matthew had said—a blow, Robin felt, that was below the belt.

“Invite her then!” she said angrily. “But it’s hardly the same thing—Cormoran’s never tried to get me into bed—what’s that snort supposed to mean?”

The argument had been in full swing when Matthew’s father telephoned with the news that a funny turn Matthew’s mother had suffered the previous week had been diagnosed as a mini-stroke.

After this, she and Matthew felt that squabbling about Strike was in bad taste, so they went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of theoretical reconciliation, both, Robin knew, still seething.

It was nearly midday before Strike finally emerged from his office. He was not wearing his suit today, but a dirty and holey sweater, jeans and trainers. His face was thick with the heavy stubble that accrued if he did not shave every twenty-four hours. Forgetting her own troubles, Robin stared: she had never, even in the days when he was sleeping in the office, known Strike to look like a down-and-out.

“Been making calls for the Ingles file and getting some numbers for Longman,” Strike told Robin, handing her the old-fashioned brown card folders, each with a handwritten serial number on the spine, that he had used in the Special Investigation Branch and which remained his favorite way of collating information.

“Is that a—a deliberate look?” she asked, staring at what looked like grease marks on the knees of his jeans.

“Yeah. It’s for Gunfrey. Long story.”

While Strike made them both tea, they discussed details of three current cases, Strike updating Robin on information received and further points to be investigated.

“And what about Owen Quine?” Robin asked, accepting her mug. “What did his agent say?”

Strike lowered himself onto the sofa, which made its usual farting noises beneath him, and filled her in on the details of his interview with Elizabeth Tassel and his visit to Kathryn Kent.

“When she first saw me, I could swear she thought I was Quine.”

Robin laughed.

“You’re not that fat.”

“Cheers, Robin,” he said drily. “When she realized I wasn’t Quine, and before she knew who I was, she said, ‘I don’t work in that bit.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

“No…but,” she added diffidently, “I did manage to find out a bit about Kathryn Kent yesterday.”

“How?” asked Strike, taken aback.

“Well, you told me she’s a self-published writer,” Robin reminded him, “so I thought I’d look online and see what’s out there and”—with two clicks of her mouse she brought up the page—“she’s got a blog.”

“Good going!” said Strike, moving gladly off the sofa and round the desk to read over Robin’s shoulder.

The amateurish web page was called “My Literary Life,” decorated with drawings of quills and a very flattering picture of Kathryn that Strike thought must be a good ten years out of date. The blog comprised a list of posts, arranged by date like a diary.

“A lot of it’s about how traditional publishers wouldn’t know good books if they were hit over the head with them,” said Robin, scrolling slowly down the web page so he could look at it. “She’s written three novels in what she calls an erotic fantasy series, called the Melina Saga. They’re available for download on Kindle.”

“I don’t want to read any more bad books; I had enough with the Brothers Ballsache,” said Strike. “Anything about Quine?”

“Loads,” said Robin, “assuming he’s the man she calls The Famous Writer. TFW for short.”

“I doubt she’s sleeping with two authors,” said Strike. “It must be him. ‘Famous’ is stretching it a bit, though. Had you heard of Quine before Leonora walked in?”

“No,” admitted Robin. “Here he is, look, on the second of November.”

“Scroll up,” said Strike, “see what else there is about Quine.”

Robin obliged, pausing on a post from 21 October.

There was an exchange of comments below.

“Interesting,” said Strike. “Very interesting. When Kent attacked me last night, she assured me that someone called Pippa wanted to kill me.”

“Look at this, then!” said Robin in excitement, scrolling down to 9 November.

“Where’s that quotation from?” asked Strike.

Robin’s nimble fingers danced across the keyboard.

“The Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay.”

“Erudite, for a woman who confuses ‘you’re’ and ‘your’ and goes in for random capitalization.”

“We can’t all be literary geniuses,” said Robin reproachfully.

“Thank Christ for that, from all I’m hearing about them.”

“But look at the comment under the quotation,” said Robin, returning to Kathryn’s blog. She clicked on the link and a single sentence was revealed.

This comment, too, had been made by Pippa2011.

“Pippa sounds a handful, doesn’t she?” commented Strike. “Anything about what Kent does for a living on here? I’m assuming she’s not paying the bills with her erotic fantasies.”

“That’s a bit odd, too. Look at this bit.”

On 28 October, Kathryn had written:

“Mysterious,” said Strike. “Tightened security…women’s prison? Psychiatric hospital? Or are we talking industrial secrets?”

“And look at this, on the thirteenth of November.”

Robin scrolled right down to the most recent post on the blog, which was the only entry after that in which Kathryn claimed to have been fatally stabbed.

Two comments had been added below this, which Robin opened.

Pippa2011 had written:

Kathryn had replied:

Kathryn’s advance thanks for multiple messages of support sat very sadly above the short exchange.

“Why?” asked Strike heavily.

“Why what?” said Robin, looking up at him.

“Why do people do this?”

“Blog, you mean? I don’t know…didn’t someone once say the unexamined life isn’t worth living?”

“Yeah, Plato,” said Strike, “but this isn’t examining a life, it’s exhibiting it.”

“Oh God!” said Robin, slopping tea down herself as she gave a guilty start. “I forgot, there’s something else! Christian Fisher called just as I was walking out the door last night. He wants to know if you’re interested in writing a book.”

“He what?”

“A book,” said Robin, fighting the urge to laugh at the expression of disgust on Strike’s face. “About your life. Your experiences in the army and solving the Lula Landry—”

“Call him back,” Strike said, “and tell him no, I’m not interested in writing a book.”

He drained his mug and headed for the peg where an ancient leather jacket now hung beside his black overcoat.

“You haven’t forgotten tonight?” Robin said, with the knot that had temporarily dissolved tight in her stomach again.

“Tonight?”

“Drinks,” she said desperately. “Me. Matthew. The King’s Arms.”

“No, haven’t forgotten,” he said, wondering why she looked so tense and miserable. “’Spect I’ll be out all afternoon, so I’ll see you there. Eight, was it?”

“Six thirty,” said Robin, tenser than ever.

“Six thirty. Right. I’ll be there…Venetia.”

She did a doubletake.

“How did you know—?”

“It’s on the invitation,” said Strike. “Unusual. Where did that come from?”

“I was—well, I was conceived there, apparently,” she said, pink in the face. “In Venice. What’s your middle name?” she asked over his laughter, half amused, half cross. “C. B. Strike—what’s the B?”

“Got to get going,” said Strike. “See you at eight.”

“Six thirty!” she bellowed at the closing door.

Strike’s destination that afternoon was a shop that sold electronic accessories in Crouch End. Stolen mobile phones and laptops were unlocked in a back room, the personal information therein extracted, and the purged devices and the information were then sold separately to those who could use them.

The owner of this thriving business was causing Mr. Gunfrey, Strike’s client, considerable inconvenience. Mr. Gunfrey, who was every bit as crooked as the man whom Strike had tracked to his business headquarters, but on a larger and more flamboyant scale, had made a mistake in treading on the wrong toes. It was Strike’s view that Gunfrey needed to clear out while he was ahead. He knew of what this adversary was capable; they had an acquaintance in common.

The target greeted Strike in an upstairs office that smelled as bad as Elizabeth Tassel’s, while two shell-suited youths lolled around in the background picking their nails. Strike, who was impersonating a thug for hire recommended by their mutual acquaintance, listened as his would-be employer confided that he was intending to target Mr. Gunfrey’s teenage son, about whose movements he was frighteningly well informed. He went so far as to offer Strike the job: five hundred pounds to cut the boy. (“I don’t want no murder, jussa message to his father, you get me?”)

It was gone six before Strike managed to extricate himself from the premises. His first call, once he had made sure he had not been followed, was to Mr. Gunfrey himself, whose appalled silence told Strike that he had at last realized what he was up against.

Strike then phoned Robin.

“Going to be late, sorry,” he said.

“Where are you?” she asked, sounding strained. He could hear the sounds of the pub behind her: conversation and laughter.

“Crouch End.”

“Oh God,” he heard her say under her breath. “It’ll take you ages—”

“I’ll get a cab,” he assured her. “Be as quick as I can.”

Why, Strike wondered, as he sat in the taxi rumbling along Upper Street, had Matthew chosen a pub in Waterloo? To make sure that Strike had to travel a long way? Payback for Strike having chosen pubs convenient to him on their previous attempts to meet? Strike hoped the King’s Arms served food. He was suddenly very hungry.

It took forty minutes to reach his destination, partly because the row of nineteenth-century workers’ cottages where the pub stood was blocked to traffic. Strike chose to get out and end the curmudgeonly taxi driver’s attempt to make sense of the street numbering, which appeared not to follow a logical sequence, and proceeded on foot, wondering whether the difficulty of finding the place had influenced Matthew’s choice.

The King’s Arms turned out to be a picturesque Victorian corner pub the entrances of which were surrounded by a mixture of professional young men in suits and what looked like students, all smoking and drinking. The small crowd parted easily as he approached, giving him a wider berth than was strictly necessary even for a man of his height and breadth. As he crossed the threshold into the small bar Strike wondered, not without a faint hope that it might happen, whether he might be asked to leave on account of his filthy clothes.

Meanwhile, in the noisy back room, which was a glass-ceilinged courtyard self-consciously crammed with bric-a-brac, Matthew was looking at his watch.

“It’s nearly a quarter past,” he told Robin.

Clean cut in his suit and tie, he was—as usual—the handsomest man in the room. Robin was used to seeing women’s eyes swivel as he walked past them; she had never quite managed to make up her mind how aware Matthew was of their swift, burning glances. Sitting at the long wooden bench that they had been forced to share with a party of cackling students, six foot one, with a firm cleft chin and bright blue eyes, he looked like a thoroughbred kept in a paddock of Highland ponies.

“That’s him,” said Robin, with a surge of relief and apprehension.

Strike seemed to have become larger and rougher-looking since he had left the office. He moved easily towards them through the packed room, his eyes on Robin’s bright gold head, one large hand grasping a pint of Hophead. Matthew stood up. It looked as though he braced himself.

“Cormoran—hi—you found it.”

“You’re Matthew,” said Strike, holding out a hand. “Sorry I’m so late, I tried to get away earlier but I was with the sort of bloke you wouldn’t want to turn your back on without permission.”

Matthew returned an empty smile. He had expected Strike to be full of those kinds of comments: self-dramatizing, trying to make a mystery of what he did. By the look of him, he’d been changing a tire.

“Sit down,” Robin told Strike nervously, moving along the bench so far that she was almost falling off the end. “Are you hungry? We were just talking about ordering something.”

“They do reasonably decent food,” said Matthew. “Thai. It’s not the Mango Tree, but it’s all right.”

Strike smiled without warmth. He had expected Matthew to be like this: name-dropping restaurants in Belgravia to prove, after a single year in London, that he was a seasoned metropolitan.

“How did it go this afternoon?” Robin asked Strike. She thought that if Matthew only heard about the sort of things that Strike did, he would become as fascinated as she was by the process of detection and his every prejudice would fall away.

But Strike’s brief description of his afternoon, omitting all identifying details of those involved, met barely concealed indifference on the part of Matthew. Strike then offered them both a drink, as they were holding empty glasses.

“You could show a bit of interest,” Robin hissed at Matthew once Strike was out of earshot at the bar.

“Robin, he met a man in a shop,” said Matthew. “I doubt they’ll be optioning the film rights anytime soon.”

Pleased with his own wit, he turned his attention to the blackboard menu on the opposite wall.

When Strike had returned with drinks, Robin insisted on battling her way up to the bar with their food order. She dreaded leaving the two men alone together, but felt that they might, somehow, find their own level without her.

Matthew’s brief increase in self-satisfaction ebbed away in Robin’s absence.

“You’re ex-army,” he found himself telling Strike, even though he had been determined not to permit Strike’s life experience to dominate the conversation.

“That’s right,” said Strike. “SIB.”

Matthew was not sure what that was.

“My father’s ex-RAF,” he said. “Yeah, he was in same time as Jeff Young.”

“Who?”

“Welsh rugby union player? Twenty-three caps?” said Matthew.

“Right,” said Strike.

“Yeah, Dad made Squadron Leader. Left in eighty-six and he’s run his own property management business since. Done all right for himself. Nothing like your old man,” said Matthew, a little defensively, “but all right.”

Tit, thought Strike.

“What are you talking about?” Robin said anxiously, sitting back down.

“Just Dad,” said Matthew.

“Poor thing,” said Robin.

“Why poor thing?” snapped Matthew.

“Well—he’s worried about your mum, isn’t he? The mini-stroke?”

“Oh,” said Matthew, “that.”

Strike had met men like Matthew in the army: always officer class, but with that little pocket of insecurity just beneath the smooth surface that made them overcompensate, and sometimes overreach.

“So how are things at Lowther-French?” Robin asked Matthew, willing him to show Strike what a nice man he was, to show the real Matthew, whom she loved. “Matthew’s auditing this really odd little publishing company. They’re quite funny, aren’t they?” she said to her fiancé.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘funny,’ the shambles they’re in,” said Matthew, and he talked until their food arrived, littering his chat with references to “ninety k” and “a quarter of a mill,” and every sentence was angled, like a mirror, to show him in the best possible light: his cleverness, his quick thinking, his besting of slower, stupider yet more senior colleagues, his patronage of the dullards working for the firm he was auditing.

“…trying to justify a Christmas party, when they’ve barely broken even in two years; it’ll be more like a wake.”

Matthew’s confident strictures on the small firm were followed by the arrival of their food and silence. Robin, who had been hoping that Matthew would reproduce for Strike some of the kinder, more affectionate things he had found to tell her about the eccentrics at the small press, could think of nothing to say. However, Matthew’s mention of a publishing party had just given Strike an idea. The detective’s jaws worked more slowly. It had occurred to him that there might be an excellent opportunity to seek information on Owen Quine’s whereabouts, and his capacious memory volunteered a small piece of information he had forgotten he knew.

“Got a girlfriend, Cormoran?” Matthew asked Strike directly; it was something he was keen to establish. Robin had been vague on the point.

“No,” said Strike absently. “’Scuse me—won’t be long, got to make a phone call.”

“Yeah, no problem,” said Matthew irritably, but only once Strike was once again out of earshot. “You’re forty minutes late and then you piss off during dinner. We’ll just sit here waiting till you deign to come back.”

“Matt!”

Reaching the dark pavement, Strike pulled out cigarettes and his mobile phone. Lighting up, he walked away from his fellow smokers to the quiet end of the side street to stand in darkness beneath the brick arches that bore the railway line.

Culpepper answered on the third ring.

“Strike,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Calling to ask a favor.”

“Go on,” said Culpepper noncommittally.

“You’ve got a cousin called Nina who works for Roper Chard—”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“You told me,” said Strike patiently.

“When?”

“Few months ago when I was investigating that dodgy dentist for you.”

“Your fucking memory,” said Culpepper, sounding less impressed than unnerved. “It’s not normal. What about her?”

“Couldn’t put me in touch with her, could you?” asked Strike. “Roper Chard have got an anniversary party tomorrow night and I’d like to go.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got a case,” said Strike evasively. He never shared with Culpepper details of the high-society divorces and business ruptures he was investigating, in spite of Culpepper’s frequent requests to do so. “And I just gave you the scoop of your bloody career.”

“Yeah, all right,” said the journalist grudgingly, after a short hesitation. “I suppose I could do that for you.”

“Is she single?” Strike asked.

“What, you after a shag, too?” said Culpepper, and Strike noted that he seemed amused instead of peeved at the thought of Strike trying it on with his cousin.

“No, I want to know whether it’ll look suspicious if she takes me to the party.”

“Oh, right. I think she’s just split up with someone. I dunno. I’ll text you the number. Wait till Sunday,” Culpepper added with barely suppressed glee. “A tsunami of shit’s about to hit Lord Porker.”

“Call Nina for me first, will you?” Strike asked him. “And tell her who I am, so she understands the gig?”

Culpepper agreed to it and rang off. In no particular hurry to return to Matthew, Strike smoked his cigarette down to the butt before moving back inside.

The packed room, he thought, as he made his way across it, bowing his head to avoid hanging pots and street signs, was like Matthew: it tried too hard. The decor included an old-fashioned stove and an ancient till, multiple shopping baskets, old prints and plates: a contrived panoply of junk-shop finds.

Matthew had hoped to have finished his noodles before Strike returned, to underline the length of his absence, but had not quite managed it. Robin was looking miserable and Strike, wondering what had passed between them while he had been gone, felt sorry for her.

“Robin says you’re a rugby player,” he told Matthew, determined to make an effort. “Could’ve played county, is that right?”

They made laborious conversation for another hour: the wheels turned most easily while Matthew was able to talk about himself. Strike noticed Robin’s habit of feeding Matthew lines and cues, each designed to open up an area of conversation in which he could shine.

“How long have you two been together?” he asked.

“Nine years,” said Matthew, with a slight return of his former combative air.

“That long?” said Strike, surprised. “What, were you at university together?”

“School,” said Robin, smiling. “Sixth form.”

“Wasn’t a big school,” said Matthew. “She was the only girl with any brains who was fanciable. No choice.”

Tosser, thought Strike.

Their way home lay together as far as Waterloo station; they walked through the darkness, continuing to make small talk, then parted at the entrance to the Tube.

“There,” said Robin hopelessly, as she and Matthew walked away towards the escalator. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

“Punctuality’s shit,” said Matthew, who could find no other charge to lay against Strike that did not sound insane. “He’ll probably arrive forty minutes bloody late and ruin the service.”

But it was tacit consent to Strike’s attendance and, in the absence of genuine enthusiasm, Robin supposed it could have been worse.

Matthew, meanwhile, was brooding in silence on things he would have confessed to nobody. Robin had accurately described her boss’s looks—the pube-like hair, the boxer’s profile—but Matthew had not expected Strike to be so big. He had a couple of inches on Matthew, who enjoyed being the tallest man in his office. What was more, while he would have found it distasteful showboating if Strike had held forth about his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, or told them how his leg had been blown off, or how he had earned the medal that Robin seemed to find so impressive, his silence on these subjects had been almost more irritating. Strike’s heroism, his action-packed life, his experiences of travel and danger had somehow hovered, spectrally, over the conversation.

Beside him on the train, Robin too sat in silence. She had not enjoyed the evening one bit. Never before had she known Matthew quite like that; or at least, never before had she seen him like that. It was Strike, she thought, puzzling over the matter as the train jolted them. Strike had somehow made her see Matthew through his eyes. She did not know quite how he had done it—all that questioning Matthew about rugby—some people might have thought it was polite, but Robin knew better…or was she just annoyed that he had been late, and blaming him for things that he had not intended?

And so the engaged couple sped home, united in unexpressed irritation with the man now snoring loudly as he rattled away from them on the Northern line.