The Silkworm

12

Strike proceeded along the dark, cold Strand towards Fleet Street that evening with his hands balled deep in his pockets, walking as briskly as fatigue and an increasingly sore right leg would permit. He regretted leaving the peace and comfort of his glorified bedsit; he was not sure that anything useful would come of this evening’s expedition and yet, almost against his will, he was struck anew in the frosty haze of this winter’s night by the aged beauty of the old city to which he owed a divided childhood allegiance.

Every taint of the touristic was wiped away by the freezing November evening: the seventeenth-century façade of the Old Bell Tavern, with its diamond windowpanes aglow, exuded a noble antiquity; the dragon standing sentinel on top of the Temple Bar marker was silhouetted, stark and fierce, against the star-studded blackness above; and in the far distance the misty dome of St. Paul’s shone like a rising moon. High on a brick wall above him as he approached his destination were names that spoke of Fleet Street’s inky past—the People’s Friend, the Dundee Courier—but Culpepper and his journalistic ilk had long since been driven out of their traditional home to Wapping and Canary Wharf. The law dominated the area now, the Royal Courts of Justice staring down upon the passing detective, the ultimate temple of Strike’s trade.

In this forgiving and strangely sentimental mood, Strike approached the round yellow lamp across the road that marked the entrance to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and headed up the narrow passageway that led to the entrance, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the low lintel.

A cramped wood-paneled entrance lined with ancient oil paintings opened onto a tiny front room. Strike ducked again, avoiding the faded wooden sign “Gentlemen only in this bar,” and was greeted at once with an enthusiastic wave from a pale, petite girl whose dominant feature was a pair of large brown eyes. Huddled in a black coat beside the log fire, she was cradling an empty glass in two small white hands.

“Nina?”

“I knew it was you, Dominic described you to a T.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

She asked for a white wine. Strike fetched himself a pint of Sam Smith and edged onto the uncomfortable wooden bench beside her. London accents filled the room. As though she had read his mood, Nina said:

“It’s still a real pub. It’s only people who never come here who think it’s full of tourists. And Dickens came here, and Johnson and Yeats…I love it.”

She beamed at him and he smiled back, mustering real warmth with several mouthfuls of beer inside him.

“How far’s your office?”

“About a ten-minute walk,” she said. “We’re just off the Strand. It’s a new building and there’s a roof garden. It’s going to be bloody freezing,” she added, giving a preemptive shiver and drawing her coat more tightly around her. “But the bosses had an excuse not to hire anywhere. Times are hard in publishing.”

“There’s been some trouble about Bombyx Mori, you said?” asked Strike, getting down to business as he stretched out his prosthetic leg as far as it would go under the table.

“Trouble,” she said, “is the understatement of the century. Daniel Chard’s livid. You don’t make Daniel Chard the baddie in a dirty novel. Not done. No. Bad idea. He’s a strange man. They say he got sucked into the family business, but he really wanted to be an artist. Like Hitler,” she added with a giggle.

The lights over the bar danced in her big eyes. She looked, Strike thought, like an alert and excited mouse.

“Hitler?” he repeated, faintly amused.

“He rants like Hitler when he’s upset—we’ve found that out this week. Nobody’s ever heard Daniel speak above a mumble before this. Shouting and screaming at Jerry; we could hear him through the walls.”

“Have you read the book?”

She hesitated, a naughty grin playing around her mouth.

“Not officially,” she said at last.

“But unofficially…”

“I might have had a sneaky peek,” she said.

“Isn’t it under lock and key?”

“Well, yeah, it’s in Jerry’s safe.”

A sly sideways glance invited Strike to join her in gentle mockery of the innocent editor.

“The trouble is, he’s told everyone the combination because he keeps forgetting it and that means he can ask us to remind him. Jerry’s the sweetest, straightest man in the world and I don’t think it would have occurred to him that we’d have a read if we weren’t supposed to.”

“When did you look at it?”

“The Monday after he got it. Rumors were really picking up by then, because Christian Fisher had rung about fifty people over the weekend and read bits of the book over the phone. I’ve heard he scanned it and started emailing parts around, as well.”

“This would have been before lawyers started getting involved?”

“Yeah. They called us all together and gave us this ridiculous speech about what would happen if we talked about the book. It was just nonsense, trying to tell us the company’s reputation would suffer if the CEO’s ridiculed—we’re about to go public, or that’s the rumor—and ultimately our jobs would be imperiled. I don’t know how the lawyer kept a straight face saying it. My dad’s a QC,” she went on airily, “and he says Chard’ll have a hard time going after any of us when so many people outside the company know.”

“Is he a good CEO, Chard?” asked Strike.

“I suppose so,” she said restlessly, “but he’s quite mysterious and dignified so…well, it’s just funny, what Quine wrote about him.”

“Which was…?”

“Well, in the book Chard’s called Phallus Impudicus and—”

Strike choked on his pint. Nina giggled.

“He’s called ‘Impudent Cock’?” Strike asked, laughing, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Nina laughed; a surprisingly dirty cackle for one who looked like an eager schoolgirl.

“You did Latin? I gave it up, I hated it—but we all know what ‘phallus’ is, right? I had to look it up and Phallus impudicus is actually the proper name for a toadstool called stinkhorn. Apparently they smell vile and…well,” she giggled some more, “they look like rotting knobs. Classic Owen: dirty names and everyone with their bits out.”

“And what does Phallus Impudicus get up to?”

“Well, he walks like Daniel, talks like Daniel, looks like Daniel and he enjoys a spot of necrophilia with a handsome writer he’s murdered. It’s really gory and disgusting. Jerry always said Owen thinks the day wasted if he hasn’t made his readers gag at least twice. Poor Jerry,” she added quietly.

“Why ‘poor Jerry’?” asked Strike.

“He’s in the book as well.”

“And what kind of phallus is he?”

Nina giggled again.

“I couldn’t tell you, I didn’t read the bit about Jerry. I just flicked through to find Daniel because everyone said it was so gross and funny. Jerry was only out of his office half an hour, so I didn’t have much time—but we all know he’s in there, because Daniel hauled Jerry in, made him meet the lawyers and add his name to all the stupid emails telling us the sky will fall in if we talk about Bombyx Mori. I suppose it makes Daniel feel better that Owen’s attacked Jerry too. He knows everyone loves Jerry, so I expect he thinks we’ll all keep our mouths shut to protect him.

“God knows why Quine’s gone for Jerry, though,” Nina added, her smile fading a little. “Because Jerry hasn’t got an enemy in the world. Owen is a bastard, really,” she added as a quiet afterthought, staring down at her empty wineglass.

“Want another drink?” Strike asked.

He returned to the bar. There was a stuffed gray parrot in a glass case on the wall opposite. It was the only bit of genuine whimsy he could see and he was prepared, in his mood of tolerance for this authentic bit of old London, to do it the courtesy of assuming that it had once squawked and chattered within these walls and had not been bought as a mangy accessory.

“You know Quine’s gone missing?” Strike asked, once back beside Nina.

“Yeah, I heard a rumor. I’m not surprised, the fuss he’s caused.”

“D’you know Quine?”

“Not really. He comes into the office sometimes and tries to flirt, you know, with his stupid cloak draped round him, showing off, always trying to shock. I think he’s a bit pathetic, and I’ve always hated his books. Jerry persuaded me to read Hobart’s Sin and I thought it was dreadful.”

“D’you know if anyone’s heard from Quine lately?”

“Not that I know of,” said Nina.

“And no one knows why he wrote a book that was bound to get him sued?”

“Everyone assumes he’s had a major row with Daniel. He rows with everyone in the end; he’s been with God knows how many publishers over the years.

“I heard Daniel only publishes Owen because he thinks it makes it look as though Owen’s forgiven him for being awful to Joe North. Owen and Daniel don’t really like each other, that’s common knowledge.”

Strike remembered the image of the beautiful blond young man hanging on Elizabeth Tassel’s wall.

“How was Chard awful to North?”

“I’m a bit vague on the details,” said Nina. “But I know he was. I know Owen swore he’d never work for Daniel, but then he ran through nearly every other publisher so he had to pretend he’d been wrong about Daniel and Daniel took him on because he thought it made him look good. That’s what everyone says, anyway.”

“And has Quine rowed with Jerry Waldegrave, to your knowledge?”

“No, which is what’s so bizarre. Why attack Jerry? He’s lovely! Although from what I’ve heard, you can’t really—”

For the first time, as far as Strike could tell, she considered what she was about to say before proceeding a little more soberly:

“Well, you can’t really tell what Owen’s getting at in the bit about Jerry, and as I say, I haven’t read it. But Owen’s done over loads of people,” Nina went on. “I heard his own wife’s in there, and apparently he’s been vile about Liz Tassel, who might be a bitch, but everyone knows she’s stuck by Owen through thick and thin. Liz’ll never be able to place anything with Roper Chard again; everyone’s furious at her. I know she was disinvited for tonight on Daniel’s orders—pretty humiliating. And there’s supposed to be a party for Larry Pinkelman, one of her other authors, in a couple of weeks and they can’t uninvite her from that—Larry’s such an old sweetheart, everyone loves him—but God knows what reception she’ll get if she turns up.

“Anyway,” said Nina, shaking back her light brown fringe and changing the subject abruptly, “how are you and I supposed to know each other, once we get to the party? Are you my boyfriend, or what?”

“Are partners allowed at this thing?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t told anyone I’m seeing you, so we can’t have been going out long. We’ll say we got together at a party last weekend, OK?”

Strike heard, with almost identical amounts of disquiet and gratified vanity, the enthusiasm with which she suggested a fictional tryst.

“Need a pee before we go,” he said, raising himself heavily from the wooden bench as she drained her third glass.

The stairs down to the bathroom in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese were vertiginous and the ceiling so low that he smacked his head even while stooping. As he rubbed his temple, swearing under his breath, it seemed to Strike that he had just been given a divine clout over the head, to remind him what was, and what was not, a good idea.