The Silkworm

13

Experience had taught Strike that there was a certain type of woman to whom he was unusually attractive. Their common characteristics were intelligence and the flickering intensity of badly wired lamps. They were often attractive and usually, as his very oldest friend Dave Polworth liked to put it, “total fucking flakes.” Precisely what it was about him that attracted the type, Strike had never taken the time to consider, although Polworth, a man of many pithy theories, took the view that such women (“nervy, overbred”) were subconsciously looking for what he called “carthorse blood.”

Strike’s ex-fiancée, Charlotte, might have been said to be queen of the species. Beautiful, clever, volatile and damaged, she had returned again and again to Strike in the face of familial opposition and her friends’ barely veiled disgust. He had finally put an end to sixteen years of their on-again, off-again relationship in March and she had become engaged almost immediately to the ex-boyfriend from whom Strike, so many years ago in Oxford, had won her. Barring one exceptional night since, Strike’s love life had been voluntarily barren. Work had filled virtually every waking hour and he had successfully resisted advances, subtle or overt, from the likes of his glamorous brunet client, soon-to-be divorcées with time to kill and loneliness to assuage.

But there was always the dangerous urge to submit, to brave complications for a night or two of consolation, and now Nina Lascelles was hurrying along beside him in the dark Strand, taking two strides to his one, and informing him of her exact address in St. John’s Wood “so it looks like you’ve been there.” She barely came up to his shoulder and Strike had never found very small women attractive. Her torrent of chat about Roper Chard was laden with more laughter than was strictly necessary and once or twice she touched his arm to emphasize a point.

“Here we are,” she said at last, as they approached a tall modern building with a revolving glass door and the words “Roper Chard” picked out in shining orange Perspex across the stonework.

A wide lobby dotted with people in evening dress faced a line of metal sliding doors. Nina pulled an invitation out of her bag and showed it to what looked like hired help in a badly fitting tuxedo, then she and Strike joined twenty others in a large mirrored lift.

“This floor’s for meetings,” Nina shouted up to him as they debouched into a crowded open-plan area where a band was playing to a sparsely populated dance floor. “It’s usually partitioned. So—who do you want to meet?”

“Anyone who knew Quine well and might have an idea where he is.”

“That’s only Jerry, really…”

They were buffeted by a fresh consignment of guests from the lift behind them and moved into the crowd. Strike thought he felt Nina grab the back of his coat, like a child, but he did not reciprocate by taking her hand or in any way reinforce the impression that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Once or twice he heard her greet people in passing. They eventually won through to the far wall, where tables manned by white-coated waiters groaned with party food and it was possible to make conversation without shouting. Strike took a couple of dainty crab cakes and ate them, deploring their minuscule size, while Nina looked around.

“Can’t see Jerry anywhere, but he’s probably up on the roof, smoking. Shall we try up there? Oooh, look there—Daniel Chard, mingling with the herd!”

“Which one?”

“The bald one.”

A respectful little distance had been left around the head of the company, like the flattened circle of corn that surrounds a rising helicopter, as he talked to a curvaceous young woman in a tight black dress.

Phallus Impudicus; Strike could not repress a grin of amusement, yet Chard’s baldness suited him. He was younger and fitter-looking than Strike had expected and handsome in his way, with thick dark eyebrows over deep-set eyes, a hawkish nose and a thin-lipped mouth. His charcoal suit was unexceptional but his tie, which was pale mauve, was much wider than the average and bore drawings of human noses. Strike, whose dress sense had always been conventional, an instinct honed by the sergeants’ mess, could not help but be intrigued by this small but forceful statement of nonconformity in a CEO, especially as it was drawing the occasional glance of surprise or amusement.

“Where’s the drink?” Nina said, standing pointlessly on tiptoe.

“Over there,” said Strike, who could see a bar in front of the windows that showed a view of the dark Thames. “Stay here, I’ll get them. White wine?”

“Champers, if Daniel’s pushed the boat out.”

He took a route through the crowd so that he could, without ostentation, bring himself in close proximity to Chard, who was letting his companion do all the talking. She had that air of slight desperation of the conversationalist who knows that they are failing. The back of Chard’s hand, which was clutching a glass of water, Strike noticed, was covered in shiny red eczema. Strike paused immediately behind Chard, ostensibly to allow a party of young women to pass in the opposite direction.

“…and it really was awfully funny,” the girl in the black dress was saying nervously.

“Yes,” said Chard, who sounded deeply bored, “it must have been.”

“And was New York wonderful? I mean—not wonderful—was it useful? Fun?” asked his companion.

“Busy,” said Chard and Strike, though he could not see the CEO, thought he actually yawned. “Lots of digital talk.”

A portly man in a three-piece suit who appeared drunk already, though it was barely eight thirty, stopped in front of Strike and invited him, with overdone courtesy, to proceed. Strike had no choice but to accept the elaborately mimed invitation and so passed out of range of Daniel Chard’s voice.

“Thanks,” said Nina a few minutes later, taking her champagne from Strike. “Shall we go up to the roof garden, then?”

“Great,” said Strike. He had taken champagne too, not because he liked it, but because there had been nothing else there he cared to drink. “Who’s that woman Daniel Chard’s talking to?”

Nina craned to see as she led Strike towards a helical metal staircase.

“Joanna Waldegrave, Jerry’s daughter. She’s just written her first novel. Why? Is that your type?” she asked, with a breathy little laugh.

“No,” said Strike.

They climbed the mesh stairs, Strike relying heavily once more on the handrail. The icy night air scoured his lungs as they emerged onto the top of the building. Stretches of velvety lawn, tubs of flowers and young trees, benches dotted everywhere; there was even a floodlit pond where fish darted, flame-like, beneath the black lily pads. Outdoor heaters like giant steel mushrooms had been placed in groups between neat square lawns and people were huddled under them, their backs turned to the synthetic pastoral scene, looking inwards at their fellow smokers, cigarette tips glowing.

The view over the city was spectacular, velvet black and jeweled, the London Eye glowing neon blue, the Oxo Tower with its ruby windows, the Southbank Center, Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster shining golden away to the right.

“Come on,” said Nina, and she boldly took Strike’s hand and led him towards an all-female trio, whose breath rose in gusts of white mist even when they were not exhaling smoke.

“Hi guys,” said Nina. “Anyone seen Jerry?”

“He’s pissed,” said a redhead baldly.

“Oh no,” said Nina. “And he was doing so well!”

A lanky blonde glanced over her shoulder and murmured:

“He was half off his face in Arbutus last week.”

“It’s Bombyx Mori,” said an irritable-looking girl with short dark hair. “And the anniversary weekend in Paris didn’t come off. Fenella had another tantrum, I think. When is he going to leave her?”

“Is she here?” asked the blonde avidly.

“Somewhere,” said the dark girl. “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Nina?”

There was a flurry of introduction that left Strike none the wiser as to which of the girls was Miranda, Sarah or Emma, before the four women plunged again into a dissection of the unhappiness and drunkenness of Jerry Waldegrave.

“He should have ditched Fenella years ago,” said the dark girl. “Vile woman.”

“Shh!” hissed Nina and all four of them became unnaturally still as a man nearly as tall as Strike ambled up to them. His round, doughy face was partly concealed by large horn-rimmed glasses and a tangle of brown hair. A brimming glass of red wine was threatening to spill over his hand.

“Guilty silence,” he noted with an amiable smile. His speech had a sonorous over-deliberation that to Strike declared a practiced drunk. “Three guesses what you’re talking about: Bombyx—Mori—Quine. Hi,” he added, looking at Strike and stretching out a hand: their eyes were on a level. “We haven’t met, have we?”

“Jerry—Cormoran, Cormoran—Jerry,” said Nina at once. “My date,” she added, an aside directed more at the three women beside her than at the tall editor.

“Cameron, was it?” asked Waldegrave, cupping a hand around his ear.

“Close enough,” said Strike.

“Sorry,” said Waldegrave. “Deaf on one side. And have you ladies been gossiping in front of the tall dark stranger,” he said, with rather ponderous humor, “in spite of Mr. Chard’s very clear instructions that nobody outside the company should be made privy to our guilty secret?”

“You won’t tell on us, will you, Jerry?” asked the dark girl.

“If Daniel really wanted to keep that book quiet,” said the redhead impatiently, though with a swift glance over her shoulder to check that the boss was nowhere nearby, “he shouldn’t be sending lawyers all over town trying to hush it up. People keep calling me, asking what’s going on.”

“Jerry,” said the dark girl bravely, “why did you have to speak to the lawyers?”

“Because I’m in it, Sarah,” said Waldegrave, with a wave of his glass that sent a slug of the contents slopping onto the manicured lawn. “In it up to my malfunctioning ears. In the book.”

The women all made sounds of shock and protestation.

“What could Quine possibly say about you, when you’ve been so decent to him?” demanded the dark girl.

“The burden of Owen’s song is that I’m gratuitously brutal to his masterpieces,” said Waldegrave, and he made a scissor-like gesture with the hand not grasping the glass.

“Oh, is that all?” said the blonde, with the faintest tinge of disappointment. “Big deal. He’s lucky to have a deal at all, the way he carries on.”

“Starting to look like he’s gone underground again,” commented Waldegrave. “Not answering any calls.”

“Cowardly bastard,” said the redhead.

“I’m quite worried about him, actually.”

“Worried?” repeated the redhead incredulously. “You can’t be serious, Jerry.”

“You’d be worried too, if you’d read that book,” said Waldegrave, with a tiny hiccup. “I think Owen’s cracking up. It reads like a suicide note.”

The blonde let out a little laugh, hastily repressed when Waldegrave looked at her.

“I’m not joking. I think he’s having a breakdown. The subtext, under all the usual grotesquerie, is: everyone’s against me, everyone’s out to get me, everyone hates me—”

“Everyone does hate him,” interjected the blonde.

“No rational person would have imagined it could be published. And now he’s disappeared.”

“He’s always doing that, though,” said the redhead impatiently. “It’s his party piece, isn’t it, doing a runner? Daisy Carter at Davis-Green told me he went off in a huff twice when they were doing The Balzac Brothers with him.”

“I’m worried about him,” said Waldegrave stubbornly. He took a deep drink of wine and said, “Might’ve slit his wrists—”

“Owen wouldn’t kill himself!” scoffed the blonde. Waldegrave looked down at her with what Strike thought was a mixture of pity and dislike.

“People do kill themselves, you know, Miranda, when they think their whole reason for living is being taken away from them. Even the fact that other people think their suffering is a joke isn’t enough to shake them out of it.”

The blonde girl looked incredulous, then glanced around the circle for support, but nobody came to her defense.

“Writers are different,” said Waldegrave. “I’ve never met one who was any good who wasn’t screwy. Something bloody Liz Tassel would do well to remember.”

“She claims she didn’t know what was in the book,” said Nina. “She’s telling everyone she was ill and didn’t read it properly—”

“I know Liz Tassel,” growled Waldegrave and Strike was interested to see a flash of authentic anger in this amiable, drunken editor. “She knew what she was bloody doing when she put that book out. She thought it was her last chance to make some money off Owen. Nice bit of publicity off the back of the scandal about Fancourt, whom she’s hated for years…but now the shit’s hit the fan she’s disowning her client. Bloody outrageous behavior.”

“Daniel disinvited her tonight,” said the dark girl. “I had to ring her and tell her. It was horrible.”

“D’you know where Owen might’ve gone, Jerry?” asked Nina.

Waldegrave shrugged.

“Could be anywhere, couldn’t he? But I hope he’s all right, wherever he is. I can’t help being fond of the silly bastard, in spite of it all.”

“What is this big Fancourt scandal that he’s written about?” asked the redhead. “I heard someone say it was something to do with a review…”

Everyone in the group apart from Strike began to talk at once, but Waldegrave’s voice carried over the others’ and the women fell silent with the instinctive courtesy women often show to incapacitated males.

“Thought everyone knew that story,” said Waldegrave on another faint hiccup. “In a nutshell, Michael’s first wife Elspeth wrote a very bad novel. An anonymous parody of it appeared in a literary magazine. She cut the parody out, pinned it to the front of her dress and gassed herself, à la Sylvia Plath.”

The redhead gasped.

“She killed herself?”

“Yep,” said Waldegrave, swigging wine again. “Writers: screwy.”

“Who wrote the parody?”

“Everyone’s always thought it was Owen. He denied it, but then I suppose he would, given what it led to,” said Waldegrave. “Owen and Michael never spoke again after Elspeth died. But in Bombyx Mori, Owen finds an ingenious way of suggesting that the real author of the parody was Michael himself.”

“God,” said the redhead, awestruck.

“Speaking of Fancourt,” said Waldegrave, glancing at his watch, “I’m supposed to be telling you all that there’s going to be a grand announcement downstairs at nine. You girls won’t want to miss it.”

He ambled away. Two of the girls ground out their cigarettes and followed him. The blonde drifted off towards another group.

“Lovely, Jerry, isn’t he?” Nina asked Strike, shivering in the depths of her woolen coat.

“Very magnanimous,” said Strike. “Nobody else seems to think that Quine didn’t know exactly what he was doing. Want to get back in the warm?”

Exhaustion was lapping at the edges of Strike’s consciousness. He wanted passionately to go home, to begin the tiresome process of putting his leg to sleep (as he described it to himself), to close his eyes and attempt eight straight hours’ slumber until he had to rise and place himself again in the vicinity of another unfaithful husband.

The room downstairs was more densely packed than ever. Nina stopped several times to shout and bawl into the ears of acquaintances. Strike was introduced to a squat romantic novelist who appeared dazzled by the glamour of cheap champagne and the loud band, and to Jerry Waldegrave’s wife, who greeted Nina effusively and drunkenly through a lot of tangled black hair.

“She always sucks up,” said Nina coldly, disengaging herself and leading Strike closer to the makeshift stage. “She comes from money and makes it clear that she married down with Jerry. Horrible snob.”

“Impressed by your father the QC, is she?” asked Strike.

“Scary memory you’ve got,” said Nina, with an admiring look. “No, I think it’s…well, I’m the Honorable Nina Lascelles really. I mean, who gives a shit? But people like Fenella do.”

An underling was now angling a microphone at a wooden lectern on a stage near the bar. Roper Chard’s logo, a rope knot between the two names, and “100th Anniversary” were emblazoned on a banner.

There followed a tedious ten-minute wait during which Strike responded politely and appropriately to Nina’s chatter, which required a great effort, as she was so much shorter, and the room was increasingly noisy.

“Is Larry Pinkelman here?” he asked, remembering the old children’s writer on Elizabeth Tassel’s wall.

“Oh no, he hates parties,” said Nina cheerfully.

“I thought you were throwing him one?”

“How did you know that?” she asked, startled.

“You just told me so, in the pub.”

“Wow, you really pay attention, don’t you? Yeah, we’re doing a dinner for the reprint of his Christmas stories, but it’ll be very small. He hates crowds, Larry, he’s really shy.”

Daniel Chard had at last reached the stage. The talk faded to a murmur and then died. Strike detected tension in the air as Chard shuffled his notes and then cleared his throat.

He must have had a great deal of practice, Strike thought, and yet his public speaking was barely competent. Chard looked up mechanically to the same spot over the crowd’s head at regular intervals; he made eye contact with nobody; he was, at times, barely audible. After taking his listeners on a brief journey through the illustrious history of Roper Publishing, he made a modest detour into the antecedents of Chard Books, his grandfather’s company, described their amalgamation and his own humble delight and pride, expressed in the same flat monotone as the rest, in finding himself, ten years on, as head of the global company. His small jokes were greeted with exuberant laughter fueled, Strike thought, by discomfort as much as alcohol. Strike found himself staring at the sore, boiled-looking hands. He had once known a young private in the army whose eczema had become so bad under stress that he had had to be hospitalized.

“There can be no doubt,” said Chard, turning to what Strike, one of the tallest men in the room and close to the stage, could see was the last page of his speech, “that publishing is currently undergoing a period of rapid changes and fresh challenges, but one thing remains as true today as it was a century ago: content is king. While we boast the best writers in the world, Roper Chard will continue to excite, to challenge and to entertain. And it is in that context”—the approach of a climax was declared not by any excitement, but by a relaxation in Chard’s manner induced by the fact that his ordeal was nearly over—“that I am honored and delighted to tell you that we have this week secured the talents of one of the finest authors in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Michael Fancourt!”

A perceptible intake of breath rolled like a breeze across the crowd. A woman yelped excitedly. Applause broke out somewhere to the rear of the room and spread like crackling fire to the front. Strike saw a distant door open, the glimpse of an overlarge head, a sour expression, before Fancourt was swallowed by the enthusiastic employees. It was several minutes before he emerged onto the stage to shake Chard’s hand.

“Oh my God,” an excitedly applauding Nina kept saying. “Oh my God.”

Jerry Waldegrave, who like Strike rose head and shoulders above the mostly female crowd, was standing almost directly opposite them on the other side of the stage. He was again holding a full glass, so could not applaud, and he raised it to his lips, unsmiling, as he watched Fancourt gesture for quiet in front of the microphone.

“Thanks, Dan,” said Fancourt. “Well, I certainly never expected to find myself here,” he said, and these words were greeted by a raucous outbreak of laughter, “but it feels like a homecoming. I wrote for Chard and then I wrote for Roper and they were good days. I was an angry young man”—widespread titters—“and now I’m an angry old man”—much laughter and even a small smile from Daniel Chard—“and I look forward to raging for you”—effusive laughter from Chard as well as the crowd; Strike and Waldegrave seemed to be the only two in the room not convulsed. “I’m delighted to be back and I’ll do my best to—what was it, Dan?—keep Roper Chard exciting, challenging and entertaining.”

A storm of applause; the two men were shaking hands amid camera flashes.

“Half a mill, I reckon,” said a drunken man behind Strike, “and ten k to turn up tonight.”

Fancourt descended the stage right in front of Strike. His habitually dour expression had barely varied for the photographs, but he looked happier as hands stretched out towards him. Michael Fancourt did not disdain adulation.

“Wow,” said Nina to Strike. “Can you believe that?”

Fancourt’s overlarge head had disappeared into the crowd. The curvaceous Joanna Waldegrave appeared, trying to make her way towards the famous author. Her father was suddenly behind her; with a drunken lurch he reached out a hand and took her upper arm none too gently.

“He’s got other people to talk to, Jo, leave him.”

“Mummy’s made a beeline, why don’t you grab her?”

Strike watched Joanna stalk away from her father, evidently angry. Daniel Chard had vanished too; Strike wondered whether he had slipped out of a door while the crowd was busy with Fancourt.

“Your CEO doesn’t love the limelight,” Strike commented to Nina.

“They say he’s got a lot better,” said Nina, who was still gazing towards Fancourt. “He could barely look up from his notes ten years ago. He’s a good businessman, though, you know. Shrewd.”

Curiosity and tiredness tussled inside Strike.

“Nina,” he said, drawing his companion away from the throng pressing around Fancourt; she permitted him to lead her willingly, “where did you say the manuscript of Bombyx Mori is?”

“In Jerry’s safe,” she said. “Floor below this.” She sipped champagne, her huge eyes shining. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

“How much trouble would you be in?”

“Loads,” she said insouciantly. “But I’ve got my keycard on me and everyone’s busy, aren’t they?”

Her father, Strike thought ruthlessly, was a QC. They would be wary of how they dismissed her.

“D’you reckon we could run off a copy?”

“Let’s do it,” she said, throwing back the last of her drink.

The lift was empty and the floor below dark and deserted. Nina opened the door to the department with her keycard and led him confidently between blank computer monitors and deserted desks towards a large corner office. The only light came from perennially lit London beyond the windows and the occasional tiny orange light indicating a computer on standby.

Waldegrave’s office was not locked but the safe, which stood behind a hinged bookcase, operated on a keypad. Nina input a four-number code. The door swung open and Strike saw an untidy stack of pages lying inside.

“That’s it,” she said happily.

“Keep your voice down,” Strike advised her.

Strike kept watch while she ran off a copy for him at the photocopier outside the door. The endless swish and hum was strangely soothing. Nobody came, nobody saw; fifteen minutes later, Nina was replacing the manuscript in the safe and locking it up.

“There you go.”

She handed him the copy, with several strong elastic bands holding it together. As he took it she leaned in for a few seconds; a tipsy sway, an extended brush against him. He owed her something in return, but he was shatteringly tired; both the idea of going back to that flat in St. John’s Wood and of taking her to his attic in Denmark Street were unappealing. Would a drink, tomorrow night perhaps, be adequate repayment? And then he remembered that tomorrow night was his birthday dinner at his sister’s. Lucy had said he could bring someone.

“Want to come to a tedious dinner party tomorrow night?” he asked her.

She laughed, clearly elated.

“What’ll be tedious about it?”

“Everything. You’d cheer it up. Fancy it?”

“Well—why not?” she said happily.

The invitation seemed to meet the bill; he felt the demand for some physical gesture recede. They made their way out of the dark department in an atmosphere of friendly camaraderie, the copied manuscript of Bombyx Mori hidden beneath Strike’s overcoat. After noting down her address and phone number, he saw her safely into a taxi with a sense of relief and release.