The Silkworm

21

At a quarter to nine the next morning Strike made his way slowly down the metal stairs, asking himself, not for the first time, why he did not do something about getting the birdcage lift fixed. His knee was still sore and puffy after his fall, so he was allowing over an hour to get to Ladbroke Grove, because he could not afford to keep taking taxis.

A gust of icy air stung his face as he opened the door, then everything went white as a flash went off inches from his eyes. He blinked—the outlines of three men danced in front of him—he threw up his hand against another volley of flashes.

“Why didn’t you inform the police that Owen Quine was missing, Mr. Strike?”

“Did you know he was dead, Mr. Strike?”

For a split second he considered retreat, slamming the door on them, but that meant being trapped and having to face them later.

“No comment,” he said coolly and walked into them, refusing to alter his course by a hair’s breadth, so that they were forced to step out of his path, two asking questions and one running backwards, snapping and snapping. The girl who so often joined Strike for smoking breaks in the doorway of the guitar shop was gaping at the scene through the window.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone he’d been missing for more than a fortnight, Mr. Strike?”

“Why didn’t you notify the police?”

Strike strode in silence, his hands in his pockets and his expression grim. They scurried along beside him, trying to make him talk, a pair of razor-beaked seagulls dive-bombing a fishing trawler.

“Trying to show them up again, Mr. Strike?”

“Get one over on the police?”

“Publicity good for business, Mr. Strike?”

He had boxed in the army. In his imagination he wheeled around and delivered a left hook to the floating rib area, so that the little shit crumpled…

“Taxi!” he shouted.

Flash, flash, flash went the camera as he got into it; thankfully the lights ahead turned green, the taxi moved smoothly away from the curb and they gave up running after a few steps.

Fuckers, Strike thought, glancing over his shoulder as the taxi rounded a corner. Some bastard at the Met must have tipped them off that he had found the body. It would not have been Anstis, who had held back the information from the official statement, but one of the embittered bastards who had not forgiven him for Lula Landry.

“You famous?” asked the cabbie, staring at him in the rearview mirror.

“No,” said Strike shortly. “Drop me at Oxford Circus, will you?”

Disgruntled at such a short fare, the cabbie muttered under his breath.

Strike took out his mobile and texted Robin again.

2 journalists outside door when I left. Say you work for Crowdy.

Then he called Anstis.

“Bob.”

“I’ve just been doorstepped. They know I found the body.”

“How?”

“You’re asking me?”

A pause.

“It was always going to come out, Bob, but I didn’t give it to them.”

“Yeah, I saw the ‘family friend’ line. They’re trying to make out I didn’t tell you lot because I wanted the publicity.”

“Mate, I never—”

“Be good to have that rebutted by an official source, Rich. Mud sticks and I’ve got a livelihood to make here.”

“I’ll get it done,” promised Anstis. “Listen, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Forensics have got back with their first thoughts; be good to talk it over.”

“Yeah, great,” said Strike as the taxi approached Oxford Circus. “What time?”

He remained standing on the Tube train, because sitting meant having to get up again and that put more strain on his sore knee. As he was going through Royal Oak he felt his mobile buzz and saw two texts, the first from his sister Lucy.

Many Happy Returns, Stick! Xxx

He had completely forgotten that today was his birthday. He opened the second text.

Hi Cormoran, thanks for warning about journos, just met them, they’re still hanging round the outside door. See you later. Rx

Grateful that the day was temporarily dry, Strike reached the Quine house just before ten. It looked just as dingy and depressing in weak sunlight as it had the last time he had visited, but with a difference: there was a police officer standing in front of it. He was a tall young copper with a pugnacious-looking chin and when he saw Strike walking towards him with the ghost of a limp, his eyebrows contracted.

“Can I ask who you are, sir?”

“Yeah, I expect so,” said Strike, walking past him and ringing the doorbell. Anstis’s dinner invitation notwithstanding, he was not feeling sympathetic to the police just now. “Should be just about within your capabilities.”

The door opened and Strike found himself face to face with a tall, gangling girl with sallow skin, a mop of curly light brown hair, a wide mouth and an ingenuous expression. Her eyes, which were a clear, pale green, were large and set far apart. She was wearing what was either a long sweatshirt or a short dress that ended above bony knees and fluffy pink socks, and she was cradling a large plush orangutan to her flat chest. The toy ape had Velcro attachments on its paws and was hanging around her neck.

“Hullo,” she said. She swayed very gently, side to side, putting weight first on one foot, then on the other.

“Hello,” said Strike. “Are you Orlan—?”

“Can I have your name, please, sir?” asked the young policeman loudly.

“Yeah, all right—if I can ask why you’re standing outside this house,” said Strike with a smile.

“There’s been press interest,” said the young policeman.

“A man came,” said Orlando, “and with a camera and Mum said—”

“Orlando!” called Leonora from inside the house. “What are you doing?”

She came stumping down the hall behind her daughter, gaunt and white-faced in an ancient navy blue dress with its hem hanging down.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you. Come in.”

As he stepped over the threshold, Strike smiled at the policeman, who glared back.

“What’s your name?” Orlando asked Strike as the front door closed behind them.

“Cormoran,” he said.

“That’s a funny name.”

“Yeah, it is,” said Strike and something made him add, “I was named after a giant.”

“That’s funny,” said Orlando, swaying.

“Go in,” said Leonora curtly, pointing Strike towards the kitchen. “I need the loo. Be with you in a mo.”

Strike proceeded down the narrow hallway. The door of the study was closed and, he suspected, still locked.

On reaching the kitchen he discovered to his surprise that he was not the only visitor. Jerry Waldegrave, the editor from Roper Chard, was sitting at the kitchen table, clutching a bunch of flowers in somber purples and blues, his pale face anxious. A second bunch of flowers, still in its cellophane, protruded from a sink half filled with dirty crockery. Supermarket bags of food sat unpacked on the sides.

“Hi,” said Waldegrave, scrambling to his feet and blinking earnestly at Strike through his horn-rimmed glasses. Evidently he did not recognize the detective from their previous meeting on the dark roof garden because he asked, as he held out his hand, “Are you family?”

“Family friend,” said Strike as they shook hands.

“Terrible thing,” said Waldegrave. “Had to come and see if I could do anything. She’s been in the bathroom ever since I arrived.”

“Right,” said Strike.

Waldegrave resumed his seat. Orlando edged crabwise into the dark kitchen, cuddling her furry orangutan. A very long minute passed while Orlando, clearly the most at ease, unabashedly stared at both of them.

“You’ve got nice hair,” she announced at last to Jerry Waldegrave. “It’s like a hairstack.”

“I suppose it is,” said Waldegrave and he smiled at her. She edged out again.

Another brief silence followed, during which Waldegrave fidgeted with the flowers, his eyes darting around the kitchen.

“Can’t believe it,” he said at last.

They heard the loud flushing of a toilet upstairs, a thumping on the stairs, and Leonora returned with Orlando at her heels.

“Sorry,” she said to the two men. “I’m a bit upset.”

It was obvious that she was referring to her stomach.

“Look, Leonora,” said Jerry Waldegrave in an agony of awkwardness, getting to his feet, “I don’t want to intrude when you’ve got your friend here—”

“Him? He’s not a friend, he’s a detective,” said Leonora.

“Sorry?”

Strike remembered that Waldegrave was deaf in one ear.

“He’s called a name like a giant,” said Orlando.

“He’s a detective,” said Leonora loudly, over her daughter.

“Oh,” said Waldegrave, taken aback. “I didn’t—why—?”

“Cos I need one,” said Leonora shortly. “The police think I done it to Owen.”

There was a silence. Waldegrave’s discomfort was palpable.

“My daddy died,” Orlando informed the room. Her gaze was direct and eager, seeking a reaction. Strike, who felt that something was required of one of them, said:

“I know. It’s very sad.”

“Edna said it was sad,” replied Orlando, as though she had hoped for something more original, and she slid out of the room again.

“Sit down,” Leonora invited the two men. “They for me?” she added, indicating the flowers in Waldegrave’s hand.

“Yes,” he said, fumbling a little as he handed them over but remaining on his feet. “Look, Leonora, I don’t want to take up any of your time just now, you must be so busy with—with arrangements and—”

“They won’t let me have his body,” said Leonora with devastating honesty, “so I can’t make no arrangements yet.”

“Oh, and there’s a card,” said Waldegrave desperately, feeling in his pockets. “Here…well, if there’s anything we can do, Leonora, anything—”

“Can’t see what anyone can do,” said Leonora shortly, taking the envelope he proffered. She sat down at the table where Strike had already pulled up a chair, glad to take the weight off his leg.

“Well, I think I’ll be off, leave you to it,” said Waldegrave. “Listen, Leonora, I hate to ask at a time like this, but Bombyx Mori…have you got a copy here?”

“No,” she said. “Owen took it with him.”

“I’m so sorry, but it would help us if…could I have a look and see if any of it’s been left behind?”

She peered up at him through those huge, outdated glasses.

“Police’ve taken anything he left,” she said. “They went through the study like a dose of salts yesterday. Locked it up and taken the key—I can’t even go in there myself now.”

“Oh, well, if the police need…no,” said Waldegrave, “fair enough. No, I’ll see myself out, don’t get up.”

He walked up the hall and they heard the front door close behind him.

“Dunno why he came,” said Leonora sullenly. “Make him feel like he’s done something nice, I suppose.”

She opened the card he had given her. There was a watercolor of violets on the front. Inside were many signatures.

“Being all nice now, because they feel guilty,” said Leonora, throwing the card down on the Formica-topped table.

“Guilty?”

“They never appreciated him. You got to market books,” she said, surprisingly. “You got to promote ’em. It’s up to the publishers to give ’em a push. They wouldn’t never get him on TV or anything like he needed.”

Strike guessed that these were complaints she had learned from her husband.

“Leonora,” he said, taking out his notebook. “Is it all right if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“I s’pose. I don’t know nothing, though.”

“Have you heard from anyone who spoke to Owen or saw him after he left here on the fifth?”

She shook her head.

“No friends, no family?”

“No one,” she said. “D’you want a cup of tea?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” said Strike, who did not much fancy anything made in this grubby kitchen, but wanted to keep her talking.

“How well d’you know the people at Owen’s publisher?” he asked over the noisy filling of the kettle.

She shrugged.

“Hardly at all. Met that Jerry when Owen done a book signing once.”

“You’re not friendly with anyone at Roper Chard?”

“No. Why would I be? It was Owen worked with them, not me.”

“And you haven’t read Bombyx Mori, have you?” Strike asked her casually.

“I’ve told you that already. I don’t like reading ’em till they’re published. Why’s everyone keep asking me that?” she said, looking up from the plastic bag in which she had been rummaging for biscuits.

“What was the matter with the body?” she demanded suddenly. “What happened to him? They won’t tell me. They took his toothbrush for DNA to identify him. Why won’t they let me see him?”

He had dealt with this question before, from other wives, from distraught parents. He fell back, as so often before, on partial truth.

“He’d been lying there for a while,” he said.

“How long?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“How was it done?”

“I don’t think they know that exactly, yet.”

“But they must…”

She fell silent as Orlando shuffled back into the room, clutching not just her plush orangutan but also a sheaf of brightly colored drawings.

“Where’s Jerry gone?”

“Back to work,” said Leonora.

“He’s got nice hair. I don’t like your hair,” she told Strike. “It’s fuzzy.”

“I don’t like it much, either,” he said.

“He don’t want to look at pictures now, Dodo,” said her mother impatiently, but Orlando ignored her mother and spread her paintings out on the table for Strike to see.

“I did them.”

They were recognizably flowers, fish and birds. A child’s menu could be read through the back of one of them.

“They’re very good,” said Strike. “Leonora, d’you know if the police found any bits of Bombyx Mori yesterday, when they searched the study?”

“Yeah,” she said, dropping tea bags into chipped mugs. “Two old typewriter ribbons; they’d fallen down the back of the desk. They come out and ask me where the rest of ’em were; I said, he took ’em when he went.”

“I like Daddy’s study,” announced Orlando, “because he gives me paper for drawing.”

“It’s a tip, that study,” said Leonora, switching the kettle on. “Took ’em ages to look through everything.”

“Auntie Liz went in there,” said Orlando.

“When?” asked Leonora, glaring at her daughter with two mugs in her hands.

“When she came and you were in the loo,” said Orlando. “She walked into Daddy’s study. I seen her.”

“She don’t have no right to go in there,” said Leonora. “Was she poking around?”

“No,” said Orlando. “She just walked in and then she walked out and she saw me an’ she was crying.”

“Yeah,” said Leonora with a satisfied air. “She was tearful with me an’ all. Another one feeling guilty.”

“When did she come over?” Strike asked Leonora.

“First thing Monday,” said Leonora. “Wanted to see if she could help. Help! She’s done enough.”

Strike’s tea was so weak and milky it looked as though it had never known a tea bag; his preference was for a brew the color of creosote. As he took a polite, token sip, he remembered Elizabeth Tassel’s avowed wish that Quine had died when her Doberman bit him.

“I like her lipstick,” announced Orlando.

“You like everyone’s everything today,” said Leonora vaguely, sitting back down with her own mug of weak tea. “I asked her why she done it, why she told Owen he couldn’t publish his book, and upset him like that.”

“And what did she say?” asked Strike.

“That he’s gone and put a load of real people in it,” said Leonora. “I dunno why they’re so upset about that. He always does it.” She sipped her tea. “He’s put me in loads of ’em.”

Strike thought of Succuba, the “well-worn whore,” and found himself despising Owen Quine.

“I wanted to ask you about Talgarth Road.”

“I don’t know why he went there,” she said immediately. “He hated it. He wanted to sell it for years but that Fancourt wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that.”

Orlando had slid onto the chair beside him, one bare leg twisted underneath her as she added vibrantly colored fins to a picture of a large fish with a pack of crayons she appeared to have pulled from thin air.

“How come Michael Fancourt’s been able to block the sale all these years?”

“It’s something to do with how it was left to ’em by that bloke Joe. Something about how it was to be used. I dunno. You’d have to ask Liz, she knows all about it.”

“When was the last time Owen was there, do you know?”

“Years ago,” she said. “I dunno. Years.”

“I want more paper to draw,” Orlando announced.

“I haven’t got any more,” said Leonora. “It’s all in Daddy’s study. Use the back of this.”

She seized a circular from the cluttered work surface and pushed it across the table to Orlando, but her daughter shoved it away and left the kitchen at a languid walk, the orangutan swinging from her neck. Almost at once they heard her trying to force the door of the study.

“Orlando, no!” barked Leonora, jumping up and hurrying into the hall. Strike took advantage of her absence to lean back and pour away most of his milky tea into the sink; it spattered down the bouquet clinging traitorously to the cellophane.

“No, Dodo. You can’t do that. No. We’re not allowed—we’re not allowed, get off it—”

A high-pitched wail and then a loud thudding proclaimed Orlando’s flight upstairs. Leonora reappeared in the kitchen with a flushed face.

“I’ll be paying for that all day now,” she said. “She’s unsettled. Don’t like the police here.”

She yawned nervously.

“Have you slept?” Strike asked.

“Not much. Cos I keep thinking, Who? Who’d do it to him? He upsets people, I know that,” she said distractedly, “but that’s just how he is. Temperamental. He gets angry over little things. He’s always been like that, he don’t mean anything by it. Who’d kill him for that?

“Michael Fancourt must still have a key to the house,” she went on, twisting her fingers together as she jumped subject. “I thought that last night when I couldn’t sleep. I know Michael Fancourt don’t like him, but that’s ages ago. Anyway, Owen never did that thing Michael said he did. He never wrote it. But Michael Fancourt wouldn’t kill Owen.” She looked up at Strike with clear eyes as innocent as her daughter’s. “He’s rich, isn’t he? Famous…he wouldn’t.”

Strike had always marveled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.

“And that bloody Chard,” burst out Leonora, “sending Owen threatening letters. Owen never liked him. And then he signs the card and says if there’s anything he can do…where’s that card?”

The card with the picture of violets had vanished from the table.

“She’s got it,” said Leonora, flushing angrily. “She’s taken it.” And so loudly that it made Strike jump she bellowed “DODO!” at the ceiling.

It was the irrational anger of a person in the first raw stages of grief and, like her upset stomach, revealed just how she was suffering beneath the surly surface.

“DODO!” shouted Leonora again. “What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong—?”

Orlando reappeared with startling suddenness in the kitchen, still cuddling her orangutan. She must have crept back down without them hearing, as quiet as a cat.

“You took my card!” said Leonora angrily. “What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong to you? Where is it?”

“I like the flowers,” said Orlando, producing the glossy but now crumpled card, which her mother snatched from her.

“It’s mine,” she told her daughter. “See,” she went on, addressing Strike and pointing to the longest handwritten message, which was in precise copperplate: “‘Do let me know if there is anything you need. Daniel Chard.’ Bloody hypocrite.”

“Daddy didn’t like Dannulchar,” said Orlando. “He told me.”

“He’s a bloody hypocrite, I know that,” said Leonora, who was squinting at the other signatures.

“He give me a paintbrush,” said Orlando, “after he touched me.”

There was a short, pregnant silence. Leonora looked up at her. Strike had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips.

“What?”

“I didn’t like him touching me.”

“What are you talking about? Who touched you?”

“At Daddy’s work.”

“Don’t talk so silly,” said her mother.

“When Daddy took me and I saw—”

“He took her in a month ago or more, because I had a doctor’s appointment,” Leonora told Strike, flustered, on edge. “I don’t know what she’s on about.”

“…and I saw the pictures for books that they put on, all colored,” said Leonora, “an’ Dannulchar did touch—”

“You don’t even know who Daniel Chard is,” said Leonora.

“He’s got no hair,” said Orlando. “And after Daddy took me to see the lady an’ I gave her my best picture. She had nice hair.”

“What lady? What are you talking—?”

“When Dannulchar touched me,” said Orlando loudly. “He touched me and I shouted and after he gave me a paintbrush.”

“You don’t want to go round saying things like that,” said Leonora and her strained voice cracked. “Aren’t we in enough— Don’t be stupid, Orlando.”

Orlando grew very red in the face. Glaring at her mother, she left the kitchen. This time she slammed the door hard behind her; it did not close, but bounced open again. Strike heard her stamping up the stairs; after a few steps she started shrieking incomprehensibly.

“Now she’s upset,” said Leonora dully, and tears toppled out of her pale eyes. Strike reached over to the ragged kitchen roll on the side, ripped some off and pressed it into her hand. She cried silently, her thin shoulders shaking, and Strike sat in silence, drinking the dregs of his horrible tea.

“Met Owen in a pub,” she mumbled unexpectedly, pushing up her glasses and blotting her wet face. “He was there for the festival. Hay-on-Wye. I’d never heard of him, but I could tell he was someone, way he was dressed and talking.”

And a faint glow of hero worship, almost extinguished by years of neglect and unhappiness, of putting up with his airs and tantrums, of trying to pay the bills and care for their daughter in this shabby little house, flickered again behind her tired eyes. Perhaps it had rekindled because her hero, like all the best heroes, was dead; perhaps it would burn forever now, like an eternal flame, and she would forget the worst and cherish the idea of him she had once loved…as long as she did not read his final manuscript, and his vile depiction of her…

“Leonora, I wanted to ask you something else,” Strike said gently, “and then I’ll be off. Have you had anymore dog excrement through your letter box in the last week?”

“In the last week?” she repeated thickly, still dabbing her eyes. “Yeah. Tuesday we did, I think. Or Wednesday, was it? But yeah. One more time.”

“And have you seen the woman you thought was following you?”

She shook her head, blowing her nose.

“Maybe I imagined it, I dunno…”

“And are you all right for money?”

“Yeah,” she said, blotting her eyes. “Owen had life insurance. I made him take it out, cos of Orlando. So we’ll be all right. Edna’s offered to lend me till it comes through.”

“Then I’ll be off,” said Strike, pushing himself back to his feet.

She trailed him up the dingy hall, still sniffing, and before the door had closed behind him he heard her calling:

“Dodo! Dodo, come down, I didn’t mean it!”

The young policeman outside stood partially blocking Strike’s path. He looked angry.

“I know who you are,” he said. His mobile phone was still clutched in his hand. “You’re Cormoran Strike.”

“No flies on you, are there?” said Strike. “Out of the way now, sonny, some of us have got proper work to do.”