The Silkworm

35

The Sunday broadsheets next day strove to find a dignified balance between an objective assessment of Owen Quine’s life and work and the macabre, Gothic nature of his death.

“A minor literary figure, occasionally interesting, tipping latterly into self-parody, eclipsed by his contemporaries but continuing to blaze his own outmoded trail,” said the Sunday Times in a front-page column that led to a promise of much more excitement within: A sadist’s blueprint: see pages 10-11 and, beside a thumbnail photograph of Kenneth Halliwell: Books and Bookmen: literary killers p. 3 Culture.

“Rumors about the unpublished book that allegedly inspired his murder are now spreading beyond London’s literary circles,” the Observer assured its readers. “Were it not for the dictates of good taste, Roper Chard would have an instant bestseller on its hands.”

KINKY WRITER DISEMBOWELED IN SEX GAME, declared the Sunday People.

Strike had bought every paper on his way home from Nina Lascelles’s, difficult though it was to manage them all and his stick over snowy pavements. It occurred to him as he struggled towards Denmark Street that he was unwisely encumbered, should his would-be assailant of the previous evening reappear, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Later that evening he worked his way through the news stories while eating chips, lying on his bed with his prosthetic leg mercifully removed once more.

Viewing the facts through the press’s distorting lens was stimulating to his imagination. At last, having finished Culpepper’s piece in the News of the World (“Sources close to the story confirm that Quine liked to be tied up by his wife, who denies that she knew the kinky writer had gone to stay in their second home”), Strike slid the papers off his bed, reached for the notebook he kept by his bed and scribbled himself a list of reminders for the following day. He did not add Anstis’s initial to any of the tasks or questions, but bookshop man and MF when filmed? were both followed by a capital R. He then texted Robin, reminding her to keep her eyes peeled for a tall woman in a black coat the following morning and not to enter Denmark Street if she was there.

Robin saw nobody answering that description on her short journey from the Tube and arrived at the office at nine o’clock next morning to find Strike sitting at her desk and using her computer.

“Morning. No nutters outside?”

“No one,” said Robin, hanging up her coat.

“How’s Matthew?”

“Fine,” lied Robin.

The aftermath of their row about her decision to drive Strike to Devon clung to her like fumes. The argument had simmered and erupted repeatedly all through their car journey back to Clapham; her eyes were still puffy from crying and lack of sleep.

“Tough for him,” muttered Strike, still frowning at the monitor. “His mother’s funeral.”

“Mm,” said Robin, moving to fill the kettle and feeling annoyed that Strike chose to empathize with Matthew today, exactly when she would have welcomed an assurance that he was an unreasonable prick.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, setting a mug of tea at Strike’s elbow, for which he gave her muttered thanks.

“Trying to find out when Michael Fancourt’s interview was filmed,” he said. “He was on telly on Saturday night.”

“I watched that,” said Robin.

“Me too,” said Strike.

“Arrogant prat,” said Robin, sitting down on the mock-leather sofa, which for some reason did not emit farting noises when she did it. Perhaps, Strike thought, it was his weight.

“Notice anything funny when he was talking about his late wife?” Strike asked.

“The crocodile tears were a bit much,” said Robin, “seeing how he’d just been explaining how love’s an illusion and all that rubbish.”

Strike glanced at her again. She had the kind of fair, delicate complexion that suffered from excess emotion; the swollen eyes told their own story. Some of her animosity towards Michael Fancourt, he guessed, might be displaced from another and perhaps more deserving target.

“Thought he was faking, did you?” Strike asked. “Me too.”

He glanced at his watch.

“I’ve got Caroline Ingles arriving in half an hour.”

“I thought she and her husband had reconciled?”

“Old news. She wants to see me, something about a text she found on his phone over the weekend. So,” said Strike, heaving himself up from the desk, “I need you to keep trying to find out when that interview was filmed, while I go and look over the case notes so I look like I can remember what the hell she’s on about. Then I’ve got lunch with Quine’s editor.”

“And I’ve got some news about what the doctor’s surgery outside Kathryn Kent’s flat does with medical waste,” said Robin.

“Go on,” said Strike.

“A specialist company collects it every Tuesday. I contacted them,” said Robin and Strike could tell by her sigh that the line of inquiry was about to fizzle out, “and they didn’t notice anything odd or unusual about the bags they collected the Tuesday after the murder. I suppose,” she said, “it was a bit unrealistic, thinking they wouldn’t notice a bag of human intestines. They told me it’s usually just swabs and needles, and they’re all sealed up in special bags.”

“Had to check it out, though,” said Strike bracingly. “That’s good detective work—cross off all the possibilities. Anyway, there’s something else I need doing, if you can face the snow.”

“I’d love to get out,” said Robin, brightening at once. “What is it?”

“That man in the bookshop in Putney who reckons he saw Quine on the eighth,” said Strike. “He should be back off his holidays.”

“No problem,” said Robin.

She had not had an opportunity over the weekend to discuss with Matthew the fact that Strike wished to give her investigative training. It would have been the wrong time before the funeral, and after their row on Saturday night would have seemed provocative, even inflammatory. Today she yearned to get out onto the streets, to investigate, to probe, and to go home and tell Matthew matter-of-factly what she had done. He wanted honesty, she would give him honesty.

Caroline Ingles, who was a worn-out blonde, spent over an hour in Strike’s office that morning. When finally she had departed, looking tear-stained but determined, Robin had news for Strike.

“That interview with Fancourt was filmed on the seventh of November,” she said. “I phoned the BBC. Took ages, but got there in the end.”

“The seventh,” repeated Strike. “That was a Sunday. Where was it filmed?”

“A film crew went down to his house in Chew Magna,” said Robin. “What did you notice on the interview that’s making you this interested?”

“Watch it again,” said Strike. “See if you can get it on YouTube. Surprised you didn’t spot it at the time.”

Stung, she remembered Matthew beside her, interrogating her about the crash on the M4.

“I’m going to change for Simpson’s,” said Strike. “We’ll lock up and leave together, shall we?”

They parted forty minutes later at the Tube, Robin heading for the Bridlington Bookshop in Putney, Strike for the restaurant on the Strand, to which he intended to walk.

“Spent way too much on taxis lately,” he told Robin gruffly, unwilling to tell her how much it had cost him to take care of the Toyota Land Cruiser with which he had been stranded on Friday night. “Plenty of time.”

She watched him for a few seconds as he walked away from her, leaning heavily on his stick and limping badly. An observant childhood spent in the company of three brothers had given Robin an unusual and accurate insight into the frequently contrary reaction of males to female concern, but she wondered how much longer Strike could force his knee to support him before he found himself incapacitated for longer than a few days.

It was almost lunchtime and the two women opposite Robin on the train to Waterloo were chatting loudly, carrier bags full of Christmas shopping between their knees. The floor of the Tube was wet and dirty and the air full, again, of damp cloth and stale bodies. Robin spent most of her journey trying without success to view clips of Michael Fancourt’s interview on her mobile phone.

The Bridlington Bookshop stood on a main road in Putney, its old-fashioned paned windows crammed from top to bottom with a mixture of new and secondhand books, all stacked horizontally. A bell tinkled as Robin crossed the threshold into a pleasant, mildewed atmosphere. A couple of ladders stood propped against shelves crammed with more horizontally piled books reaching all the way to the ceiling. Hanging bulbs lit the space, dangling so low that Strike would have banged his head.

“Good morning!” said an elderly gentleman in an overlarge tweed jacket, emerging with almost audible creaks from an office with a dimpled glass door. As he approached, Robin caught a strong whiff of body odor.

She had already planned her simple line of inquiry and asked at once whether he had any Owen Quine in stock.

“Ah! Ah!” he said knowingly. “I needn’t ask, I think, why the sudden interest!”

A self-important man in the common fashion of the unworldly and cloistered, he embarked without invitation into a lecture on Quine’s style and declining readability as he led her into the depths of the shop. He appeared convinced, after two seconds’ acquaintance, that Robin could only be asking for a copy of one of Quine’s books because he had recently been murdered. While this was of course the truth, it irritated Robin.

“Have you got The Balzac Brothers?” she asked.

“You know better than to ask for Bombyx Mori, then,” he said, shifting a ladder with doddery hands. “Three young journalists I’ve had in here, asking for it.”

“Why are journalists coming here?” asked Robin innocently as he began to climb the ladder, revealing an inch of mustard-colored sock above his old brogues.

“Mr. Quine shopped here shortly before he died,” said the old man, now peering at spines some six feet above Robin. “Balzac Brothers, Balzac Brothers…should be here…dear, dear, I’m sure I’ve got a copy…”

“He actually came in here, to your shop?” asked Robin.

“Oh yes. I recognized him instantly. I was a great admirer of Joseph North and they once appeared on the same bill at the Hay Festival.”

He was coming down the ladder now, feet trembling with every step. Robin was scared he might fall.

“I’ll check the computer,” he said, breathing heavily. “I’m sure I’ve got a Balzac Brothers here.”

Robin followed him, reflecting that if the last time the old man had set eyes on Owen Quine had been in the mid-eighties, his reliability in identifying the writer again might be questionable.

“I don’t suppose you could miss him,” she said. “I’ve seen pictures of him. Very distinctive-looking in his Tyrolean cloak.”

“His eyes are different colors,” said the old man, now gazing at the monitor of an early Macintosh Classic that must, Robin thought, be twenty years old: beige, boxy, big chunky keys like cubes of toffee. “You see it close up. One hazel, one blue. I think the policeman was impressed by my powers of observation and recall. I was in intelligence during the war.”

He turned upon her with a self-satisfied smile.

“I was right, we do have a copy—secondhand. This way.”

He shuffled towards an untidy bin full of books.

“That’s a very important bit of information for the police,” said Robin, following him.

“Yes, indeed,” he said complacently. “Time of death. Yes, I could assure them that he was alive, still, on the eighth.”

“I don’t suppose you could remember what he came in here for,” said Robin with a small laugh. “I’d love to know what he read.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” said her companion at once. “He bought three novels: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed and…and I forget the third…told me he was going away for a break and wanted reading matter. We discussed the digital phenomenon—he more tolerant of reading devices than I…somewhere in here,” he muttered, raking in the bin. Robin joined the search halfheartedly.

“The eighth,” she repeated. “How could you be so sure it was the eighth?”

For the days, she thought, must blend quite seamlessly into each other in this dim atmosphere of mildew.

“It was a Monday,” he said. “A pleasant interlude, discussing Joseph North, of whom he had very fond memories.”

Robin was still none the wiser as to why he believed this particular Monday to have been the eighth, but before she could inquire further he had pulled an ancient paperback from the depths of the bin with a triumphant cry.

“There we are. There we are. I knew I had it.”

“I can never remember dates,” Robin lied as they returned to the till with their trophy. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any Joseph North, while I’m here?”

“There was only one,” said the old man. “Towards the Mark. Now, I know we’ve got that, one of my personal favorites…”

And he headed, once more, for the ladder.

“I confuse days all the time,” Robin soldiered on bravely as the mustard-colored socks were revealed again.

“Many people do,” he said smugly, “but I am an adept at reconstructive deduction, ha ha. I remembered that it was a Monday, because always on a Monday I buy fresh milk and I had just returned from doing so when Mr. Quine arrived at the shop.”

She waited while he scanned the shelves above her head.

“I explained to the police that I was able to date the particular Monday precisely because that evening I went to my friend Charles’s house, as I do most Mondays, but I distinctly remembered telling him about Owen Quine arriving in my bookshop and discussing the five Anglican bishops who had defected to Rome that day. Charles is a lay preacher in the Anglican Church. He felt it deeply.”

“I see,” said Robin, who was making a mental note to check the date of such a defection. The old man had found North’s book and was slowly descending the ladder.

“Yes, and I remember,” he said, with a spurt of enthusiasm, “Charles showed me some remarkable pictures of a sinkhole that appeared overnight in Schmalkalden, Germany. I was stationed near Schmalkalden during the war. Yes…that evening, I remember, my friend interrupted me telling him about Quine visiting the shop—his interest in writers is negligible—‘Weren’t you in Schmalkalden?’ he said”—the frail, knobbly hands were busy at the till now—“and he told me a huge crater had appeared…extraordinary pictures in the paper next day…

“Memory is a wonderful thing,” he said complacently, handing Robin a brown paper bag containing her two books and receiving her ten-pound note in exchange.

“I remember that sinkhole,” said Robin, which was another lie. She took her mobile out of her pocket and pressed a few buttons while he conscientiously counted change. “Yes, here it is…Schmalkalden…how amazing, that huge hole appearing out of nowhere.

“But that happened,” she said, looking up at him, “on the first of November, not the eighth.”

He blinked.

“No, it was the eighth,” he said, with all the conviction a profound dislike of being mistaken could muster.

“But see here,” said Robin, showing him the tiny screen; he pushed his glasses up his forehead to stare at it. “You definitely remember discussing Owen Quine’s visit and the sinkhole in the same conversation?”

“Some mistake,” he muttered, and whether he referred to the Guardian website, himself or Robin was unclear. He thrust her phone back at her.

“You don’t remem—?”

“Is that all?” he said loudly, flustered. “Then good day to you, good day.”

And Robin, recognizing the stubbornness of an offended old egoist, took her leave to the tinkling of the bell.