The Silkworm

37

Strike set out for his office beneath a sky of dirty silver, his feet moving with difficulty through the rapidly accumulating snow, which was still falling fast. Though he had touched nothing but water, he felt a little drunk on good rich food, which gave him the false sense of well-being that Waldegrave had probably passed sometime midmorning, drinking in his office. The walk between Simpson’s-in-the-Strand and his drafty little office on Denmark Street would take a fit and unimpaired adult perhaps a quarter of an hour. Strike’s knee remained sore and overworked, but he had just spent more than his entire week’s food budget on a single meal. Lighting a cigarette, he limped away through the knife-sharp cold, head bowed against the snow, wondering what Robin had found out at the Bridlington Bookshop.

As he walked past the fluted columns of the Lyceum Theatre, Strike pondered the fact that Daniel Chard was convinced that Jerry Waldegrave had helped Quine write his book, whereas Waldegrave thought that Elizabeth Tassel had played upon his sense of grievance until it had erupted into print. Were these, he wondered, simple cases of displaced anger? Having been balked of the true culprit by Quine’s gruesome death, were Chard and Waldegrave seeking living scapegoats on whom to vent their frustrated fury? Or were they right to detect, in Bombyx Mori, a foreign influence?

The scarlet façade of the Coach and Horses in Wellington Street constituted a powerful temptation as he approached it, the stick doing heavy duty now, and his knee complaining: warmth, beer and a comfortable chair…but a third lunchtime visit to the pub in a week…not a habit he ought to develop…Jerry Waldegrave was an object lesson in where such behavior might lead…

He could not resist an envious glance through the window as he passed, towards lights gleaming on brass beer pumps and convivial men with slacker consciences than his own—

He saw her out of the corner of his eye. Tall and stooping in her black coat, hands in her pockets, scurrying along the slushy pavements behind him: his stalker and would-be attacker of Saturday night.

Strike’s pace did not falter, nor did he turn to look at her. He was not playing games this time; there would be no stopping to test her amateurish stalking style, no letting her know that he had spotted her. On he walked without looking over his shoulder, and only a man or woman similarly expert in countersurveillance would have noticed his casual glances into helpfully positioned windows and reflective brass door plates; only they could have spotted the hyperalertness disguised as inattentiveness.

Most killers were slapdash amateurs; that was how they were caught. To persist after their encounter on Saturday night argued high-caliber recklessness and it was on this that Strike was counting as he continued up Wellington Street, outwardly oblivious to the woman following him with a knife in her pocket. As he crossed Russell Street she had dodged out of sight, faking entrance to the Marquess of Anglesey, but soon reappeared, dodging in and out of the square pillars of an office block and lurking in a doorway to allow him to pull ahead.

Strike could barely feel his knee now. He had become six foot three of highly concentrated potential. This time she had no advantage; she would not be taking him by surprise. If she had a plan at all, he guessed that it was to profit from any available opportunity. It was up to him to present her with an opportunity she dare not let pass, and to make sure she did not succeed.

Past the Royal Opera House with its classical portico, its columns and statues; in Endell Street she entered an old red telephone box, gathering her nerve, no doubt, double-checking that he was not aware of her. Strike walked on, his pace unchanging, his eyes on the street ahead. She took confidence and emerged again onto the crowded pavement, following him through harried passersby with carrier bags swinging from their hands, drawing closer to him as the street narrowed, flitting in and out of doorways.

As he drew nearer to the office he made his decision, turning left off Denmark Street into Flitcroft Street, which led to Denmark Place, where a dark passage, plastered with fliers for bands, led back to his office.

Would she dare?

As he entered the alleyway, his footsteps echoing a little off the dank walls, he slowed imperceptibly. Then he heard her coming—running at him.

Wheeling around on his sound left leg he flung out his walking stick—there was a shriek of pain as her arm met it—the Stanley knife was knocked out of her hand, hit the stone wall, rebounded and narrowly missed Strike’s eye—he had her now in a ferocious grip that made her scream.

He was afraid that some hero would come to her aid, but no one appeared, and now speed was essential—she was stronger than he had expected and struggling ferociously, trying to kick him in the balls and claw his face. With a further economical twist of his body he had her in a headlock, her feet skidding and scrambling on the damp alley floor.

As she writhed in his arms, trying to bite him, he stooped to pick up the knife, pulling her down with him so that she almost lost her footing, then, abandoning the walking stick, which he could not carry while managing her, he dragged her out onto Denmark Street.

He was fast, and she so winded by the struggle that she had no breath to yell. The short cold street was empty of shoppers and no passersby on Charing Cross Road noticed anything amiss as he forced her the short distance to the black street door.

“Need in, Robin! Quickly!” he shouted on the intercom, slamming his way through the outer door as soon as Robin had buzzed it open. Up the metal steps he dragged her, his right knee now protesting violently, and she started shrieking, the screams echoing around the stairwell. Strike saw movement behind the glass door of the dour and eccentric graphic designer who worked in the office beneath his.

“Just messing around!” he bellowed at the door, heaving his pursuer upstairs.

“Cormoran? What’s—oh my God!” said Robin, staring down from the landing. “You can’t—what are you playing at? Let her go!”

“She’s just—tried—to bloody—knife me again,” panted Strike, and with a gigantic final effort he forced his pursuer over the threshold. “Lock the door!” he shouted at Robin, who had hurried in behind them and obeyed.

Strike threw the woman onto the mock-leather sofa. The hood fell back to reveal a long pale face with large brown eyes and thick dark wavy hair that fell to her shoulders. Her fingers terminated in pointed crimson nails. She looked barely twenty.

“You bastard! You bastard!”

She tried to get up, but Strike was standing over her looking murderous, so she thought better of it, slumping back onto the sofa and massaging her white neck, which bore dark pink scratch marks where he had seized her.

“Want to tell me why you’re trying to knife me?” Strike asked.

“Fuck you!”

“That’s original,” said Strike. “Robin, call the police—”

“Noooo!” howled the woman in black like a baying dog. “He hurt me,” she gasped to Robin, tugging down her top with abandoned wretchedness to reveal the marks on the strong white neck. “He dragged me, he pulled me—”

Robin looked to Strike, her hand on the receiver.

“Why have you been following me?” Strike said, panting as he stood over her, his tone threatening.

She cowered into the squeaking cushions yet Robin, whose fingers had not left the phone, detected a note of relish in the woman’s fear, a whisper of voluptuousness in the way she twisted away from him.

“Last chance,” growled Strike. “Why—?”

“What’s happening up there?” came a querulous inquiry from the landing below.

Robin’s eyes met Strike’s. She hurried to the door, unlocked it and slid out onto the landing while Strike stood guard over his captive, his jaw set and one fist clenched. He saw the idea of screaming for help pass behind the big dark eyes, purple-shadowed like pansies, and fade away. Shaking, she began to cry, but her teeth were bared and he thought there was more rage than misery in her tears.

“All OK, Mr. Crowdy,” Robin called. “Just messing around. Sorry we were so loud.”

Robin returned to the office and locked the door behind her again. The woman was rigid on the sofa, tears tumbling down her face, her talon-like nails gripping the edge of the seat.

“Fuck this,” Strike said. “You don’t want to talk—I’m calling the police.”

Apparently she believed him. He had taken barely two steps towards the phone when she sobbed:

“I wanted to stop you.”

“Stop me doing what?” said Strike.

“Like you don’t know!”

“Don’t play fucking games with me!” Strike shouted, bending towards her with two large fists clenched. He could feel his damaged knee only too acutely now. It was her fault he had taken the fall that had damaged the ligaments all over again.

“Cormoran,” said Robin firmly, sliding between them and forcing him to take a pace backwards. “Listen,” she told the girl. “Listen to me. Tell him why you’re doing this and maybe he won’t call—”

“You’ve gotta be fucking joking,” said Strike. “Twice she’s tried to stab—”

“—maybe he won’t call the police,” said Robin loudly, undeterred.

The woman jumped up and tried to make a break for it towards the door.

“No you don’t,” said Strike, hobbling fast around Robin, catching his assailant round the waist and throwing her none too gently back onto the sofa. “Who are you?”

“You’ve hurt me now!” she shouted. “You’ve really hurt me—my ribs—I’ll get you for assault, you bastard—”

“I’ll call you Pippa, then, shall I?” said Strike.

A shuddering gasp and a malevolent stare.

“You—you—fuck—”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck me,” said Strike irritably. “Your name.”

Her chest was heaving under the heavy overcoat.

“How will you know if I’m telling the truth, even if I tell you?” she panted, with a further show of defiance.

“I’ll keep you here till I’ve checked,” said Strike.

“Kidnap!” she shouted, her voice as rough and loud as a docker’s.

“Citizen’s arrest,” said Strike. “You tried to fucking knife me. Now, for the last bloody time—”

“Pippa Midgley,” she spat.

“Finally. Have you got ID?”

With another mutinous obscenity she slid a hand into her pocket and drew out a bus pass, which she threw to him.

“This says Phillip Midgley.”

“No shit.”

Watching the implication hit Strike, Robin felt a sudden urge, in spite of the tension in the room, to laugh.

“Epicoene,” said Pippa Midgley furiously. “Didn’t you get it? Too subtle for you, dickhead?”

Strike looked up at her. The Adam’s apple on her scratched, marked throat was still prominent. She had buried her hands in her pockets again.

“I’ll be Pippa on all my documents next year,” she said.

“Pippa,” Strike repeated. “You’re the author of ‘I’ll turn the handle on the fucking rack for you,’ are you?”

“Oh,” said Robin, on a long drawn-out sigh of comprehension.

“Oooooh, you’re so clever, Mr. Butch,” said Pippa in spiteful imitation.

“D’you know Kathryn Kent personally, or are you just cyber-friends?”

“Why? Is knowing Kath Kent a crime now?”

“How did you know Owen Quine?”

“I don’t want to talk about that bastard,” she said, her chest heaving. “What he’s done to me…what he’s done…pretending…he lied…lying fucking bastard…”

Fresh tears splattered down her cheeks and she dissolved into hysterics. Her scarlet-tipped hands clawed at her hair, her feet drummed on the floor, she rocked backwards and forwards, wailing. Strike watched her with distaste and after thirty seconds said:

“Will you shut the fuck—”

But Robin quelled him with a glance, tore a handful of tissues out of the box on her desk and pushed them into Pippa’s hand.

“T-t-ta—”

“Would you like a tea or coffee, Pippa?” asked Robin kindly.

“Co…fee…pl…”

“She’s just tried to bloody knife me, Robin!”

“Well, she didn’t manage it, did she?” commented Robin, busy with the kettle.

“Ineptitude,” said Strike incredulously, “is no fucking defense under the law!”

He rounded on Pippa again, who had followed this exchange with her mouth agape.

“Why have you been following me? What are you trying to stop me doing? And I’m warning you—just because Robin here’s buying the sob stuff—”

“You’re working for her!” yelled Pippa. “That twisted bitch, his widow! She’s got his money now, hasn’t she—we know what you’ve been hired to do, we’re not fucking stupid!”

“Who’s ‘we’?” demanded Strike, but Pippa’s dark eyes slid again towards the door. “I swear to God,” said Strike, whose much-tried knee was now throbbing in a way that made him want to grind his teeth, “if you go for that door one more fucking time I’m calling the police and I’ll testify and be glad to watch you go down for attempted murder. And it won’t be fun for you inside, Pippa,” he added. “Not pre-op.”

“Cormoran!” said Robin sharply.

“Stating facts,” said Strike.

Pippa had shrunk back onto the sofa and was staring at Strike in unfeigned terror.

“Coffee,” said Robin firmly, emerging from behind the desk and pressing the mug into one of the long-taloned hands. “Just tell him what all this is about, for God’s sake, Pippa. Tell him.”

Unstable and aggressive though Pippa seemed, Robin could not help pitying the girl, who appeared to have given almost no thought to the possible consequences of lunging at a private detective with a blade. Robin could only assume that she possessed in extreme form the trait that afflicted her own younger brother Martin, who was notorious in their family for the lack of foresight and love of danger that had resulted in more trips to casualty than the rest of his siblings combined.

“We know she hired you to frame us,” croaked Pippa.

“Who,” growled Strike, “is ‘she’ and who is ‘us’?”

“Leonora Quine!” said Pippa. “We know what she’s like and we know what she’s capable of! She hates us, me and Kath, she’d do anything to get us. She murdered Owen and she’s trying to pin it on us! You can look like that all you want!” she shouted at Strike, whose heavy eyebrows had risen halfway to his thick hairline. “She’s a crazy bitch, she’s jealous as hell—she couldn’t stand him seeing us and now she’s got you poking around trying to get stuff to use against us!”

“I don’t know whether you believe this paranoid bollocks—”

“We know what’s going on!” shouted Pippa.

“Shut up. Nobody except the killer knew Quine was dead when you started stalking me. You followed me the day I found the body and I know you were following Leonora for a week before that. Why?” And when she did not answer, he repeated: “Last chance: why did you follow me from Leonora’s?”

“I thought you might lead me to where he was,” said Pippa.

“Why did you want to know where he was?”

“So I could fucking kill him!” yelled Pippa, and Robin was confirmed in her impression that Pippa shared Martin’s almost total lack of self-preservation.

“And why did you want to kill him?” asked Strike, as though she had said nothing out of the ordinary.

“Because of what he did to us in that horrible fucking book! You know—you’ve read it—Epicoene—that bastard, that bastard—”

“Bloody calm down! So you’d read Bombyx Mori by then?”

“Yeah, of course I had—”

“And that’s when you started putting shit through Quine’s letter box?”

“Shit for a shit!” she shouted.

“Witty. When did you read the book?”

“Kath read the bits about us on the phone and then I went round and—”

“When did she read you the bits on the phone?”

“W-when she came home and found it lying on her doormat. Whole manuscript. She could hardly get the door open. He’d fed it through her door with a note,” said Pippa Midgley. “She showed me.”

“What did the note say?”

“It said ‘Payback time for both of us. Hope you’re happy! Owen.’”

“‘Payback time for both of us’?” repeated Strike, frowning. “D’you know what that meant?”

“Kath wouldn’t tell me but I know she understood. She was d-devastated,” said Pippa, her chest heaving. “She’s a—she’s a wonderful person. You don’t know her. She’s been like a m-mother to me. We met on his writing course and we were like—we became like—” She caught up her breath and whimpered: “He was a bastard. He lied to us about what he was writing, he lied about—about everything—”

She began to cry again, wailing and sobbing, and Robin, worried about Mr. Crowdy, said gently:

“Pippa, just tell us what he lied about. Cormoran only wants the truth, he’s not trying to frame anyone…”

She did not know whether Pippa had heard or believed her; perhaps she simply wanted to relieve her overwrought feelings, but she took a great shuddering breath and out spilled a torrent of words:

“He said I was like his second daughter, he said that to me; I told him everything, he knew my mum threw me out and everything. And I showed him m-m-my book about my life and he w-was so k-kind and interested and he said he’d help me get it p-published and he t-told us both, me and Kath, that we were in his n-new novel and he said I w-was a ‘b-beautiful lost soul’—that’s what he said to me,” gasped Pippa, her mobile mouth working, “and he p-pretended to read a bit out to me one day, over the phone, and it was—it was lovely and then I r-read it and he’d—he’d written that…Kath was in b-bits…the cave…Harpy and Epicoene…”

“So Kathryn came home and found it all over the doormat, did she?” said Strike. “Came home from where—work?”

“From s-sitting in the hospice with her dying sister.”

“And that was when?” said Strike for the third time.

“Who cares when it—?”

“I fucking care!”

“Was it the ninth?” Robin asked. She had brought up Kathryn Kent’s blog on her computer, the screen angled away from the sofa where Pippa was sitting. “Could it have been Tuesday the ninth, Pippa? The Tuesday after bonfire night?”

“It was…yeah, I think it was!” said Pippa, apparently awestruck by Robin’s lucky guess. “Yeah, Kath went away on bonfire night because Angela was so ill—”

“How d’you know it was bonfire night?” Strike asked.

“Because Owen told Kath he c-couldn’t see her that night, because he had to do fireworks with his daughter,” said Pippa. “And Kath was really upset, because he was supposed to be leaving! He’d promised her, he’d promised at long bloody last he’d leave his bitch of a wife, and then he says he’s got to play sparklers with the reta—”

She drew up short, but Strike finished for her.

“With the retard?”

“It’s just a joke,” muttered Pippa, shamefaced, showing more regret about her use of the word than she had about trying to stab Strike. “Just between me and Kath: his daughter was always the excuse why Owen couldn’t leave and be with Kath…”

“What did Kathryn do that night, instead of seeing Quine?” asked Strike.

“I went over to hers. Then she got the call that her sister Angela was a lot worse and she left. Angela had cancer. It had gone everywhere.”

“Where was Angela?”

“In the hospice in Clapham.”

“How did Kathryn get there?”

“Why’s that matter?”

“Just answer the bloody question, will you?”

“I don’t know—Tube, I s’pose. And she stayed with Angela for three days, sleeping on a mattress on the floor by her bed because they thought Angela was going to die any moment, but Angela kept hanging on so Kath had to go home for clean clothes and that’s when she found the manuscript all over the doormat.”

“Why are you sure she came home on the Tuesday?” Robin asked and Strike, who had been about to ask the same thing, looked at her in surprise. He did not know about the old man in the bookshop and the German sinkhole.

“Because on Tuesday nights I work on a helpline,” said Pippa, “and I was there when Kath called me in f-floods, because she’d put the manuscript in order, and read what he’d written about us—”

“Well, this is all very interesting,” said Strike, “because Kathryn Kent told the police that she’d never read Bombyx Mori.”

Pippa’s horrified expression might, under other circumstances, have been amusing.

“You fucking tricked me!”

“Yeah, you’re a really tough nut to crack,” said Strike. “Don’t even think about it,” he added, standing over her as she tried to get up.

“He was a—a shit!” shouted Pippa seething with impotent rage. “He was a user! Pretending to be interested in our work and using us all along, that l-lying b-bastard…I thought he understood what my life’s been about—we used to talk for hours about it and he encouraged me with my life story—he t-told me he was going to help me get a publishing deal—”

Strike felt a sudden weariness wash over him. What was this mania to appear in print?

“—and he was just trying to keep me sweet, telling him all my most private thoughts and feelings, and Kath—what he did to Kath—you don’t understand—I’m glad his bitch wife killed him! If she hadn’t—”

“Why,” demanded Strike, “d’you keep saying his wife killed Quine?”

“Because Kath’s got proof!”

A short pause.

“What proof?” asked Strike.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” shouted Pippa with a cackle of hysterical laughter. “Never you mind!”

“If she’s got proof, why hasn’t she taken it to the police?”

“Out of compassion!” shouted Pippa. “Something you wouldn’t—”

“Why,” came a plaintive voice from outside the glass door, “is there still all this shouting?”

“Oh bloody hell,” said Strike as the fuzzy outline of Mr. Crowdy from downstairs pressed close to the glass.

Robin moved to unlock the door.

“Very sorry, Mr. Crow—”

Pippa was off the sofa in an instant. Strike made a grab for her but his knee buckled agonizingly as he lunged. Knocking Mr. Crowdy aside she was gone, clattering down the stairs.

“Leave her!” Strike said to Robin, who looked braced to give chase. “Least I’ve got her knife.”

“Knife?” yelped Mr. Crowdy and it took them fifteen minutes to persuade him not to contact the landlord (for the publicity following the Lula Landry case had unnerved the graphic designer, who lived in dread that another murderer might come seeking Strike and perhaps wander by mistake into the wrong office).

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Strike when they had at last persuaded Crowdy to leave. He slumped down on the sofa; Robin took her computer chair and they looked at each other for a few seconds before starting to laugh.

“Decent good cop, bad cop routine we had going there,” said Strike.

“I wasn’t faking,” said Robin, “I really did feel a bit sorry for her.”

“I noticed. What about me, getting attacked?”

“Did she really want to stab you, or was it play-acting?” asked Robin sceptically.

“She might’ve liked the idea of it more than the reality,” acknowledged Strike. “Trouble is, you’re just as dead if you’re knifed by a self-dramatizing twat as by a professional. And what she thought she’d gain by stabbing me—”

“Mother love,” said Robin quietly.

Strike stared at her.

“Her own mother’s disowned her,” said Robin, “and she’s going through a really traumatic time, I expect, taking hormones and God knows what else she’s got to do before she has the operation. She thought she had a new family, didn’t she? She thought Quine and Kathryn Kent were her new parents. She told us Quine said she was a second daughter to him and he put her in the book as Kathryn Kent’s daughter. But in Bombyx Mori he revealed her to the world as half male, half female. He also suggested that, beneath all the filial affection, she wanted to sleep with him.

“Her new father,” said Robin, “had let her down very badly. But her new mother was still good and loving, and she’d been betrayed as well, so Pippa set out to get even for both of them.”

She could not stop herself grinning at Strike’s looked of stunned admiration.

“Why the hell did you give up that psychology degree?”

“Long story,” said Robin, looking away towards the computer monitor. “She’s not very old…twenty, d’you think?”

“Looked about that,” agreed Strike. “Pity we never got round to asking her about her movements in the days after Quine disappeared.”

“She didn’t do it,” said Robin with certainty, looking back at him.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” sighed Strike, “if only because shoving dog shit through his letter box might’ve felt a bit anticlimactic after carving out his guts.”

“And she doesn’t seem very strong on planning or efficiency, does she?”

“An understatement,” he agreed.

“Are you going to call the police about her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But shit,” he said, thumping himself on the forehead, “we didn’t even find out why she was bloody singing in the book!”

“I think I might know,” said Robin after a short burst of typing and reading the results on her computer monitor. “Singing to soften the voice…vocal exercises for transgendered people.”

“Was that all?” asked Strike in disbelief.

“What are you saying—that she was wrong to take offense?” said Robin. “Come on—he was jeering at something really personal in a public—”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Strike.

He frowned out of the window, thinking. The snow was falling thick and fast.

After a while he said:

“What happened at the Bridlington Bookshop?”

“God, yes, I nearly forgot!”

She told him all about the assistant and his confusion between the first and the eighth of November.

“Stupid old sod,” said Strike.

“That’s a bit mean,” said Robin.

“Cocky, wasn’t he? Mondays are always the same, goes to his friend Charles every Monday…”

“But how do we know whether it was the Anglican bishop night or the sinkhole night?”

“You say he claims Charles interrupted him with the sinkhole story while he was telling him about Quine coming into the shop?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Then it’s odds on Quine was in the shop on the first, not the eighth. He remembers those two bits of information as connected. Silly bugger’s got confused. He wanted to have seen Quine after he’d disappeared, he wanted to be able to help establish time of death, so he was subconsciously looking for reasons to think it was the Monday in the time frame for the murder, not an irrelevant Monday a whole week before anyone was interested in Quine’s movements.”

“There’s still something odd, though, isn’t there, about what he claims Quine said to him?” asked Robin.

“Yeah, there is,” said Strike. “Buying reading matter because he was going away for a break…so he was already planning to go away, four days before he rowed with Elizabeth Tassel? Was he already planning to go to Talgarth Road, after all those years he was supposed to have hated and avoided the place?”

“Are you going to tell Anstis about this?” Robin asked.

Strike gave a wry snort of laughter.

“No, I’m not going to tell Anstis. We’ve got no real proof Quine was in there on the first instead of the eighth. Anyway, Anstis and I aren’t on the best terms just now.”

There was another long pause, and then Strike startled Robin by saying:

“I’ve got to talk to Michael Fancourt.”

“Why?” she asked.

“A lot of reasons,” said Strike. “Things Waldegrave said to me over lunch. Can you get on to his agent or whatever contact you can find for him?”

“Yes,” said Robin, making a note for herself. “You know, I watched that interview back just now and I still couldn’t—”

“Look at it again,” said Strike. “Pay attention. Think.”

He lapsed into silence again, glaring now at the ceiling. Not wishing to break his train of thought, Robin merely set to work on the computer to discover who represented Michael Fancourt.

Finally Strike spoke over the tapping of her keyboard.

“What does Kathryn Kent think she’s got on Leonora?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Robin, concentrating on the results she had uncovered.

“And she’s withholding it ‘out of compassion’…”

Robin said nothing. She was perusing the website of Fancourt’s literary agency for a contact number.

“Let’s hope that was just more hysterical bullshit,” said Strike.

But he was worried.