The Silkworm

42

Robin arrived at work on Monday morning feeling tired and vaguely battle-weary, but proud of herself.

She and Matthew had spent most of the weekend discussing her job. In some ways (strange to think this, after nine years together) it had been the deepest and most serious conversation that they had ever had. Why had she not admitted for so long that her secret interest in investigative work had long predated meeting Cormoran Strike? Matthew had seemed stunned when she had finally confessed to him that she had had an ambition to work in some form of criminal investigation since her early teens.

“I’d have thought it would’ve been the last thing…” Matthew had mumbled, tailing off but referring obliquely, as Robin knew, to the reason she had dropped out of university.

“I just never knew how to say it to you,” she told him. “I thought you’d laugh. So it wasn’t Cormoran making me stay, or anything to do with him as a—as a person” (she had been on the verge of saying “as a man,” but saved herself just in time). “It was me. It’s what I want to do. I love it. And now he says he’ll train me, Matt, and that’s what I always wanted.”

The discussion had gone on all through Sunday, the disconcerted Matthew shifting slowly, like a boulder.

“How much weekend work?” he had asked her suspiciously.

“I don’t know; when it’s needed. Matt, I love the job, don’t you understand? I don’t want to pretend anymore. I just want to do it, and I’d like your support.”

In the end he had put his arms around her and agreed. She had tried not to feel grateful that his mother had just died, making him, she could not help thinking, just a little more amenable to persuasion than he might usually have been.

Robin had been looking forward to telling Strike about this mature development in her relationship but he was not in the office when she arrived. Lying on the desk beside her tiny tinsel tree was a short note in his distinctive, hard-to-read handwriting:

No milk, gone out for breakfast, then to Hamleys, want to beat crowds. PS Know who killed Quine.

Robin gasped. Seizing the phone, she called Strike’s mobile, only to hear the engaged signal.

Hamleys would not open until ten but Robin did not think she could bear to wait that long. Again and again she pressed redial while she opened and sorted the post, but Strike was still on the other call. She opened emails, the phone clamped to one ear; half an hour passed, then an hour, and still the engaged tone emanated from Strike’s number. She began to feel irritated, suspecting that it was a deliberate ploy to keep her in suspense.

At half past ten a soft ping from the computer announced the arrival of an email from an unfamiliar sender called Clodia2@live.com, who had sent nothing but an attachment labeled FYI.

Robin clicked on it automatically, still listening to the engaged tone. A large black-and-white picture swelled to fill her computer monitor.

The backdrop was stark; an overcast sky and the exterior of an old stone building. Everyone in the picture was out of focus except the bride, who had turned to look directly at the camera. She was wearing a long, plain, slim-fitting white gown with a floor-length veil held in place by a thin diamond band. Her black hair was flying like the folds of tulle in what looked like a stiff breeze. One hand was clasped in that of a blurred figure in a morning suit who appeared to be laughing, but her expression was unlike any bride’s that Robin had ever seen. She looked broken, bereft, haunted. Her eyes staring straight into Robin’s as though they alone were friends, as though Robin were the only one who might understand.

Robin lowered the mobile she had been listening to and stared at the picture. She had seen that extraordinarily beautiful face before. They had spoken once, on the telephone: Robin remembered a low, attractively husky voice. This was Charlotte, Strike’s ex-fiancée, the woman she had once seen running from this very building.

She was so beautiful. Robin felt strangely humbled by the other woman’s looks, and awed by her profound sadness. Sixteen years, on and off, with Strike—Strike, with his pube-like hair, his boxer’s profile and his half a leg…not that those things mattered, Robin told herself, staring transfixed at this incomparably stunning, sad bride…

The door opened. Strike was suddenly there beside her, two carrier bags of toys in his hands, and Robin, who had not heard him coming up the stairs, jumped as though she had been caught pilfering from the petty cash.

“Morning,” he said.

She reached hastily for the computer mouse, trying to close down the picture before he could see it, but her scramble to cover up what she was viewing drew his eyes irresistibly to the screen. Robin froze, shamefaced.

“She sent it a few minutes ago, I didn’t know what it was when I opened it. I’m…sorry.”

Strike stared at the picture for a few seconds then turned away, setting the bags of toys down on the floor by her desk.

Robin hesitated, then closed the file, deleted the email and emptied the trash folder.

“Cheers,” he said, straightening up, and by his manner informed her that there would be no discussion of Charlotte’s wedding picture. “I’ve got about thirty missed calls from you on my phone.”

“Well, what do you expect?” said Robin with spirit. “Your note—you said—”

“I had to take a call from my aunt,” said Strike. “An hour and ten minutes on the medical complaints of everyone in St. Mawes, all because I told her I’m going home for Christmas.”

He laughed at the sight of her barely contained frustration.

“All right, but we’ve got to be quick. I’ve just realized there’s something we could do this morning before I meet Fancourt.”

Still wearing his coat he sat down on the leather sofa and talked for ten solid minutes, laying his theory before her in detail.

When he had finished there was a long silence. The misty, mystical image of the boy-angel in her local church floated into Robin’s mind as she stared at Strike in near total disbelief.

“Which bit’s causing you problems?” asked Strike kindly.

“Er…” said Robin.

“We already agreed that Quine’s disappearance might not’ve been spontaneous, right?” Strike asked her. “If you add together the mattress at Talgarth Road—convenient, in a house that hasn’t been used in twenty-five years—and the fact that a week before he vanished Quine told that bloke in the bookshop he was going away and bought himself reading material—and the waitress at the River Café saying Quine wasn’t really angry when he was shouting at Tassel, that he was enjoying himself—I think we can hypothesize a staged disappearance.”

“OK,” she said. This part of Strike’s theory seemed the least outlandish to her. She did not know where to begin in telling him how implausible she found the rest of it, but the urge to pick holes made her say, “Wouldn’t he have told Leonora what he was planning, though?”

“Course not. She can’t act to save her life; he wanted her worried, so she’d be convincing when she went round telling everyone he’d disappeared. Maybe she’d involve the police. Make a fuss with the publisher. Start the panic.”

“But that had never worked,” said Robin. “He was always flouncing off and nobody cared—surely even he must have realized that he wasn’t going to get massive publicity just for running away and hiding in his old house.”

“Ah, but this time he was leaving behind him a book he thought was going to be the talk of literary London, wasn’t he? He’d drawn as much attention to it as he could by rowing with his agent in the middle of a packed restaurant, and making a public threat to self-publish. He goes home, stages the grand walkout in front of Leonora and slips off to Talgarth Road. Later that evening he lets in his accomplice without a second thought, convinced that they’re in it together.”

After a long pause Robin said bravely (because she was not used to challenging Strike’s conclusions, which she had never known to be wrong):

“But you haven’t got a single bit of evidence that there was an accomplice, let alone…I mean…it’s all…opinion.”

He began to reiterate points he had already made, but she held up her hand to stop him.

“I heard all that the first time, but…you’re extrapolating from things people have said. There’s no—no physical evidence at all.”

“Of course there is,” said Strike. “Bombyx Mori.”

“That’s not—”

“It’s the single biggest piece of evidence we’ve got.”

“You’re the one,” said Robin, “who’s always telling me: means and opportunity. You’re the one who’s always saying motive doesn’t—”

“I haven’t said a word about motive,” Strike reminded her. “As it happens, I’m not sure what the motive was, although I’ve got a few ideas. And if you want more physical evidence, you can come and help me get it right now.”

She looked at him suspiciously. In all the time she had worked for him he had never asked her to collect a physical clue.

“I want you to come and help me talk to Orlando Quine,” he said, pushing himself back off the sofa. “I don’t want to do it on my own, she’s…well, she’s tricky. Doesn’t like my hair. She’s in Ladbroke Grove with the next-door neighbor, so we’d better get a move on.”

“This is the daughter with learning difficulties?” Robin asked, puzzled.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “She’s got this monkey, plush thing, hangs round her neck. I’ve just seen a pile of them in Hamleys—they’re really pajama cases. Cheeky Monkeys, they call them.”

Robin was staring at him as though fearful for his sanity.

“When I met her she had it round her neck and she kept producing things out of nowhere—pictures, crayons and a card she sneaked off the kitchen table. I’ve just realized she was pulling it all out of the pajama case. She nicks things from people,” Strike went on, “and she was in and out of her father’s study all the time when he was alive. He used to give her paper to draw on.”

“You’re hoping she’s carrying around a clue to her father’s killer inside her pajama case?”

“No, but I think there’s reasonable chance that she picked up a bit of Bombyx Mori while she was skulking around in Quine’s office, or that he gave her the back of an early draft to draw on. I’m looking for scraps of paper with notes on them, a discarded couple of paragraphs, anything. Look, I know it’s a long shot,” said Strike, correctly reading her expression, “but we can’t get into Quine’s study, the police have already been through everything in there and come up with nothing and I’m betting the notebooks and drafts Quine took away with him have been destroyed. Cheeky Monkey’s the last place I can think of to look, and,” he checked his watch, “we haven’t got much time if we’re going to Ladbroke Grove and back before I meet Fancourt.

“Which reminds me…”

He left the office. Robin heard him heading upstairs and thought he must be going to his flat, but then the sounds of rummaging told her that he was searching the boxes of his possessions on the landing. When he returned, he was holding a box of latex gloves that he had clearly filched before leaving the SIB for good, and a clear plastic evidence bag of exactly the size that airlines provided to hold toiletries.

“There’s another crucial bit of physical evidence I’d like to get,” he said, taking out a pair of gloves and handing them to an uncomprehending Robin. “I thought you could have a bash at getting hold of it while I’m with Fancourt this afternoon.”

In a few succinct words he explained what he wanted her to get, and why.

Not altogether to Strike’s surprise, a stunned silence followed his instructions.

“You’re joking,” said Robin faintly.

“I’m not.”

She raised one hand unconsciously to her mouth.

“It won’t be dangerous,” Strike reassured her.

“That’s not what’s worrying me. Cormoran, that’s—that’s horrific. You—are you really serious?”

“If you’d seen Leonora Quine in Holloway last week, you wouldn’t ask that,” said Strike darkly. “We’re going to have to be bloody clever to get her out of there.”

Clever? thought Robin, still fazed as she stood with the limp gloves dangling from her hand. His suggestions for the day’s activities seemed wild, bizarre and, in the case of the last, disgusting.

“Look,” he said, suddenly serious. “I don’t know what to tell you except I can feel it. I can smell it, Robin. Someone deranged, bloody dangerous but efficient lurking behind all this. They got that idiot Quine exactly where they wanted him by playing on his narcissism, and I’m not the only one who thinks so either.”

Strike threw Robin her coat and she put it on; he was tucking evidence bags into his inside pocket.

“People keep telling me there was someone else involved: Chard says it’s Waldegrave, Waldegrave says it’s Tassel, Pippa Midgley’s too stupid to interpret what’s staring her in the face and Christian Fisher—well, he’s got more perspective, not being in the book,” said Strike. “He put his finger on it without realizing it.”

Robin, who was struggling to keep up with Strike’s thought processes and skeptical of those parts she could understand, followed him down the metal staircase and out into the cold.

“This murder,” said Strike, lighting a cigarette as they walked down Denmark Street together, “was months if not years in the planning. Work of genius, when you think about it, but it’s over-elaborate and that’s going to be its downfall. You can’t plot murder like a novel. There are always loose ends in real life.”

Strike could tell that he was not convincing Robin, but he was not worried. He had worked with disbelieving subordinates before. Together they descended into the Tube and onto a Central line train.

“What did you get for your nephews?” Robin asked after a long silence.

“Camouflage gear and fake guns,” said Strike, whose choice had been entirely motivated by the desire to aggravate his brother-in-law, “and I got Timothy Anstis a bloody big drum. They’ll enjoy that at five o’clock on Christmas morning.”

In spite of her preoccupation, Robin snorted with laughter.

The quiet row of houses from which Owen Quine had fled a month previously was, like the rest of London, covered in snow, pristine and pale on the roofs and grubby gray underfoot. The happy Inuit smiled down from his pub sign like the presiding deity of the wintry street as they passed beneath him.

A different policeman stood outside the Quine residence now and a white van was parked at the curb with its doors open.

“Digging for guts in the garden,” Strike muttered to Robin as they drew nearer and spotted spades lying on the van floor. “They didn’t have any luck at Mucking Marshes and they’re not going to have any luck in Leonora’s flower beds either.”

“So you say,” replied Robin sotto voce, a little intimidated by the staring policeman, who was quite handsome.

“So you’re going to help me prove this afternoon,” replied Strike under his breath. “Morning,” he called to the watchful constable, who did not respond.

Strike seemed energized by his crazy theory, but if by any remote chance he was right, Robin thought, the killing had grotesque features even beyond that carved-out corpse…

They headed up the front path of the house beside the Quines’, bringing them within feet of the watchful PC. Strike rang the bell, and after a short wait the door opened revealing a short, anxious-looking woman in her early sixties who was wearing a housecoat and wool-trimmed slippers.

“Are you Edna?” Strike asked.

“Yes,” she said timidly, looking up at him.

When Strike introduced himself and Robin Edna’s furrowed brow relaxed, to be replaced by a look of pathetic relief.

“Oh, it’s you, I’ve heard all about you. You’re helping Leonora, you’re going to get her out, aren’t you?”

Robin felt horribly aware of the handsome PC, listening to all of it, feet away.

“Come in, come in,” said Edna, backing out of their way and beckoning them enthusiastically inside.

“Mrs.—I’m sorry, I don’t know your surname,” began Strike, wiping his feet on the doormat (her house was warm, clean and much cozier than the Quines’, though identical in layout).

“Call me Edna,” she said, beaming at him.

“Edna, thank you—you know, you ought to ask to see ID before you let anyone into your house.”

“Oh, but,” said Edna, flustered, “Leonora told me all about you…”

Strike insisted, nevertheless, on showing her his driving license before following her down the hall into a blue-and-white kitchen much brighter than Leonora’s.

“She’s upstairs,” said Edna when Strike explained that they had come to see Orlando. “She’s not having a good day. Do you want coffee?”

As she flitted around fetching cups she talked nonstop in the pent-up fashion of the stressed and lonely.

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having her, poor lamb, but…” She looked hopelessly between Strike and Robin then blurted out, “But how long for? They’ve no family, you see. There was a social worker round yesterday, checking on her; she said if I couldn’t keep her she’d have to go in a home or something; I said, you can’t do that to Orlando, they’ve never been apart, her and her mum, no, she can stay with me, but…”

Edna glanced at the ceiling.

“She’s very unsettled just now, very upset. Just wants her mum to come home and what can I say to her? I can’t tell her the truth, can I? And there they are next door, digging up the whole garden, they’ve gone and dug up Mr. Poop…”

“Dead cat,” Strike muttered under his breath to Robin as tears bubbled behind Edna’s spectacles and bounced down her round cheeks.

“Poor lamb,” she said again.

When she had given Strike and Robin their coffees Edna went upstairs to fetch Orlando. It took ten minutes for her to persuade the girl to come downstairs, but Strike was glad to see Cheeky Monkey clutched in her arms when she appeared, today dressed in a grubby tracksuit and wearing a sullen expression.

“He’s called like a giant,” she announced to the kitchen at large when she saw Strike.

“I am,” said Strike, nodding. “Well remembered.”

Orlando slid into the chair that Edna pulled out for her, holding her orangutan tightly in her arms.

“I’m Robin,” said Robin, smiling at her.

“Like a bird,” said Orlando at once. “Dodo’s a bird.”

“It’s what her mum and dad called her,” explained Edna.

“We’re both birds,” said Robin.

Orlando gazed at her, then got up and walked out of the kitchen without speaking.

Edna sighed deeply.

“She takes upset over anything. You never know what she’s—”

But Orlando had returned with crayons and a spiral-bound drawing pad that Strike was sure had been bought by Edna to try to keep her happy. Orlando sat down at the kitchen table and smiled at Robin, a sweet, open smile that made Robin feel unaccountably sad.

“I’m going to draw you a robin,” she announced.

“I’d love that,” said Robin.

Orlando set to work with her tongue between her teeth. Robin said nothing, but watched the picture develop. Feeling that Robin had already forged a better rapport with Orlando than he had managed, Strike ate a chocolate biscuit offered by Edna and made small talk about the snow.

Eventually Orlando finished her picture, tore it out of the pad and pushed it across to Robin.

“It’s beautiful,” said Robin, beaming at her. “I wish I could draw a dodo, but I can’t draw at all.” This, Strike knew, was a lie. Robin drew very well; he had seen her doodles. “I’ve got to give you something, though.”

She rummaged in her bag, watched eagerly by Orlando, and eventually pulled out a small round makeup mirror decorated on the back with a stylized pink bird.

“There,” said Robin. “Look. That’s a flamingo. Another bird. You can keep that.”

Orlando took her gift with parted lips, staring at it.

“Say thank you to the lady,” prompted Edna.

“Thank you,” said Orlando and she slid the mirror inside the pajama case.

“Is he a bag?” asked Robin with bright interest.

“My monkey,” said Orlando, clutching the orangutan closer. “My daddy give him to me. My daddy died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Robin quietly, wishing that the image of Quine’s body had not slid instantly into her mind, his torso as hollow as a pajama case…

Strike surreptitiously checked his watch. The appointment with Fancourt was drawing ever closer. Robin sipped some coffee and asked:

“Do you keep things in your monkey?”

“I like your hair,” said Orlando. “It’s shiny and yellow.”

“Thank you,” said Robin. “Have you got any other pictures in there?”

Orlando nodded.

“C’n I have a biscuit?” she asked Edna.

“Can I see your other pictures?” Robin asked as Orlando munched.

And after a brief pause for consideration, Orlando opened up her orangutan.

A sheaf of crumpled pictures came out, on an assortment of different sized and colored papers. Neither Strike nor Robin turned them over at first, but made admiring comments as Orlando spread them out across the table, Robin asking questions about the bright starfish and the dancing angels that Orlando had drawn in crayon and felt tip. Basking in their appreciation, Orlando dug deeper into her pajama case for her working materials. Up came a used typewriter cartridge, oblong and gray, with a thin strip tape carrying the reversed words it had printed. Strike resisted the urge to palm it immediately as it disappeared beneath a tin of colored pencils and a box of mints, but kept his eye on it as Orlando laid out a picture of a butterfly through which could be seen traces of untidy adult writing on the back.

Encouraged by Robin, Orlando now brought out more: a sheet of stickers, a postcard of the Mendip Hills, a round fridge magnet that read Careful! You may end up in my novel! Last of all she showed them three images on better-quality paper: two proof book illustrations and a mocked-up book cover.

“My daddy gave me them from his work,” Orlando said. “Dannulchar touched me when I wanted it,” she said, pointing at a brightly colored picture that Strike recognized: Kyla the Kangaroo Who Loved to Bounce. Orlando had added a hat and handbag to Kyla and colored in the line drawing of a princess talking to a frog with neon felt tips.

Delighted to see Orlando so chatty, Edna made more coffee. Conscious of the time, but aware of the need not to provoke a row and a protective grab of all her treasures, Robin and Strike chatted as they picked up and examined each of the pieces of paper on the table. Whenever she thought something might be helpful, Robin slid it sideways to Strike.

There was a list of scribbled names on the back of the butterfly picture:

Sam Breville. Eddie Boyne? Edward Baskinville? Stephen Brook?

The postcard of the Mendip Hills had been sent in July and carried a brief message:

Weather great, hotel disappointing, hope the book’s going well! V xx

Other than that, there was no trace of handwriting. A few of Orlando’s pictures were familiar to Strike from his last visit. One had been drawn on the reverse of a child’s restaurant menu, another on the Quines’ gas bill.

“Well, we’d better head off,” said Strike, draining his coffee cup with a decent show of regret. Almost absentmindedly he continued to hold the cover image for Dorcus Pengelly’s Upon the Wicked Rocks. A bedraggled woman lay supine on the stony sands of a steep cliff-enclosed cove, with the shadow of a man falling across her midriff. Orlando had drawn thickly lined black fish in the seething blue water. The used typewriter cassette lay beneath the image, nudged there by Strike.

“I don’t want you to go,” Orlando told Robin, suddenly tense and tearful.

“It’s been lovely, hasn’t it?” said Robin. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again. You’ll keep your flamingo mirror, won’t you, and I’ve got my robin picture—”

But Orlando had begun to wail and stamp. She did not want another good-bye. Under cover of the escalating furor Strike wrapped the typewriter cassette smoothly in the cover illustration for Upon the Wicked Rocks and slid it into his pocket, unmarked by his fingerprints.

They reached the street five minutes later, Robin a little shaken because Orlando had wailed and tried to grab her as she headed down the hall. Edna had had to physically restrain Orlando from following them.

“Poor girl,” said Robin under her breath, so that the staring PC could not hear them. “Oh God, that was dreadful.”

“Useful, though,” said Strike.

“You got that typewriter ribbon?”

“Yep,” said Strike, glancing over his shoulder to check that the PC was out of sight before taking out the cassette, still wrapped in Dorcus’s cover, and tipping it into a plastic evidence bag. “And a bit more than that.”

“You did?” said Robin, surprised.

“Possible lead,” said Strike, “might be nothing.”

He glanced again at his watch and sped up, wincing as his knee throbbed in protest.

“I’m going to have to get a move on if I’m not going to be late for Fancourt.”

As they sat on the crowded Tube train carrying them back to central London twenty minutes later, Strike said:

“You’re clear about what you’re doing this afternoon?”

“Completely clear,” said Robin, but with a note of reservation.

“I know it’s not a fun job—”

“That’s not what’s bothering me.”

“And like I say, it shouldn’t be dangerous,” he said, preparing to stand as they approached Tottenham Court Road. “But…”

Something made him reconsider, a slight frown between his heavy eyebrows.

“Your hair,” he said.

“What’s wrong with it?” said Robin, raising her hand self-consciously.

“It’s memorable,” said Strike. “Haven’t got a hat, have you?”

“I—I could buy one,” said Robin, feeling oddly flustered.

“Charge it to petty cash,” he told her. “Can’t hurt to be careful.”