The Silkworm

44

Strike sat for a long time on the sofa in his kitchen-sitting room that night, barely hearing the rumble of the traffic on Charing Cross Road and the occasional muffled shouts of more early Christmas partygoers. He had removed his prosthesis; it was comfortable sitting there in his boxers, the end of his injured leg free of pressure, the throbbing of his knee deadened by another double dose of painkillers. Unfinished pasta congealed on the plate beside him on the sofa, the sky beyond his small window achieved the dark blue velvet depth of true night, and Strike did not move, though wide awake.

It felt like a very long time since he had seen the picture of Charlotte in her wedding dress. He had not given her another thought all day. Was this the start of true healing? She had married Jago Ross and he was alone, mulling the complexities of an elaborate murder in the dim light of his chilly attic flat. Perhaps each of them was, at last, where they really belonged.

On the table in front of him in the clear plastic evidence bag, still half wrapped in the photocopied cover of Upon the Wicked Rocks, sat the dark gray typewriter cassette that he had taken from Orlando. He had been staring at it for what seemed like half an hour at least, feeling like a child on Christmas morning confronted by a mysterious, inviting package, the largest under the tree. And yet he ought not to look, or touch, lest he interfere with whatever forensic evidence might be gleaned from the tape. Any suspicion of tampering…

He checked his watch. He had promised himself not to make the call until half past nine. There were children to be wrestled into bed, a wife to placate after another long day on the job. Strike wanted time to explain fully…

But his patience had limits. Getting up with some difficulty, he took the keys to his office and moved laboriously downstairs, clutching the handrail, hopping and occasionally sitting down. Ten minutes later he reentered his flat and returned to the still-warm spot on the sofa carrying his penknife and wearing another pair of the latex gloves he had earlier given to Robin.

He lifted the typewriter tape and the crumpled cover illustration gingerly out of the evidence bag and set the cassette, still resting on the paper, on the rickety Formica-topped table. Barely breathing, he pulled out the toothpick attachment from his knife and inserted it delicately behind the two inches of fragile tape that were exposed. By dint of careful manipulation he managed to pull out a little more. Reversed words were revealed, the letters back to front.

YOB EIDDE WENK I THGUOHT DAH I DN

His sudden rush of adrenaline was expressed only in Strike’s quiet sigh of satisfaction. He deftly tightened the tape again, using the knife’s screwdriver attachment in the cog at the top of the cassette, the whole untouched by his hands, then, still wearing the latex gloves, slipped it back into the evidence bag. He checked his watch again. Unable to wait any longer, he picked up his mobile and called Dave Polworth.

“Bad time?” he asked when his old friend answered.

“No,” said Polworth, sounding curious. “What’s up, Diddy?”

“Need a favor, Chum. A big one.”

The engineer, over a hundred miles away in his sitting room in Bristol, listened without interrupting while the detective explained what it was he wanted done. When finally he had finished, there was a pause.

“I know it’s a big ask,” Strike said, listening anxiously to the line crackling. “Dunno if it’ll even be possible in this weather.”

“Course it will,” said Polworth. “I’d have to see when I could do it, though, Diddy. Got two days off coming up…not sure Penny’s going to be keen…”

“Yeah, I thought that might be a problem,” said Strike, “I know it’d be dangerous.”

“Don’t insult me, I’ve done worse than this,” said Polworth. “Nah, she wanted me to take her and her mother Christmas shopping…but fuck it, Diddy, did you say this is life or death?”

“Close,” said Strike, closing his eyes and grinning. “Life and liberty.”

“And no Christmas shopping, boy, which suits old Chum. Consider it done, and I’ll give you a ring if I’ve got anything, all right?”

“Stay safe, mate.”

“Piss off.”

Strike dropped the mobile beside him on the sofa and rubbed his face in his hands, still grinning. He might just have told Polworth to do something even crazier and more pointless than grabbing a passing shark, but Polworth was a man who enjoyed danger, and the time had come for desperate measures.

The last thing Strike did before turning out the light was to reread the notes of his conversation with Fancourt and to underline, so heavily that he sliced through the page, the word “Cutter.”