The Silkworm

49

Out past the smokers at the front of the club the large woman came, blindly, slipping a little in the snow. She began to run up the dark street, her fur-collared coat flapping behind her.

A taxi, its “For Hire” light on, slid out of a side road and she hailed it, flapping her arms madly. The cab slid to a halt, its headlamps making two cones of light whose trajectory was cut by the thickly falling snow.

“Fulham Palace Road,” said the harsh, deep voice, breaking with sobs.

They pulled slowly away from the curb. The cab was old, the glass partition scratched and a little stained by years of its owner’s smoking. Elizabeth Tassel was visible in the rearview mirror as the streetlight slid over her, sobbing silently into her large hands, shaking all over.

The driver did not ask what was the matter but looked beyond the fare to the street behind, where the shrinking figures of two men could be seen, hurrying across the snowy road to a red sports car in the distance.

The taxi turned left at the end of the road and still Elizabeth Tassel cried into her hands. The driver’s thick woolen hat was itchy, grateful though she had been for it during the long hours of waiting. On up the King’s Road the taxi sped, over thick powdery snow that resisted tires’ attempts to squash it to slush, the blizzard swirling remorselessly, rendering the roads increasingly lethal.

“You’re going the wrong way.”

“There’s a diversion,” lied Robin. “Because of the snow.”

She met Elizabeth’s eyes briefly in the mirror. The agent looked over her shoulder. The red Alfa Romeo was too far behind to see. She stared wildly around at the passing buildings. Robin could hear the eerie whistling from her chest.

“We’re going in the opposite direction.”

“I’m going to turn in a minute,” said Robin.

She did not see Elizabeth Tassel try the door, but heard it. They were all locked.

“You can let me out here,” she said loudly. “Let me out, I say!”

“You won’t get another cab in this weather,” said Robin.

They had counted on Tassel being too distraught to notice where they were going for a little while longer. The cab was barely at Sloane Square. There was over a mile to go to New Scotland Yard. Robin’s eyes flickered again to her rearview mirror. The Alfa Romeo was a tiny red dot in the distance.

Elizabeth had undone her seatbelt.

“Stop this cab!” she shouted. “Stop it and let me out!”

“I can’t stop here,” said Robin, much more calmly than she felt, because the agent had left her seat and her large hands were scrabbling at the partition. “I’m going to have to ask you to sit down, madam—”

The screen slid open. Elizabeth’s hand seized Robin’s hat and a handful of hair, her head almost side by side with Robin’s, her expression venomous. Robin’s hair fell into her eyes in sweaty strands.

“Get off me!”

“Who are you?” screeched Tassel, shaking Robin’s head with the fistful of hair in her hand. “Ralph said he saw a blonde going through the bin—who are you?”

“Let go!” shouted Robin, as Tassel’s other hand grabbed her neck.

Two hundred yards behind them, Strike roared at Al:

“Put your fucking foot down, there’s something wrong, look at it—”

The taxi ahead was careering all over the road.

“It’s always been shit in ice,” moaned Al as the Alfa skidded a little and the taxi took the corner into Sloane Square at speed and disappeared from view.

Tassel was halfway into the front of the taxi, screaming from her ripped throat—Robin was trying to beat her back one-handed while maintaining a grip on the wheel—she could not see where she was going for hair and snow and now both Tassel’s hands were at her throat, squeezing—Robin tried to find the brake, but as the taxi leapt forwards realized she had hit the accelerator—she could not breathe—taking both hands off the wheel she tried to prize away the agent’s tightening grip—screams from pedestrians, a huge jolt and then the ear-splitting crunch of glass, of metal on concrete and the searing pain of the seatbelt against her as the taxi crashed, but she was sinking, everything going black—

“Fuck the car, leave it, we’ve got to get in there!” Strike bellowed at Al over the wail of a shop alarm and the screams of the scattered bystanders. Al brought the Alfa to an untidy skidding halt in the middle of the road a hundred yards from where the taxi had smashed its way into a plate-glass window. Al jumped out as Strike struggled to stand. A group of passersby, some of them Christmas partygoers in black tie who had sprinted out of the way as the taxi mounted the curb, watched, stunned, as Al ran, slipping and almost falling, over the snow towards the crash.

The rear door of the cab opened. Elizabeth Tassel flung herself from the backseat and began to run.

“Al, get her!” Strike bellowed, still struggling through the snow. “Get her, Al!”

Le Rosey had a superb rugby team. Al was used to taking orders. A short sprint and he had taken her down in a perfect tackle. She hit the snowy street with a hard bang over the screamed protests of many women watching and he pinned her there, struggling and swearing, repelling every attempt of chivalrous men to help his victim.

Strike was immune to all of it: he seemed to be running in slow motion, trying not to fall, staggering towards the ominously silent and still cab. Distracted by Al and his struggling, swearing captive, nobody had a thought to spare for the driver of the taxi.

“Robin…”

She was slumped sideways, still held to her seat by the belt. There was blood on her face, but when he said her name she responded with a muddled groan.

“Thank fuck…thank fuck…”

Police sirens were already filling the square. They wailed over the shop alarm, the mounting protests of the shocked Londoners, and Strike, undoing Robin’s seatbelt, pushing her gently back into the cab as she attempted to get out, said:

“Stay there.”

“She knew we weren’t going to her house,” mumbled Robin. “Knew straightaway I was going the wrong way.”

“Doesn’t matter,” panted Strike. “You’ve brought Scotland Yard to us.”

Diamond-bright lights were twinkling from the bare trees around the square. Snow poured down upon the gathering crowd, the taxi protruding from the broken window and the sports car parked untidily in the middle of the road as the police cars came to a halt, their flashing blue lights sparkling on the glittering glass-strewn ground, their sirens lost in the wail of the shop alarm.

As his half-brother tried to shout an explanation as to why he was lying on top of a sixty-year-old woman, the relieved, exhausted detective slumped down beside his partner in the cab and found himself—against his will and against the dictates of good taste—laughing.