The Silkworm

8

It occurred to Strike as he traveled, standing, the one Tube stop to Elizabeth Tassel’s office (he was never fully relaxed on these short journeys, but braced to take the strain on his false leg, wary of falls), that Robin had not reproached him for taking on the Quine case. Not, of course, that it was her place to reproach her employer, but she had turned down a much higher salary to throw her lot in with his and it would not have been unreasonable for her to expect that once the debts were paid, a raise might be the least he could do for her. She was unusual in her lack of criticism, or critical silence; the only female in Strike’s life who seemed to have no desire to improve or correct him. Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you.

So she was marrying in seven weeks’ time. Seven weeks left until she became Mrs. Matthew…but if he had ever known her fiancé’s surname, he could not recall it.

As he waited for the lift at Goodge Street, Strike experienced a sudden, crazy urge to call his divorcing brunet client—who had made it quite clear that she would welcome such a development—with a view to screwing her tonight in what he imagined would be her deep, soft, heavily perfumed bed in Knightsbridge. But the idea occurred only to be instantly dismissed. Such a move would be insanity; worse than taking on a missing-person case for which he was unlikely ever to see payment…

And why was he wasting time on Owen Quine? he asked himself, head bowed against the biting rain. Curiosity, he answered inwardly after a few moments’ thought, and perhaps something more elusive. As he headed down Store Street, squinting through the downpour and concentrating on maintaining his footing on the slippery pavements, he reflected that his palate was in danger of becoming jaded by the endless variations on cupidity and vengefulness that his wealthy clients kept bringing him. It had been a long time since he had investigated a missing-person case. There would be satisfaction in restoring the runaway Quine to his family.

Elizabeth Tassel’s literary agency lay in a mostly residential mews of dark brick, a surprisingly quiet cul-de-sac off busy Gower Street. Strike pressed a doorbell beside a discreet brass plaque. A light thumping sound ensued and a pale young man in an open-necked shirt opened the door at the foot of red-carpeted stairs.

“Are you the private detective?” he asked with what seemed to be a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Strike followed him, dripping all over the threadbare carpet, up the stairs to a mahogany door and into a large office space that had once, perhaps, been a separate hall and sitting room.

Aged elegance was slowly disintegrating into shabbiness. The windows were misty with condensation and the air heavy with old cigarette smoke. A plethora of overstocked wooden bookcases lined the walls and the dingy wallpaper was almost obscured by framed literary caricatures and cartoons. Two heavy desks sat facing each other across a scuffed rug, but neither was occupied.

“Can I take your coat?” the young man asked, and a thin and frightened-looking girl jumped up from behind one of the desks. She was holding a stained sponge in one hand.

“I can’t get it out, Ralph!” she whispered frantically to the young man with Strike.

“Bloody thing,” Ralph muttered irritably. “Elizabeth’s decrepit old dog’s puked under Sally’s desk,” he confided, sotto voce, as he took Strike’s sodden Crombie and hung it on a Victorian coat-stand just inside the door. “I’ll let her know you’re here. Just keep scrubbing,” he advised his colleague as he crossed to a second mahogany door and opened it a crack.

“That’s Mr. Strike, Liz.”

There was a loud bark, followed immediately by a deep, rattling human cough that could have plausibly issued from the lungs of an old coal miner.

“Grab him,” said a hoarse voice.

The door to the agent’s office opened, revealing Ralph, who was holding tight to the collar of an aged but evidently still feisty Doberman pinscher, and a tall, thick-set woman of around sixty, with large, uncompromisingly plain features. The geometrically perfect steel-gray bob, a black suit of severe cut and a slash of crimson lipstick gave her a certain dash. She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.

“You’d better take him out, Ralph,” said the agent, her olive-dark eyes on Strike. The rain was still pelting against the windows. “And don’t forget the poo bags, he’s a bit soft today.

“Come in, Mr. Strike.”

Looking disgusted, her assistant dragged the big dog, with its head like a living Anubis, out of her office; as Strike and the Doberman passed each other, it growled energetically.

“Coffee, Sally,” the agent shot at the frightened-looking girl who had concealed her sponge. As she jumped up and vanished through a door behind her desk, Strike hoped she would wash her hands thoroughly before making drinks.

Elizabeth Tassel’s stuffy office was a kind of concentration of the outer room: it stank of cigarettes and old dog. A tweed bed for the animal sat under her desk; the walls were plastered with old photographs and prints. Strike recognized one of the largest: a reasonably well-known and elderly writer of illustrated children’s books called Pinkelman, whom he was not sure was still alive. After indicating wordlessly that Strike should take the seat opposite her, from which he had first to remove a stack of papers and old copies of the Bookseller, the agent took a cigarette from a box on the desk, lit it with an onyx lighter, inhaled deeply then broke into a protracted fit of rattling, wheezing coughs.

“So,” she croaked when these had subsided and she had returned to the leather chair behind the desk, “Christian Fisher tells me that Owen’s put in another of his famous vanishing acts.”

“That’s right,” said Strike. “He disappeared the night that you and he argued about his book.”

She began to speak, but the words disintegrated immediately into further coughs. Horrible, tearing noises issued from deep in her torso. Strike waited in silence for the fit to pass.

“Sounds nasty,” he said at last, when she had coughed herself into silence again and, incredibly, taken another deep drag of her cigarette.

“Flu,” she rasped. “Can’t shake it. When did Leonora come to you?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Can she afford you?” she croaked. “I wouldn’t have thought you come cheap, the man who solved the Landry case.”

“Mrs. Quine suggested that you might pay me,” said Strike.

The coarse cheeks purpled and her dark eyes, watery from so much coughing, narrowed.

“Well, you can go straight back to Leonora”—her chest began to heave beneath the smart black jacket as she fought off the desire to cough again—“and tell her that I won’t pay a p-penny to get that bastard back. He’s no—no longer my client. Tell her—tell her—”

She was overtaken by another giant explosion of coughing.

The door opened and the thin female assistant entered, struggling under the weight of a heavy wooden tray laden with cups and a cafetière. Strike got up to take it from her; there was barely room on the desk to set it down. The girl attempted to make a space. In her nerves, she knocked over a stack of papers.

A furious admonitory gesture from the coughing agent sent the girl scuttling from the room in fright.

“Use-useless—little—” wheezed Elizabeth Tassel.

Strike put the tray down on the desk, ignoring the scattered papers all over the carpet, and resumed his seat. The agent was a bully in a familiar mold: one of those older women who capitalized, whether consciously or not, on the fact that they awoke in those who were susceptible childhood memories of demanding and all-powerful mothers. Strike was immune to such intimidation. For one thing, his own mother, whatever her faults, had been young and openly adoring; for another, he sensed vulnerability in this apparent dragon. The chain-smoking, the fading photographs and the old dog basket suggested a more sentimental, less self-assured woman than her young hirelings might think.

When at last she had finished coughing, he handed her a cup of coffee he had poured.

“Thank you,” she muttered gruffly.

“So you’ve sacked Quine?” he asked. “Did you tell him so, the night you had dinner?”

“I can’t remember,” she croaked. “Things got heated very quickly. Owen stood up in the middle of the restaurant, the better to shout at me, then flounced out leaving me to pay the bill. You’ll find plenty of witnesses to what was said, if you’re interested. Owen made sure it was a nice, public scene.”

She reached for another cigarette and, as an afterthought, offered Strike one. After she had lit both, she said:

“What’s Christian Fisher told you?”

“Not much,” said Strike.

“I hope for both your sakes that’s true,” she snapped.

Strike said nothing, but smoked and drank his coffee while Elizabeth waited, clearly hoping for more information.

“Did he mention Bombyx Mori?” she asked.

Strike nodded.

“What did he say about it?”

“That Quine’s put a lot of recognizable people in the book, thinly disguised.”

There was a charged pause.

“I hope Chard does sue him. That’s his idea of keeping his mouth shut, is it?”

“Have you tried to contact Quine since he walked out of—where was it you were having dinner?” Strike asked.

“The River Café,” she croaked. “No, I haven’t tried to contact him. There’s nothing left to say.”

“And he hasn’t contacted you?”

“No.”

“Leonora says you told Quine his book was the best thing he’d ever produced, then changed your mind and refused to represent it.”

“She says what? That’s not what—not—what I s—”

It was her worst paroxysm of coughing yet. Strike felt a strong urge to forcibly remove the cigarette from her hand as she hacked and spluttered. Finally the fit passed. She drank half a cup of hot coffee straight off, which seemed to bring her some relief. In a stronger voice, she repeated:

“That’s not what I said. ‘The best thing he’d ever written’—is that what he told Leonora?”

“Yes. What did you really say?”

“I was ill,” she said hoarsely, ignoring the question. “Flu. Off work for a week. Owen rang the office to tell me the novel was finished; Ralph told him I was at home in bed, so Owen couriered the manuscript straight to my house. I had to get up to sign for it. Absolutely typical of him. I had a temperature of a hundred and four and could barely stand. His book was finished so I was expected to read it immediately.”

She slugged down more coffee and said:

“I chucked the manuscript on the hall table and went straight back to bed. Owen started ringing me, virtually on the hour, to see what I thought. All through Wednesday and Thursday he badgered me…

“I’ve never done it before in thirty years in the business,” she croaked. “I was supposed to be going away that weekend. I’d been looking forward to it. I didn’t want to cancel and I didn’t want Owen calling me every three minutes while I was away. So…just to get him off my back…I was still feeling awful…I skim-read it.”

She took a deep drag on her cigarette, coughed routinely, composed herself and said:

“It didn’t look any worse than his last couple. If anything, it was an improvement. Quite an interesting premise. Some of the imagery was arresting. A Gothic fairy tale, a grisly Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“Did you recognize anyone in the bits you read?”

“The characters seemed mostly symbolic,” she said, a touch defensively, “including the hagiographic self-portrait. Lots of p-perverse sex.” She paused to cough again. “The mixture as usual, I thought…but I—I wasn’t reading carefully, I’d be the first to admit that.”

He could tell that she was not used to admitting fault.

“I—well, I skimmed the last quarter, the bits where he writes about Michael and Daniel. I glanced at the ending, which was grotesque and a bit silly…

“If I hadn’t been so ill, if I’d read it properly, naturally I’d have told him straightaway that he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Daniel’s a st-strange man, very t-touchy”—her voice was breaking up again; determined to finish her sentence she wheezed, “and M-Michael’s the nastiest—the nastiest—” before exploding again into coughs.

“Why would Mr. Quine try and publish something that was bound to get him sued?” Strike asked when she had stopped coughing.

“Because Owen doesn’t think he’s subject to the same laws as the rest of society,” she said roughly. “He thinks himself a genius, an enfant terrible. He takes pride in causing offense. He thinks it’s brave, heroic.”

“What did you do with the book when you’d looked at it?”

“I called Owen,” she said, closing her eyes momentarily in what seemed to be fury at herself. “And said, ‘Yes, jolly good,’ and I got Ralph to pick the damn thing up from my house, and asked him to make two copies, and send one to Jerry Waldegrave, Owen’s editor at Roper Chard and the other, G-God help me, to Christian Fisher.”

“Why didn’t you just email the manuscript to the office?” asked Strike curiously. “Didn’t you have it on a memory stick or something?”

She ground out her cigarette in a glass ashtray full of stubs.

“Owen insists on continuing to use the old electric typewriter on which he wrote Hobart’s Sin. I don’t know whether it’s affectation or stupidity. He’s remarkably ignorant about technology. Maybe he tried to use a laptop and couldn’t. It’s just another way he contrives to make himself awkward.”

“And why did you send copies to two publishers?” asked Strike, although he already knew the answer.

“Because Jerry Waldegrave might be a blessed saint and the nicest man in publishing,” she replied, sipping more coffee, “but even he’s lost patience with Owen and his tantrums lately. Owen’s last book for Roper Chard barely sold. I thought it was only sensible to have a second string to our bow.”

“When did you realize what the book was really about?”

“Early that evening,” she croaked. “Ralph called me. He’d sent off the two copies and then had a flick through the original. He phoned me and said, ‘Liz, have you actually read this?’”

Strike could well imagine the trepidation with which the pale young assistant had made the call, the courage it had taken, the agonized deliberation with his female colleague before he had reached his decision.

“I had to admit I hadn’t…or not thoroughly,” she muttered. “He read me a few choice excerpts I’d missed and…”

She picked up the onyx lighter and flicked it absently before looking up at Strike.

“Well, I panicked. I phoned Christian Fisher, but the call went straight to voice mail, so I left a message telling him that the manuscript that had been sent over was a first draft, that he wasn’t to read it, that I’d made a mistake and would he please return it as soon as—as soon as p-possible. I called Jerry next, but I couldn’t reach him either. He’d told me he was going away for an anniversary weekend with his wife. I hoped he wouldn’t have any time for reading, so I left a message along the lines of the one I’d left for Fisher.

“Then I called Owen back.”

She lit yet another cigarette. Her large nostrils flared as she inhaled; the lines around her mouth deepened.

“I could barely get the words out and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. He talked over me as only Owen can, absolutely delighted with himself. He said we ought to meet to have dinner and celebrate the completion of the book.

“So I dragged myself into clothes, and I went to the River Café and I waited. And in came Owen.

“He wasn’t even late. He’s usually late. He was virtually floating on air, absolutely elated. He genuinely thinks he’s done something brave and marvelous. He’d started to talk about film adaptations before I managed to get a word in edgeways.”

When she expelled smoke from her scarlet mouth she looked truly dragonish, with her shining black eyes.

“When I told him that I think what he’s produced is vile, malicious and unpublishable, he jumped up, sent his chair flying and began screaming. After insulting me both personally and professionally, he told me that if I wasn’t brave enough to represent him anymore, he’d self-publish the thing—put it out as an ebook. Then he stormed out, parking me with the bill. N-not,” she snarled, “that that’s anything un-un-unus—”

Her emotion triggered an even worse coughing fit than before. Strike thought she might actually choke. He half-rose out of his chair, but she waved him away. Finally, purple in the face, her eyes streaming, she said in a voice like gravel:

“I did everything I could to put it right. My whole weekend by the sea ruined; I was on the phone constantly, trying to get hold of Fisher and Waldegrave. Message after message, stuck out on the bloody cliffs at Gwithian trying to get reception—”

“Is that where you’re from?” Strike asked, mildly surprised, because he heard no echo of his Cornish childhood in her accent.

“It’s where one of my authors lives. I told her I hadn’t been out of London in four years and she invited me for the weekend. Wanted to show me all the lovely places where she sets her books. Some of the m-most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen but all I could think about was b-bloody Bombyx Mori and trying to stop anyone reading it. I couldn’t sleep. I felt dreadful…

“I finally heard back from Jerry at Sunday lunchtime. He hadn’t gone on his anniversary weekend after all, and he claims he’d never got my messages, so he’d decided to read the bloody book.

“He was disgusted and furious. I assured Jerry that I’d do everything in my power to stop the damn thing…but I had to admit that I’d also sent it to Christian, at which Jerry slammed the phone down on me.”

“Did you tell him that Quine had threatened to put the book out over the internet?”

“No, I did not,” she said hoarsely. “I was praying that was an empty threat, because Owen really doesn’t know one end of a computer from the other. But I was worried…”

Her voice trailed away.

“You were worried?” Strike prompted her.

She did not answer.

“This self-publishing explains something,” said Strike casually. “Leonora says Quine took his own copy of the manuscript and all his notes with him when he disappeared into the night. I did wonder whether he was intending to burn it or throw it in a river, but presumably he took it with a view to turning it into an ebook.”

This information did nothing to improve Elizabeth Tassel’s temper. Through clenched teeth she said:

“There’s a girlfriend. They met on a writing course he taught. She’s self-published. I know about her because Owen tried to interest me in her bloody awful erotic fantasy novels.”

“Have you contacted her?” Strike asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I wanted to frighten her off, tell her that if Owen tried to rope her in to help him reformat the book or sell it online she’d probably be party to a lawsuit.”

“What did she say?”

“I couldn’t get hold of her. I tried several times. Maybe she’s not at that number anymore, I don’t know.”

“Could I take her details?” Strike asked.

“Ralph’s got her card. I asked him to keep ringing her for me. Ralph!” she bellowed.

“He’s still out with Beau!” came the girl’s frightened squeak from beyond the door. Elizabeth Tassel rolled her eyes and got heavily to her feet.

“There’s no point asking her to find it.”

When the door had swung shut behind the agent, Strike got at once to his feet, moved behind the desk and bent down to examine a photograph on the wall that had caught his eye, which necessitated the removal of a double portrait on the bookcase, featuring a pair of Dobermans.

The picture in which he was interested was A4-sized, in color but very faded. Judging by the fashions of the four people it featured, it had been taken at least twenty-five years previously, outside this very building.

Elizabeth herself was clearly recognizable, the only woman in the group, big and plain with long, windswept dark hair and wearing an unflattering drop-waisted dress of dark pink and turquoise. On one side of her stood a slim, fair-haired young man of extreme beauty; on the other was a short, sallow-skinned, sour-looking man whose head was too large for his body. He looked faintly familiar. Strike thought he might have seen him in the papers or on TV.

Beside the unidentified but possibly well-known man stood a much younger Owen Quine. The tallest of the four, he was wearing a crumpled white suit and a hairstyle best described as a spiky mullet. He reminded Strike irresistibly of a fat David Bowie.

The door swished open on its well-oiled hinges. Strike did not attempt to cover up what he was doing, but turned to face the agent, who was holding a sheet of paper.

“That’s Fletcher,” she said, her eyes on the picture of the dogs in his hand. “He died last year.”

He replaced the portrait of her dogs on the bookcase.

“Oh,” she said, catching on. “You were looking at the other one.”

She approached the faded picture; shoulder to shoulder with Strike, he noted that she was nearly six feet tall. She smelled of John Player Specials and Arpège.

“That’s the day I started my agency. Those are my first three clients.”

“Who’s he?” asked Strike of the beautiful blond youth.

“Joseph North. The most talented of them, by far. Unfortunately, he died young.”

“And who’s—?”

“Michael Fancourt, of course,” she said, sounding surprised.

“I thought he looked familiar. D’you still represent him?”

“No! I thought…”

He heard the rest of the sentence, even though she did not say it: I thought everyone knew that. Worlds within worlds: perhaps all of literary London did know why the famous Fancourt was no longer her client, but he did not.

“Why don’t you represent him anymore?” he asked, resuming his seat.

She passed the paper in her hand across the desk to him; it was a photocopy of what looked like a flimsy and grubby business card.

“I had to choose between Michael and Owen, years ago,” she said. “And like a b-bloody fool”—she had begun to cough again; her voice was disintegrating into a guttural croak—“I chose Owen.

“Those are the only contact details I’ve got for Kathryn Kent,” she added firmly, closing down further discussion of Fancourt.

“Thank you,” he said, folding the paper and tucking it inside his wallet. “How long has Quine been seeing her, do you know?”

“A while. He brings her to parties while Leonora’s stuck at home with Orlando. Utterly shameless.”

“No idea where he might be hiding? Leonora says you’ve found him, the other times he’s—”

“I don’t ‘find’ Owen,” she snapped. “He rings me up after a week or so in a hotel and asks for an advance—which is what he calls a gift of money—to pay the minibar bill.”

“And you pay, do you?” asked Strike. She seemed very far from a pushover.

Her grimace seemed to acknowledge a weakness of which she was ashamed, but her response was unexpected.

“Have you met Orlando?”

“No.”

She opened her mouth to continue but seemed to think better of it and merely said:

“Owen and I go back a very long way. We were good friends… once,” she added, on a note of deep bitterness.

“Which hotels has he stayed at before this?”

“I can’t remember all of them. The Kensington Hilton once. The Danubius in St. John’s Wood. Big faceless hotels with all the creature comforts he can’t get at home. Owen’s no citizen of Bohemia—except in his approach to hygiene.”

“You know Quine well. You don’t think there’s any chance that he might have—?”

She finished the sentence for him with a faint sneer.

“—‘done something silly?’ Of course not. He’d never dream of depriving the world of the genius of Owen Quine. No, he’s out there plotting his revenge on all of us, thoroughly aggrieved that there isn’t a national manhunt going on.”

“He’d expect a manhunt, even when he makes such a practice of going missing?”

“Oh yes,” said Elizabeth. “Every time he puts in one of these little vanishing acts he expects it to make the front page. The trouble is that the very first time he did it, years and years ago, after an argument with his first editor, it worked. There was a little flurry of concern and a smattering of press. He’s lived in the hope of that ever since.”

“His wife’s adamant that he’d be annoyed if she called the police.”

“I don’t know where she gets that idea,” said Elizabeth, helping herself to yet another cigarette. “Owen would think helicopters and sniffer dogs the least the nation could do for a man of his importance.”

“Well, thanks for your time,” said Strike, preparing to stand. “It was good of you to see me.”

Elizabeth Tassel held up a hand and said:

“No, it wasn’t. I want to ask you something.”

He waited receptively. She was not used to asking favors, that much was clear. She smoked for a few seconds in silence, which brought on another bout of suppressed coughs.

“This—this…Bombyx Mori business has done me a lot of harm,” she croaked at last. “I’ve been disinvited from Roper Chard’s anniversary party this Friday. Two manuscripts I had on submission with them have been sent back without so much as a thank you. And I’m getting worried about poor Pinkelman’s latest.” She pointed at the picture of the elderly children’s writer on the wall. “There’s a disgusting rumor flying around that I was in cahoots with Owen; that I egged him on to rehash an old scandal about Michael Fancourt, whip up some controversy and try to get a bidding war going for the book.

“If you’re going to trawl around everyone who knows Owen,” she said, coming to the point, “I’d be very grateful if you could tell them—especially Jerry Waldegrave, if you see him—that I had no idea what was in that novel. I’d never have sent it out, least of all to Christian Fisher, if I hadn’t been so ill. I was,” she hesitated, “careless, but no more than that.”

This, then, was why she had been so anxious to meet him. It did not seem an unreasonable request in return for the addresses of two hotels and a mistress.

“I’ll certainly mention that if it comes up,” said Strike, getting to his feet.

“Thank you,” she said gruffly. “I’ll see you out.”

When they emerged from the office, it was to a volley of barks. Ralph and the old Doberman had returned from their walk. Ralph’s wet hair was slicked back as he struggled to restrain the gray-muzzled dog, which was snarling at Strike.

“He’s never liked strangers,” said Elizabeth Tassel indifferently.

“He bit Owen once,” volunteered Ralph, as though this might make Strike feel better about the dog’s evident desire to maul him.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth Tassel, “pity it—”

But she was overtaken by another volley of rattling, wheezing coughs. The other three waited in silence for her to recover.

“Pity it wasn’t fatal,” she croaked at last. “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Her assistants looked shocked. Strike shook her hand and said a general good-bye. The door swung shut on the Doberman’s growling and snarling.