The Silkworm (4 page)

Wads of icy mist were still clinging to the buildings of Exmouth Market when Strike turned into it at ten to nine the following morning. It did not feel like a London street, not with pavement seating outside its many cafés, pastel-painted façades and a basilica-like church, gold, blue and brick: Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, wreathed in smoky vapour. Chilly fog, shops full of curios, kerb-side tables and chairs; if he could have added the tang of salt water and the mournful screech of seagulls he might have thought himself back in Cornwall, where he had spent the most stable parts of his childhood.

A small sign on a nondescript door beside a bakery announced the offices of Crossfire Publishing. Strike buzzed the bell promptly at nine o’clock and was admitted to a steep whitewashed staircase, up which he clambered with some difficulty and with liberal use of the handrail.

He was met on the top landing by a slight, dandyish and bespectacled man of around thirty. He had wavy, shoulder-length hair and wore jeans, a waistcoat and a paisley shirt with a touch of frill around the cuffs.

‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘I’m Christian Fisher. Cameron, isn’t it?’

‘Cormoran,’ Strike corrected him automatically, ‘but—’

He had been about to say that he answered to Cameron, a stock response to years of the mistake, but Christian Fisher came back at once:

‘Cormoran – Cornish giant.’

‘That’s right,’ said Strike, surprised.

‘We published a kids’ book on English folklore last year,’ said Fisher, pushing open white double doors and leading Strike into a cluttered, open-plan space with walls plastered in posters and many untidy bookshelves. A scruffy young woman with dark hair looked up curiously at Strike as he walked past.

‘Coffee? Tea?’ offered Fisher, leading Strike into his own office, a small room off the main area with a pleasant view over the sleepy, foggy street. ‘I can get Jade to nip out for us.’ Strike declined, saying truthfully that he had just had coffee, but wondering, too, why Fisher seemed to be settling in for a longer meeting than Strike felt the circumstances justified. ‘Just a latte, then, Jade,’ Fisher called through the door.

‘Have a seat,’ Fisher said to Strike, and he began to flit around the bookshelves that lined the walls. ‘Didn’t he live in St Michael’s Mount, the giant Cormoran?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘And Jack’s supposed to have killed him. Of beanstalk fame.’

‘It’s here somewhere,’ said Fisher, still searching the shelves. ‘
Folk Tales of the British Isles
. Have you got kids?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘Oh,’ said Fisher. ‘Well, I won’t bother, then.’

And with a grin he took the chair opposite Strike.

‘So, am I allowed to ask who’s hired you? Am I allowed to guess?’

‘Feel free,’ said Strike, who on principle never forbade speculation.

‘It’s either Daniel Chard or Michael Fancourt,’ said Fisher. ‘Am I right?’

The lenses on his glasses gave his eyes a concentrated, beady look. Though giving no outward sign, Strike was taken aback. Michael Fancourt was a very famous writer who had recently won a major literary prize. Why exactly would he be interested in the missing Quine?

‘Afraid not,’ said Strike. ‘It’s Quine’s wife, Leonora.’

Fisher looked almost comically astonished.

‘His wife?’ he repeated blankly. ‘That mousy woman who looks like Rose West? What’s
she
hired a private detective for?’

‘Her husband’s disappeared. He’s been gone eleven days.’

‘Quine’s
disappeared
? But – but then…’

Strike could tell Fisher had been anticipating a very different conversation, one to which he had been eagerly looking forward.

‘But why’s she sent you to me?’

‘She thinks you know where Quine is.’

‘How the hell would I know?’ asked Fisher, and he appeared genuinely bewildered. ‘He’s not a friend of mine.’

‘Mrs Quine says she heard you telling her husband about a writer’s retreat, at a party—’

‘
Oh,
’ said Fisher, ‘Bigley Hall, yeah. But Owen won’t be
there
!’ When he laughed, he was transformed into a bespectacled Puck: merriment laced with slyness. ‘They wouldn’t let Owen Quine in if he paid them. Born shit-stirrer. And one of the women who runs the place hates his guts. He wrote a stinking review of her first novel and she’s never forgiven him.’

‘Could you give me the number anyway?’ asked Strike.

‘I’ve got it on here,’ said Fisher, pulling a mobile out of the back pocket of his jeans. ‘I’ll call now…’

And he did so, setting the mobile on the desk between them and switching it on to speakerphone for Strike’s benefit. After a full minute of ringing, a breathless female voice answered:

‘Bigley Hall.’

‘Hi, is that Shannon? It’s Chris Fisher here, from Crossfire.’

‘Oh, hi Chris, how’s it going?’

The door of Fisher’s office opened and the scruffy dark girl from outside came in, wordlessly placed a latte in front of Fisher and departed.

‘I’m phoning, Shan,’ Fisher said, as the door clicked shut, ‘to see if you’ve got Owen Quine staying. He hasn’t turned up there, has he?’

‘
Quine?
’

Even reduced to a distant and tinny monosyllable, Shannon’s dislike echoed scornfully around the book-lined room.

‘Yeah, have you seen him?’

‘Not for a year or more. Why? He’s not thinking of coming here, is he? He won’t be bloody welcome, I can tell you that.’

‘No worries, Shan, I think his wife’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Speak soon.’

Fisher cut off her farewells, keen to return to Strike.

‘See?’ he said. ‘Told you. He couldn’t go to Bigley Hall if he wanted to.’

‘Couldn’t you have told his wife that, when she phoned you up?’

‘Oh,
that’s
what she kept calling about!’ said Fisher with an air of dawning comprehension. ‘I thought
Owen
was making her call me.’

‘Why would he make his wife phone you?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Fisher, with a grin, and when Strike did not grin back, he laughed shortly and said, ‘Because of
Bombyx Mori
. I thought it’d be typical of Quine to try to get his wife to call me and sound me out.’

‘
Bombyx Mori
,’ repeated Strike, trying to sound neither interrogative nor puzzled.

‘Yeah, I thought Quine was pestering me to see whether there was still a chance I’d publish it. It’s the sort of thing he’d do, make his wife ring. But if anyone’s going to touch
Bombyx Mori
now, it won’t be me. We’re a small outfit. We can’t afford court cases.’

Gaining nothing from pretending to know more than he did, Strike changed tack.

‘
Bombyx Mori
’s Quine’s latest novel?’

‘Yeah,’ said Fisher, taking a sip of his takeaway latte, following his own train of thought. ‘So he’s disappeared, has he? I’d’ve thought he’d want to stick around and watch the fun. I’d’ve thought that was the whole point. Or has he lost his nerve? Doesn’t sound like Owen.’

‘How long have you published Quine?’ asked Strike. Fisher looked at him incredulously.

‘I’ve never published him!’ he said.

‘I thought—’

‘He’s been with Roper Chard for his last three books – or is it four? No, what happened was, I was at a party with Liz Tassel, his agent, a few months ago, and she told me in confidence – she’d had a few – that she didn’t know how much longer Roper Chard were going to put up with him, so I said I’d be happy to have a look at his next one. Quine’s in the so-bad-he’s-good category these days – we could’ve done something offbeat with the marketing. Anyway,’ said Fisher, ‘there
was
Hobart’s Sin
. That was a good book. I figured he might still have something in him.’

‘Did she send you
Bombyx Mori
?’ asked Strike, feeling his way and inwardly cursing himself for the lack of thoroughness with which he had questioned Leonora Quine the previous day. This was what came of taking on clients when you were three parts dead of exhaustion. Strike was used to coming to interviews knowing more than the interviewee and he felt curiously exposed.

‘Yeah, she biked me over a copy Friday before last,’ said Fisher, his Puckish smirk slyer than ever. ‘Biggest mistake of poor Liz’s life.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she obviously hadn’t read it properly, or not all the way to the end. About two hours after it arrived I got this very panicky message on my phone: “Chris, there’s been a mistake, I’ve sent the wrong manuscript. Please don’t read it, could you just send it straight back, I’ll be at the office to take it.” I’ve never heard Liz Tassel like that in my life. Very scary woman usually. Makes grown men cower.’

‘And did you send it back?’

‘Course not,’ said Fisher. ‘I spent most of Saturday reading it.’

‘And?’ asked Strike.

‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’

‘Told me…?’

‘What’s in there,’ said Fisher. ‘What he’s done.’

‘What has he done?’

Fisher’s smile faded. He put down his coffee.

‘I’ve been warned,’ he said, ‘by some of London’s top lawyers not to disclose that.’

‘Who’s employing the lawyers?’ asked Strike. When Fisher didn’t answer, he added, ‘Anyone apart from Chard and Fancourt?’

‘It’s just Chard,’ said Fisher, toppling easily into Strike’s trap. ‘Though I’d be more worried about Fancourt if I were Owen. He can be an evil bastard. Never forgets a grudge. Don’t quote me,’ he added hastily.

‘And the Chard you’re talking about?’ said Strike, groping in semi-darkness.

‘Daniel Chard, CEO of Roper Chard,’ said Fisher, with a trace of impatience. ‘I don’t understand how Owen thought he’d get away with screwing over the man who runs his publisher, but that’s Owen for you. He’s the most monumentally arrogant, deluded bastard I’ve ever met. I suppose he thought he could depict Chard as—’

Fisher broke off with an uneasy laugh.

‘I’m a danger to myself. Let’s just say I’m surprised that even Owen thought he’d get away with it. Maybe he lost his nerve when he realised everyone knew exactly what he was hinting at and that’s why he’s done a runner.’

‘It’s libellous, is it?’ Strike asked.

‘Bit of a grey area in fiction, isn’t it?’ asked Fisher. ‘If you tell the truth in a grotesque way – not that I’m suggesting,’ he added hastily, ‘that the stuff he’s saying is
true
. It couldn’t be
literally
true. But everyone’s recognisable; he’s done over quite a few people and in a very clever way… It feels a lot like Fancourt’s early stuff, actually. Load of gore and arcane symbolism… you can’t see quite what he’s getting at in some places, but you want to know, what’s in the bag, what’s in the fire?’

‘What’s in the—?’

‘Never mind – it’s just stuff in the book. Didn’t Leonora tell you any of this?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘Bizarre,’ said Christian Fisher, ‘she must
know
. I’d’ve thought Quine’s the sort of writer who lectures the family on his work at every mealtime.’

‘Why did you think Chard or Fancourt would hire a private detective, when you didn’t know Quine was missing?’

Fisher shrugged.

‘I dunno. I thought maybe one of them was trying to find out what he’s planning to do with the book, so they could stop him, or warn the new publisher they’ll sue. Or that they might be hoping to get something on Owen – fight fire with fire.’

‘Is that why were you so keen to see me?’ asked Strike. ‘Have you got something on Quine?’

‘No,’ said Fisher with a laugh. ‘I’m just nosy. Wanted to know what’s going on.’

He checked his watch, turned over a copy of a book cover in front of him and pushed out his chair a little. Strike took the hint.

‘Thanks for your time,’ he said, standing up. ‘If you hear from Owen Quine, will you let me know?’

He handed Fisher a card. Fisher frowned at it as he moved around his desk to show Strike out.

‘Cormoran Strike…
Strike
…
I know that name, don’t I…?’

The penny dropped. Fisher was suddenly reanimated, as though his batteries had been changed.

‘Bloody hell, you’re the Lula Landry guy!’

Strike knew that he could have sat back down, ordered a latte and enjoyed Fisher’s undivided attention for another hour or so. Instead, he extricated himself with firm friendliness and, within a few minutes, re-emerged alone on the cold misty street.

When informed by telephone that her husband was not, after all, at the writer’s retreat, Leonora Quine sounded anxious.

‘Where is he, then?’ she asked, more of herself, it seemed, than Strike.

‘Where does he usually go when he walks out?’ Strike asked.

‘Hotels,’ she said, ‘and once he was staying with some woman but he don’t know her no more. Orlando,’ she said sharply, away from the receiver, ‘put that
down
, it’s mine. I said, it’s
mine
. What?’ she said, loudly in Strike’s ear.

‘I didn’t say anything. D’you want me to keep looking for your husband?’

‘Course I do, who else is gonna bloody find him? I can’t leave Orlando. Ask Liz Tassel where he is. She found him before. Hilton,’ said Leonora unexpectedly. ‘He was at the Hilton once.’

‘Which Hilton?’

‘I dunno, ask Liz. She made him go off, she should be bloody helping bring him back. She won’t take my calls. Orlando,
put it down
.’

‘Is there anyone else you can think—?’

‘No, or I’d’ve bloody asked them, wouldn’t I?’ snapped Leonora. ‘You’re the detective, you find him!
Orlando!
’

‘Mrs Quine, we’ve got—’

‘Call me Leonora.’

‘Leonora, we’ve got to consider the possibility that your husband might have done himself an injury. We’d find him more quickly,’ said Strike, raising his voice over the domestic clamour at the other end of the line, ‘if we involved the police.’

‘I don’t wanna. I called them that time he was gone a week and he turned up at his lady friend’s and they weren’t happy. He’ll be angry if I do that again. Anyway, Owen wouldn’t –
Orlando, leave it!
’

‘The police could circulate his picture more effectively and—’

‘I just want him home quietly. Why doesn’t he just come back?’ she added pettishly. ‘He’s had time to calm down.’

‘Have you read your husband’s new book?’ Strike asked.

‘No. I always wait till they’re finished and I can read ’em with proper covers on and everything.’

‘Has he told you anything about it?’

‘No, he don’t like talking about work while he’s –
Orlando, put it down!
’

He was not sure whether she had hung up deliberately or not.

The fog of early morning had lifted. Rain was speckling his office windows. A client was due imminently, yet another divorcing woman who wanted to know where her soon-to-be-ex husband was burying assets.

‘Robin,’ said Strike, emerging into the outer office, ‘will you print me out a picture of Owen Quine off the internet, if you can find one? And call his agent, Elizabeth Tassel, and see if she’s willing to answer a few quick questions.’

About to return to his own office, he thought of something else.

‘And could you look up “bombyx mori” for me, and see what it means?’

‘How are you spelling that?’

‘God knows,’ said Strike.

The soon-to-be divorcée arrived on time, at eleven thirty. She was a suspiciously youthful-looking forty-something who exuded fluttery charm and a musky scent that always made the office feel cramped to Robin. Strike disappeared into his office with her, and for two hours Robin heard only the gentle rise and fall of their voices over the steady thrumming of the rain and the tapping of her fingers on the keyboard; calm and placid sounds. Robin had become used to hearing sudden outbreaks of tears, moans, even shouting from Strike’s office. Sudden silences could be the most ominous of all, as when a male client had literally fainted (and, they had learned later, suffered a minor heart attack) on seeing the photographs of his wife and her lover that Strike had taken through a long lens.

When Strike and his client emerged at last, and she had taken fulsome farewell of him, Robin handed her boss a large picture of Owen Quine, taken from the website of the Bath Literature Festival.

‘Jesus Christ almighty,’ said Strike.

Owen Quine was a large, pale and portly man of around sixty, with straggly yellow-white hair and a pointed Van Dyke beard. His eyes appeared to be of different colours, which gave a peculiar intensity to his stare. For the photograph he had wrapped himself in what seemed to be a Tyrolean cape and was wearing a feather-trimmed trilby.

‘You wouldn’t think he’d be able to stay incognito for long,’ commented Strike. ‘Can you make a few copies of this, Robin? We might have to show it around hotels. His wife thinks he once stayed at a Hilton, but she can’t remember which one, so could you start ringing round to see if he’s booked in? Can’t imagine he’d use his own name, but you could try describing him… Any luck with Elizabeth Tassel?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘Believe it or not, I was just about to call her when she called me.’

‘She called here? Why?’

‘Christian Fisher’s told her you’ve been to see him.’

‘And?’

‘She’s got meetings this afternoon, but she wants to meet you at eleven o’clock tomorrow at her office.’

‘Does she, now?’ said Strike, looking amused. ‘More and more interesting. Did you ask her if she knows where Quine is?’

‘Yes; she says she hasn’t got a clue, but she was still adamant she wants to meet you. She’s very bossy. Like a headmistress. And
Bombyx mori
,’ she finished up, ‘is the Latin name for a silkworm.’

‘A silkworm?’

‘Yeah, and you know what? I always thought they were like spiders spinning their webs, but you know how they get silk from the worms?’

‘Can’t say I do.’

‘They boil them,’ said Robin. ‘Boil them alive, so that they don’t damage their cocoons by bursting out of them. It’s the cocoons that are made of silk. Not very nice, really, is it? Why did you want to know about silkworms?’

‘I wanted to know why Owen Quine might have called his novel
Bombyx Mori
,’ said Strike. ‘Can’t say I’m any the wiser.’

He spent the afternoon on tedious paperwork relating to a surveillance case and hoping the weather might improve: he would need to go out as he had virtually nothing to eat upstairs. After Robin had left, Strike continued working while the rain pounding his window became steadily heavier. Finally he pulled on his overcoat and walked, in what was now a downpour, down a sodden, dark Charing Cross Road to buy food at the nearest supermarket. There had been too many takeaways lately.

On the way back up the road, with bulging carrier bags in both hands, he turned on impulse into a second-hand bookshop that was about to close. The man behind the counter was unsure whether they had a copy of
Hobart’s Sin
, Owen Quine’s first book and supposedly his best, but after a lot of inconclusive mumbling and an unconvincing perusal of his computer screen, offered Strike a copy of
The Balzac Brothers
by the same author. Tired, wet and hungry, Strike paid two pounds for the battered hardback and took it home to his attic flat.

Having put away his provisions and cooked himself pasta, Strike stretched out on his bed as night pressed dense, dark and cold at his windows, and opened the missing man’s book.

The style was ornate and florid, the story gothic and surreal. Two brothers by the names of Varicocele and Vas were locked inside a vaulted room while the corpse of their older brother decayed slowly in a corner. In between drunken arguments about literature, loyalty and the French writer Balzac, they attempted to co-author an account of their decomposing brother’s life. Varicocele constantly palpated his aching balls, which seemed to Strike to be a clumsy metaphor for writer’s block; Vas seemed to be doing most of the work.

After fifty pages, and with a murmur of ‘Bollocks is right’, Strike threw the book aside and began the laborious process of turning in.

The deep and blissful stupor of the previous night eluded him. Rain hammered against the window of his attic room and his sleep was disturbed; confused dreams of catastrophe filled the night. Strike woke in the morning with the uneasy aftermath clinging over him like a hangover. The rain was still pounding on his window, and when he turned on his TV he saw that Cornwall had been hit by severe flooding; people were trapped in cars, or evacuated from their homes and now huddled in emergency centres.

Strike snatched up his mobile phone and called the number, familiar to him as his own reflection in the mirror, that all his life had represented security and stability.

‘Hello?’ said his aunt.

‘It’s Cormoran. You all right, Joan? I’ve just seen the news.’

‘We’re all right at the moment, love, it’s up the coast it’s bad,’ she said. ‘It’s wet, mind you, blowing up a storm, but nothing like St Austell. Just been watching it on the news ourselves. How are you, Corm? It’s been ages. Ted and I were just saying last night, we haven’t heard from you, and we were wanting to say, why don’t you come for Christmas as you’re on your own again? What do you think?’

He was unable to dress or to fasten on his prosthesis while holding the mobile. She talked for half an hour, an unstoppable gush of local chat and sudden, darting forays into personal territory he preferred to leave unprobed. At last, after a final blast of interrogation about his love life, his debts and his amputated leg, she let him go.

Strike arrived in the office late, tired and irritable. He was wearing a dark suit and tie. Robin wondered whether he was going to meet the divorcing brunette for lunch after his meeting with Elizabeth Tassel.

‘Heard the news?’

‘Floods in Cornwall?’ Strike asked, switching on the kettle, because his first tea of the day had grown cold while Joan gabbled.

‘William and Kate are engaged,’ said Robin.

‘Who?’

‘Prince William,’ said Robin, amused, ‘and Kate Middleton.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike coldly. ‘Good for them.’

He had been among the ranks of the engaged himself until a few months ago. He did not know how his ex-fiancée’s new engagement was proceeding, nor did he enjoy wondering when it was going to end. (Not as theirs had ended, of course, with her clawing her betrothed’s face and revealing her betrayal, but with the kind of wedding he could never have given her; more like the one William and Kate would no doubt soon enjoy.)

Robin judged it safe to break the moody silence only once Strike had had half a mug of tea.

‘Lucy called just before you came down, to remind you about your birthday dinner on Saturday night, and to ask whether you want to bring anyone.’

Strike’s spirits slipped several more notches. He had forgotten all about the dinner at his sister’s house.

‘Right,’ he said heavily.

‘Is it your birthday on Saturday?’ Robin asked.

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘When is it?’

He sighed. He did not want a cake, a card or presents, but her expression was expectant.

‘Tuesday,’ he said.

‘The twenty-third?’

‘Yeah.’

After a short pause, it occurred to him that he ought to reciprocate.

‘And when’s yours?’ Something in her hesitation unnerved him. ‘Christ, it’s not today, is it?’

She laughed.

‘No, it’s gone. October the ninth. It’s all right, it was a Saturday,’ she said, still smiling at his pained expression. ‘I wasn’t sitting here all day expecting flowers.’

He grinned back. Feeling he ought to make a little extra effort, because he had missed her birthday and never considered finding out when it was, he added:

‘Good thing you and Matthew haven’t set a date yet. At least you won’t clash with the Royal Wedding.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, blushing, ‘we have set a date.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the – the eighth of January. I’ve got your invitation here,’ she said, stooping hurriedly over her bag (she had not even asked Matthew about inviting Strike, but too late for that). ‘Here.’

‘The eighth of January?’ Strike said, taking the silver envelope. ‘That’s only – what? – seven weeks away.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

There was a strange little pause. Strike could not remember immediately what else he wanted her to do; then it came back to him, and as he spoke he tapped the silver envelope against his palm, businesslike.

‘How’s it going with the Hiltons?’

‘I’ve done a few. Quine isn’t there under his own name and nobody’s recognised the description. There are loads of them, though, so I’m just working my way through the list. What are you up to after you see Elizabeth Tassel?’ she asked casually.

‘Pretending I want to buy a flat in Mayfair. Looks like somebody’s husband’s trying to realise some capital and take it offshore before his wife’s lawyers can stop him.

‘Well,’ he said, pushing the unopened wedding invitation deep into his overcoat pocket, ‘better be off. Got a bad author to find.’