The Silkworm (9 page)

Beside him on the train, Robin too sat in silence. She had not enjoyed the evening one bit. Never before had she known Matthew quite like that; or at least, never before had she
seen
him like that. It was Strike, she thought, puzzling over the matter as the train jolted them. Strike had somehow made her see Matthew through his eyes. She did not know quite how he had done it – all that questioning Matthew about rugby – some people might have thought it was polite, but Robin knew better… or was she just annoyed that he had been late, and blaming him for things that he had not intended?

And so the engaged couple sped home, united in unexpressed irritation with the man now snoring loudly as he rattled away from them on the Northern line.

‘Is that Cormoran Strike?’ asked a girlish upper-middle-class voice at twenty to nine the following morning.

‘It is,’ said Strike.

‘It’s Nina. Nina Lascelles. Dominic gave me your number.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike, who was standing bare-chested in front of the shaving mirror he usually kept beside the kitchen sink, the shower room being both dark and cramped. Wiping shaving foam from around his mouth with his forearm, he said:

‘Did he tell you what it was about, Nina?’

‘Yeah, you want to infiltrate Roper Chard’s anniversary party.’

‘“Infiltrate” is a bit strong.’

‘But it sounds much more exciting if we say “infiltrate”.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said, amused. ‘I take it you’re up for this?’

‘Oooh, yes, fun. Am I allowed to guess why you want to come and spy on everyone?’

‘Again, “spy” isn’t really—’

‘Stop spoiling things. Am I allowed a guess?’

‘Go on then,’ said Strike, taking a sip from his mug of tea, his eyes on the window. It was foggy again; the brief spell of sunshine extinguished.

‘
Bombyx Mori
,’ said Nina. ‘Am I right? I am, aren’t I? Say I’m right.’

‘You’re right,’ said Strike and she gave a squeal of pleasure.

‘I’m not even supposed to be talking about it. There’s been a lockdown, emails round the company, lawyers storming in and out of Daniel’s office. Where shall we meet? We should hook up somewhere first and turn up together, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah, definitely,’ said Strike. ‘Where’s good for you?’

Even as he took a pen from the coat hanging behind the door he thought longingly of an evening at home, a good long sleep, an interlude of peace and rest before an early start on Saturday morning, tailing his brunette client’s faithless husband.

‘D’you know Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese?’ asked Nina. ‘On Fleet Street? Nobody from work’ll be in there, and it’s walking distance to the office. I know it’s corny but I love it.’

They agreed to meet at seven thirty. As Strike returned to his shaving, he asked himself how likely it was that he would meet anyone who knew Quine’s whereabouts at his publisher’s party.
The trouble is
, Strike mentally chided the reflection in the circular mirror as the pair of them strafed stubble from their chins,
you keep acting like you’re still SIB. The nation’s not paying you to be thorough any more, mate.

But he knew no other way; it was part of a short but inflexible personal code of ethics that he had carried with him all his adult life: do the job and do it well.

Strike was intending to spend most of the day in the office, which under normal circumstances he enjoyed. He and Robin shared the paperwork; she was an intelligent and often helpful sounding board and as fascinated now with the mechanics of an investigation as she had been when she had joined him. Today, however, he headed downstairs with something bordering on reluctance and, sure enough, his seasoned antennae detected in her greeting a self-conscious edge that he feared would shortly break through into ‘What did you think of Matthew?’

This, Strike reflected, retiring to the inner office and shutting the door on the pretext of making phone calls, was exactly why it was a bad idea to meet your only member of staff outside working hours.

Hunger forced him to emerge a few hours later. Robin had bought sandwiches as usual, but she had not knocked on the door to let him know that they were there. This, too, seemed to point to feelings of awkwardness after the previous evening. To postpone the moment when it must be mentioned, and in the hope that if he kept off the subject long enough she might never bring it up (although he had never known the tactic to work on a woman before), Strike told her truthfully that he had just got off the phone with Mr Gunfrey.

‘Is he going to go to the police?’ asked Robin.

‘Er – no. Gunfrey isn’t the type of bloke who goes to the police if someone’s bothering him. He’s nearly as bent as the bloke who wants to cut his son. He’s realised he’s in over his head this time, though.’

‘Didn’t you think of recording what that gangster was paying you to do and taking it to the police yourself?’ asked Robin, without thinking.

‘No, Robin, because it’d be obvious where the tip-off came from and it’ll put a strain on business if I’ve got to dodge hired killers while doing surveillance.’

‘But Gunfrey can’t keep his son at home for ever!’

‘He won’t have to. He’s going to take the family off for a surprise holiday in the States, phone our knife-happy friend from LA and tell him he’s given the matter some thought and changed his mind about interfering with his business interests. Shouldn’t look too suspicious. The bloke’s already done enough shitty stuff to him to warrant a cooling off. Bricks through his windscreen, threatening calls to his wife.

‘S’pose I’ll have to go back to Crouch End next week, say the boy never showed up and give his monkey back.’ Strike sighed. ‘Not very plausible, but I don’t want them to come looking for me.’

‘He gave you a—?’

‘Monkey – five hundred quid, Robin,’ said Strike. ‘What do they call that in Yorkshire?’

‘Shockingly little to stab a teenager,’ said Robin forcefully and then, catching Strike off guard, ‘What did you think of Matthew?’

‘Nice bloke,’ lied Strike automatically.

He refrained from elaboration. She was no fool; he had been impressed before now by her instinct for the lie, the false note. Nevertheless, he could not help hurrying them on to a different subject.

‘I’m starting to think, maybe next year, if we’re turning a proper profit and you’ve already had your pay rise, we could justify taking someone else on. I’m working flat out here, I can’t keep going like this for ever. How many clients have you turned down lately?’

‘A couple,’ Robin responded coolly.

Surmising that he had been insufficiently enthusiastic about Matthew but resolute that he would not be any more hypocritical than he had already been, Strike withdrew shortly afterwards into his office and shut the door again.

However, on this occasion, Strike was only half right.

Robin had indeed felt deflated by his response. She knew that if Strike had genuinely liked Matthew he would never have been as definitive as ‘nice bloke.’ He’d have said ‘Yeah, he’s all right,’ or ‘I s’pose you could do worse.’

What had irritated and even hurt was his suggestion of bringing in another employee. Robin turned back to her computer monitor and started typing fast and furiously, banging the keys harder than usual as she made up this week’s invoice for the divorcing brunette. She had thought – evidently wrongly – that she was here as more than a secretary. She had helped Strike secure the evidence that had convicted Lula Landry’s killer; she had even collected some of it alone, on her own initiative. In the months since, she had several times operated way beyond the duties of a PA, accompanying Strike on surveillance jobs when it would look more natural for him to be in a couple, charming doormen and recalcitrant witnesses who instinctively took offence at Strike’s bulk and surly expression, not to mention pretending to be a variety of women on the telephone that Strike, with his deep bass voice, had no hope of impersonating.

Robin had assumed that Strike was thinking along the same lines that she was: he occasionally said things like ‘It’s good for your detective training’ or ‘You could use a counter-surveillance course.’ She had assumed that once the business was on a sounder footing (and she could plausibly claim to have helped make it so) she would be given the training she knew she needed. But now it seemed that these hints had been mere throwaway lines, vague pats on the head for the typist. So what was she doing here? Why had she thrown away something much better? (In her temper, Robin chose to forget how little she had wanted that human resources job, however well paid.)

Perhaps the new employee would be female, able to perform these useful jobs, and she, Robin, would become receptionist and secretary to both of them, and never leave her desk again. It was not for that that she had stayed with Strike, given up a much better salary and created a recurring source of tension in her relationship.

At five o’clock on the dot Robin stopped typing in mid-sentence, pulled on her trench coat and left, closing the glass door behind her with unnecessary force.

The bang woke Strike up. He had been fast asleep at his desk, his head on his arms. Checking his watch he saw that it was five and wondered who had just come into the office. Only when he opened the dividing door and saw that Robin’s coat and bag were gone and her computer monitor dark did he realise that she had left without saying goodbye.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said impatiently.

She wasn’t usually sulky; it was one of the many things he liked about her. What did it matter if he didn’t like Matthew? He wasn’t the one marrying him. Muttering irritably under his breath, Strike locked up and climbed the stairs to his attic room, intending to eat and change before meeting Nina Lascelles.

Strike proceeded along the dark, cold Strand towards Fleet Street that evening with his hands balled deep in his pockets, walking as briskly as fatigue and an increasingly sore right leg would permit. He regretted leaving the peace and comfort of his glorified bedsit; he was not sure that anything useful would come of this evening’s expedition and yet, almost against his will, he was struck anew in the frosty haze of this winter’s night by the aged beauty of the old city to which he owed a divided childhood allegiance.

Every taint of the touristic was wiped away by the freezing November evening: the seventeenth-century façade of the Old Bell Tavern, with its diamond windowpanes aglow, exuded a noble antiquity; the dragon standing sentinel on top of the Temple Bar marker was silhouetted, stark and fierce, against the star-studded blackness above; and in the far distance the misty dome of St Paul’s shone like a rising moon. High on a brick wall above him as he approached his destination were names that spoke of Fleet Street’s inky past – the
People’s Friend
, the
Dundee Courier
–
but Culpepper and his journalistic ilk had long since been driven out of their traditional home to Wapping and Canary Wharf. The law dominated the area now, the Royal Courts of Justice staring down upon the passing detective, the ultimate temple of Strike’s trade.

In this forgiving and strangely sentimental mood, Strike approached the round yellow lamp across the road that marked the entrance to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and headed up the narrow passageway that led to the entrance, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the low lintel.

A cramped wood-panelled entrance lined with ancient oil paintings opened on to a tiny front room. Strike ducked again, avoiding the faded wooden sign ‘Gentlemen only in this bar’, and was greeted at once with an enthusiastic wave from a pale, petite girl whose dominant feature was a pair of large brown eyes. Huddled in a black coat beside the log fire, she was cradling an empty glass in two small white hands.

‘Nina?’

‘I knew it was you, Dominic described you to a T.’

‘Can I get you a drink?’

She asked for a white wine. Strike fetched himself a pint of Sam Smith and edged onto the uncomfortable wooden bench beside her. London accents filled the room. As though she had read his mood, Nina said:

‘It’s still a real pub. It’s only people who never come here who think it’s full of tourists. And Dickens came here, and Johnson and Yeats… I love it.’

She beamed at him and he smiled back, mustering real warmth with several mouthfuls of beer inside him.

‘How far’s your office?’

‘About a ten-minute walk,’ she said. ‘We’re just off the Strand. It’s a new building and there’s a roof garden. It’s going to be bloody freezing,’ she added, giving a pre-emptive shiver and drawing her coat more tightly around her. ‘But the bosses had an excuse not to hire anywhere. Times are hard in publishing.’

‘There’s been some trouble about
Bombyx Mori
, you said?’ asked Strike, getting down to business as he stretched out his prosthetic leg as far as it would go under the table.

‘Trouble,’ she said, ‘is the understatement of the century. Daniel Chard’s livid. You
don’t
make Daniel Chard the baddie in a dirty novel. Not done. No. Bad idea. He’s a strange man. They say he got sucked into the family business, but he really wanted to be an artist. Like Hitler,’ she added with a giggle.

The lights over the bar danced in her big eyes. She looked, Strike thought, like an alert and excited mouse.

‘Hitler?’ he repeated, faintly amused.

‘He rants like Hitler when he’s upset – we’ve found
that
out this week. Nobody’s ever heard Daniel speak above a mumble before this. Shouting and screaming at Jerry; we could hear him through the walls.’

‘Have you read the book?’

She hesitated, a naughty grin playing around her mouth.

‘Not officially,’ she said at last.

‘But unofficially…’

‘I might have had a sneaky peek,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it under lock and key?’

‘Well, yeah, it’s in Jerry’s safe.’

A sly sideways glance invited Strike to join her in gentle mockery of the innocent editor.

‘The trouble is, he’s told everyone the combination because he keeps forgetting it and that means he can ask us to remind him. Jerry’s the sweetest, straightest man in the world and I don’t think it would have occurred to him that we’d have a read if we weren’t supposed to.’

‘When did you look at it?’

‘The Monday after he got it. Rumours were really picking up by then, because Christian Fisher had rung about fifty people over the weekend and read bits of the book over the phone. I’ve heard he scanned it and started emailing parts around, as well.’

‘This would have been before lawyers started getting involved?’

‘Yeah. They called us all together and gave us this ridiculous speech about what would happen if we talked about the book. It was just nonsense, trying to tell us the company’s reputation would suffer if the CEO’s ridiculed – we’re about to go public, or that’s the rumour – and ultimately our jobs would be imperilled. I don’t know how the lawyer kept a straight face saying it. My dad’s a QC,’ she went on airily, ‘and he says Chard’ll have a hard time going after any of us when so many people outside the company know.’

‘Is he a good CEO, Chard?’ asked Strike.

‘I suppose so,’ she said restlessly, ‘but he’s quite mysterious and dignified so… well, it’s just funny, what Quine wrote about him.’

‘Which was…?’

‘Well, in the book Chard’s called Phallus Impudicus and—’

Strike choked on his pint. Nina giggled.

‘He’s called “Impudent Cock”?’ Strike asked, laughing, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Nina laughed; a surprisingly dirty cackle for one who looked like an eager schoolgirl.

‘You did Latin? I gave it up, I hated it – but we all know what “phallus” is, right? I had to look it up and
Phallus impudicus
is actually the proper name for a toadstool called stinkhorn. Apparently they smell vile and… well,’ she giggled some more, ‘they look like rotting knobs. Classic Owen: dirty names and everyone with their bits out.’

‘And what does Phallus Impudicus get up to?’

‘Well, he walks like Daniel, talks like Daniel, looks like Daniel and he enjoys a spot of necrophilia with a handsome writer he’s murdered. It’s really gory and disgusting. Jerry always said Owen thinks the day wasted if he hasn’t made his readers gag at least twice. Poor Jerry,’ she added quietly.

‘Why “poor Jerry”?’ asked Strike.

‘He’s in the book as well.’

‘And what kind of phallus is he?’

Nina giggled again.

‘I couldn’t tell you, I didn’t read the bit about Jerry. I just flicked through to find Daniel because everyone said it was so gross and funny. Jerry was only out of his office half an hour, so I didn’t have much time – but we all know he’s in there, because Daniel hauled Jerry in, made him meet the lawyers and add his name to all the stupid emails telling us the sky will fall in if we talk about
Bombyx Mori
. I suppose it makes Daniel feel better that Owen’s attacked Jerry too. He knows everyone loves Jerry, so I expect he thinks we’ll all keep our mouths shut to protect him.

‘God knows why Quine’s gone for Jerry, though,’ Nina added, her smile fading a little. ‘Because Jerry hasn’t got an enemy in the world. Owen
is
a bastard, really,’ she added as a quiet afterthought, staring down at her empty wine glass.

‘Want another drink?’ Strike asked.

He returned to the bar. There was a stuffed grey parrot in a glass case on the wall opposite. It was the only bit of genuine whimsy he could see and he was prepared, in his mood of tolerance for this authentic bit of old London, to do it the courtesy of assuming that it had once squawked and chattered within these walls and had not been bought as a mangy accessory.

‘You know Quine’s gone missing?’ Strike asked, once back beside Nina.

‘Yeah, I heard a rumour. I’m not surprised, the fuss he’s caused.’

‘D’you know Quine?’

‘Not really. He comes into the office sometimes and tries to flirt, you know, with his stupid cloak draped round him, showing off, always trying to shock. I think he’s a bit pathetic, and I’ve always hated his books. Jerry persuaded me to read
Hobart’s Sin
and I thought it was dreadful.’

‘D’you know if anyone’s heard from Quine lately?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Nina.

‘And no one knows why he wrote a book that was bound to get him sued?’

‘Everyone assumes he’s had a major row with Daniel. He rows with everyone in the end; he’s been with God knows how many publishers over the years.

‘I heard Daniel only publishes Owen because he thinks it makes it look as though Owen’s forgiven him for being awful to Joe North. Owen and Daniel don’t really like each other, that’s common knowledge.’

Strike remembered the image of the beautiful blond young man hanging on Elizabeth Tassel’s wall.

‘How was Chard awful to North?’

‘I’m a bit vague on the details,’ said Nina. ‘But I know he
was
. I know Owen swore he’d never work for Daniel, but then he ran through nearly every other publisher so he had to pretend he’d been wrong about Daniel and Daniel took him on because he thought it made him look good. That’s what everyone says, anyway.’

‘And has Quine rowed with Jerry Waldegrave, to your knowledge?’

‘No, which is what’s so bizarre. Why attack Jerry? He’s lovely! Although from what I’ve heard, you can’t really—’

For the first time, as far as Strike could tell, she considered what she was about to say before proceeding a little more soberly:

‘Well, you can’t really tell what Owen’s getting at in the bit about Jerry, and as I say, I haven’t read it. But Owen’s done over loads of people,’ Nina went on. ‘I heard his own wife’s in there, and apparently he’s been
vile
about Liz Tassel, who might be a bitch, but everyone knows she’s stuck by Owen through thick and thin. Liz’ll never be able to place anything with Roper Chard again; everyone’s furious at her. I know she was disinvited for tonight on Daniel’s orders – pretty humiliating. And there’s supposed to be a party for Larry Pinkelman, one of her other authors, in a couple of weeks and they
can’t
uninvite her from that – Larry’s such an old sweetheart, everyone loves him – but God knows what reception she’ll get if she turns up.

‘Anyway,’ said Nina, shaking back her light brown fringe and changing the subject abruptly, ‘how are you and I supposed to know each other, once we get to the party? Are you my boyfriend, or what?’

‘Are partners allowed at this thing?’

‘Yeah, but I haven’t told anyone I’m seeing you, so we can’t have been going out long. We’ll say we got together at a party last weekend, OK?’

Strike heard, with almost identical amounts of disquiet and gratified vanity, the enthusiasm with which she suggested a fictional tryst.

‘Need a pee before we go,’ he said, raising himself heavily from the wooden bench as she drained her third glass.

The stairs down to the bathroom in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese were vertiginous and the ceiling so low that he smacked his head even while stooping. As he rubbed his temple, swearing under his breath, it seemed to Strike that he had just been given a divine clout over the head, to remind him what was, and what was not, a good idea.