The Silkworm (5 page)

It occurred to Strike as he travelled, 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 brunette 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 Dobermann pinscher, and a tall, thick-set woman of around sixty, with large, uncompromisingly plain features. The geometrically perfect steel-grey 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 Dobermann 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 recognised 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 mould: one of those older women who capitalised, 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 recognisable 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 recognise 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 straight away 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 offence. 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.’