Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

“And you know what I think happened once he let you in, Elizabeth?”

Against his will, Strike remembered the scene: the great vaulted window, the body centered there as though for a grisly still life.

“I think you got that poor naive, narcissistic sod to pose for a publicity photograph. Was he kneeling down? Did the hero in the real book plead, or pray? Or did he get tied up like your Bombyx? He’d have liked that, wouldn’t he, Quine, posing in ropes? It would’ve made it nice and easy to move behind him and smash his head in with the metal doorstop, wouldn’t it? Under cover of the neighborhood fireworks, you knocked Quine out, tied him up, sliced him open and—”

Fancourt let out a strangled moan of horror, but Tassel spoke again, crooning at him in a travesty of consolation:

“You ought to see someone, Mr. Strike. Poor Mr. Strike,” and to his surprise she reached out to lay one of her big hands on his snow-covered shoulder. Remembering what those hands had done, Strike stepped back instinctively and her arm fell heavily back to her side, hanging there, the fingers clenching reflexively.

“You filled a holdall with Owen’s guts and the real manuscript,” said the detective. She had moved so close that he could again smell the combination of perfume and stale cigarettes. “Then you put on Quine’s own cloak and hat and left. Off you went, to feed a fourth copy of the fake Bombyx Mori through Kathryn Kent’s letter box, to maximize suspects and incriminate another woman who was getting what you never got—sex. Companionship. At least one friend.”

She feigned laughter again but this time the sound was manic. Her fingers were still flexing and unflexing.

“You and Owen would have got on so well,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t he, Michael? Wouldn’t he have got on marvelously with Owen? Sick fantasists…people will laugh at you, Mr. Strike.” She was panting harder than ever, those dead, blank eyes staring out of her fixed white face. “A poor cripple trying to recreate the sensation of success, chasing your famous fath—”

“Have you got proof of any of this?” Fancourt demanded in the swirling snow, his voice harsh with the desire not to believe. This was no ink-and-paper tragedy, no greasepaint death scene. Here beside him stood the living friend of his student years and whatever life had subsequently done to them, the idea that the big, ungainly, besotted girl whom he had known at Oxford could have turned into a woman capable of grotesque murder was almost unbearable.

“Yeah, I’ve got proof,” said Strike quietly. “I’ve got a second electric typewriter, the exact model of Quine’s, wrapped up in a black burqa and hydrochloric-stained overalls and weighted with stones. An amateur diver I happen to know pulled it out of the sea just a few days ago. It was lying beneath some notorious cliffs at Gwithian: Hell’s Mouth, a place featured on Dorcus Pengelly’s book cover. I expect she showed it to you when you visited, didn’t she, Elizabeth? Did you walk back there alone with your mobile, telling her you needed to find better reception?”

She let out a ghastly low moan, like the sound of a man who has been punched in the stomach. For a second nobody moved, then Tassel turned clumsily and began running and stumbling away from them, back towards the club. A bright yellow rectangle of light shivered then disappeared as the door opened and closed.

“But,” said Fancourt, taking a few steps and looking back at Strike a little wildly, “you can’t—you’ve got to stop her!”

“Couldn’t catch her if I wanted to,” said Strike, throwing the butt of his cigarette down into the snow. “Dodgy knee.”

“She could do anything—”

“Off to kill herself, probably,” agreed Strike, pulling out his mobile.

The writer stared at him.

“You—you cold-blooded bastard!”

“You’re not the first to say it,” said Strike, pressing keys on his phone. “Ready?” he said into it. “We’re off.”

Dangers, like stars, in dark attempts best shine.

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

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—