Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

A gaggle of hooded youths smoking beside large plastic recycling bins eyed him speculatively as he passed. He was taller and broader than any of them.

“Big fucker,” he caught one of them saying as he passed out of their sight, ignoring the inevitably out-of-order lift and heading for the concrete stairs.

Kathryn Kent’s flat was on the third floor and was reached via a windswept brick balcony that ran the width of the building. Strike noted that, unlike her neighbors, Kathryn had hung real curtains in the windows, before rapping on the door.

There was no response. If Owen Quine was inside, he was determined not to give himself away: there were no lights on, no sign of movement. An angry-looking woman with a cigarette jammed in her mouth stuck her head out of the next door with almost comical haste, gave Strike one brief searching stare, then withdrew.

The chilly wind whistled along the balcony. Strike’s overcoat was glistening with raindrops but his uncovered head, he knew, would look the same as ever; his short, tightly curling hair was impervious to the effects of rain. He drove his hands deep inside his pockets and there found a stiff envelope he had forgotten. The exterior light beside Kathryn Kent’s front door was broken, so Strike ambled two doors along to reach a functioning bulb and opened the silver envelope.

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Ellacott

request the pleasure of your company

at the wedding of their daughter

Robin Venetia

to

Mr. Matthew John Cunliffe

at the church of St. Mary the Virgin, Masham

on Saturday 8th January 2011

at two o’clock

and afterwards at

Swinton Park

The invitation exuded the authority of military orders: this wedding will take place in the manner described hereon. He and Charlotte had never got as far as the issuing of stiff cream invitations engraved with shining black cursive.

Strike pushed the card back into his pocket and returned to wait beside Kathryn’s dark door, digging into himself, staring out over dark Lillie Road with its swooshing double lights, headlamps and reflections sliding along, ruby and amber. Down on the ground the hooded youths huddled, split apart, were joined by others and regrouped.

At half past six the expanded gang loped off together in a pack. Strike watched them until they were almost out of sight, at which point they passed a woman coming in the opposite direction. As she moved through the light puddle of a streetlamp, he saw a thick mane of bright red hair flying from beneath a black umbrella.

Her walk was lopsided, because the hand not holding the umbrella was carrying two heavy carrier bags, but the impression she gave from this distance, regularly tossing back her thick curls, was not unattractive; her windblown hair was eye-catching and her legs beneath the loose overcoat were slender. Closer and closer she moved, unaware of his scrutiny from three floors up, across the concrete forecourt and out of sight.

Five minutes later she had emerged onto the balcony where Strike stood waiting. As she drew nearer, the straining buttons on the coat betrayed a heavy, apple-shaped torso. She did not notice Strike until she was ten yards away, because her head was bowed, but when she looked up he saw a lined and puffy face much older than he had expected. Coming to an abrupt halt, she gasped.

“ You! ”

Strike realized that she was seeing him in silhouette because of the broken lights.

“You fucking bastard! ”

The bags hit the concrete floor with a tinkle of breaking glass: she was running full tilt at him, hands balled into fists and flailing.

“You bastard, you bastard , I’ll never forgive you, never , you get away from me!”

Strike was forced to parry several wild punches. He stepped backwards as she screeched, throwing ineffectual blows and trying to break past his ex-boxer’s defenses.

“You wait—Pippa’s going to fucking kill you—you wait—”

The neighbor’s door opened again: there stood the same woman with a cigarette in her mouth.

“Oi!” she said.

Light from the hall flooded onto Strike, revealing him. With a half gasp, half yelp, the redheaded woman staggered backwards, away from him.

“The fuck’s going on?” demanded the neighbor.

“Case of mistaken identity, I think,” said Strike pleasantly.

The neighbor slammed her door, plunging the detective and his assailant back into darkness.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “What do you want?”

“Are you Kathryn Kent?”

“ What do you want? ”

Then, with sudden panic, “If it’s what I think it is, I don’t work in that bit!”

“Excuse me?”

“Who are you, then?” she demanded, sounding more frightened than ever.

“My name’s Cormoran Strike and I’m a private detective.”

He was used to the reactions of people who found him unexpectedly on their doorsteps. Kathryn’s response—stunned silence—was quite typical. She backed away from him and almost fell over her own abandoned carrier bags.

“Who’s set a private detective on me? It’s her , is it?” she said ferociously.

“I’ve been hired to find the writer Owen Quine,” said Strike. “He’s been missing for nearly a fortnight. I know you’re a friend of his—”

“No, I’m not,” she said and bent to pick up her bags again; they clinked heavily. “You can tell her that from me. She’s welcome to him.”

“You’re not his friend anymore? You don’t know where he is?”

“I don’t give a shit where he is.”

A cat stalked arrogantly along the edge of the stone balcony.

“Can I ask when you last—?”

“No, you can’t,” she said with an angry gesture; one of the bags in her hand swung and Strike flinched, thinking that the cat, which had drawn level with her, would be knocked off the ledge into space. It hissed and leapt down. She aimed a swift, spiteful kick at it.

“Damn thing!” she said. The cat streaked away. “Move, please. I want to get into my house.”

He took a few steps back from the door to let her approach it. She could not find her key. After a few uncomfortable seconds of trying to pat her own pockets while carrying the bags she was forced to set them down at her feet.

“Mr. Quine’s been missing since he had a row with his agent about his latest book,” said Strike, as Kathryn fumbled in her coat. “I was wondering whether—”

“I don’t give a shit about his book. I haven’t read it,” she added. Her hands were shaking.

“Mrs. Kent—”

“Ms.,” she said.

“Ms. Kent, Mr. Quine’s wife says a woman called at his house looking for him. By the description, it sounded—”

Kathryn Kent had found the key but dropped it. Strike bent to pick it up for her; she snatched it from his grasp.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t go looking for him at his house last week?”

“I told you, I don’t know where he is, I don’t know anything,” she snapped, ramming the key into the lock and turning it.

She caught up the two bags, one of which clinked heavily again. It was, Strike saw, from a local hardware store.

“That looks heavy.”

“My ball cock’s gone,” she told him fiercely.

And she slammed her door in his face.

VERDONE: We came to fight.

CLEREMONT: Ye shall fight, Gentlemen,

And fight enough; but a short turn or two…

Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger,

The Little French Lawyer

Robin emerged from the Tube the following morning, clutching a redundant umbrella and feeling sweaty and uncomfortable. After days of downpours, of Tube trains full of the smell of wet cloth, of slippery pavements and rain-speckled windows, the sudden switch to bright, dry weather had taken her by surprise. Other spirits might have lightened in the respite from the deluge and lowering gray clouds, but not Robin’s. She and Matthew had had a bad row.