Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

“If it’s a simple question of making a phone call,” he said gently, “haven’t you got a friend or a—?”

“Edna can’t do it,” she said and he found himself disproportionately touched (exhaustion sometimes laid him raw in this way) at her tacit admission that she had one friend in the world. “Owen’s told them not to say where he is. I need,” she said simply, “a man to do it. Force them to say.”

“Your husband’s name’s Owen, is it?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “Owen Quine. He wrote Hobart’s Sin .”

Neither name nor title meant anything to Strike.

“And you think you know where he is?”

“Yeah. We was at this party with a load of publishers and people—he didn’t want to take me, but I says, ‘I got a babysitter already, I’m coming’—so I hears Christian Fisher telling Owen about this place, this writer’s retreat place. And afterwards I says to Owen, ‘What was that place he was telling you about?’ and Owen says, ‘I’m not telling you, that’s the whole bloody point, getting away from the wife and kids.’”

She almost invited Strike to join her husband in laughing at her; proud, as mothers sometimes pretend to be, of their child’s insolence.

“Who’s Christian Fisher?” asked Strike, forcing himself to concentrate.

“Publisher. Young, trendy bloke.”

“Have you tried phoning Fisher and asking him for the address of this retreat?”

“Yeah, I’ve called him every day for a week and they said they’d taken a message and he’d get back to me, but he hasn’t. I think Owen’s told him not to say where he is. But you’ll be able to get the address out of Fisher. I know you’re good,” she said. “You solved that Lula Landry thing, when the police never.”

A mere eight months previously, Strike had had but a single client, his business had been moribund and his prospects desperate. Then he had proven, to the satisfaction of the Crown Prosecution Service, that a famous young woman had not committed suicide but had been pushed to her death from a fourth-floor balcony. The ensuing publicity had brought a tide of business; he had been, for a few weeks, the best-known private detective in the metropolis. Jonny Rokeby had become a mere footnote to his story; Strike had become a name in his own right, albeit a name most people got wrong…

“I interrupted you,” he said, trying hard to hold on to the thread of his thoughts.

“Did you?”

“Yeah,” said Strike, squinting at his own crabbed writing on the notebook. “You said, ‘There’s Orlando, I’ve got things to do and there’s—’”

“Oh yeah,” she said, “there’s funny stuff happening since he left.”

“What kind of funny stuff?”

“Shit,” said Leonora Quine matter-of-factly, “through our letter box.”

“Someone’s put excrement through your letter box?” Strike said.

“Yeah.”

“Since your husband disappeared?”

“Yeah. Dog,” said Leonora, and it was a split second before Strike deduced that this applied to the excrement, not her husband. “Three or four times now, at night. Nice thing to find in the morning, I don’t think. And there was a woman come to the door and all, who was weird.”

She paused, waiting for Strike to prompt her. She seemed to enjoy being questioned. Many lonely people, Strike knew, found it pleasant to be the focus of somebody’s undivided attention and sought to prolong the novel experience.

“When did this woman come to the door?”

“Last week it was, and she asks for Owen and when I says, ‘He’s not here,’ she says, ‘Tell him Angela died,’ and walks off.”

“And you didn’t know her?”

“Never seen her before.”

“Do you know an Angela?”

“No. But he gets women fans going funny over him, sometimes,” said Leonora, suddenly expansive. “Like, he had this woman once that wrote him letters and sent him photos of herself dressed up like one of his characters. Some of these women who write to him think he understands them or something because of his books. Silly, innit?” she said. “It’s all made up.”

“Do fans usually know where your husband lives?”

“No,” said Leonora. “But she could’ve bin a student or something. He teaches writing as well, sometimes.”

The door opened and Robin entered with a tray. After putting black coffee in front of Strike and a tea in front of Leonora Quine, she withdrew again, closing the door behind her.

“Is that everything strange that’s happened?” Strike asked Leonora. “The excrement through the door, and this woman coming to the house?”

“And I think I’ve been followed. Tall, dark girl with round shoulders,” said Leonora.

“This is a different woman to the one—?”

“Yeah, the one that come to the house was dumpy. Long red hair. This one’s dark and bent over, like.”

“You’re sure she was following you?”

“Yeah, I think so. I seen her behind me two, three times now. She isn’t local, I’ve never seen her before and I’ve lived in Ladbroke Grove thirty-odd years.”

“OK,” said Strike slowly. “You said your husband’s upset? What happened to upset him?”

“He had a massive row with his agent.”

“What about, do you know?”

“His book, his latest. Liz—that’s his agent—tells him it’s the best thing he’s ever done, and then, like, a day later, she takes him out to dinner and says it’s unpublishable.”

“Why did she change her mind?”

“Ask her ,” said Leonora, showing anger for the first time. “Course he was upset after that. Anyone would be. He’s worked on that book for two years. He comes home in a right state and he goes into his study and grabs it all—”

“Grabs what?”

“His book, the manuscript and his notes and everything, swearing his head off, and he shoves them in a bag and he goes off and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Has he got a mobile? Have you tried calling him?”

“Yeah and he’s not picking up. He never does, when he goes off like this. He chucked his phone out the car window once,” she said, again with that faint note of pride at her husband’s spirit.

“Mrs. Quine,” said Strike, whose altruism necessarily had its limits, whatever he had told William Baker, “I’ll be honest with you: I don’t come cheap.”

“That’s all right,” said Leonora implacably. “Liz’ll pay.”

“Liz?”

“ Liz —Elizabeth Tassel. Owen’s agent. It’s her fault he’s gone away. She can take it out of her commission. He’s her best client. She’ll want him back all right, once she realizes what she’s done.”

Strike did not set as much store by this assurance as Leonora herself seemed to. He added three sugars to the coffee and gulped it down, trying to think how best to proceed. He felt vaguely sorry for Leonora Quine, who seemed inured to her erratic husband’s tantrums, who accepted the fact that nobody would deign to return her calls, who was sure that the only help she could expect must be paid for. Her slight eccentricity of manner aside, there was a truculent honesty about her. Nevertheless, he had been ruthless in taking on only profitable cases since his business had received its unexpected boost. Those few people who had come to him with hard-luck stories, hoping that his own personal difficulties (reported and embellished in the press) would predispose him to helping them free of charge, had left disappointed.

But Leonora Quine, who had drunk her tea quite as quickly as Strike had downed his coffee, was already on her feet, as though they had agreed to terms and everything was settled.

“I’d better get going,” she said, “I don’t like leaving Orlando too long. She’s missing her daddy. I’ve told her I’m getting a man to go find him.”