Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

“Yeah? And how much are you paying the stupid bastard to shoot his mouth off and screw up the case?”

“Bloody hell, Strike, you get mixed up in a murder like this and you don’t even think of ringing me?”

“I don’t know what you think our relationship is about, mate,” said Strike, “but as far as I’m concerned, I do jobs for you and you pay me. That’s it.”

“I put you in touch with Nina so you could get in that publisher’s party.”

“The least you could do after I handed you a load of extra stuff you’d never asked for on Parker,” said Strike, spearing stray chips with his free hand. “I could’ve withheld that and shopped it all round the tabloids.”

“If you want paying—”

“No, I don’t want paying, dickhead,” said Strike irritably, as Robin turned her attention tactfully to the BBC website on her own phone. “I’m not going to help screw up a murder investigation by dragging in the News of the World .”

“I could get you ten grand if you throw in a personal interview.”

“Bye, Cul—”

“Wait! Just tell me which book it is—the one where he describes the murder.”

Strike pretended to hesitate.

“ The Brothers Balls … Balzac ,” he said.

Smirking, he cut the call and reached for the menu to examine the puddings. Hopefully Culpepper would spend a long afternoon wading through tortured syntax and palpated scrotums.

“Anything new?” Strike asked as Robin looked up from her phone.

“Not unless you count the Daily Mail saying that family friends thought Pippa Middleton would make a better marriage than Kate.”

Strike frowned at her.

“I was just looking at random things while you were on the phone,” said Robin, a little defensively.

“No,” said Strike, “not that. I’ve just remembered—Pippa2011.”

“I don’t—” said Robin, confused, and still thinking of Pippa Middleton.

“Pippa2011—on Kathryn Kent’s blog. She claimed to have heard a bit of Bombyx Mori .”

Robin gasped and set to work on her mobile.

“It’s here!” she said, a few minutes later. “‘What would you say if I told you he’d read it to me’! And that was…” Robin scrolled upwards, “on October the twenty-first. October the twenty-first! She might’ve known the ending before Quine even disappeared.”

“That’s right,” said Strike. “I’m having apple crumble, want anything?”

When Robin had returned from placing yet another order at the bar, Strike said:

“Anstis has asked me to dinner tonight. Says he’s got some preliminary stuff in from forensics.”

“Does he know it’s your birthday?” asked Robin.

“Christ, no,” said Strike, and he sounded so revolted by the idea that Robin laughed.

“Why would that be bad?”

“I’ve already had one birthday dinner,” said Strike darkly. “Best present I could get from Anstis would be a time of death. The earlier they set it, the smaller the number of likely suspects: the ones who got their hands on the manuscript early. Unfortunately, that includes Leonora, but you’ve got this mysterious Pippa, Christian Fisher—”

“Why Fisher?”

“Means and opportunity, Robin: he had early access, he’s got to go on the list. Then there’s Elizabeth Tassel’s assistant Ralph, Elizabeth Tassel herself and Jerry Waldegrave. Daniel Chard presumably saw it shortly after Waldegrave. Kathryn Kent denies reading it, but I’m taking that with a barrel of salt. And then there’s Michael Fancourt.”

Robin looked up, startled.

“How can he—?”

Strike’s mobile rang again; it was Nina Lascelles. He hesitated, but the reflection that her cousin might have told her he had just spoken to Strike persuaded him to take the call.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, Famous Person,” she said. He heard an edge, inexpertly covered by breathy high spirits. “I’ve been too scared to call you in case you’re being inundated with press calls and groupies and things.”

“Not so much,” said Strike. “How’re things at Roper Chard?”

“Insane. Nobody’s doing any work; it’s all we can talk about. Was it really, honestly murder?”

“Looks like it.”

“God, I can’t believe it…I don’t suppose you can tell me anything, though?” she asked, barely suppressing the interrogative note.

“The police won’t want details getting out at this stage.”

“It was to do with the book, wasn’t it?” she said. “ Bombyx Mori .”

“I couldn’t say.”

“And Daniel Chard’s broken his leg.”

“Sorry?” he said, thrown by the non sequitur.

“Just so many odd things happening,” she said. She sounded keyed up, overwrought. “Jerry’s all over the place. Daniel rang him up from Devon just now and was yelling at him again—half the office heard because Jerry put him on speakerphone by accident and then couldn’t find the button to turn him off. He can’t leave his weekend house because of his broken leg. Daniel, I mean.”

“Why was he yelling at Waldegrave?”

“Security on Bombyx ,” she said. “The police have got a full copy of the manuscript from somewhere and Daniel’s not happy about it.

“Anyway,” she said, “I just thought I’d ring and say congrats—I suppose you congratulate a detective when they find a body, or don’t you? Call me when you’re not so busy.”

She rang off before he could say anything else.

“Nina Lascelles,” he said as the waiter reappeared with his apple crumble and a coffee for Robin. “The girl—”

“Who stole the manuscript for you,” said Robin.

“Your memory would’ve been wasted in HR,” said Strike, picking up his spoon.

“Are you serious about Michael Fancourt?” she asked quietly.

“Course,” said Strike. “Daniel Chard must’ve told him what Quine had done—he wouldn’t have wanted Fancourt to hear it from anyone else, would he? Fancourt’s a major acquisition for them. No, I think we’ve got to assume that Fancourt knew, early on, what was in—”

Now Robin’s mobile rang.

“Hi,” said Matthew.

“Hi, how are you?” she asked anxiously.

“Not great.”

Somewhere in the background, someone turned up the music: “ First day that I saw you, thought you were beautiful …”

“Where are you?” asked Matthew sharply.

“Oh…in a pub,” said Robin.

Suddenly the air seemed full of pub noises; clinking glasses, raucous laughter from the bar.

“It’s Cormoran’s birthday,” she said anxiously. (After all, Matthew and his colleagues went to the pub on each other’s birthdays…)

“That’s nice,” said Matthew, sounding furious. “I’ll call you later.”

“Matt, no—wait—”

Mouth full of apple crumble, Strike watched out of the corner of his eye as she got up and moved away to the bar without explanation, evidently trying to redial Matthew. The accountant was unhappy that his fiancée had gone out to lunch, that she was not sitting shiva for his mother.

Robin redialed and redialed. She got through at last. Strike finished both his crumble and his third pint and realized that he needed the bathroom.

His knee, which had not troubled him much while he ate, drank and talked to Robin, complained violently when he stood. By the time he got back to his seat he was sweating a little with the pain. Judging by the expression on her face, Robin was still trying to placate Matthew. When at last she hung up and rejoined him, he returned a short answer to whether or not he was all right.

“You know, I could follow the Brocklehurst girl for you,” she offered again, “if your leg’s too—?”