Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

“I wouldn’t swear his eyesight’s great; he’s got very thick lenses in his glasses. He told me he didn’t know of any Muslims living in the street, so it had caught his attention.”

“So we’ve got two alleged sightings of Quine since he walked out on his wife: early hours of the sixth, and on the eighth, in Putney.”

“Yeah,” said Anstis, “but I wouldn’t pin too much hope on either of them, Bob.”

“You think he died the night he left,” said Strike, more statement than question, and Anstis nodded.

“Underhill thinks so.”

“No sign of the knife?”

“Nothing. The only knife in the kitchen was a very blunt, everyday one. Definitely not up to the job.”

“Who do we know had a key to the place?”

“Your client,” said Anstis, “obviously. Quine himself must’ve had one. Fancourt’s got two, he’s already told us that by phone. The Quines lent one to his agent when she was organizing some repairs for them; she says she gave it back. A next-door neighbor’s got a key so he can let himself in if anything goes wrong with the place.”

“Didn’t he go in once the stink got bad?”

“One side did put a note through the door complaining about the smell, but the key holder left for two months in New Zealand a fortnight ago. We’ve spoken to him by phone. Last time he was in the house was in about May, when he took delivery of a couple of packages while some workmen were in and put them in the hall. Mrs. Quine’s vague about who else might have been lent a key over the years.

“She’s an odd woman, Mrs. Quine,” Anstis went on smoothly, “isn’t she?”

“Haven’t thought about it,” lied Strike.

“You know the neighbors heard her chasing him, the night he disappeared?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. She ran out of the house after him, screaming. The neighbors all say”—Anstis was watching Strike closely—“that she yelled ‘I know where you’re off to, Owen!’”

“Well, she thought she did know,” Strike said with a shrug. “She thought he was going to the writer’s retreat Christian Fisher told him about. Bigley Hall.”

“She’s refusing to move out of the house.”

“She’s got a mentally handicapped daughter who’s never slept anywhere else. Can you imagine Leonora overpowering Quine?”

“No,” said Anstis, “but we know it turned him on to be tied up, and I doubt they were married for thirty-odd years without her knowing that.”

“You think they had a row, then she tracked him down and suggested a bit of bondage?”

Anstis gave the suggestion of a small, token laugh, then said:

“It doesn’t look great for her, Bob. Angry wife with the key to the house, early access to the manuscript, plenty of motive if she knew about the mistress, especially if there was any question of Quine leaving her and the daughter for Kent. Only her word for it that ‘I know where you’re going’ meant this writer’s retreat and not the house on Talgarth Road.”

“Sounds convincing when you put it like that,” Strike said.

“But you don’t think so.”

“She’s my client,” said Strike. “I’m being paid to think of alternatives.”

“Has she told you where she used to work?” asked Anstis, with the air of a man about to play his trump card. “Back in Hay-on-Wye, before they were married?”

“Go on,” said Strike, not without a degree of apprehension.

“In her uncle’s butcher’s shop,” said Anstis.

Outside the study door Strike heard Timothy Cormoran Anstis thudding down the stairs again, screaming his head off at some fresh disappointment. For the first time in their unsatisfactory acquaintance, Strike felt a real empathy for the boy.

All well bred persons lie—Besides, you are a woman; you must never speak what you think…

William Congreve, Love for Love

Strike’s dreams that night, fueled by a day’s consumption of Doom Bar, by talk of blood, acid and blowflies, were strange and ugly.

Charlotte was getting married and he, Strike, was running to an eerie Gothic cathedral, running on two whole, functioning legs, because he knew that she had just given birth to his child and he needed to see it, to save it. There she was, in the vast, dark empty space, alone at the altar, struggling into a blood-red gown, and somewhere out of sight, perhaps in a cold vestry, lay his baby, naked, helpless and abandoned.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“You’re not seeing it. You didn’t want it. Anyway, there’s something wrong with it,” she said.

He was afraid of what he would see if he went to find the baby. Her bridegroom was nowhere to be seen but she was ready for the wedding, in a thick scarlet veil.

“Leave it, it’s horrible,” she said coldly, pushing past him, walking alone away from the altar, back up the aisle towards the distant doorway. “You’d only touch it,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I don’t want you touching it. You’ll see it eventually. It’ll have to be announced,” she added in a vanishing voice, as she became a sliver of scarlet dancing in the light of the open doors, “in the papers…”

He was suddenly awake in the morning gloom, his mouth dry and his knee throbbing ominously in spite of a night’s rest.

Winter had slid in the night like a glacier over London. A hard frost had iced the outside of his attic window and the temperature inside his rooms, with their ill-fitting windows and doors and the total lack of insulation under the roof, had plummeted.

Strike got up and reached for a sweater lying on the end of his bed. When he came to fix on his prosthesis, he found that his knee was exceptionally swollen after the journey to and from Greenwich. The shower water took longer than usual to heat up; he cranked up the thermostat, fearing burst pipes and frozen gutters, subzero living quarters and an expensive plumber. After drying himself off, he unearthed his old sports bandages from the box on the landing to strap up his knee.

He knew, now, as clearly as though he had spent the night puzzling it out, how Helly Anstis knew Charlotte’s wedding plans. He had been stupid not to think of it before. His subconscious had known.

Once clean, dressed and breakfasted he headed downstairs. Glancing out of the window behind his desk, he noted that the knifelike cold was keeping away the little cluster of journalists who had waited in vain for his return the previous day. Sleet pattered on the windows as he moved back to the outer office and Robin’s computer. Here, in the search engine, he typed: charlotte campbell hon jago ross wedding .

Pitiless and prompt came the results.

Tatler, December 2010: Cover girl Charlotte Campbell on her wedding to the future Viscount of Croy…

“ Tatler ,” said Strike aloud in the office.

He only knew of the magazine’s existence because its society pages were full of Charlotte’s friends. She had bought it, sometimes, to read ostentatiously in front of him, commenting on men she had once slept with, or whose stately homes she had partied in.

And now she was the Christmas cover girl.

Even strapped up, his knee complained at having to support him down the metal stairs and out into the sleet. There was an early morning queue at the counter of the newsagents. Calmly he scanned the shelves of magazines: soap stars on the cheap ones and film stars on the expensive; December issues almost sold out, even though they were still in November. Emma Watson in white on the cover of Vogue (“The Super Star Issue”), Rihanna in pink on Marie Claire (“The Glamour Issue”) and on the cover of Tatler …

Pale, perfect skin, black hair blown away from high cheekbones and wide hazel-green eyes, flecked like a russet apple. Two huge diamonds dangling from her ears and a third on the hand lying lightly against her face. A dull, blunt hammer blow to the heart, absorbed without the slightest external sign. He took the magazine, the last on the shelf, paid for it and returned to Denmark Street.