Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

Had Strike not chosen to keep Robin on his payroll, the loan would already have been cleared. He was determined to repay it before Christmas, determined not to be beholden to Jonny Rokeby, which was why he had taken on a workload that had lately seen him working eight or nine hours, seven days a week. None of this made the prospect of calling his younger brother for a favor any more comfortable. Strike could understand Al’s loyalty to a father whom he clearly loved, but any mention between them of Rokeby was necessarily charged.

Al’s number rang several times and finally went to voice mail. As relieved as he was disappointed, Strike left a brief message asking Al to call him and hung up.

Lighting his third cigarette since breakfast, Strike reverted to his contemplation of the crack in the ceiling. The trail towards the crime…so much depended on when the killer had seen the manuscript, had recognized its potential as a blueprint for murder…

And, once again, he flicked through the suspects as though they were a hand of cards he had been dealt, examining their potentialities.

Elizabeth Tassel, who made no secret of the rage and pain Bombyx Mori had caused her. Kathryn Kent, who claimed not to have read it at all. The still unknown Pippa2011, to whom Quine had read parts of the book back in October. Jerry Waldegrave, who had had the manuscript on the fifth, but might, if Chard was to be believed, have known what was in there way before. Daniel Chard, who claimed that he had not seen it until the seventh, and Michael Fancourt, who had heard about the book from Chard. Yes, there were sundry others, peeking and peering and giggling at the most salacious parts of the book, emailed all over London by Christian Fisher, but Strike found it very hard to work up even the vaguest of cases against Fisher, young Ralph in Tassel’s office, or Nina Lascelles, none of whom were featured in Bombyx Mori nor had really known Quine.

He needed, Strike thought, to get closer, close enough to ruffle the people whose lives had already been mocked and distorted by Owen Quine. With only a little more enthusiasm than he had brought to the task of calling Al, he scrolled through his contact list and called Nina Lascelles.

It was a brief call. She was delighted. Of course he could come over tonight. She’d cook.

Strike could think of no other way to probe for further details of Jerry Waldegrave’s private life or for Michael Fancourt’s reputation as a literary assassin, but he did not look forward to the painful process of reattaching his prosthesis, not to mention the effort it would require to detach himself again, tomorrow morning, from Nina Lascelles’s hopeful clutches. However, he had Arsenal versus Aston Villa to watch before he needed to leave; painkillers, cigarettes, bacon and bread.

Preoccupied with his own comfort, a mixture of football and murder on his mind, it did not occur to Strike to glance down into the snowy street where shoppers, undeterred by the freezing weather, were gliding in and out of the music stores, the instrument makers and the cafés. Had he done so, he might have seen the willowy, hooded figure in the black coat leaning against the wall between numbers six and eight, staring up at his flat. Good though his eyesight was, however, he would have been unlikely to spot the Stanley knife being turned rhythmically between long, fine fingers.

Rise my good angel,

Whose holy tunes beat from me that evil spirit

Which jogs mine elbow…

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

Even with snow chains on its tires the old family Land Rover driven by Robin’s mother had had a hard job of it between York station and Masham. The wipers made fan-shaped windows, swiftly obliterated, onto roads familiar to Robin since childhood, now transformed by the worst winter she had seen in many years. The snow was relentless and the journey, which should have taken an hour, lasted nearly three. There had been moments when Robin had thought she might yet miss the funeral. At least she had been able to speak to Matthew on her mobile, explaining that she was close. He had told her that several others were still miles away, that he was afraid his aunt from Cambridge might not make it at all.

At home Robin had dodged the slobbering welcome of their old chocolate Labrador and hurtled upstairs to her room, pulling on the black dress and coat without bothering to iron them, laddering her first pair of tights in her haste, then running back downstairs to the hall where her parents and brothers were waiting for her.

They walked together through the swirling snow beneath black umbrellas, up the gentle hill Robin had climbed every day of her primary school years and across the wide square that was the ancient heart of her tiny hometown, their backs to the giant chimney of the local brewery. The Saturday market had been canceled. Deep channels had been made in the snow by those few brave souls who had crossed the square that morning, footprints converging near the church where Robin could see a crowd of black-coated mourners. The roofs of the pale gold Georgian houses lining the square wore mantels of bright, frozen icing, and still the snow kept coming. A rising sea of white was steadily burying the large square tombstones in the cemetery.

Robin shivered as the family edged towards the doors of St. Mary the Virgin, past the remnant of a ninth-century round-shafted cross that had a curiously pagan appearance, and then, at last, she saw Matthew, standing in the porch with his father and sister, pale and heart-stoppingly handsome in his black suit. As Robin watched, trying to catch his eye over the queue, a young woman reached up and embraced him. Robin recognized Sarah Shadlock, Matthew’s old friend from university. Her greeting was a little more lascivious, perhaps, than was appropriate in the circumstances, but Robin’s guilt about having come within ten seconds of missing the overnight train, about not having seen Matthew in nearly a week, made her feel she had no right to resent it.

“Robin,” he said urgently when he saw her and he forgot to shake three people’s hands as he held out his arms to her. As they hugged she felt tears prickle beneath her eyelids. This was real life, after all, Matthew and home…

“Go and sit at the front,” he told her and she obeyed, leaving her family at the back of the church to sit in the front pew with Matthew’s brother-in-law, who was dandling his baby daughter on his knee and greeted Robin with a morose nod.

It was a beautiful old church and Robin knew it well from the Christmas, Easter and harvest services she had attended all her life with her primary school and family. Her eyes traveled slowly from familiar object to familiar object. High above her over the chancel arch was a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (or, at the very least, the school of Joshua Reynolds) and she fixed upon it, trying to compose her mind. A misty, mystical image, the boy-angel contemplating the distant vision of a cross emitting golden rays…Who had really done it, she wondered, Reynolds or some studio acolyte? And then she felt guilty that she was indulging her perennial curiosity instead of feeling sad about Mrs. Cunliffe…

She had thought that she would be marrying here in a few weeks’ time. Her wedding dress was hanging ready in the spare room’s wardrobe, but instead, here was Mrs. Cunliffe’s coffin coming up the aisle, shining black with silver handles, Owen Quine still in the morgue…no shiny coffin for his disemboweled body yet, rotted and burned…

Don’t think about that , she told herself sternly as Matthew sat down beside her, the length of his leg warm against hers.

The last twenty-four hours had been so packed with incident that it was hard for Robin to believe she was here, at home. She and Strike might have been in hospital, they had come close to slamming head first into that overturned lorry…the driver covered in blood…Mrs. Cunliffe was probably unscathed in her silk-lined box… Don’t think about that …