Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

It was as though her eyes were being stripped of a comfortable soft focus. Maybe seeing things like bound and disemboweled bodies did something to you, changed the way you saw the world.

She knelt a little late for prayer, the cross-stitched hassock rough beneath her freezing knees. Poor Mrs. Cunliffe …except that Matthew’s mother had never much liked her. Be kind , Robin implored herself, even though it was true. Mrs. Cunliffe had not liked the idea of Matthew being tied to the same girlfriend for so long. She had mentioned, within Robin’s hearing, how good it was for young men to play the field, sow their wild oats…The way in which Robin had left university had tainted her, she knew, in Mrs. Cunliffe’s eyes.

The statue of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill was facing Robin from mere feet away. As she stood for the hymn he seemed to be staring at her in his Jacobean dress, life-sized and horizontal on his marble shelf, propped up on his elbow to face the congregation. His wife lay beneath him in an identical pose. They were oddly real in their irreverent poses, cushions beneath their elbows to keep their marble bones comfortable, and above them, in the spandrels, allegorical figures of death and mortality. Till death do us part …and her thoughts drifted again: she and Matthew, tied together forever until they died… no, not tied … don’t think tied … What’s wrong with you? She was exhausted. The train had been overheated and jerky. She had woken on the hour, afraid that it would get stuck in the snow.

Matthew reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers.

The burial took place as quickly as decency allowed, the snow falling thick around them. There was no lingering at the graveside; Robin was not the only one perceptibly shivering.

Everyone went back to the Cunliffes’ big brick house and milled around in the welcome warmth. Mr. Cunliffe, who was always a little louder than the occasion warranted, kept filling glasses and greeting people as though it were a party.

“I’ve missed you,” Matthew said. “It’s been horrible without you.”

“Me too,” said Robin. “I wish I could have been here.”

Lying again.

“Auntie Sue’s staying tonight,” said Matthew. “I thought I could maybe come over to your place, be good to get away for a bit. It’s been full on this week…”

“Great, yes,” said Robin, squeezing his hand, grateful that she would not have to stay at the Cunliffes’. She found Matthew’s sister hard work and Mr. Cunliffe overbearing.

But you could have put up with it for a night , she told herself sternly. It felt like an undeserved escape.

And so they returned to the Ellacotts’ house, a short walk from the square. Matthew liked her family; he was glad to change out of his suit into jeans, to help her mother lay the kitchen table for dinner. Mrs. Ellacott, an ample woman with Robin’s red-gold hair tucked up in an untidy bun, treated him with gentle kindness; she was a woman of many interests and enthusiasms, currently doing an Open University degree in English Literature.

“How’re the studies going, Linda?” Matthew asked as he lifted the heavy casserole dish out of the oven for her.

“We’re doing Webster, The Duchess of Malfi : ‘And I am grown mad with ’t.’”

“Difficult, is it?” asked Matthew.

“That’s a quotation, love. Oh,” she dropped the serving spoons onto the side with a clatter, “that reminds me — I bet I’ve missed it—”

She crossed the kitchen and snatched up a copy of the Radio Times , always present in their house.

“No, it’s on at nine. There’s an interview with Michael Fancourt I want to watch.”

“Michael Fancourt?” said Robin, looking round. “Why?”

“He’s very influenced by all those Revenge Tragedians,” said her mother. “I’m hoping he’ll explain the appeal.”

“Seen this?” said Robin’s youngest brother, Jonathan, fresh back from the corner shop with the extra milk requested by his mother. “It’s on the front page, Rob. That writer with his guts ripped out—”

“Jon!” said Mrs. Ellacott sharply.

Robin knew that her mother was not reprimanding her son out of any suspicion that Matthew would not appreciate mention of her job, but because of a more general aversion to discussing sudden death in the aftermath of the burial.

“What?” said Jonathan, oblivious to the proprieties, shoving the Daily Express under Robin’s nose.

Quine had made the front page now that the press knew what had been done to him.

HORROR AUTHOR WROTE OWN MURDER.

Horror author , Robin thought, he was hardly that … but it makes a good headline .

“Is your boss gonna solve it, d’you reckon?” Jonathan asked her, thumbing through the paper. “Show up the Met again?”

She began to read the account over Jonathan’s shoulder, but caught Matthew’s eye and moved away.

A buzzing issued from Robin’s handbag, discarded in a sagging chair in the corner of the flagged kitchen, as they ate their meal of stew and baked potatoes. She ignored it. Only when they had finished eating and Matthew was dutifully helping her mother clear the table did Robin wander to her bag to check her messages. To her great surprise she saw a missed call from Strike. With a surreptitious glance at Matthew, who was busily stacking plates in the dishwasher, she called voice mail while the others chatted.

You have one new message. Received today at seven twenty p.m.

The crackle of an open line, but no speech.

Then a thud. A yell in the distance from Strike:

“No you don’t, you fucking—”

A bellow of pain.

Silence. The crackle of the open line. Indeterminate crunching, dragging sounds. Loud panting, a scraping noise, the line dead.

Robin stood aghast, the phone pressed against her ear.

“What’s the matter?” asked her father, glasses halfway down his nose as he paused on the way to the dresser, knives and forks in his hand.

“I think—I think my boss has—has had an accident—”

She pressed Strike’s number with shaking fingers. The call went straight to voice mail. Matthew was standing in the middle of the kitchen watching her, his displeasure undisguised.

Hard fate when women are compell’d to woo!

Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Honest Whore

Strike did not hear Robin calling because, unbeknownst to him, his mobile had been knocked onto silent when it had hit the ground fifteen minutes previously. Nor was he aware that his thumb had hit Robin’s number as the phone slipped through his fingers.

He had only just left his building when it happened. The door onto the street had swung shut behind him and he had had two seconds, with his mobile in his hand (waiting for a ring-back from the cab he had reluctantly ordered) when the tall figure in the black coat had come running at him through the darkness. A blur of pale skin beneath a hood and a scarf, her arm outstretched, inexpert but determined, with the knife pointing directly at him in a wavering clutch.

Bracing himself to meet her he had almost slipped again but, slamming his hand to the door, he steadied himself and the mobile fell. Shocked and furious with her, whoever she was, for the damage her pursuit had already done to his knee, he bellowed—she checked for a split second, then came at him once more.

As he swung his stick at the hand in which he had already seen the Stanley knife his knee twisted again. He let out a roar of pain and she leapt back, as though she had stabbed him without knowing it, and then, for the second time, she had panicked and taken flight, sprinting away through the snow leaving a furious and frustrated Strike unable to give chase, and with no choice but to scrabble around in the snow for his phone.