The Silkworm

Watching Waldegrave disappear into the swirling snow, past the Christmas shoppers scrambling, laden, along the slushy pavements, Strike remembered a hand closing ungently on an upper arm, a stern man’s voice, an angrier young woman’s. “Mummy’s made a beeline, why don’t you grab her?”

Turning up his coat collar Strike thought he knew, now, what the meaning was: of a dwarf in a bloody bag, of the horns under the Cutter’s cap and, cruelest of all, the attempted drowning.

37

…when I am provok’d to fury, I cannot incorporate with patience and reason.

William Congreve, The Double-Dealer

Strike set out for his office beneath a sky of dirty silver, his feet moving with difficulty through the rapidly accumulating snow, which was still falling fast. Though he had touched nothing but water, he felt a little drunk on good rich food, which gave him the false sense of well-being that Waldegrave had probably passed sometime midmorning, drinking in his office. The walk between Simpson’s-in-the-Strand and his drafty little office on Denmark Street would take a fit and unimpaired adult perhaps a quarter of an hour. Strike’s knee remained sore and overworked, but he had just spent more than his entire week’s food budget on a single meal. Lighting a cigarette, he limped away through the knife-sharp cold, head bowed against the snow, wondering what Robin had found out at the Bridlington Bookshop.

As he walked past the fluted columns of the Lyceum Theatre, Strike pondered the fact that Daniel Chard was convinced that Jerry Waldegrave had helped Quine write his book, whereas Waldegrave thought that Elizabeth Tassel had played upon his sense of grievance until it had erupted into print. Were these, he wondered, simple cases of displaced anger? Having been balked of the true culprit by Quine’s gruesome death, were Chard and Waldegrave seeking living scapegoats on whom to vent their frustrated fury? Or were they right to detect, in Bombyx Mori, a foreign influence?

The scarlet façade of the Coach and Horses in Wellington Street constituted a powerful temptation as he approached it, the stick doing heavy duty now, and his knee complaining: warmth, beer and a comfortable chair…but a third lunchtime visit to the pub in a week…not a habit he ought to develop…Jerry Waldegrave was an object lesson in where such behavior might lead…

He could not resist an envious glance through the window as he passed, towards lights gleaming on brass beer pumps and convivial men with slacker consciences than his own—

He saw her out of the corner of his eye. Tall and stooping in her black coat, hands in her pockets, scurrying along the slushy pavements behind him: his stalker and would-be attacker of Saturday night.

Strike’s pace did not falter, nor did he turn to look at her. He was not playing games this time; there would be no stopping to test her amateurish stalking style, no letting her know that he had spotted her. On he walked without looking over his shoulder, and only a man or woman similarly expert in countersurveillance would have noticed his casual glances into helpfully positioned windows and reflective brass door plates; only they could have spotted the hyperalertness disguised as inattentiveness.

Most killers were slapdash amateurs; that was how they were caught. To persist after their encounter on Saturday night argued high-caliber recklessness and it was on this that Strike was counting as he continued up Wellington Street, outwardly oblivious to the woman following him with a knife in her pocket. As he crossed Russell Street she had dodged out of sight, faking entrance to the Marquess of Anglesey, but soon reappeared, dodging in and out of the square pillars of an office block and lurking in a doorway to allow him to pull ahead.

Strike could barely feel his knee now. He had become six foot three of highly concentrated potential. This time she had no advantage; she would not be taking him by surprise. If she had a plan at all, he guessed that it was to profit from any available opportunity. It was up to him to present her with an opportunity she dare not let pass, and to make sure she did not succeed.

Past the Royal Opera House with its classical portico, its columns and statues; in Endell Street she entered an old red telephone box, gathering her nerve, no doubt, double-checking that he was not aware of her. Strike walked on, his pace unchanging, his eyes on the street ahead. She took confidence and emerged again onto the crowded pavement, following him through harried passersby with carrier bags swinging from their hands, drawing closer to him as the street narrowed, flitting in and out of doorways.

As he drew nearer to the office he made his decision, turning left off Denmark Street into Flitcroft Street, which led to Denmark Place, where a dark passage, plastered with fliers for bands, led back to his office.

Would she dare?