The Silkworm

“Bit of a gray area in fiction, isn’t it?” asked Fisher. “If you tell the truth in a grotesque way—not that I’m suggesting,” he added hastily, “that the stuff he’s saying is true. It couldn’t be literally true. But everyone’s recognizable; he’s done over quite a few people and in a very clever way…It feels a lot like Fancourt’s early stuff, actually. Load of gore and arcane symbolism…you can’t see quite what he’s getting at in some places, but you want to know, what’s in the bag, what’s in the fire?”

“What’s in the—?”

“Never mind—it’s just stuff in the book. Didn’t Leonora tell you any of this?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Bizarre,” said Christian Fisher, “she must know. I’d’ve thought Quine’s the sort of writer who lectures the family on his work at every mealtime.”

“Why did you think Chard or Fancourt would hire a private detective, when you didn’t know Quine was missing?”

Fisher shrugged.

“I dunno. I thought maybe one of them was trying to find out what he’s planning to do with the book, so they could stop him, or warn the new publisher they’ll sue. Or that they might be hoping to get something on Owen—fight fire with fire.”

“Is that why you were so keen to see me?” asked Strike. “Have you got something on Quine?”

“No,” said Fisher with a laugh. “I’m just nosy. Wanted to know what’s going on.”

He checked his watch, turned over a copy of a book cover in front of him and pushed out his chair a little. Strike took the hint.

“Thanks for your time,” he said, standing up. “If you hear from Owen Quine, will you let me know?”

He handed Fisher a card. Fisher frowned at it as he moved around his desk to show Strike out.

“Cormoran Strike…Strike…I know that name, don’t I…?”

The penny dropped. Fisher was suddenly reanimated, as though his batteries had been changed.

“Bloody hell, you’re the Lula Landry guy!”

Strike knew that he could have sat back down, ordered a latte and enjoyed Fisher’s undivided attention for another hour or so. Instead, he extricated himself with firm friendliness and, within a few minutes, reemerged alone on the cold misty street.

7

I’ll be sworn, I was ne’er guilty of reading the like.

Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour

When informed by telephone that her husband was not, after all, at the writer’s retreat, Leonora Quine sounded anxious.

“Where is he, then?” she asked, more of herself, it seemed, than Strike.

“Where does he usually go when he walks out?” Strike asked.

“Hotels,” she said, “and once he was staying with some woman but he don’t know her no more. Orlando,” she said sharply, away from the receiver, “put that down, it’s mine. I said, it’s mine. What?” she said, loudly in Strike’s ear.

“I didn’t say anything. D’you want me to keep looking for your husband?”

“Course I do, who else is gonna bloody find him? I can’t leave Orlando. Ask Liz Tassel where he is. She found him before. Hilton,” said Leonora unexpectedly. “He was at the Hilton once.”

“Which Hilton?”

“I dunno, ask Liz. She made him go off, she should be bloody helping bring him back. She won’t take my calls. Orlando, put it down.”

“Is there anyone else you can think—?”

“No, or I’d’ve bloody asked them, wouldn’t I?” snapped Leonora. “You’re the detective, you find him! Orlando!”

“Mrs. Quine, we’ve got—”

“Call me Leonora.”

“Leonora, we’ve got to consider the possibility that your husband might have done himself an injury. We’d find him more quickly,” said Strike, raising his voice over the domestic clamor at the other end of the line, “if we involved the police.”

“I don’t wanna. I called them that time he was gone a week and he turned up at his lady friend’s and they weren’t happy. He’ll be angry if I do that again. Anyway, Owen wouldn’t—Orlando, leave it!”

“The police could circulate his picture more effectively and—”

“I just want him home quietly. Why doesn’t he just come back?” she added pettishly. “He’s had time to calm down.”

“Have you read your husband’s new book?” Strike asked.

“No. I always wait till they’re finished and I can read ’em with proper covers on and everything.”

“Has he told you anything about it?”

“No, he don’t like talking about work while he’s—Orlando, put it down!”

He was not sure whether she had hung up deliberately or not.

The fog of early morning had lifted. Rain was speckling his office windows. A client was due imminently, yet another divorcing woman who wanted to know where her soon-to-be-ex-husband was burying assets.

“Robin,” said Strike, emerging into the outer office, “will you print me out a picture of Owen Quine off the internet, if you can find one? And call his agent, Elizabeth Tassel, and see if she’s willing to answer a few quick questions.”

About to return to his own office, he thought of something else.

“And could you look up ‘bombyx mori’ for me, and see what it means?”

“How are you spelling that?”

“God knows,” said Strike.