The Silkworm

“No, no, allow me. Your press coverage makes much of the fact that you have known better times. In fact, it puts me in mind of Ben Jonson: ‘I am a poor gentleman, a soldier; one that, in the better state of my fortunes, scorned so mean a refuge.’”

“Really?” said Strike pleasantly, returning his cash to his pocket. “I’m put more in mind of

“sicine subrepsti mi, atque intestina pururens

ei misero eripuisti omnia nostra bona?

Eripuisti, eheu, nostrae crudele uenenum

Uitae, eheu nostrae pestis amicitiae.”

He looked unsmilingly upon Fancourt’s astonishment. The writer rallied quickly.

“Ovid?”

“Catullus,” said Strike, heaving himself off the low pouffe with the aid of the table. “Translates roughly:

“So that’s how you crept up on me, an acid eating away

My guts, stole from me everything I most treasure?

Yes, alas, stole: grim poison in my blood

The plague, alas, of the friendship we once had.

“Well, I expect we’ll see each other around,” said Strike pleasantly.

He limped off towards the stairs, Fancourt’s eyes upon his back.

44

All his allies and friends rush into troops

Like raging torrents.

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

Strike sat for a long time on the sofa in his kitchen-sitting room that night, barely hearing the rumble of the traffic on Charing Cross Road and the occasional muffled shouts of more early Christmas partygoers. He had removed his prosthesis; it was comfortable sitting there in his boxers, the end of his injured leg free of pressure, the throbbing of his knee deadened by another double dose of painkillers. Unfinished pasta congealed on the plate beside him on the sofa, the sky beyond his small window achieved the dark blue velvet depth of true night, and Strike did not move, though wide awake.

It felt like a very long time since he had seen the picture of Charlotte in her wedding dress. He had not given her another thought all day. Was this the start of true healing? She had married Jago Ross and he was alone, mulling the complexities of an elaborate murder in the dim light of his chilly attic flat. Perhaps each of them was, at last, where they really belonged.

On the table in front of him in the clear plastic evidence bag, still half wrapped in the photocopied cover of Upon the Wicked Rocks, sat the dark gray typewriter cassette that he had taken from Orlando. He had been staring at it for what seemed like half an hour at least, feeling like a child on Christmas morning confronted by a mysterious, inviting package, the largest under the tree. And yet he ought not to look, or touch, lest he interfere with whatever forensic evidence might be gleaned from the tape. Any suspicion of tampering…

He checked his watch. He had promised himself not to make the call until half past nine. There were children to be wrestled into bed, a wife to placate after another long day on the job. Strike wanted time to explain fully…

But his patience had limits. Getting up with some difficulty, he took the keys to his office and moved laboriously downstairs, clutching the handrail, hopping and occasionally sitting down. Ten minutes later he reentered his flat and returned to the still-warm spot on the sofa carrying his penknife and wearing another pair of the latex gloves he had earlier given to Robin.

He lifted the typewriter tape and the crumpled cover illustration gingerly out of the evidence bag and set the cassette, still resting on the paper, on the rickety Formica-topped table. Barely breathing, he pulled out the toothpick attachment from his knife and inserted it delicately behind the two inches of fragile tape that were exposed. By dint of careful manipulation he managed to pull out a little more. Reversed words were revealed, the letters back to front.

YOB EIDDE WENK I THGUOHT DAH I DN

His sudden rush of adrenaline was expressed only in Strike’s quiet sigh of satisfaction. He deftly tightened the tape again, using the knife’s screwdriver attachment in the cog at the top of the cassette, the whole untouched by his hands, then, still wearing the latex gloves, slipped it back into the evidence bag. He checked his watch again. Unable to wait any longer, he picked up his mobile and called Dave Polworth.

“Bad time?” he asked when his old friend answered.

“No,” said Polworth, sounding curious. “What’s up, Diddy?”

“Need a favor, Chum. A big one.”

The engineer, over a hundred miles away in his sitting room in Bristol, listened without interrupting while the detective explained what it was he wanted done. When finally he had finished, there was a pause.

“I know it’s a big ask,” Strike said, listening anxiously to the line crackling. “Dunno if it’ll even be possible in this weather.”

“Course it will,” said Polworth. “I’d have to see when I could do it, though, Diddy. Got two days off coming up…not sure Penny’s going to be keen…”