The Silkworm

A cat stalked arrogantly along the edge of the stone balcony.

“Can I ask when you last—?”

“No, you can’t,” she said with an angry gesture; one of the bags in her hand swung and Strike flinched, thinking that the cat, which had drawn level with her, would be knocked off the ledge into space. It hissed and leapt down. She aimed a swift, spiteful kick at it.

“Damn thing!” she said. The cat streaked away. “Move, please. I want to get into my house.”

He took a few steps back from the door to let her approach it. She could not find her key. After a few uncomfortable seconds of trying to pat her own pockets while carrying the bags she was forced to set them down at her feet.

“Mr. Quine’s been missing since he had a row with his agent about his latest book,” said Strike, as Kathryn fumbled in her coat. “I was wondering whether—”

“I don’t give a shit about his book. I haven’t read it,” she added. Her hands were shaking.

“Mrs. Kent—”

“Ms.,” she said.

“Ms. Kent, Mr. Quine’s wife says a woman called at his house looking for him. By the description, it sounded—”

Kathryn Kent had found the key but dropped it. Strike bent to pick it up for her; she snatched it from his grasp.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t go looking for him at his house last week?”

“I told you, I don’t know where he is, I don’t know anything,” she snapped, ramming the key into the lock and turning it.

She caught up the two bags, one of which clinked heavily again. It was, Strike saw, from a local hardware store.

“That looks heavy.”

“My ball cock’s gone,” she told him fiercely.

And she slammed her door in his face.

10

VERDONE: We came to fight.

CLEREMONT: Ye shall fight, Gentlemen,

And fight enough; but a short turn or two…

Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger,

The Little French Lawyer

Robin emerged from the Tube the following morning, clutching a redundant umbrella and feeling sweaty and uncomfortable. After days of downpours, of Tube trains full of the smell of wet cloth, of slippery pavements and rain-speckled windows, the sudden switch to bright, dry weather had taken her by surprise. Other spirits might have lightened in the respite from the deluge and lowering gray clouds, but not Robin’s. She and Matthew had had a bad row.

It was almost a relief, when she opened the glass door engraved with Strike’s name and job title, to find that her boss was already on the telephone in his own office, with the door closed. She felt obscurely that she needed to pull herself together before she faced him, because Strike had been the subject of last night’s argument.

“You’ve invited him to the wedding?” Matthew had said sharply.

She had been afraid that Strike might mention the invitation over drinks that evening, and that if she did not warn Matthew first, Strike would bear the brunt of Matthew’s displeasure.

“Since when are we just asking people without telling each other?” Matthew had said.

“I meant to tell you. I thought I had.”

Then Robin had felt angry with herself: she never lied to Matthew.

“He’s my boss, he’ll expect to be invited!”

Which wasn’t true; she doubted that Strike cared one way or the other.

“Well, I’d like him there,” she said, which, at last, was honesty. She wanted to tug the working life that she had never enjoyed so much closer to the personal life that currently refused to meld with it; she wanted to stitch the two together in a satisfying whole and to see Strike in the congregation, approving (approving! Why did he have to approve?) of her marrying Matthew.

She had known that Matthew would not be happy, but she had hoped that by this time the two men would have met and liked each other, and it was not her fault that that had not happened yet.

“After all the bloody fuss we had when I wanted to invite Sarah Shadlock,” Matthew had said—a blow, Robin felt, that was below the belt.

“Invite her then!” she said angrily. “But it’s hardly the same thing—Cormoran’s never tried to get me into bed—what’s that snort supposed to mean?”

The argument had been in full swing when Matthew’s father telephoned with the news that a funny turn Matthew’s mother had suffered the previous week had been diagnosed as a mini-stroke.

After this, she and Matthew felt that squabbling about Strike was in bad taste, so they went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of theoretical reconciliation, both, Robin knew, still seething.

It was nearly midday before Strike finally emerged from his office. He was not wearing his suit today, but a dirty and holey sweater, jeans and trainers. His face was thick with the heavy stubble that accrued if he did not shave every twenty-four hours. Forgetting her own troubles, Robin stared: she had never, even in the days when he was sleeping in the office, known Strike to look like a down-and-out.