The Silkworm

“The plates. Knives and forks…”

“Exactly,” said Strike.

Without thinking, he pulled his mobile out of his pocket and brought up the photos he had taken, then caught sight of her frightened expression.

“No,” he said, “sorry, forgot you’re not—”

“Give it to me,” she said.

What had he forgotten? That she was not trained or experienced, not a policewoman or a soldier? She wanted to live up to his momentary forgetfulness. She wanted to step up, to be more than she was.

“I want to see,” she lied.

He handed over the telephone with obvious misgivings.

Robin did not flinch, but as she stared at the open hole in the cadaver’s chest and stomach her own insides seemed to shrink in horror. Raising her mug to her lips, she found that she did not want to drink. The worst was the angled close-up of the face, eaten away by whatever had been poured on it, blackened and with that burned-out eye socket…

The plates struck her as an obscenity. Strike had zoomed in on one of them; the place setting had been meticulously arranged.

“My God,” she said numbly, handing the phone back.

“Now read this,” said Strike, handing her the relevant pages.

She did so in silence. When she had finished, she looked up at him with eyes that seemed to have doubled in size.

“My God,” she said again.

Her mobile rang. She pulled it out of the handbag on the sofa beside her and looked at it. Matthew. Still furious at him, she pressed “ignore.”

“How many people,” she asked Strike, “d’you think have read this book?”

“Could be a lot of them by now. Fisher emailed bits of it all over town; between him and the lawyers’ letters, it’s become hot property.”

And a strange, random thought crossed Strike’s mind as he spoke: that Quine could not have arranged better publicity if he had tried…but he could not have poured acid over himself while tied up, or cut out his own guts…

“It’s been kept in a safe at Roper Chard that half the company seems to know the code for,” he went on. “That’s how I got hold of it.”

“But don’t you think the killer’s likely to be someone who’s in the—?”

Robin’s mobile rang again. She glanced down at it: Matthew. Again, she pressed “ignore.”

“Not necessarily,” said Strike, answering her unfinished question. “But the people he’s written about are going to be high on the list when the police start interviewing. Of the characters I recognize, Leonora claims not to have read it, so does Kathryn Kent—”

“Do you believe them?” asked Robin.

“I believe Leonora. Not sure about Kathryn Kent. How did the line go? ‘To see thee tortur’d would give me pleasure’?”

“I can’t believe a woman would have done that,” said Robin at once, glancing at Strike’s mobile now lying on the desk between them.

“Did you never hear about the Australian woman who skinned her lover, decapitated him, cooked his head and buttocks and tried to serve him up to his kids?”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m totally serious. Look it up on the net. When women turn, they really turn,” said Strike.

“He was a big man…”

“If it was a woman he trusted? A woman he met for sex?”

“Who do we know for sure has read it?”

“Christian Fisher, Elizabeth Tassel’s assistant Ralph, Tassel herself, Jerry Waldegrave, Daniel Chard—they’re all characters, except Ralph and Fisher. Nina Lascelles—”

“Who are Waldegrave and Chard? Who’s Nina Lascelles?”

“Quine’s editor, the head of his publisher and the girl who helped me nick this,” said Strike, giving the manuscript a slap.

Robin’s mobile rang for the third time.

“Sorry,” she said impatiently, and picked it up. “Yes?”

“Robin.”

Matthew’s voice sounded strangely congested. He never cried and he had never before shown himself particularly overcome by remorse at an argument.

“Yes?” she said, a little less sharply.

“Mum’s had another stroke. She’s—she’s—”

An elevator drop in the pit of her stomach.

“Matt?”

He was crying.

“Matt?” she repeated urgently.

“’S dead,” he said, like a little boy.

“I’m coming,” said Robin. “Where are you? I’ll come now.”

Strike was watching her face. He saw tidings of death there and hoped it was nobody she loved, neither of her parents, none of her brothers…

“All right,” she was saying, already on her feet. “Stay there. I’m coming.

“It’s Matt’s mother,” she told Strike. “She’s died.”

It felt utterly unreal. She could not believe it.

“They were only talking on the phone last night,” she said. Remembering Matt’s rolling eyes and the muffled voice she had just heard, she was overwhelmed with tenderness and sympathy. “I’m so sorry but—”

“Go,” said Strike. “Tell him I’m sorry, will you?”

“Yes,” said Robin, trying to fasten her handbag, her fingers grown clumsy in her agitation. She had known Mrs. Cunliffe since primary school. She slung her raincoat over her arm. The glass door flashed and closed behind her.

Strike’s eyes remained fixed for a few seconds on the place where Robin had vanished. Then he looked down at his watch. It was barely nine o’clock. The brunet divorcée whose emeralds lay in his safe was due at the office in just over half an hour.