The Silkworm

Orlando grew very red in the face. Glaring at her mother, she left the kitchen. This time she slammed the door hard behind her; it did not close, but bounced open again. Strike heard her stamping up the stairs; after a few steps she started shrieking incomprehensibly.

“Now she’s upset,” said Leonora dully, and tears toppled out of her pale eyes. Strike reached over to the ragged kitchen roll on the side, ripped some off and pressed it into her hand. She cried silently, her thin shoulders shaking, and Strike sat in silence, drinking the dregs of his horrible tea.

“Met Owen in a pub,” she mumbled unexpectedly, pushing up her glasses and blotting her wet face. “He was there for the festival. Hay-on-Wye. I’d never heard of him, but I could tell he was someone, way he was dressed and talking.”

And a faint glow of hero worship, almost extinguished by years of neglect and unhappiness, of putting up with his airs and tantrums, of trying to pay the bills and care for their daughter in this shabby little house, flickered again behind her tired eyes. Perhaps it had rekindled because her hero, like all the best heroes, was dead; perhaps it would burn forever now, like an eternal flame, and she would forget the worst and cherish the idea of him she had once loved…as long as she did not read his final manuscript, and his vile depiction of her…

“Leonora, I wanted to ask you something else,” Strike said gently, “and then I’ll be off. Have you had anymore dog excrement through your letter box in the last week?”

“In the last week?” she repeated thickly, still dabbing her eyes. “Yeah. Tuesday we did, I think. Or Wednesday, was it? But yeah. One more time.”

“And have you seen the woman you thought was following you?”

She shook her head, blowing her nose.

“Maybe I imagined it, I dunno…”

“And are you all right for money?”

“Yeah,” she said, blotting her eyes. “Owen had life insurance. I made him take it out, cos of Orlando. So we’ll be all right. Edna’s offered to lend me till it comes through.”

“Then I’ll be off,” said Strike, pushing himself back to his feet.

She trailed him up the dingy hall, still sniffing, and before the door had closed behind him he heard her calling:

“Dodo! Dodo, come down, I didn’t mean it!”

The young policeman outside stood partially blocking Strike’s path. He looked angry.

“I know who you are,” he said. His mobile phone was still clutched in his hand. “You’re Cormoran Strike.”

“No flies on you, are there?” said Strike. “Out of the way now, sonny, some of us have got proper work to do.”

22

…what murderer, hell-hound, devil can this be?

Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman

Forgetting that getting up was the difficult part when his knee was sore, Strike dropped into a corner seat on the Tube train and rang Robin.

“Hi,” he said, “have those journalists gone?”

“No, they’re still hanging round outside. You’re on the news, did you know?”

“I saw the BBC website. I rang Anstis and asked him to help play down the stuff about me. Has he?”

He heard her fingers tapping on the keyboard.

“Yeah, he’s quoted: ‘DI Richard Anstis has confirmed rumors that the body was found by private investigator Cormoran Strike, who made news earlier this year when he—’”

“Never mind that bit.”

“‘Mr. Strike was employed by the family to find Mr. Quine, who often went away without informing anyone of his whereabouts. Mr. Strike is not under suspicion and police are satisfied with his account of the discovery of the body.’”

“Good old Dickie,” said Strike. “This morning they were implying I conceal bodies to drum up business. Surprised the press are this interested in a dead fifty-eight-year-old has-been. It’s not as though they know how grisly the killing was yet.”

“It isn’t Quine who’s got them interested,” Robin told him. “It’s you.”

The thought gave Strike no pleasure. He did not want his face in the papers or on the television. The photographs of him that had appeared in the wake of the Lula Landry case had been small (room had been required for pictures of the stunning model, preferably partially clothed); his dark, surly features did not reproduce well in smudgy newsprint and he had managed to avoid a full-face picture as he entered court to give evidence against Landry’s killer. They had dredged up old photographs of him in uniform, but these had been years old, when he had been several stone lighter. Nobody had recognized him on appearance alone since his brief burst of fame and he had no wish to further endanger his anonymity.

“I don’t want to run into a bunch of hacks. Not,” he added wryly, as his knee throbbed, “that I could run if you paid me. Could you meet me—”

His favorite local was the Tottenham, but he did not want to expose it to the possibility of future press incursions.

“—in the Cambridge in about forty minutes?”

“No problem,” she said.

Only after he had hung up did it occur to Strike, first, that he ought to have asked after the bereaved Matthew, and second, that he ought to have asked her to bring his crutches.