The Silkworm

“My point is,” Robin pressed on doggedly, “that you can’t necessarily trust Quine when it comes to other people’s sex lives, because his characters all seem to sleep with anyone and anything. I looked him up on Wikipedia. One of the key features of his books is how characters keep swapping their gender or sexual orientation.”

“Bombyx Mori’s like that,” grunted Strike, helping himself to more chocolate. “This is good, want a bit?”

“I’m supposed to be on a diet,” said Robin sadly. “For the wedding.”

Strike did not think she needed to lose any weight at all, but said nothing as she took a piece.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Robin diffidently, “about the killer.”

“Always keen to hear from the psychologist. Go on.”

“I’m not a psychologist,” she half laughed.

She had dropped out of her psychology degree. Strike had never pressed her for an explanation, nor had she ever volunteered one. It was something they had in common, dropping out of university. He had left when his mother had died of a mysterious overdose and, perhaps because of this, he had always assumed that something traumatic had made Robin leave too.

“I’ve just been wondering why they tied his murder so obviously to the book. On the surface it looks like a deliberate act of revenge and malice, to show the world that Quine got what he deserved for writing it.”

“Looks like that,” agreed Strike, who was still hungry; he reached over to a neighboring table and plucked a menu off it. “I’m going to have steak and chips, want something?”

Robin chose a salad at random and then, to spare Strike’s knee, went up to the bar to give their order.

“But on the other hand,” Robin continued, sitting back down, “copycatting the last scene of the book could have seemed like a good way of concealing a different motive, couldn’t it?”

She was forcing herself to speak matter-of-factly, as though they were discussing an abstract problem, but Robin had not been able to forget the pictures of Quine’s body: the dark cavern of the gouged-out torso, the burned-out crevices where once had been mouth and eyes. If she thought about what had been done to Quine too much, she knew that she might not be able to eat her lunch, or that she might somehow betray her horror to Strike, who was watching her with a disconcertingly shrewd expression in his dark eyes.

“It’s all right to admit what happened to him makes you want to puke,” he said through a mouthful of chocolate.

“It doesn’t,” she lied automatically. Then, “Well, obviously—I mean, it was horrific—”

“Yeah, it was.”

If he had been back with his SIB colleagues he would have been making jokes about it by now. Strike could remember many afternoons laden with pitch-black humor: it was the only way to get through certain investigations. Robin, however, was not yet ready for professionally callous self-defense and her attempt at dispassionate discussion of a man whose guts had been torn out proved it.

“Motive’s a bitch, Robin. Nine times out of ten you only find out why when you’ve found out who. It’s means and opportunity we want. Personally,” he took a gulp of beer, “I think we might be looking for someone with medical knowledge.”

“Medical—?”

“Or anatomical. It didn’t look amateur, what they did to Quine. They could’ve hacked him to bits, trying to remove the intestines, but I couldn’t see any false starts: one clean, confident incision.”

“Yes,” said Robin, struggling to maintain her objective, clinical manner. “That’s true.”

“Unless we’re dealing with some literary maniac who just got hold of a good textbook,” mused Strike. “Seems a stretch, but you don’t know…If he was tied up and drugged and they had enough nerve, they might’ve been able to treat it like a biology lesson…”

Robin could not restrain herself.

“I know you always say motive’s for lawyers,” she said a little desperately (Strike had repeated this maxim many times since she had come to work for him), “but humor me for a moment. The killer must have felt that to murder Quine in the same way as the book was worth it for some reason that outweighed the obvious disadvantages—”

“Which were?”

“Well,” said Robin, “the logistical difficulties of making it such an—an elaborate killing, and the fact that the pool of suspects would be confined to people who’ve read the book—”

“Or heard about it in detail,” said Strike, “and you say ‘confined,’ but I’m not sure we’re looking at a small number of people. Christian Fisher made it his business to spread the contents of the book as far and as wide as he could. Roper Chard’s copy of the manuscript was in a safe to which half the company seems to have had access.”

“But…” said Robin.

She broke off as a sullen barman came over to dump cutlery and paper napkins on their table.

“But,” she resumed when he had sloped away, “Quine can’t have been killed that recently, can he? I mean, I’m no expert…”