The Silkworm

She rang off before he could say anything else.

“Nina Lascelles,” he said as the waiter reappeared with his apple crumble and a coffee for Robin. “The girl—”

“Who stole the manuscript for you,” said Robin.

“Your memory would’ve been wasted in HR,” said Strike, picking up his spoon.

“Are you serious about Michael Fancourt?” she asked quietly.

“Course,” said Strike. “Daniel Chard must’ve told him what Quine had done—he wouldn’t have wanted Fancourt to hear it from anyone else, would he? Fancourt’s a major acquisition for them. No, I think we’ve got to assume that Fancourt knew, early on, what was in—”

Now Robin’s mobile rang.

“Hi,” said Matthew.

“Hi, how are you?” she asked anxiously.

“Not great.”

Somewhere in the background, someone turned up the music: “First day that I saw you, thought you were beautiful…”

“Where are you?” asked Matthew sharply.

“Oh…in a pub,” said Robin.

Suddenly the air seemed full of pub noises; clinking glasses, raucous laughter from the bar.

“It’s Cormoran’s birthday,” she said anxiously. (After all, Matthew and his colleagues went to the pub on each other’s birthdays…)

“That’s nice,” said Matthew, sounding furious. “I’ll call you later.”

“Matt, no—wait—”

Mouth full of apple crumble, Strike watched out of the corner of his eye as she got up and moved away to the bar without explanation, evidently trying to redial Matthew. The accountant was unhappy that his fiancée had gone out to lunch, that she was not sitting shiva for his mother.

Robin redialed and redialed. She got through at last. Strike finished both his crumble and his third pint and realized that he needed the bathroom.

His knee, which had not troubled him much while he ate, drank and talked to Robin, complained violently when he stood. By the time he got back to his seat he was sweating a little with the pain. Judging by the expression on her face, Robin was still trying to placate Matthew. When at last she hung up and rejoined him, he returned a short answer to whether or not he was all right.

“You know, I could follow the Brocklehurst girl for you,” she offered again, “if your leg’s too—?”

“No,” snapped Strike.

He felt sore, angry with himself, irritated by Matthew and suddenly a bit nauseous. He ought not to have eaten the chocolate before having steak, chips, crumble and three pints.

“I need you to go back to the office and type up Gunfrey’s last invoice. And text me if those bloody journalists are still around, because I’ll go straight from here to Anstis’s, if they are.

“We really need to be thinking about taking someone else on,” he added under his breath.

Robin’s expression hardened.

“I’ll go and get typing, then,” she said. She snatched up her coat and bag and left. Strike caught a glimpse of her angry expression, but an irrational vexation prevented him from calling her back.

23

For my part, I do not think she hath a soul so black

To act a deed so bloody.

John Webster, The White Devil

An afternoon in the pub with his leg propped up had not much reduced the swelling in Strike’s knee. After buying painkillers and a cheap bottle of red on the way to the Tube, he set out for Greenwich where Anstis lived with his wife, Helen, commonly known as Helly. The journey to their house in Ashburnham Grove took him over an hour due to a delay on the Central line; he stood the whole way, keeping his weight on his left leg, regretting anew the hundred pounds he had spent on taxis to and from Lucy’s house.

By the time he got off the Docklands Light Railway spots of rain were again peppering his face. He turned up his collar and limped away into the darkness for what should have been a five-minute walk, but which took him nearly fifteen.

Only as he turned the corner into the neat terraced street with its well-tended front gardens did it occur to Strike that he ought, perhaps, to have brought a gift for his godson. He felt as little enthusiasm for the social part of the evening ahead as he felt eager to discuss with Anstis the forensic information.

Strike did not like Anstis’s wife. Her nosiness was barely concealed beneath a sometimes cloying warmth; it emerged from time to time like a flick knife flashing suddenly from beneath a fur coat. She gushed gratitude and solicitousness every time Strike swam into her orbit, but he could tell that she itched for details of his checkered past, for information about his rock star father, his dead, drug-taking mother, and he could well imagine that she would yearn for details of his breakup with Charlotte, whom she had always treated with an effusiveness that failed to mask dislike and suspicion.