The Silkworm

“Witness claims she looked back at him over her shoulder and stared, because she recognized him.”

“He was just walking past?”

“So she claims.”

“Anybody checked that with Fancourt yet?”

“He’s in Germany, but he’s said he’s happy to cooperate with us when he gets back. Agent bending over backwards to be helpful.”

“Any other suspicious activity around Talgarth Road? Camera footage?”

“The only camera’s at the wrong angle for the house, it watches traffic—but I’m saving the best till last. We’ve got a different neighbor—other side, four doors down—who swears he saw a fat woman in a burqa letting herself in on the afternoon of the fourth, carrying a plastic bag from a halal takeaway. He says he noticed because the house had been empty so long. He claims she was there for an hour, then left.”

“He’s sure she was in Quine’s house?”

“So he says.”

“And she had a key?”

“That’s his story.”

“A burqa,” repeated Strike. “Bloody hell.”

“I wouldn’t swear his eyesight’s great; he’s got very thick lenses in his glasses. He told me he didn’t know of any Muslims living in the street, so it had caught his attention.”

“So we’ve got two alleged sightings of Quine since he walked out on his wife: early hours of the sixth, and on the eighth, in Putney.”

“Yeah,” said Anstis, “but I wouldn’t pin too much hope on either of them, Bob.”

“You think he died the night he left,” said Strike, more statement than question, and Anstis nodded.

“Underhill thinks so.”

“No sign of the knife?”

“Nothing. The only knife in the kitchen was a very blunt, everyday one. Definitely not up to the job.”

“Who do we know had a key to the place?”

“Your client,” said Anstis, “obviously. Quine himself must’ve had one. Fancourt’s got two, he’s already told us that by phone. The Quines lent one to his agent when she was organizing some repairs for them; she says she gave it back. A next-door neighbor’s got a key so he can let himself in if anything goes wrong with the place.”

“Didn’t he go in once the stink got bad?”

“One side did put a note through the door complaining about the smell, but the key holder left for two months in New Zealand a fortnight ago. We’ve spoken to him by phone. Last time he was in the house was in about May, when he took delivery of a couple of packages while some workmen were in and put them in the hall. Mrs. Quine’s vague about who else might have been lent a key over the years.

“She’s an odd woman, Mrs. Quine,” Anstis went on smoothly, “isn’t she?”

“Haven’t thought about it,” lied Strike.

“You know the neighbors heard her chasing him, the night he disappeared?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. She ran out of the house after him, screaming. The neighbors all say”—Anstis was watching Strike closely—“that she yelled ‘I know where you’re off to, Owen!’”

“Well, she thought she did know,” Strike said with a shrug. “She thought he was going to the writer’s retreat Christian Fisher told him about. Bigley Hall.”

“She’s refusing to move out of the house.”

“She’s got a mentally handicapped daughter who’s never slept anywhere else. Can you imagine Leonora overpowering Quine?”

“No,” said Anstis, “but we know it turned him on to be tied up, and I doubt they were married for thirty-odd years without her knowing that.”

“You think they had a row, then she tracked him down and suggested a bit of bondage?”

Anstis gave the suggestion of a small, token laugh, then said:

“It doesn’t look great for her, Bob. Angry wife with the key to the house, early access to the manuscript, plenty of motive if she knew about the mistress, especially if there was any question of Quine leaving her and the daughter for Kent. Only her word for it that ‘I know where you’re going’ meant this writer’s retreat and not the house on Talgarth Road.”

“Sounds convincing when you put it like that,” Strike said.

“But you don’t think so.”

“She’s my client,” said Strike. “I’m being paid to think of alternatives.”

“Has she told you where she used to work?” asked Anstis, with the air of a man about to play his trump card. “Back in Hay-on-Wye, before they were married?”

“Go on,” said Strike, not without a degree of apprehension.

“In her uncle’s butcher’s shop,” said Anstis.

Outside the study door Strike heard Timothy Cormoran Anstis thudding down the stairs again, screaming his head off at some fresh disappointment. For the first time in their unsatisfactory acquaintance, Strike felt a real empathy for the boy.

24

All well bred persons lie—Besides, you are a woman; you must never speak what you think…

William Congreve, Love for Love

Strike’s dreams that night, fueled by a day’s consumption of Doom Bar, by talk of blood, acid and blowflies, were strange and ugly.