The Silkworm

Charlotte was getting married and he, Strike, was running to an eerie Gothic cathedral, running on two whole, functioning legs, because he knew that she had just given birth to his child and he needed to see it, to save it. There she was, in the vast, dark empty space, alone at the altar, struggling into a blood-red gown, and somewhere out of sight, perhaps in a cold vestry, lay his baby, naked, helpless and abandoned.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“You’re not seeing it. You didn’t want it. Anyway, there’s something wrong with it,” she said.

He was afraid of what he would see if he went to find the baby. Her bridegroom was nowhere to be seen but she was ready for the wedding, in a thick scarlet veil.

“Leave it, it’s horrible,” she said coldly, pushing past him, walking alone away from the altar, back up the aisle towards the distant doorway. “You’d only touch it,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I don’t want you touching it. You’ll see it eventually. It’ll have to be announced,” she added in a vanishing voice, as she became a sliver of scarlet dancing in the light of the open doors, “in the papers…”

He was suddenly awake in the morning gloom, his mouth dry and his knee throbbing ominously in spite of a night’s rest.

Winter had slid in the night like a glacier over London. A hard frost had iced the outside of his attic window and the temperature inside his rooms, with their ill-fitting windows and doors and the total lack of insulation under the roof, had plummeted.

Strike got up and reached for a sweater lying on the end of his bed. When he came to fix on his prosthesis, he found that his knee was exceptionally swollen after the journey to and from Greenwich. The shower water took longer than usual to heat up; he cranked up the thermostat, fearing burst pipes and frozen gutters, subzero living quarters and an expensive plumber. After drying himself off, he unearthed his old sports bandages from the box on the landing to strap up his knee.

He knew, now, as clearly as though he had spent the night puzzling it out, how Helly Anstis knew Charlotte’s wedding plans. He had been stupid not to think of it before. His subconscious had known.

Once clean, dressed and breakfasted he headed downstairs. Glancing out of the window behind his desk, he noted that the knifelike cold was keeping away the little cluster of journalists who had waited in vain for his return the previous day. Sleet pattered on the windows as he moved back to the outer office and Robin’s computer. Here, in the search engine, he typed: charlotte campbell hon jago ross wedding.

Pitiless and prompt came the results.

Tatler, December 2010: Cover girl Charlotte Campbell on her wedding to the future Viscount of Croy…

“Tatler,” said Strike aloud in the office.

He only knew of the magazine’s existence because its society pages were full of Charlotte’s friends. She had bought it, sometimes, to read ostentatiously in front of him, commenting on men she had once slept with, or whose stately homes she had partied in.

And now she was the Christmas cover girl.

Even strapped up, his knee complained at having to support him down the metal stairs and out into the sleet. There was an early morning queue at the counter of the newsagents. Calmly he scanned the shelves of magazines: soap stars on the cheap ones and film stars on the expensive; December issues almost sold out, even though they were still in November. Emma Watson in white on the cover of Vogue (“The Super Star Issue”), Rihanna in pink on Marie Claire (“The Glamour Issue”) and on the cover of Tatler…

Pale, perfect skin, black hair blown away from high cheekbones and wide hazel-green eyes, flecked like a russet apple. Two huge diamonds dangling from her ears and a third on the hand lying lightly against her face. A dull, blunt hammer blow to the heart, absorbed without the slightest external sign. He took the magazine, the last on the shelf, paid for it and returned to Denmark Street.

It was twenty to nine. He shut himself in his office, sat down at his desk and laid the magazine down in front of him.

IN-CROY-ABLE! Former Wild Child turned future Viscountess, Charlotte Campbell.

The strap line ran across Charlotte’s swanlike neck.

It was the first time he had looked at her since she had clawed his face in this very office and run from him, straight into the arms of the Honorable Jago Ross. He supposed that they must airbrush all their pictures. Her skin could not be this flawless, the whites of her eyes this pure, but they had not exaggerated anything else, not the exquisite bone structure, nor (he was sure) the size of the diamond on her finger.