The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(125)

She seemed to be commiserating with him. He had not solved the case. The police had beaten him to it.

‘Listen, I’m having a few people over on Friday, fancy coming?’

‘Can’t, sorry,’ said Strike. ‘I’m having dinner with my brother.’

He could tell that she thought he was lying. There had been an almost imperceptible hesitation before he had said ‘my brother’, which might well have suggested a pause for rapid thought. Strike could not remember ever describing Al as his brother before. He rarely discussed his half-siblings on his father’s side.

Before she left the office that evening Robin set a mug of tea in front of him as he sat poring over the Quine file. She could almost feel the anger that Strike was doing his best to hide, and suspected that it was directed at himself quite as much as at Anstis.

‘It’s not over,’ she said, winding her scarf around her neck as she prepared to depart. ‘We’ll prove it wasn’t her.’

She had once before used the plural pronoun when Strike’s faith in himself had been at a low ebb. He appreciated the moral support, but a feeling of impotence was swamping his thought processes. Strike hated paddling on the periphery of the case, forced to watch as others dived for clues, leads and information.

He sat up late with the Quine file that night, reviewing the notes he had made of interviews, examining again the photographs he had printed off his phone. The mangled body of Owen Quine seemed to signal to him in the silence as corpses often did, exhaling mute appeals for justice and pity. Sometimes the murdered carried messages from their killers like signs forced into their stiff dead hands. Strike stared for a long time at the burned and gaping chest cavity, the ropes tight around ankles and wrists, the carcass trussed and gutted like a turkey, but try as he might, he could glean nothing from the pictures that he did not already know. Eventually he turned off all the lights and headed upstairs to bed.



It was a bittersweet relief to have to spend Thursday morning at the offices of his brunette client’s exorbitantly expensive divorce lawyers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Strike was glad to have something to while away time that could not be spent investigating Quine’s murder, but he still felt that he had been lured to the meeting under false pretences. The flirtatious divorcée had given him to understand that her lawyer wanted to hear from Strike in person how he had collected the copious evidence of her husband’s duplicity. He sat beside her at a highly polished mahogany table with room for twelve while she referred constantly to ‘what Cormoran managed to find out’ and ‘as Cormoran witnessed, didn’t you?’, occasionally touching his wrist. It did not take Strike long to deduce from her suave lawyer’s barely concealed irritation that it had not been his idea to have Strike in attendance. Nevertheless, as might have been expected when the hourly fee ran to over five hundred pounds, he showed no disposition to hurry matters along.

On a trip to the bathroom Strike checked his phone and saw, in tiny thumbnail pictures, Leonora being led in and out of Wood Green Crown Court. She had been charged and driven away in a police van. There had been plenty of press photographers but no members of the public baying for her blood; she was not supposed to have murdered anyone that the public much cared about.

A text from Robin arrived just as he was about to re-enter the conference room:



Could get you in to see Leonora at 6 this evening?





Great, he texted back.

‘I thought,’ said his flirtatious client, once he had sat back down, ‘that Cormoran might be rather impressive on the witness stand.’

Strike had already shown her lawyer the meticulous notes and photographs he had compiled, detailing Mr Burnett’s every covert transaction, the attempted sale of the apartment and the palming of the emerald necklace included. To Mrs Burnett’s evident disappointment, neither man saw any reason for Strike to attend court in person given the quality of his records. Indeed, the lawyer could barely conceal his resentment of the reliance she seemed to place upon the detective. No doubt he thought this wealthy divorcée’s discreet caresses and batted eyelashes might be better directed towards him, in his bespoke pinstripe suit, with his distinguished salt-and-pepper hair, instead of a man who looked like a limping prize fighter.

Relieved to quit the rarefied atmosphere, Strike caught the Tube back to his office, glad to take off his suit in his flat, happy to think that he would soon be rid of that particular case and in possession of the fat cheque that had been the only reason he had taken it. He was free now to focus on that thin, grey-haired fifty-year-old woman in Holloway who was touted as WRITER’S MOUSY WIFE EXPERT WITH CLEAVER on page two of the Evening Standard he had picked up on the journey.

‘Was her lawyer happy?’ Robin asked when he reappeared in the office.

‘Reasonably,’ said Strike, staring at the miniature tinsel Christmas tree she had placed on her tidy desk. It was decorated with tiny baubles and LED lights.

‘Why?’ he asked succinctly.

‘Christmas,’ said Robin, with a faint grin but without apology. ‘I was going to put it up yesterday, but after Leonora was charged I didn’t feel very festive. Anyway, I’ve got you an appointment to see her at six. You’ll need to take photo ID—’

‘Good work, thanks.’

‘—and I got you sandwiches and I thought you might like to see this,’ she said. ‘Michael Fancourt’s given an interview about Quine.’