The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(128)

‘All right,’ she mumbled, cowed.

‘Elizabeth Tassel supervised work on the house in Talgarth Road, right? How was that paid for? Did she have a copy of your credit card?’

‘No,’ said Leonora.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure, cos we offered it to her and she said it was easier just to take it out of Owen’s next royalties cos he was due some any time. He sells well in Finland, I dunno why, but they like his—’

‘You can’t think of any time where Elizabeth Tassel did something for the house and had the Visa card?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘never.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, ‘can you remember – and take your time – any occasion when Owen paid for something with his credit card at Roper Chard?’

And to his astonishment she said, ‘Not at Roper Chard exactly, but yeah.

‘They were all there. I was there, too. It was… I dunno… two years ago? Maybe less… a big dinner for publishers, it was, at the Dorchester. They put me and Owen at a table with all the junior people. Daniel Chard and Jerry Waldegrave were nowhere near us. Anyway, there was a silent auction, you know, when you write down your bid for—’

‘Yeah, I know how they work,’ said Strike, trying to contain his impatience.

‘It was for some writers’ charity, when they try and get writers outta prison. And Owen bid on a weekend in this country house hotel and he won it and he had to give his credit card details at the dinner. Some of the young girls from the publishers were there all tarted up, taking payment. He gave the girl his card. I remember that because he was pissed,’ she said, with a shadow of her former sullenness, ‘an’ he paid eight hundred quid for it. Showin’ off. Tryin’ to make out he earned money like the others.’

‘He handed his credit card over to a girl from the publishers,’ repeated Strike. ‘Did she take the details at the table or—?’

‘She couldn’t make her little machine work,’ said Leonora. ‘She took it away and brought it back.’

‘Anyone else there you recognised?’

‘Michael Fancourt was there with his publisher,’ she said, ‘on the other side of the room. That was before he moved to Roper Chard.’

‘Did he and Owen speak?’

‘Not likely,’ she said.

‘Right, what about—?’ he said, and hesitated. They had never before acknowledged the existence of Kathryn Kent.

‘His girlfriend coulda got at it any time, couldn’t she?’ said Leonora, as though she had read his mind.

‘You knew about her?’ he asked, matter-of-fact.

‘Police said something,’ replied Leonora, her expression bleak. ‘There’s always been someone. Way he was. Picking them up at his writing classes. I used to give him right tellings-off. When they said he was – when they said he was – he was tied up—’

She had started to cry again.

‘I knew it must’ve been a woman what done it. He liked that. Got him going.’

‘You didn’t know about Kathryn Kent before the police mentioned her?’

‘I saw her name on a text on his phone one time but he said it was nothing. Said she was just one of his students. Like he always said. Told me he’d never leave us, me and Orlando.’

She wiped her eyes under her outdated glasses with the back of a thin, trembling hand.

‘But you never saw Kathryn Kent until she came to the door to say that her sister had died?’

‘Was that her, was it?’ asked Leonora, sniffing and dabbing at her eyes with her cuff. ‘Fat, i’n’t she? Well, she could’ve got his credit card details any time, couldn’t she? Taken it out of his wallet while he was sleeping.’

It was going to be difficult to find and question Kathryn Kent, Strike knew. He was sure she would have absconded from her flat to avoid the attentions of the press.

‘The things the murderer bought on the card,’ he said, changing tack, ‘were ordered online. You haven’t got a computer at home, have you?’

‘Owen never liked ’em, he preferred his old type—’

‘Have you ever ordered shopping over the internet?’

‘Yeah,’ she replied, and his heart sank a little. He had been hoping that Leonora might be that almost mythical beast: a computer virgin.

‘Where did you do that?’

‘Edna’s, she let me borrow hers to order Orlando an art set for her birthday so I didn’t have to go into town,’ said Leonora.

Doubtless the police would soon be confiscating and ripping apart the kind-hearted Edna’s computer.

A woman with a shaved head and a tattooed lip at the next table began shouting at a warder, who had warned her to stay in her seat. Leonora cowered away from the prisoner as she erupted into obscenities and the officer approached.

‘Leonora, there’s one last thing,’ said Strike loudly, as the shouting at the next table reached a crescendo. ‘Did Owen say anything to you about meaning to go away, to take a break, before he walked out on the fifth?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘’F course not.’

The prisoner at the next table had been persuaded to quieten down. Her visitor, a woman similarly tattooed and only slightly less aggressive-looking, gave the prison officer the finger as she walked away.