The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(138)

‘There’s another crucial bit of physical evidence I’d like to get,’ he said, taking out a pair of gloves and handing them to an uncomprehending Robin. ‘I thought you could have a bash at getting hold of it while I’m with Fancourt this afternoon.’

In a few succinct words he explained what he wanted her to get, and why.

Not altogether to Strike’s surprise, a stunned silence followed his instructions.

‘You’re joking,’ said Robin faintly.

‘I’m not.’

She raised one hand unconsciously to her mouth.

‘It won’t be dangerous,’ Strike reassured her.

‘That’s not what’s worrying me. Cormoran, that’s – that’s horrific. You – are you really serious?’

‘If you’d seen Leonora Quine in Holloway last week, you wouldn’t ask that,’ said Strike darkly. ‘We’re going to have to be bloody clever to get her out of there.’

Clever? thought Robin, still fazed as she stood with the limp gloves dangling from her hand. His suggestions for the day’s activities seemed wild, bizarre and, in the case of the last, disgusting.

‘Look,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t know what to tell you except I can feel it. I can smell it, Robin. Someone deranged, bloody dangerous but efficient lurking behind all this. They got that idiot Quine exactly where they wanted him by playing on his narcissism, and I’m not the only one who thinks so either.’

Strike threw Robin her coat and she put it on; he was tucking evidence bags into his inside pocket.

‘People keep telling me there was someone else involved: Chard says it’s Waldegrave, Waldegrave says it’s Tassel, Pippa Midgley’s too stupid to interpret what’s staring her in the face and Christian Fisher – well, he’s got more perspective, not being in the book,’ said Strike. ‘He put his finger on it without realising it.’

Robin, who was struggling to keep up with Strike’s thought processes and sceptical of those parts she could understand, followed him down the metal staircase and out into the cold.

‘This murder,’ said Strike, lighting a cigarette as they walked down Denmark Street together, ‘was months if not years in the planning. Work of genius, when you think about it, but it’s over-elaborate and that’s going to be its downfall. You can’t plot murder like a novel. There are always loose ends in real life.’

Strike could tell that he was not convincing Robin, but he was not worried. He had worked with disbelieving subordinates before. Together they descended into the Tube and onto a Central line train.

‘What did you get for your nephews?’ Robin asked after a long silence.

‘Camouflage gear and fake guns,’ said Strike, whose choice had been entirely motivated by the desire to aggravate his brother-in-law, ‘and I got Timothy Anstis a bloody big drum. They’ll enjoy that at five o’clock on Christmas morning.’

In spite of her preoccupation, Robin snorted with laughter.

The quiet row of houses from which Owen Quine had fled a month previously was, like the rest of London, covered in snow, pristine and pale on the roofs and grubby grey underfoot. The happy Inuit smiled down from his pub sign like the presiding deity of the wintry street as they passed beneath him.

A different policeman stood outside the Quine residence now and a white van was parked at the kerb with its doors open.

‘Digging for guts in the garden,’ Strike muttered to Robin as they drew nearer and spotted spades lying on the van floor. ‘They didn’t have any luck at Mucking Marshes and they’re not going to have any luck in Leonora’s flower beds either.’

‘So you say,’ replied Robin sotto voce, a little intimidated by the staring policeman, who was quite handsome.

‘So you’re going to help me prove this afternoon,’ replied Strike under his breath. ‘Morning,’ he called to the watchful constable, who did not respond.

Strike seemed energised by his crazy theory, but if by any remote chance he was right, Robin thought, the killing had grotesque features even beyond that carved-out corpse…

They headed up the front path of the house beside the Quines’, bringing them within feet of the watchful PC. Strike rang the bell, and after a short wait the door opened revealing a short, anxious-looking woman in her early sixties who was wearing a housecoat and wool-trimmed slippers.

‘Are you Edna?’ Strike asked.

‘Yes,’ she said timidly, looking up at him.

When Strike introduced himself and Robin Edna’s furrowed brow relaxed, to be replaced by a look of pathetic relief.

‘Oh, it’s you, I’ve heard all about you. You’re helping Leonora, you’re going to get her out, aren’t you?’

Robin felt horribly aware of the handsome PC, listening to all of it, feet away.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Edna, backing out of their way and beckoning them enthusiastically inside.

‘Mrs – I’m sorry, I don’t know your surname,’ began Strike, wiping his feet on the doormat (her house was warm, clean and much cosier than the Quines’, though identical in layout).

‘Call me Edna,’ she said, beaming at him.

‘Edna, thank you – you know, you ought to ask to see ID before you let anyone into your house.’