The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(15)

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘It’s the – the eighth of January. I’ve got your invitation here,’ she said, stooping hurriedly over her bag (she had not even asked Matthew about inviting Strike, but too late for that). ‘Here.’

‘The eighth of January?’ Strike said, taking the silver envelope. ‘That’s only – what? – seven weeks away.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

There was a strange little pause. Strike could not remember immediately what else he wanted her to do; then it came back to him, and as he spoke he tapped the silver envelope against his palm, businesslike.

‘How’s it going with the Hiltons?’

‘I’ve done a few. Quine isn’t there under his own name and nobody’s recognised the description. There are loads of them, though, so I’m just working my way through the list. What are you up to after you see Elizabeth Tassel?’ she asked casually.

‘Pretending I want to buy a flat in Mayfair. Looks like somebody’s husband’s trying to realise some capital and take it offshore before his wife’s lawyers can stop him.

‘Well,’ he said, pushing the unopened wedding invitation deep into his overcoat pocket, ‘better be off. Got a bad author to find.’





8





I took the book and so the old man vanished.



John Lyly, Endymion: or, the Man in the Moon





It occurred to Strike as he travelled, standing, the one Tube stop to Elizabeth Tassel’s office (he was never fully relaxed on these short journeys, but braced to take the strain on his false leg, wary of falls) that Robin had not reproached him for taking on the Quine case. Not, of course, that it was her place to reproach her employer, but she had turned down a much higher salary to throw her lot in with his and it would not have been unreasonable for her to expect that once the debts were paid, a raise might be the least he could do for her. She was unusual in her lack of criticism, or critical silence; the only female in Strike’s life who seemed to have no desire to improve or correct him. Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you.

So she was marrying in seven weeks’ time. Seven weeks left until she became Mrs Matthew… but if he had ever known her fiancé’s surname, he could not recall it.

As he waited for the lift at Goodge Street, Strike experienced a sudden, crazy urge to call his divorcing brunette client – who had made it quite clear that she would welcome such a development – with a view to screwing her tonight in what he imagined would be her deep, soft, heavily perfumed bed in Knightsbridge. But the idea occurred only to be instantly dismissed. Such a move would be insanity; worse than taking on a missing-person case for which he was unlikely ever to see payment…

And why was he wasting time on Owen Quine? he asked himself, head bowed against the biting rain. Curiosity, he answered inwardly after a few moments’ thought, and perhaps something more elusive. As he headed down Store Street, squinting through the downpour and concentrating on maintaining his footing on the slippery pavements, he reflected that his palate was in danger of becoming jaded by the endless variations on cupidity and vengefulness that his wealthy clients kept bringing him. It had been a long time since he had investigated a missing-person case. There would be satisfaction in restoring the runaway Quine to his family.

Elizabeth Tassel’s literary agency lay in a mostly residential mews of dark brick, a surprisingly quiet cul-de-sac off busy Gower Street. Strike pressed a doorbell beside a discreet brass plaque. A light thumping sound ensued and a pale young man in an open-necked shirt opened the door at the foot of red-carpeted stairs.

‘Are you the private detective?’ he asked with what seemed to be a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Strike followed him, dripping all over the threadbare carpet, up the stairs to a mahogany door and into a large office space that had once, perhaps, been a separate hall and sitting room.

Aged elegance was slowly disintegrating into shabbiness. The windows were misty with condensation and the air heavy with old cigarette smoke. A plethora of overstocked wooden bookcases lined the walls and the dingy wallpaper was almost obscured by framed literary caricatures and cartoons. Two heavy desks sat facing each other across a scuffed rug, but neither was occupied.

‘Can I take your coat?’ the young man asked, and a thin and frightened-looking girl jumped up from behind one of the desks. She was holding a stained sponge in one hand.

‘I can’t get it out, Ralph!’ she whispered frantically to the young man with Strike.

‘Bloody thing,’ Ralph muttered irritably. ‘Elizabeth’s decrepit old dog’s puked under Sally’s desk,’ he confided, sotto voce, as he took Strike’s sodden Crombie and hung it on a Victorian coat-stand just inside the door. ‘I’ll let her know you’re here. Just keep scrubbing,’ he advised his colleague as he crossed to a second mahogany door and opened it a crack.

‘That’s Mr Strike, Liz.’

There was a loud bark, followed immediately by a deep, rattling human cough that could have plausibly issued from the lungs of an old coal miner.

‘Grab him,’ said a hoarse voice.

The door to the agent’s office opened, revealing Ralph, who was holding tight to the collar of an aged but evidently still feisty Dobermann pinscher, and a tall, thick-set woman of around sixty, with large, uncompromisingly plain features. The geometrically perfect steel-grey bob, a black suit of severe cut and a slash of crimson lipstick gave her a certain dash. She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.