The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(162)

‘I think you got that poor naive, narcissistic sod to pose for a publicity photograph. Was he kneeling down? Did the hero in the real book plead, or pray? Or did he get tied up like your Bombyx? He’d have liked that, wouldn’t he, Quine, posing in ropes? It would’ve made it nice and easy to move behind him and smash his head in with the metal doorstop, wouldn’t it? Under cover of the neighbourhood fireworks, you knocked Quine out, tied him up, sliced him open and—’

Fancourt let out a strangled moan of horror, but Tassel spoke again, crooning at him in a travesty of consolation:

‘You ought to see someone, Mr Strike. Poor Mr Strike,’ and to his surprise she reached out to lay one of her big hands on his snow-covered shoulder. Remembering what those hands had done, Strike stepped back instinctively and her arm fell heavily back to her side, hanging there, the fingers clenching reflexively.

‘You filled a holdall with Owen’s guts and the real manuscript,’ said the detective. She had moved so close that he could again smell the combination of perfume and stale cigarettes. ‘Then you put on Quine’s own cloak and hat and left. Off you went, to feed a fourth copy of the fake Bombyx Mori through Kathryn Kent’s letter box, to maximise suspects and incriminate another woman who was getting what you never got – sex. Companionship. At least one friend.’

She feigned laughter again but this time the sound was manic. Her fingers were still flexing and unflexing.

‘You and Owen would have got on so well,’ she whispered. ‘Wouldn’t he, Michael? Wouldn’t he have got on marvellously with Owen? Sick fantasists… people will laugh at you, Mr Strike.’ She was panting harder than ever, those dead, blank eyes staring out of her fixed white face. ‘A poor cripple trying to recreate the sensation of success, chasing your famous fath—’

‘Have you got proof of any of this?’ Fancourt demanded in the swirling snow, his voice harsh with the desire not to believe. This was no ink-and-paper tragedy, no greasepaint death scene. Here beside him stood the living friend of his student years and whatever life had subsequently done to them, the idea that the big, ungainly, besotted girl whom he had known at Oxford could have turned into a woman capable of grotesque murder was almost unbearable.

‘Yeah, I’ve got proof,’ said Strike quietly. ‘I’ve got a second electric typewriter, the exact model of Quine’s, wrapped up in a black burqa and hydrochloric-stained overalls and weighted with stones. An amateur diver I happen to know pulled it out of the sea just a few days ago. It was lying beneath some notorious cliffs at Gwithian: Hell’s Mouth, a place featured on Dorcus Pengelly’s book cover. I expect she showed it to you when you visited, didn’t she, Elizabeth? Did you walk back there alone with your mobile, telling her you needed to find better reception?’

She let out a ghastly low moan, like the sound of a man who has been punched in the stomach. For a second nobody moved, then Tassel turned clumsily and began running and stumbling away from them, back towards the club. A bright yellow rectangle of light shivered then disappeared as the door opened and closed.

‘But,’ said Fancourt, taking a few steps and looking back at Strike a little wildly, ‘you can’t – you’ve got to stop her!’

‘Couldn’t catch her if I wanted to,’ said Strike, throwing the butt of his cigarette down into the snow. ‘Dodgy knee.’

‘She could do anything—’

‘Off to kill herself, probably,’ agreed Strike, pulling out his mobile.

The writer stared at him.

‘You – you cold-blooded bastard!’

‘You’re not the first to say it,’ said Strike, pressing keys on his phone. ‘Ready?’ he said into it. ‘We’re off.’





49





Dangers, like stars, in dark attempts best shine.



Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier





Out past the smokers at the front of the club the large woman came, blindly, slipping a little in the snow. She began to run up the dark street, her fur-collared coat flapping behind her.

A taxi, its ‘For Hire’ light on, slid out of a side road and she hailed it, flapping her arms madly. The cab slid to a halt, its headlamps making two cones of light whose trajectory was cut by the thickly falling snow.

‘Fulham Palace Road,’ said the harsh, deep voice, breaking with sobs.

They pulled slowly away from the kerb. The cab was old, the glass partition scratched and a little stained by years of its owner’s smoking. Elizabeth Tassel was visible in the rear-view mirror as the street light slid over her, sobbing silently into her large hands, shaking all over.

The driver did not ask what was the matter but looked beyond the fare to the street behind, where the shrinking figures of two men could be seen, hurrying across the snowy road to a red sports car in the distance.

The taxi turned left at the end of the road and still Elizabeth Tassel cried into her hands. The driver’s thick woollen hat was itchy, grateful though she had been for it during the long hours of waiting. On up the King’s Road the taxi sped, over thick powdery snow that resisted tyres’ attempts to squash it to slush, the blizzard swirling remorselessly, rendering the roads increasingly lethal.

‘You’re going the wrong way.’