The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(17)

‘And he hasn’t contacted you?’

‘No.’

‘Leonora says you told Quine his book was the best thing he’d ever produced, then changed your mind and refused to represent it.’

‘She says what? That’s not what – not – what I s—’

It was her worst paroxysm of coughing yet. Strike felt a strong urge to forcibly remove the cigarette from her hand as she hacked and spluttered. Finally the fit passed. She drank half a cup of hot coffee straight off, which seemed to bring her some relief. In a stronger voice, she repeated:

‘That’s not what I said. “The best thing he’d ever written” – is that what he told Leonora?’

‘Yes. What did you really say?’

‘I was ill,’ she said hoarsely, ignoring the question. ‘Flu. Off work for a week. Owen rang the office to tell me the novel was finished; Ralph told him I was at home in bed, so Owen couriered the manuscript straight to my house. I had to get up to sign for it. Absolutely typical of him. I had a temperature of a hundred and four and could barely stand. His book was finished so I was expected to read it immediately.’

She slugged down more coffee and said:

‘I chucked the manuscript on the hall table and went straight back to bed. Owen started ringing me, virtually on the hour, to see what I thought. All through Wednesday and Thursday he badgered me…

‘I’ve never done it before in thirty years in the business,’ she croaked. ‘I was supposed to be going away that weekend. I’d been looking forward to it. I didn’t want to cancel and I didn’t want Owen calling me every three minutes while I was away. So… just to get him off my back… I was still feeling awful… I skim-read it.’

She took a deep drag on her cigarette, coughed routinely, composed herself and said:

‘It didn’t look any worse than his last couple. If anything, it was an improvement. Quite an interesting premise. Some of the imagery was arresting. A Gothic fairy tale, a grisly Pilgrim’s Progress.’

‘Did you recognise anyone in the bits you read?’

‘The characters seemed mostly symbolic,’ she said, a touch defensively, ‘including the hagiographic self-portrait. Lots of p-perverse sex.’ She paused to cough again. ‘The mixture as usual, I thought… but I – I wasn’t reading carefully, I’d be the first to admit that.’

He could tell that she was not used to admitting fault.

‘I – well, I skimmed the last quarter, the bits where he writes about Michael and Daniel. I glanced at the ending, which was grotesque and a bit silly…

‘If I hadn’t been so ill, if I’d read it properly, naturally I’d have told him straight away that he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Daniel’s a st-strange man, very t-touchy’ – her voice was breaking up again; determined to finish her sentence she wheezed, ‘and M-Michael’s the nastiest – the nastiest—’ before exploding again into coughs.

‘Why would Mr Quine try and publish something that was bound to get him sued?’ Strike asked when she had stopped coughing.

‘Because Owen doesn’t think he’s subject to the same laws as the rest of society,’ she said roughly. ‘He thinks himself a genius, an enfant terrible. He takes pride in causing offence. He thinks it’s brave, heroic.’

‘What did you do with the book when you’d looked at it?’

‘I called Owen,’ she said, closing her eyes momentarily in what seemed to be fury at herself. ‘And said, “Yes, jolly good,” and I got Ralph to pick the damn thing up from my house, and asked him to make two copies, and send one to Jerry Waldegrave, Owen’s editor at Roper Chard and the other, G-God help me, to Christian Fisher.’

‘Why didn’t you just email the manuscript to the office?’ asked Strike curiously. ‘Didn’t you have it on a memory stick or something?’

She ground out her cigarette in a glass ashtray full of stubs.

‘Owen insists on continuing to use the old electric typewriter on which he wrote Hobart’s Sin. I don’t know whether it’s affectation or stupidity. He’s remarkably ignorant about technology. Maybe he tried to use a laptop and couldn’t. It’s just another way he contrives to make himself awkward.’

‘And why did you send copies to two publishers?’ asked Strike, although he already knew the answer.

‘Because Jerry Waldegrave might be a blessed saint and the nicest man in publishing,’ she replied, sipping more coffee, ‘but even he’s lost patience with Owen and his tantrums lately. Owen’s last book for Roper Chard barely sold. I thought it was only sensible to have a second string to our bow.’

‘When did you realise what the book was really about?’

‘Early that evening,’ she croaked. ‘Ralph called me. He’d sent off the two copies and then had a flick through the original. He phoned me and said, “Liz, have you actually read this?”’

Strike could well imagine the trepidation with which the pale young assistant had made the call, the courage it had taken, the agonised deliberation with his female colleague before he had reached his decision.

‘I had to admit I hadn’t… or not thoroughly,’ she muttered. ‘He read me a few choice excerpts I’d missed and…’