The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(4)

Strike’s innate orderliness was manifest throughout: the bed was made, the crockery clean, everything in its place. He needed a shave and shower, but that could wait; after hanging up his overcoat, he set his alarm for nine twenty and stretched out on the bed fully clothed.

He fell asleep within seconds and within a few more – or so it seemed – he was awake again. Somebody was knocking on his door.

‘I’m sorry, Cormoran, I’m really sorry—’

His assistant, a tall young woman with long strawberry-blonde hair, looked apologetic as he opened the door, but at the sight of him her expression became appalled.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Wuzassleep. Been ’wake all night – two nights.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Robin repeated, ‘but it’s nine forty and William Baker’s here and getting—’

‘Shit,’ mumbled Strike. ‘Can’t’ve set the alarm right – gimme five min—’

‘That’s not all,’ said Robin. ‘There’s a woman here. She hasn’t got an appointment. I’ve told her you haven’t got room for another client, but she’s refusing to leave.’

Strike yawned, rubbing his eyes.

‘Five minutes. Make them tea or something.’

Six minutes later, in a clean shirt, smelling of toothpaste and deodorant but still unshaven, Strike entered the outer office where Robin was sitting at her computer.

‘Well, better late than never,’ said William Baker with a rigid smile. ‘Lucky you’ve got such a good-looking secretary, or I might have got bored and left.’

Strike saw Robin flush angrily as she turned away, ostensibly organising the post. There had been something inherently offensive in the way that Baker had said ‘secretary’. Immaculate in his pinstriped suit, the company director was employing Strike to investigate two of his fellow board members.

‘Morning, William,’ said Strike.

‘No apology?’ murmured Baker, his eyes on the ceiling.

‘Hello, who are you?’ Strike asked, ignoring him and addressing instead the slight, middle-aged woman in an old brown overcoat who was perched on the sofa.

‘Leonora Quine,’ she replied, in what sounded, to Strike’s practised ear, like a West Country accent.

‘I’ve got a very busy morning ahead, Strike,’ said Baker.

He walked without invitation into the inner office. When Strike did not follow, he lost a little of his suavity.

‘I doubt you got away with shoddy time-keeping in the army, Mr Strike. Come along, please.’

Strike did not seem to hear him.

‘What exactly is it you were wanting me to do for you, Mrs Quine?’ he asked the shabby woman on the sofa.

‘Well, it’s my husband—’

‘Mr Strike, I’ve got an appointment in just over an hour,’ said William Baker, more loudly.

‘—your secretary said you didn’t have no appointments but I said I’d wait.’

‘Strike!’ barked William Baker, calling his dog to heel.

‘Robin,’ snarled the exhausted Strike, losing his temper at last. ‘Make up Mr Baker’s bill and give him the file; it’s up to date.’

‘What?’ said William Baker, thrown. He re-emerged into the outer office.

‘He’s sacking you,’ said Leonora Quine with satisfaction.

‘You haven’t finished the job,’ Baker told Strike. ‘You said there was more—’

‘Someone else can finish the job for you. Someone who doesn’t mind tossers as clients.’

The atmosphere in the office seemed to become petrified. Wooden-faced, Robin retrieved Baker’s file from the outer cabinet and handed it to Strike.

‘How dare—’

‘There’s a lot of good stuff in that file that’ll stand up in court,’ said Strike, handing it to the director. ‘Well worth the money.’

‘You haven’t finished—’

‘He’s finished with you,’ interjected Leonora Quine.

‘Will you shut up, you stupid wom—’ William Baker began, then took a sudden step backwards as Strike took a half-step forwards. Nobody said anything. The ex-serviceman seemed suddenly to be filling twice as much space as he had just seconds before.

‘Take a seat in my office, Mrs Quine,’ said Strike quietly.

She did as she was told.

‘You think she’ll be able to afford you?’ sneered a retreating William Baker, his hand now on the door handle.

‘My fees are negotiable,’ said Strike, ‘if I like the client.’

He followed Leonora Quine into his office and closed the door behind him with a snap.





3





… left alone to bear up all these ills…



Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier





‘He’s a right one, isn’t he?’ commented Leonora Quine as she sat down in the chair facing Strike’s desk.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Strike, sinking heavily into the seat opposite her. ‘He is.’

In spite of a barely crumpled pink-and-white complexion and the clear whites of her pale blue eyes, she looked around fifty. Fine, limp, greying hair was held off her face by two plastic combs and she was blinking at him through old-fashioned glasses with over-large plastic frames. Her coat, though clean, had surely been bought in the eighties. It had shoulder pads and large plastic buttons.