The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(44)

Westbourne Park station came into sight a little way ahead: a long, low building of golden brick. He would confront her there, ask her the time, get a good look at her face.

Turning into the station, he drew quickly to the far side of the entrance, waiting for her, out of sight.

Some thirty seconds later he glimpsed the tall, dark figure jogging towards the entrance through the glittering rain, hands still in her pockets; she was frightened that she might have missed him, that he was already on a train.

He took a swift, confident step out into the doorway to face her – the false foot slipped on the wet tiled floor and skidded.

‘Fuck!’

With an undignified descent into half-splits, he lost his footing and fell; in the long, slow-motion seconds before he reached the dirty wet floor, landing painfully on the bottle of whisky in his carrier bag, he saw her freeze in silhouette in the entrance, then vanish like a startled deer.

‘Bollocks,’ he gasped, lying on the sopping tiles while people at the ticket machines stared. He had twisted his leg again as he fell; it felt as though he might have torn a ligament; the knee that had been merely sore was now screaming in protest. Inwardly cursing imperfectly mopped floors and prosthetic ankles of rigid construction, Strike tried to get up. Nobody wanted to approach him. No doubt they thought he was drunk – Nick and Ilsa’s whisky had now escaped the carrier bag and was rolling clunkily across the floor.

Finally a London Underground employee helped him to his feet, muttering about there being a sign warning of the wet floor; hadn’t the gentleman seen it, wasn’t it prominent enough? He handed Strike his whisky. Humiliated, Strike muttered a thank you and limped over to the ticket barriers, wanting only to escape the countless staring eyes.

Safely on a southbound train he stretched out his throbbing leg and probed his knee as best he could through his suit trousers. It felt tender and sore, exactly as it had after he had fallen down those stairs last spring. Furious, now, with the girl who had been following him, he tried to make sense of what had happened.

When had she joined him? Had she been watching the Quine place, seen him go inside? Might she (an unflattering possibility) have mistaken Strike for Owen Quine? Kathryn Kent had certainly done so, briefly, in the dark…

Strike got to his feet some minutes before changing at Hammersmith to better prepare himself for what might be a perilous descent. By the time he reached his destination of Barons Court, he was limping heavily and wishing that he had a stick. He made his way out of a ticket hall tiled in Victorian pea green, placing his feet with care on the floor covered in grimy wet prints. Too soon he had left the dry shelter of the small jewel of a station, with its art nouveau lettering and stone pediments, and proceeded in the relentless rain towards the rumbling dual carriageway that lay close by.

To his relief and gratitude, he realised that he had emerged on that very stretch of Talgarth Road where the house he sought stood.

Though London was full of these kinds of architectural anomalies, he had never seen buildings that jarred so obviously with their surroundings. The old houses sat in a distinctive row, dark red brick relics of a more confident and imaginative time, while traffic rumbled unforgivingly past them in both directions, for this was the main artery into London from the west.

They were ornate late-Victorian artists’ studios, their lower windows leaded and latticed and oversized arched north-facing windows on their upper floors, like fragments of the vanished Crystal Palace. Wet, cold and sore though he was, Strike paused for a few seconds to look up at number 179, marvelling at its distinctive architecture and wondering how much the Quines would stand to make if Fancourt ever changed his mind and agreed to sell.

He heaved himself up the white front steps. The front door was sheltered from the rain by a brick canopy richly ornamented with carved stone swags, scrolls and badges. Strike brought out the keys one by one with cold, numb fingers.

The fourth one he tried slid home without protest and turned as though it had been doing so for years. One gentle click and the front door slid open. He crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him.

A shock, like a slap in the face, like a falling bucket of water. Strike fumbled with his coat collar, dragging it up over his mouth and nose to protect them. Where he should have smelled only dust and old wood, something sharp and chemical was overwhelming him, catching in his nose and throat.

He reached automatically for a switch on the wall beside him, producing a flood of light from two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The hallway, which was narrow and empty, was panelled in honey-coloured wood. Twisted columns of the same material supported an arch halfway along its length. At first glance it was serene, gracious, well-proportioned.

But with eyes narrowed Strike slowly took in the wide, burn-like stains on the original woodwork. A corrosive, acrid fluid – which was making the still, dusty air burn – had been splashed everywhere in what seemed to have been an act of wanton vandalism; it had stripped varnish from the aged floorboards, blasted the patina off the bare wood stairs ahead, even been thrown over the walls so that large patches of painted plaster were bleached and discoloured.

After a few seconds of breathing through his thick serge collar, it occurred to Strike that the place was too warm for an uninhabited house. The heating had been cranked up high, which made the fierce chemical smell waft more pungently than if it had been left to disperse in the chill of a winter’s day.

Paper rustled under his feet. Looking down, he saw a smattering of takeaway menus and an envelope addressed TO THE OCCUPIER/CARETAKER. He stooped and picked it up. It was a brief, angry handwritten note from the next-door neighbour, complaining about the smell.