The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(5)

‘So you’re here about your husband, Mrs Quine?’

‘Yeah,’ said Leonora. ‘He’s missing.’

‘How long’s he been gone?’ asked Strike, reaching automatically for a notebook.

‘Ten days,’ said Leonora.

‘Have you been to the police?’

‘I don’t need the police,’ she said impatiently, as though she was tired of explaining this to people. ‘I called them once before and everyone was angry at me because he was only with a friend. Owen just goes off sometimes. He’s a writer,’ she said, as though this explained everything.

‘He’s disappeared before?’

‘He’s emotional,’ she said, her expression glum. ‘He’s always going off on one, but it’s been ten days and I know he’s really upset but I need him home now. There’s Orlando and I’ve got things to do and there’s—’

‘Orlando?’ repeated Strike, his tired mind on the Florida resort. He did not have time to go to America and Leonora Quine, in her ancient coat, certainly did not look as though she could afford a ticket for him.

‘Our daughter, Orlando,’ said Leonora. ‘She needs looking after. I’ve got a neighbour in to sit with her while I’m here.’

There was a knock on the door and Robin’s bright gold head appeared.

‘Would you like coffee, Mr Strike? You, Mrs Quine?’

When they had given Robin their orders and she had withdrawn, Leonora said:

‘It won’t take you long, because I think I know where he is, only I can’t get hold of the address and nobody’ll take my calls. It’s been ten days,’ she repeated, ‘and we need him home.’

It seemed to Strike a great extravagance to resort to a private detective in this circumstance, especially as her appearance exhaled poverty.

‘If it’s a simple question of making a phone call,’ he said gently, ‘haven’t you got a friend or a—?’

‘Edna can’t do it,’ she said and he found himself disproportionately touched (exhaustion sometimes laid him raw in this way) at her tacit admission that she had one friend in the world. ‘Owen’s told them not to say where he is. I need,’ she said simply, ‘a man to do it. Force them to say.’

‘Your husband’s name’s Owen, is it?’

‘Yeah,’ she replied, ‘Owen Quine. He wrote Hobart’s Sin.’

Neither name nor title meant anything to Strike.

‘And you think you know where he is?’

‘Yeah. We was at this party with a load of publishers and people – he didn’t want to take me, but I says, “I got a babysitter already, I’m coming” – so I hears Christian Fisher telling Owen about this place, this writer’s retreat place. And afterwards I says to Owen, “What was that place he was telling you about?” and Owen says, “I’m not telling you, that’s the whole bloody point, getting away from the wife and kids.”’

She almost invited Strike to join her husband in laughing at her; proud, as mothers sometimes pretend to be, of their child’s insolence.

‘Who’s Christian Fisher?’ asked Strike, forcing himself to concentrate.

‘Publisher. Young, trendy bloke.’

‘Have you tried phoning Fisher and asking him for the address of this retreat?’

‘Yeah, I’ve called him every day for a week and they said they’d taken a message and he’d get back to me, but he hasn’t. I think Owen’s told him not to say where he is. But you’ll be able to get the address out of Fisher. I know you’re good,’ she said. ‘You solved that Lula Landry thing, when the police never.’

A mere eight months previously, Strike had had but a single client, his business had been moribund and his prospects desperate. Then he had proven, to the satisfaction of the Crown Prosecution Service, that a famous young woman had not committed suicide but had been pushed to her death from a fourth-floor balcony. The ensuing publicity had brought a tide of business; he had been, for a few weeks, the best-known private detective in the metropolis. Jonny Rokeby had become a mere footnote to his story; Strike had become a name in his own right, albeit a name most people got wrong…

‘I interrupted you,’ he said, trying hard to hold on to the thread of his thoughts.

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, squinting at his own crabbed writing on the notebook. ‘You said, “There’s Orlando, I’ve got things to do and there’s—”’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘there’s funny stuff happening since he left.’

‘What kind of funny stuff?’

‘Shit,’ said Leonora Quine matter-of-factly, ‘through our letter box.’

‘Someone’s put excrement through your letter box?’ Strike said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Since your husband disappeared?’

‘Yeah. Dog,’ said Leonora, and it was a split-second before Strike deduced that this applied to the excrement, not her husband. ‘Three or four times now, at night. Nice thing to find in the morning, I don’t think. And there was a woman come to the door and all, who was weird.’

She paused, waiting for Strike to prompt her. She seemed to enjoy being questioned. Many lonely people, Strike knew, found it pleasant to be the focus of somebody’s undivided attention and sought to prolong the novel experience.