The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(50)

They only had one bedroom. Robin pulled spare blankets from on top of the wardrobe, grabbed clean clothes from inside it and announced her intention to sleep on the sofa. Sure that she would cave before long (the sofa was hard and uncomfortable) Matthew did not try to dissuade her.

But he had been wrong in expecting her to soften. When he woke the following morning it was to find an empty sofa and Robin gone. His anger increased exponentially. She had doubtless headed for work an hour earlier than usual, and his imagination – Matthew was not usually imaginative – showed him that big, ugly bastard opening the door of his flat, not the office below…





19





… I to you will open



The book of a black sin, deep printed in me.



… my disease lies in my soul.



Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier





Strike had set his alarm for an early hour, with the intention of securing some peaceful, uninterrupted time without clients or telephone. He rose at once, showered and breakfasted, took great care over the fastening of the prosthesis onto a definitely swollen knee and, forty-five minutes after waking, limped into his office with the unread portion of Bombyx Mori under his arm. A suspicion that he had not confided to Anstis was driving him to finish the book as a matter of urgency.

After making himself a mug of strong tea he sat down at Robin’s desk, where the light was best, and began to read.

Having escaped the Cutter and entered the city that had been his destination, Bombyx decided to rid himself of the companions of his long journey, Succuba and the Tick. This he did by taking them to a brothel where both appeared satisfied to work. Bombyx departed alone in search of Vainglorious, a famous writer and the man whom he hoped would be his mentor.

Halfway along a dark alleyway, Bombyx was accosted by a woman with long red hair and a demonic expression, who was taking a handful of dead rats home for supper. When she learned Bombyx’s identity Harpy invited him to her house, which turned out to be a cave littered with animal skulls. Strike skim-read the sex, which took up four pages and involved Bombyx being strung up from the ceiling and whipped. Then, like the Tick, Harpy attempted to breast-feed from Bombyx, but in spite of being tied up he managed to beat her off. While his nipples leaked a dazzling supernatural light, Harpy wept and revealed her own breasts, from which leaked something dark brown and glutinous.

Strike scowled over this image. Not only was Quine’s style starting to seem parodic, giving Strike a sense of sickened surfeit, the scene read like an explosion of malice, an eruption of pent-up sadism. Had Quine devoted months, perhaps years, of his life to the intention of causing as much pain and distress as possible? Was he sane? Could a man in such masterly control of his style, little though Strike liked it, be classified as mad?

He took a drink of tea, reassuringly hot and clean, and read on. Bombyx was on the point of leaving Harpy’s house in disgust when another character burst in through her door: Epicoene, whom the sobbing Harpy introduced as her adopted daughter. A young girl, whose open robes revealed a penis, Epicoene insisted that she and Bombyx were twin souls, understanding, as they did, both the male and the female. She invited him to sample her hermaphrodite’s body, but first to hear her sing. Apparently under the impression that she had a beautiful voice, she emitted barks like a seal until Bombyx ran from her with his ears covered.

Now Bombyx saw for the first time, high on a hill in the middle of the city, a castle of light. He climbed the steep streets towards it until hailed from a dark doorway by a male dwarf, who introduced himself as the writer Vainglorious. He had Fancourt’s eyebrows, Fancourt’s surly expression and sneering manner, and offered Bombyx a bed for the night, ‘having heard of your great talent’.

To Bombyx’s horror, a young woman was chained up inside the house, writing at a roll-top desk. Burning brands lay white hot in the fire, to which were attached phrases in twisted metal such as pertinacious gudgeon and chrysostomatic intercourse. Evidently expecting Bombyx to be amused, Vainglorious explained that he had set his young wife Effigy to write her own book, so that she would not bother him while he created his next masterpiece. Unfortunately, Vainglorious explained, Effigy had no talent, for which she must be punished. He removed one of the brands from the fire, at which Bombyx fled the house, pursued by Effigy’s shrieks of pain.

Bombyx sped on towards the castle of light where he imagined he would find his refuge. Over the door was the name Phallus Impudicus, but nobody answered Bombyx’s knock. He therefore skirted the castle, peering in through windows until he saw a naked bald man standing over the corpse of a golden boy whose body was covered in stab wounds, each of which emitted the same dazzling light that issued from Bombyx’s own nipples. Phallus’s erect penis appeared to be rotting.

‘Hi.’

Strike started and looked up. Robin was standing there in her trench coat, her face pink, long red-gold hair loose, tousled and gilded in the early sunlight streaming through the window. Just then, Strike found her beautiful.

‘Why are you so early?’ he heard himself ask.

‘Wanted to know what’s going on.’

She stripped off her coat and Strike looked away, mentally castigating himself. Naturally she looked good, appearing unexpectedly when his mind had been full of the image of a naked bald man, displaying a diseased penis…