The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(51)

‘D’you want another tea?’

‘That’d be great, thanks,’ he said without lifting his eyes from the manuscript. ‘Give me five, I want to finish this…’

And with a feeling that he was diving again into contaminated water, he re-immersed himself in the grotesque world of Bombyx Mori.

As Bombyx stared through the window of the castle, transfixed by the horrible sight of Phallus Impudicus and the corpse, he found himself roughly seized by a crowd of hooded minions, dragged inside the castle and stripped naked in front of Phallus Impudicus. By this time, Bombyx’s belly was enormous and he appeared ready to give birth. Phallus Impudicus gave ominous directions to his minions, which left the naive Bombyx convinced that he was to be the guest of honour at a feast.

Six of the characters that Strike had recognised – Succuba, the Tick, the Cutter, Harpy, Vainglorious and Impudicus – were now joined by Epicoene. The seven guests sat down at a large table on which stood a large jug, the contents of which were smoking, and a man-sized empty platter.

When Bombyx arrived in the hall, he found that there was no seat for him. The other guests rose, moved towards him with ropes and overpowered him. He was trussed up, placed on the platter and slit open. The mass that had been growing inside him was revealed to be a ball of supernatural light, which was ripped out and locked in a casket by Phallus Impudicus.

The contents of the smoking jug were revealed to be vitriol, which the seven attackers poured gleefully over the still-living, shrieking Bombyx. When at last he fell silent, they began to eat him.

The book ended with the guests filing out of the castle, discussing their memories of Bombyx without guilt, leaving behind them an empty hall, the still-smoking remains of the corpse on the table and the locked casket of light hanging, lamp-like, above him.

‘Shit,’ said Strike quietly.

He looked up. Robin had placed a fresh tea beside him without his noticing. She was perched on the sofa, waiting quietly for him to finish.

‘It’s all in here,’ said Strike. ‘What happened to Quine. It’s here.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘The hero of Quine’s book dies exactly the way Quine died. Tied up, guts torn out, something acidic poured over him. In the book they eat him.’

Robin stared at him.

‘The plates. Knives and forks…’

‘Exactly,’ said Strike.

Without thinking, he pulled his mobile out of his pocket and brought up the photos he had taken, then caught sight of her frightened expression.

‘No,’ he said, ‘sorry, forgot you’re not—’

‘Give it to me,’ she said.

What had he forgotten? That she was not trained or experienced, not a policewoman or a soldier? She wanted to live up to his momentary forgetfulness. She wanted to step up, to be more than she was.

‘I want to see,’ she lied.

He handed over the telephone with obvious misgivings.

Robin did not flinch, but as she stared at the open hole in the cadaver’s chest and stomach her own insides seemed to shrink in horror. Raising her mug to her lips, she found that she did not want to drink. The worst was the angled close-up of the face, eaten away by whatever had been poured on it, blackened and with that burned-out eye socket…

The plates struck her as an obscenity. Strike had zoomed in on one of them; the place setting had been meticulously arranged.

‘My God,’ she said numbly, handing the phone back.

‘Now read this,’ said Strike, handing her the relevant pages.

She did so in silence. When she had finished, she looked up at him with eyes that seemed to have doubled in size.

‘My God,’ she said again.

Her mobile rang. She pulled it out of the handbag on the sofa beside her and looked at it. Matthew. Still furious at him, she pressed ‘ignore’.

‘How many people,’ she asked Strike, ‘d’you think have read this book?’

‘Could be a lot of them by now. Fisher emailed bits of it all over town; between him and the lawyers’ letters, it’s become hot property.’

And a strange, random thought crossed Strike’s mind as he spoke: that Quine could not have arranged better publicity if he had tried… but he could not have poured acid over himself while tied up, or cut out his own guts…

‘It’s been kept in a safe at Roper Chard that half the company seems to know the code for,’ he went on. ‘That’s how I got hold of it.’

‘But don’t you think the killer’s likely to be someone who’s in the—?’

Robin’s mobile rang again. She glanced down at it: Matthew. Again, she pressed ‘ignore’.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Strike, answering her unfinished question. ‘But the people he’s written about are going to be high on the list when the police start interviewing. Of the characters I recognise, Leonora claims not to have read it, so does Kathryn Kent—’

‘Do you believe them?’ asked Robin.

‘I believe Leonora. Not sure about Kathryn Kent. How did the line go? “To see thee tortur’d would give me pleasure”?’

‘I can’t believe a woman would have done that,’ said Robin at once, glancing at Strike’s mobile now lying on the desk between them.