The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(60)

‘… lovely,’ said Robin. ‘So how’s poor Mrs Quine doing?’

Strike described his visit to Leonora, including the brief appearance of Jerry Waldegrave and his impressions of Orlando.

‘What exactly’s wrong with her?’ Robin asked.

‘Learning difficulties they call it, don’t they?’

He paused, remembering Orlando’s ingenuous smile, her cuddly orang-utan.

‘She said something strange while I was there and it seemed to be news to her mother. She told us she went into work with her father once, and that the head of Quine’s publisher touched her. Name of Daniel Chard.’

He saw reflected in Robin’s face the unacknowledged fear that the words had conjured back in the dingy kitchen.

‘How, touched her?’

‘She wasn’t specific. She said, “He touched me” and “I don’t like being touched”. And that he gave her a paintbrush after he’d done it. It might not be that,’ said Strike in response to Robin’s loaded silence, her tense expression. ‘He might’ve accidentally knocked into her and given her something to placate her. She kept going off on one while I was there, shrieking because she didn’t get what she wanted or her mum had a go at her.’

Hungry, he tore open the cellophane on Robin’s gift, pulled out a chocolate bar and unwrapped it while Robin sat in thoughtful silence.

‘Thing is,’ said Strike, breaking the silence, ‘Quine implied in Bombyx Mori that Chard’s gay. I think that’s what he’s saying, anyway.’

‘Hmm,’ said Robin, unimpressed. ‘And do you believe everything Quine wrote in that book?’

‘Well, judging by the fact that he set lawyers on Quine, it upset Chard,’ said Strike, breaking off a large chunk of chocolate and putting it in his mouth. ‘Mind you,’ he continued thickly, ‘the Chard in Bombyx Mori’s a murderer, possibly a rapist and his knob’s falling off, so the gay stuff might not have been what got his goat.’

‘It’s a constant theme in Quine’s work, sexual duality,’ said Robin and Strike stared at her, chewing, his brows raised. ‘I nipped into Foyles on the way to work and bought a copy of Hobart’s Sin,’ she explained. ‘It’s all about a hermaphrodite.’

Strike swallowed.

‘He must’ve had a thing about them; there’s one in Bombyx Mori too,’ he said, examining the cardboard covering of his chocolate bar. ‘This was made in Mullion. That’s down the coast from where I grew up… How’s Hobart’s Sin – any good?’

‘I wouldn’t be fussed about reading past the first few pages if its author hadn’t just been murdered,’ admitted Robin.

‘Probably do wonders for his sales, getting bumped off.’

‘My point is,’ Robin pressed on doggedly, ‘that you can’t necessarily trust Quine when it comes to other people’s sex lives, because his characters all seem to sleep with anyone and anything. I looked him up on Wikipedia. One of the key features of his books is how characters keep swapping their gender or sexual orientation.’

‘Bombyx Mori’s like that,’ grunted Strike, helping himself to more chocolate. ‘This is good, want a bit?’

‘I’m supposed to be on a diet,’ said Robin sadly. ‘For the wedding.’

Strike did not think she needed to lose any weight at all, but said nothing as she took a piece.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Robin diffidently, ‘about the killer.’

‘Always keen to hear from the psychologist. Go on.’

‘I’m not a psychologist,’ she half laughed.

She had dropped out of her psychology degree. Strike had never pressed her for an explanation, nor had she ever volunteered one. It was something they had in common, dropping out of university. He had left when his mother had died of a mysterious overdose and, perhaps because of this, he had always assumed that something traumatic had made Robin leave too.

‘I’ve just been wondering why they tied his murder so obviously to the book. On the surface it looks like a deliberate act of revenge and malice, to show the world that Quine got what he deserved for writing it.’

‘Looks like that,’ agreed Strike, who was still hungry; he reached over to a neighbouring table and plucked a menu off it. ‘I’m going to have steak and chips, want something?’

Robin chose a salad at random and then, to spare Strike’s knee, went up to the bar to give their order.

‘But on the other hand,’ Robin continued, sitting back down, ‘copy-catting the last scene of the book could have seemed like a good way of concealing a different motive, couldn’t it?’

She was forcing herself to speak matter-of-factly, as though they were discussing an abstract problem, but Robin had not been able to forget the pictures of Quine’s body: the dark cavern of the gouged-out torso, the burned-out crevices where once had been mouth and eyes. If she thought about what had been done to Quine too much, she knew that she might not be able to eat her lunch, or that she might somehow betray her horror to Strike, who was watching her with a disconcertingly shrewd expression in his dark eyes.

‘It’s all right to admit what happened to him makes you want to puke,’ he said through a mouthful of chocolate.