The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(61)

‘It doesn’t,’ she lied automatically. Then, ‘Well, obviously – I mean, it was horrific—’

‘Yeah, it was.’

If he had been back with his SIB colleagues he would have been making jokes about it by now. Strike could remember many afternoons laden with pitch-black humour: it was the only way to get through certain investigations. Robin, however, was not yet ready for professionally callous self-defence and her attempt at dispassionate discussion of a man whose guts had been torn out proved it.

‘Motive’s a bitch, Robin. Nine times out of ten you only find out why when you’ve found out who. It’s means and opportunity we want. Personally,’ he took a gulp of beer, ‘I think we might be looking for someone with medical knowledge.’

‘Medical—?’

‘Or anatomical. It didn’t look amateur, what they did to Quine. They could’ve hacked him to bits, trying to remove the intestines, but I couldn’t see any false starts: one clean, confident incision.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, struggling to maintain her objective, clinical manner. ‘That’s true.’

‘Unless we’re dealing with some literary maniac who just got hold of a good textbook,’ mused Strike. ‘Seems a stretch, but you don’t know… If he was tied up and drugged and they had enough nerve, they might’ve been able to treat it like a biology lesson…’

Robin could not restrain herself.

‘I know you always say motive’s for lawyers,’ she said a little desperately (Strike had repeated this maxim many times since she had come to work for him), ‘but humour me for a moment. The killer must have felt that to murder Quine in the same way as the book was worth it for some reason that outweighed the obvious disadvantages—’

‘Which were?’

‘Well,’ said Robin, ‘the logistical difficulties of making it such an – an elaborate killing, and the fact that the pool of suspects would be confined to people who’ve read the book—’

‘Or heard about it in detail,’ said Strike, ‘and you say “confined”, but I’m not sure we’re looking at a small number of people. Christian Fisher made it his business to spread the contents of the book as far and as wide as he could. Roper Chard’s copy of the manuscript was in a safe to which half the company seems to have had access.’

‘But…’ said Robin.

She broke off as a sullen barman came over to dump cutlery and paper napkins on their table.

‘But,’ she resumed when he had sloped away, ‘Quine can’t have been killed that recently, can he? I mean, I’m no expert…’

‘Nor am I,’ said Strike, polishing off the last of the chocolate and contemplating the peanut brittle with less enthusiasm, ‘but I know what you mean. That body looked as though it had been there at least a week.’

‘Plus,’ said Robin, ‘there must have been a time lag between the murderer reading Bombyx Mori and actually killing Quine. There was a lot to organise. They had to get ropes and acid and crockery into an uninhabited house…’

‘And unless they already knew he was planning to go to Talgarth Road, they had to track Quine down,’ said Strike, deciding against the peanut brittle because his steak and chips were approaching, ‘or lure him there.’

The barman set down Strike’s plate and Robin’s bowl of salad, greeted their thanks with an indifferent grunt and retreated.

‘So when you factor in the planning and practicalities, it doesn’t seem possible that the killer can have read the book any later than two or three days after Quine went missing,’ said Strike, loading up his fork. ‘Trouble is, the further back we set the moment when the killer started plotting Quine’s murder, the worse it looks for my client. All Leonora had to do was walk a few steps up her hall; the manuscript was hers for the reading as soon as Quine finished it. Come to think of it, he could’ve told her how he was planning to end it months ago.’

Robin ate her salad without tasting it.

‘And does Leonora Quine seem…’ she began tentatively.

‘Like the kind of woman who’d disembowel her husband? No, but the police fancy her and if you’re looking for motive, she’s lousy with it. He was a crap husband: unreliable, adulterous and he liked depicting her in disgusting ways in his books.’

‘You don’t think she did it, do you?’

‘No,’ Strike said, ‘but we’re going to need a lot more than my opinion to keep her out of jail.’

Robin took their empty glasses back to the bar for refills without asking; Strike felt very fond of her as she set another pint in front of him.

‘We’ve also got to look at the possibility that somebody got the wind up that Quine was going to self-publish over the internet,’ said Strike, shovelling chips into his mouth, ‘a threat he allegedly made to a packed restaurant. That might constitute a motive for killing Quine, under the right conditions.’

‘You mean,’ said Robin slowly, ‘if the killer recognised something in the manuscript that they didn’t want to get a wider audience?’

‘Exactly. The book’s pretty cryptic in parts. What if Quine had found out something serious about somebody and put a veiled reference in the book?’