The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(66)

The Anstises returned, minus Timothy but with a sobbing and hiccupping Tilly.

‘Bet you’re glad you haven’t got any, aren’t you?’ said Helly gaily, sitting back down at the table with Tilly on her lap. Strike grinned humourlessly and did not contradict her.

There had been a baby: or more accurately the ghost, the promise of a baby and then, supposedly, the death of a baby. Charlotte had told him that she was pregnant, refused to consult a doctor, changed her mind about dates, then announced that all was over without a shred of proof that it had ever been real. It was a lie most men would have found impossible to forgive and for Strike it had been, as surely she must have known, the lie to end all lies and the death of that tiny amount of trust that had survived years of her mythomania.

Marrying on the fourth of December, in eleven days’ time… how could Helly Anstis know?

He was perversely grateful, now, for the whining and tantrums of the two children, which effectively disrupted conversation all through a pudding of rhubarb flan and custard. Anstis’s suggestion that they take fresh beers into his study to go over the forensic report was the best Strike had heard all day. They left a slightly sulky Helly, who clearly felt that she had not had her money’s worth out of Strike, to manage the now very sleepy Tilly and the unnervingly wide-awake Timothy, who had reappeared to announce that he had spilled his drinking water all over his bed.

Anstis’s study was a small, book-lined room off the hall. He offered Strike the computer chair and sat on an old futon. The curtains were not drawn; Strike could see a misty rain falling like dust motes in the light of an orange street lamp.

‘Forensics say it’s as hard a job as they’ve ever had,’ Anstis began, and Strike’s attention was immediately all his. ‘All this is unofficial, mind, we haven’t got everything in yet.’

‘Have they been able to tell what actually killed him?’

‘Blow to the head,’ said Anstis. ‘The back of his skull’s been stoved in. It might not’ve been instantaneous, but the brain trauma alone would’ve killed him. They can’t be sure he was dead when he was carved open, but he was almost certainly unconscious.’

‘Small mercies. Any idea whether he was tied up before or after he was knocked out?’

‘There’s some argument about that. There’s a patch of skin under the ropes on one of his wrists that’s bruised, which they think indicates he was tied up before he was killed, but we’ve no indication whether he was still conscious when the ropes were put on him. The problem is, all that bloody acid everywhere’s taken away any marks on the floor that might’ve shown a struggle, or the body being dragged. He was a big, heavy guy—’

‘Easier to handle if he was trussed up,’ agreed Strike, thinking of short, thin Leonora, ‘but it’d be good to know the angle he was hit at.’

‘From just above,’ said Anstis, ‘but as we don’t know whether he was hit standing, sitting or kneeling…’

‘I think we can be sure he was killed in that room,’ said Strike, following his own train of thought. ‘I can’t see anyone being strong enough to carry a body that heavy up those stairs.’

‘The consensus is that he died more or less on the spot where the body was found. That’s where the greatest concentration of the acid is.’

‘D’you know what kind of acid it was?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say? Hydrochloric.’

Strike struggled to remember something of his chemistry lessons. ‘Don’t they use that to galvanise steel?’

‘Among other things. It’s as caustic a substance as you can legally buy and it’s used in a load of industrial processes. Heavy-duty cleaning agent as well. One weird thing about it is, it occurs naturally in humans. In our gastric acid.’

Strike sipped his beer, considering.

‘In the book, they pour vitriol on him.’

‘Vitriol’s sulphuric acid, and hydrochloric acid derives from it. Seriously corrosive to human tissue – as you saw.’

‘Where the hell did the killer get that amount of the stuff?’

‘Believe it or not, it looks like it was already in the house.’

‘Why the hell—?’

‘Still haven’t found anyone who can tell us. There were empty gallon containers on the kitchen floor, and dusty containers of the same description in a cupboard under the stairs, full of the stuff and unopened. They came from an industrial chemicals company in Birmingham. There were marks on the empty ones that looked as though they’d been made by gloved hands.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Strike, scratching his chin.

‘We’re still trying to check when and how they were bought.’

‘What about the blunt object that bashed his head in?’

‘There’s an old-fashioned doorstop in the studio – solid iron and shaped like one, with a handle: almost certainly that. It fits with the impression in his skull. That’s had hydrochloric acid poured all over it like nearly everything else.’

‘How’s time of death looking?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the tricky bit. The entomologist won’t commit himself, says the condition of the corpse throws out all the usual calculations. The fumes from the hydrochloric acid alone would’ve kept insects away for a while, so you can’t date the death from infestation. No self-respecting blowfly wants to lay eggs in acid. We had a maggot or two on bits of the body that weren’t doused in the stuff, but the usual infestation didn’t occur.