The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(74)

‘We’ll get a taxi.’

‘Never get one in this weather.’

‘Then let’s get back on the train and go back to the office.’

‘No, I want—’

He had never felt his dearth of resources more keenly than at this moment, standing on the iron lattice bridge beneath the arched glass ceiling where snow was settling. In the old days there had always been a car for him to drive. He could have summoned witnesses to him. He had been Special Investigation Branch, in charge, in control.

‘If you want to do this, we need a taxi,’ Robin said firmly. ‘It’s a long walk up Lillie Road from here. Haven’t—’

She hesitated. They never mentioned Strike’s disability except obliquely.

‘Haven’t you got a stick or something?’

‘Wish I had,’ he said through numb lips. What was the point in pretending? He was dreading having to walk even to the end of the bridge.

‘We can get one,’ said Robin. ‘Chemists sometimes sell them. We’ll find one.’

And then, after another momentary hesitation, she said:

‘Lean on me.’

‘I’m too heavy.’

‘To balance. Use me like a stick. Do it,’ she said firmly.

He put his arm around her shoulders and they made their way slowly over the bridge and paused beside the exit. The snow had temporarily passed, but the cold was, if anything, worse than it had been.

‘Why aren’t there seats anywhere?’ asked Robin, glaring around.

‘Welcome to my world,’ said Strike, who had withdrawn his arm from around her shoulders the instant they had stopped.

‘What d’you think’s happened?’ Robin asked, looking down at his right leg.

‘I dunno. It was all puffed up this morning. I probably shouldn’t have put the prosthesis on, but I hate using crutches.’

‘Well, you can’t go traipsing up Lillie Road in the snow like this. We’ll get a cab and you can go back to the office—’

‘No. I want to do something,’ he said angrily. ‘Anstis is convinced it’s Leonora. It isn’t.’

Everything was pared down to the essential when you were in this degree of pain.

‘All right,’ said Robin. ‘We’ll split up and you can go in a cab. OK? OK?’ she said insistently.

‘All right,’ he said, defeated. ‘You go up to Clem Attlee Court.’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Cameras. Hiding places for clothing and intestines. Kent can’t have kept them in her flat if she took them; they’d stink. Take pictures on your phone – anything that seems useful…’

It seemed pathetically little to him as he said it, but he had to do something. For some reason, he kept remembering Orlando, with her wide, vacant smile and her cuddly orang-utan.

‘And then?’ asked Robin.

‘Sussex Street,’ said Strike after a few seconds’ thought. ‘Same thing. And then give me a ring and we’ll meet up. You’d better give me the numbers of Tassel’s and Waldegrave’s houses.’

She gave him a piece of paper.

‘I’ll get you a taxi.’

Before he could thank her she had marched away onto the cold street.





26





I must look to my footing:



In such slippery ice-pavements men had need



To be frost-nail’d well, they may break their necks else…



John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi





It was fortunate that Strike still had the five hundred pounds in cash in his wallet that had been given him to cut up a teenage boy. He told the taxi driver to take him to Fulham Palace Road, home of Elizabeth Tassel, took note of the route as he travelled and would have arrived at her house in a mere four minutes had he not spotted a Boots. He asked the driver to pull up and wait, and re-emerged from the chemists shortly afterwards, walking much more easily with the aid of an adjustable stick.

He estimated that a fit woman might make the journey on foot in less than half an hour. Elizabeth Tassel lived further from the murder scene than Kathryn Kent but Strike, who knew the area reasonably well, was sure that she could have made her way through most residential backstreets while avoiding the attention of cameras, and that she might have avoided detection even with a car.

Her home looked drab and dingy on this bleak winter’s day. Another red brick Victorian house, but with none of the grandeur or whimsy of Talgarth Road, it stood on a corner, fronted by a dank garden overshadowed by overgrown laburnum bushes. Sleet fell again as Strike stood peering over the garden gate, trying to keep his cigarette alight by cupping it in his hand. There were gardens front and back, both well shielded from the public view by the dark bushes quivering with the weight of the icy downpour. The upper windows of the house looked out over the Fulham Palace Road Cemetery, a depressing view one month from midwinter, with bare trees reaching bony arms silhouetted into a white sky, old tombstones marching into the distance.

Could he imagine Elizabeth Tassel in her smart black suit, with her scarlet lipstick and her undisguised fury at Owen Quine, returning here under cover of darkness, stained with blood and acid, carrying a bag full of intestines?