The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(85)

‘What happened to North’s unfinished book?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, Michael abandoned work on his own novel and finished Joe’s posthumously. It’s called Towards the Mark and Harold Weaver published it: it’s a cult classic, never been out of print.’

She checked her watch again.

‘I need to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a meeting at two thirty. My coat, please,’ she called to a passing waiter.

‘Somebody told me,’ said Strike, who remembered perfectly well that it had been Anstis, ‘that you supervised work on Talgarth Road a while back?’

‘Yes,’ she said indifferently, ‘just one more of the unusual jobs Quine’s agent ended up doing for him. It was a matter of coordinating repairs, putting in workmen. I sent Michael a bill for half and he paid up through his lawyers.’

‘You had a key?’

‘Which I passed to the foreman,’ she said coldly, ‘then returned to the Quines.’

‘You didn’t go and see the work yourself?’

‘Of course I did; I needed to check it had been done. I think I visited twice.’

‘Was hydrochloric acid used in any of the renovation, do you know?’

‘The police asked me about hydrochloric acid,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I can’t say.’

She glowered. He doubted that people often refused Elizabeth Tassel information.

‘Well, I can only tell you what I told the police: it was probably left there by Todd Harkness.’

‘Who?’

‘The sculptor I told you about who rented the studio space. Owen found him and Fancourt’s lawyers couldn’t find a reason to object. What nobody realised was that Harkness worked mainly in rusted metal and used some very corrosive chemicals. He did a lot of damage in the studio before being asked to leave. Fancourt’s side did that clean-up operation and sent us the bill.’

The waiter had brought her coat, to which a few dog hairs clung. Strike could hear a faint whistle from her labouring chest as she stood up. With a peremptory shake of the hand, Elizabeth Tassel left.

Strike took another taxi back to the office with the vague intention of being conciliatory to Robin; somehow they had rubbed each other up the wrong way that morning and he was not quite sure how it had happened. However, by the time he had finally reached the outer office he was sweating with the pain in his knee and Robin’s first words drove all thought of propitiation from his mind.

‘The car hire company just called. They haven’t got an automatic, but they can give you—’

‘It’s got to be an automatic!’ snapped Strike, dropping onto the sofa in an eruption of leathery flatulence that irritated him still further. ‘I can’t bloody drive a manual in this state! Have you rung—?’

‘Of course I’ve tried other places,’ said Robin coldly. ‘I’ve tried everywhere. Nobody can give you an automatic tomorrow. The weather forecast’s atrocious, anyway. I think you’d do better to—’

‘I’m going to interview Chard,’ said Strike.

Pain and fear were making him angry: fear that he would have to give up the prosthesis and resort to crutches again, his trouser leg pinned up, staring eyes, pity. He hated hard plastic chairs in disinfected corridors; hated his voluminous notes being unearthed and pored over, murmurs about changes to his prosthesis, advice from calm medical men to rest, to mollycoddle his leg as though it were a sick child he had to carry everywhere with him. In his dreams he was not one-legged; in his dreams he was whole.

Chard’s invitation had been an unlooked-for gift; he intended to seize it. There were many things he wanted to ask Quine’s publisher. The invitation itself was glaringly strange. He wanted to hear Chard’s reason for dragging him to Devon.

‘Did you hear me?’ asked Robin.

‘What?’

‘I said, “I could drive you.”’

‘No, you can’t,’ said Strike ungraciously.

‘Why not?’

‘You’ve got to be in Yorkshire.’

‘I’ve got to be at King’s Cross tomorrow night at eleven.’

‘The snow’s going to be terrible.’

‘We’ll set out early. Or,’ said Robin with a shrug, ‘you can cancel Chard. But the forecast for next week’s awful too.’

It was difficult to reverse from ingratitude to the opposite with Robin’s steely grey-blue eyes upon him.

‘All right,’ he said stiffly. ‘Thanks.’

‘Then I need to go and pick up the car,’ said Robin.

‘Right,’ said Strike through gritted teeth.

Owen Quine had not thought women had any place in literature: he, Strike, had a secret prejudice, too – but what choice did he have, with his knee screaming for mercy and no automatic car for hire?





28





… that (of all other) was the most fatal and dangerous exploit that ever I was ranged in, since I first bore arms before the face of the enemy…



Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour





At five o’clock the following morning, a muffled and gloved Robin boarded one of the first Tube trains of the day, her hair glistening with snowflakes, a small backpack over her shoulder and carrying a weekend bag into which she had packed the black dress, coat and shoes that she would need for Mrs Cunliffe’s funeral. She did not dare count on getting back home after the round trip to Devon, but intended to go straight to King’s Cross once she had returned the car to the hire company.