The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(87)

Strike knew himself to be unreasonable, but the awareness merely increased his irritation. On waking it had been obvious that to try to force the prosthesis onto his leg, when the knee was hot, swollen and extremely painful, would be an act of idiocy. He had been forced to descend the metal stairs on his backside, like a small child. Traversing Charing Cross Road on ice and crutches had earned him the stares of those few early-morning pedestrians who were braving the sub-zero darkness. He had never wanted to return to this state but here he was, all because of a temporary forgetfulness that he was not, like the dream Strike, whole.

At least, Strike noted with relief, Robin could drive. His sister, Lucy, was distractible and unreliable behind the wheel. Charlotte had always driven her Lexus in a manner that caused Strike physical pain: speeding through red lights, turning up one-way streets, smoking and chatting on her mobile, narrowly missing cyclists and the opening doors of parked cars… Ever since the Viking had blown up around him on that yellow dirt road, Strike had found it difficult to be driven by anyone except a professional.

After a long silence, Robin said:

‘There’s coffee in the backpack.’

‘What?’

‘In the backpack – a flask. I didn’t think we should stop unless we really have to. And there are biscuits.’

The windscreen wipers were carving their way through flecks of snow.

‘You’re a bloody marvel,’ said Strike, his reserve crumbling. He had not had breakfast: trying and failing to attach his false leg, finding a pin for his suit trousers, digging out his crutches and getting himself downstairs had taken twice the time he had allowed. And in spite of herself, Robin gave a small smile.

Strike poured himself coffee and ate several bits of shortbread, his appreciation of Robin’s deft handling of the strange car increasing as his hunger decreased.

‘What does Matthew drive?’ he asked as they sped over the Boston Manor viaduct.

‘Nothing,’ said Robin. ‘We haven’t got a car in London.’

‘Yeah, no need,’ said Strike, privately reflecting that if he ever gave Robin the salary she deserved they might be able to afford one.

‘So what are you planning to ask Daniel Chard?’ Robin asked.

‘Plenty,’ said Strike, brushing crumbs off his dark jacket. ‘First off, whether he’d fallen out with Quine and, if so, what about. I can’t fathom why Quine – total dickhead though he clearly was – decided to attack the man who had his livelihood in his hands and who had the money to sue him into oblivion.’

Strike munched shortbread for a while, swallowed, then added:

‘Unless Jerry Waldegrave’s right and Quine was having a genuine breakdown when he wrote it and lashed out at anyone he thought he could blame for his lousy sales.’

Robin, who had finished reading Bombyx Mori while Strike had been having lunch with Elizabeth Tassel the previous day, said:

‘Isn’t the writing too coherent for somebody having a breakdown?’

‘The syntax might be sound, but I don’t think you’d find many people who’d disagree that the content’s bloody insane.’

‘His other writing’s very like it.’

‘None of his other stuff’s as crazy as Bombyx Mori,’ said Strike. ‘Hobart’s Sin and The Balzac Brothers both had plots.’

‘This has got a plot.’

‘Has it? Or is Bombyx’s little walking tour just a convenient way of stringing together a load of attacks on different people?’

The snow fell thick and fast as they passed the exit to Heathrow, talking about the novel’s various grotesqueries, laughing a little over its ludicrous jumps of logic, its absurdities. The trees on either side of the motorway looked as though they had been dusted with tons of icing sugar.

‘Maybe Quine was born four hundred years too late,’ said Strike, still eating shortbread. ‘Elizabeth Tassel told me there’s a Jacobean revenge play featuring a poisoned skeleton disguised as a woman. Presumably someone shags it and dies. Not a million miles away from Phallus Impudicus getting ready to—’

‘Don’t,’ said Robin, with a half laugh and a shudder.

But Strike had not broken off because of her protest, or because of any sense of repugnance. Something had flickered deep in his subconscious as he spoke. Somebody had told him… someone had said… but the memory was gone in a flash of tantalising silver, like a minnow vanishing in pondweed.

‘A poisoned skeleton,’ Strike muttered, trying to capture the elusive memory, but it was gone.

‘And I finished Hobart’s Sin last night as well,’ said Robin, overtaking a dawdling Prius.

‘You’re a sucker for punishment,’ said Strike, reaching for a sixth biscuit. ‘I didn’t think you were enjoying it.’

‘I wasn’t, and it didn’t improve. It’s all about—’

‘A hermaphrodite who’s pregnant and gets an abortion because a kid would interfere with his literary ambitions,’ said Strike.

‘You’ve read it!’

‘No, Elizabeth Tassel told me.’

‘There’s a bloody sack in it,’ said Robin.

Strike looked sideways at her pale profile, serious as she watched the road ahead, her eyes flicking to the rear-view mirror.