The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(90)

Strike stared at her.

‘When was this?’

‘Not long after I dropped out of university. I was… I was going through a bad time and I wasn’t going out much. It was my dad’s idea. I’ve always loved cars.

‘It was just something to do,’ she said, putting on her seatbelt and turning on the ignition. ‘Sometimes when I’m home, I go up to the farm to practise. My uncle’s got a field he lets me drive in.’

Strike was still staring at her.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait a bit before we—?’

‘No, I’ve given them my name and address. We should get going.’

She shifted gear and pulled smoothly out onto the motorway. Strike could not look away from her calm profile; her eyes were again fixed on the road, her hands confident and relaxed on the wheel.

‘I’ve seen worse steering than that from defensive drivers in the army,’ he told her. ‘The ones who drive generals, who’re trained to make a getaway under fire.’ He glanced back at the tangle of overturned vehicles now blocking the road. ‘I still don’t know how you got us out of that.’

The near-crash had not brought Robin close to tears, but at these words of praise and appreciation she suddenly thought she might cry, let herself down. With a great effort of will she compressed her emotion into a little laugh and said:

‘You realise that if I’d braked, we’d have skidded right into the tanker?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, and he laughed too. ‘Dunno why I said that,’ he lied.





29





There is a path vpon your left hand side,



That leadeth from a guiltie conscience



Vnto a forrest of distrust and feare,–



Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedie





In spite of their near-crash, Strike and Robin entered the Devonshire town of Tiverton shortly after twelve. Robin followed the sat nav’s instructions past quiet country houses topped with thick layers of glittering white, over a neat little bridge spanning a river the colour of flint and past a sixteenth-century church of unexpected grandeur to the far side of the town, where a pair of electric gates were discreetly set back from the road.

A handsome young Filipino man wearing what appeared to be deck shoes and an over-large coat was attempting to prise these open manually. When he caught sight of the Land Cruiser he mimed to Robin to wind down her window.

‘Frozen,’ he told her succinctly. ‘Wait a moment, please.’

They sat for five minutes until at last he had succeeded in unfreezing the gates and had dug a clearing in the steadily falling snow to allow the gates to swing open.

‘Do you want a lift back to the house?’ Robin asked him.

He climbed into the back seat beside Strike’s crutches.

‘You friends of Mr Chard?’

‘He’s expecting us,’ said Strike evasively.

Up a long and winding private driveway they went, the Land Cruiser making easy work of the heaped, crunchy overnight fall. The shiny dark green leaves of the rhododendrons lining the path had refused to bear their load of snow, so that the approach was all black and white: walls of dense foliage crowding in on the pale, powdery drive. Tiny spots of light had started popping in front of Robin’s eyes. It had been a very long time since breakfast and, of course, Strike had eaten all the biscuits.

Her feeling of seasickness and a slight sense of unreality persisted as she got down out of the Toyota and looked up at Tithebarn House, which stood beside a dark patch of wood that pressed close to one side of the house. The massive oblong structure in front of them had been converted by an adventurous architect: half of the roof had been replaced by sheet glass; the other seemed to be covered in solar panels. Looking up at the place where the structure became transparent and skeletal against the bright, light grey sky made Robin feel even giddier. It reminded her of the ghastly picture on Strike’s phone, the vaulted space of glass and light in which Quine’s mutilated body had lain.

‘Are you all right?’ said Strike, concerned. She looked very pale.

‘Fine,’ said Robin, who wanted to maintain her heroic status in his eyes. Taking deep lungfuls of the frosty air, she followed Strike, surprisingly nimble on his crutches, up the gravel path towards the entrance. Their young passenger had disappeared without another word to them.

Daniel Chard opened the front door himself. He was wearing a mandarin-collared, smock-like shirt in chartreuse silk and loose linen trousers. Like Strike, he was on crutches, his left foot and calf encased in a thick surgical boot and strapping. Chard looked down at Strike’s dangling, empty trouser leg and for several painful seconds did not seem able to look away.

‘And you thought you had problems,’ said Strike, holding out his hand.

The small joke fell flat. Chard did not smile. The aura of awkwardness, of otherness, that had surrounded him at his firm’s party clung to him still. He shook Strike’s hand without looking him in the eye and his welcoming words were:

‘I’ve been expecting you to cancel all morning.’

‘No, we made it,’ said Strike unnecessarily. ‘This is my assistant, Robin, who’s driven me down. I hope—’

‘No, she can’t sit outside in the snow,’ said Chard, though without noticeable warmth. ‘Come in.’