© J.K. Rowling. All Rights Reserved.
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The Silkworm
22
‘She wasn’t specific. She said, “He touched me” and “I don’t like being touched”. And that he gave her a paintbrush after he’d done it. It might not be that,’ said Strike in response to Robin’s loaded silence, her tense expression. ‘He might’ve accidentally knocked into her and given her something to placate her. She kept going off on one while I was there, shrieking because she didn’t get what she wanted or her mum had a go at her.’
Hungry, he tore open the cellophane on Robin’s gift, pulled out a chocolate bar and unwrapped it while Robin sat in thoughtful silence.
‘Thing is,’ said Strike, breaking the silence, ‘Quine implied in Bombyx Mori that Chard’s gay. I think that’s what he’s saying, anyway.’
The Silkworm
22
‘Hmm,’ said Robin, unimpressed. ‘And do you believe everything Quine wrote in that book?’
‘Well, judging by the fact that he set lawyers on Quine, it upset Chard,’ said Strike, breaking off a large chunk of chocolate and putting it in his mouth. ‘Mind you,’ he continued thickly, ‘the Chard in Bombyx Mori’s a murderer, possibly a rapist and his knob’s falling off, so the gay stuff might not have been what got his goat.’
‘It’s a constant theme in Quine’s work, sexual duality,’ said Robin and Strike stared at her, chewing, his brows raised. ‘I nipped into Foyles on the way to work and bought a copy of Hobart’s Sin,’ she explained. ‘It’s all about a hermaphrodite.’
The Silkworm
22
Strike swallowed.
‘He must’ve had a thing about them; there’s one in Bombyx Mori too,’ he said, examining the cardboard covering of his chocolate bar. ‘This was made in Mullion. That’s down the coast from where I grew up… How’s Hobart’s Sin – any good?’
‘I wouldn’t be fussed about reading past the first few pages if its author hadn’t just been murdered,’ admitted Robin.
The Silkworm
22
‘My point is,’ Robin pressed on doggedly, ‘that you can’t necessarily trust Quine when it comes to other people’s sex lives, because his characters all seem to sleep with anyone and anything. I looked him up on Wikipedia. One of the key features of his books is how characters keep swapping their gender or sexual orientation.’
‘Bombyx Mori’s like that,’ grunted Strike, helping himself to more chocolate. ‘This is good, want a bit?’
‘I’m supposed to be on a diet,’ said Robin sadly. ‘For the wedding.’
The Silkworm
22
She was forcing herself to speak matter-of-factly, as though they were discussing an abstract problem, but Robin had not been able to forget the pictures of Quine’s body: the dark cavern of the gouged-out torso, the burned-out crevices where once had been mouth and eyes. If she thought about what had been done to Quine too much, she knew that she might not be able to eat her lunch, or that she might somehow betray her horror to Strike, who was watching her with a disconcertingly shrewd expression in his dark eyes.
‘It’s all right to admit what happened to him makes you want to puke,’ he said through a mouthful of chocolate.
‘It doesn’t,’ she lied automatically. Then, ‘Well, obviously – I mean, it was horrific—’
The Silkworm
22
‘But,’ she resumed when he had sloped away, ‘Quine can’t have been killed that recently, can he? I mean, I’m no expert…’
‘Nor am I,’ said Strike, polishing off the last of the chocolate and contemplating the peanut brittle with less enthusiasm, ‘but I know what you mean. That body looked as though it had been there at least a week.’
‘Plus,’ said Robin, ‘there must have been a time lag between the murderer reading Bombyx Mori and actually killing Quine. There was a lot to organise. They had to get ropes and acid and crockery into an uninhabited house…’
The Silkworm
22
‘No,’ snapped Strike.
He felt sore, angry with himself, irritated by Matthew and suddenly a bit nauseous. He ought not to have eaten the chocolate before having steak, chips, crumble and three pints.
‘I need you to go back to the office and type up Gunfrey’s last invoice. And text me if those bloody journalists are still around, because I’ll go straight from here to Anstis’s, if they are.