The Silkworm

She wrote her address and telephone number out for him in a round, childish hand, but his request for a photo seemed to surprise her.

“What d’you need a picture for? He’s at that writer’s retreat. Just make Christian Fisher tell you where it is.”

She was through the door before Strike, tired and sore, could emerge from behind his desk. He heard her say briskly to Robin: “Ta for the tea,” then the glass door onto the landing opened with a flash and closed with a gentle judder, and his new client had gone.

4

Well, ’tis a rare thing to have an ingenious friend…

William Congreve, The Double-Dealer

Strike dropped onto the sofa in the outer office. It was almost new, an essential expense as he had broken the secondhand one with which he had initially furnished the office. Covered in mock leather that he had thought smart in the showroom, it made farting noises if you moved on it in the wrong way. His assistant—tall, curvaceous, with a clear, brilliant complexion and bright blue-gray eyes—scrutinized him over her coffee cup.

“You look terrible.”

“Spent all night weaseling details of a peer of the realm’s sexual irregularities and financial malfeasance out of a hysterical woman,” said Strike, on a massive yawn.

“Lord Parker?” gasped Robin.

“That’s the one,” said Strike.

“He’s been—?”

“Shagging three women simultaneously and salting millions away offshore,” said Strike. “If you’ve got a strong stomach, try the News of the World this Sunday.”

“How on earth did you find all that out?”

“Contact of a contact of a contact,” intoned Strike.

He yawned again, so widely that it looked painful.

“You should go to bed,” said Robin.

“Yeah, I should,” said Strike, but he did not move.

“You haven’t got anyone else till Gunfrey this afternoon at two.”

“Gunfrey,” sighed Strike, massaging his eye sockets. “Why are all my clients shits?”

“Mrs. Quine doesn’t seem like a shit.”

He peered blearily at her through his thick fingers.

“How d’you know I took her case?”

“I knew you would,” said Robin with an irrepressible smirk. “She’s your type.”

“A middle-aged throwback to the eighties?”

“Your kind of client. And you wanted to spite Baker.”

“Seemed to work, didn’t it?”

The telephone rang. Still grinning, Robin answered.

“Cormoran Strike’s office,” she said. “Oh. Hi.”

It was her fiancé, Matthew. She glanced sideways at her boss. Strike had closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his arms folded across his broad chest.

“Listen,” said Matthew in Robin’s ear; he never sounded very friendly when calling from work. “I need to move drinks from Friday to Thursday.”

“Oh Matt,” she said, trying to keep both disappointment and exasperation out of her voice.

It would be the fifth time that arrangements for these particular drinks had been made. Robin alone, of the three people involved, had not altered time, date or venue, but had shown herself willing and available on every occasion.

“Why?” she muttered.

A sudden grunting snore issued from the sofa. Strike had fallen asleep where he sat, his large head tilted back against the wall, arms still folded.

“Work drinks on the nineteenth,” said Matthew. “It’ll look bad if I don’t go. Show my face.”

She fought the urge to snap at him. He worked for a major firm of accountants and sometimes he acted as though this imposed social obligations more appropriate to a diplomatic posting.

She was sure that she knew the real reason for the change. Drinks had been postponed repeatedly at Strike’s request; on each occasion he had been busy with some piece of urgent, evening work, and while the excuses had been genuine, they had irritated Matthew. Though he had never said it aloud, Robin knew that Matthew thought Strike was implying that his time was more valuable than Matthew’s, his job more important.

In the eight months that she had worked for Cormoran Strike, her boss and her fiancé had not met, not even on that infamous night when Matthew had picked her up from the casualty department where she had accompanied Strike, with her coat wrapped tightly around his stabbed arm after a cornered killer had tried to finish him. When she had emerged, shaken and bloodstained, from the place where they were stitching Strike up, Matthew had declined her offer to introduce him to her injured boss. He had been furious about the whole business, even though Robin had reassured him that she herself had never been in any danger.