The first familiar character to emerge from the densely written and frequently obscene sentences was Leonora Quine. As the brilliant young Bombyx journeyed through a landscape populated by various dangers and monsters he came across Succuba, a woman described succinctly as a ‘well-worn whore’, who captured and tied him up and succeeded in raping him. Leonora was described to the life: thin and dowdy, with her large glasses and her flat, deadpan manner. After being systematically abused for several days, Bombyx persuaded Succuba to release him. She was so desolate at his departure that Bombyx agreed to take her along: the first example of the story’s frequent strange, dream-like reversals, whereby what had been bad and frightening became good and sensible without justification or apology.
A few pages further on, Bombyx and Succuba were attacked by a creature called the Tick, which Strike recognised easily as Elizabeth Tassel: square-jawed, deep-voiced and frightening. Once again Bombyx took pity on the thing once it had finished violating him, and permitted it to join him. The Tick had an unpleasant habit of suckling from Bombyx while he slept. He started to become thin and weak.
Bombyx’s gender appeared strangely mutable. Quite apart from his apparent ability to breast-feed, he was soon showing signs of pregnancy, despite continuing to pleasure a number of apparently nymphomaniac women who strayed regularly across his path.
Wading through ornate obscenity, Strike wondered how many portraits of real people he was failing to notice. The violence of Bombyx’s encounters with other humans was disturbing; their perversity and cruelty left barely an orifice unviolated; it was a sadomasochistic frenzy. Yet Bombyx’s essential innocence and purity were a constant theme, the simple statement of his genius apparently all the reader needed to absolve him of the crimes in which he colluded as freely as the supposed monsters around him. As he turned the pages, Strike remembered Jerry Waldegrave’s opinion that Quine was mentally ill; he was starting to have some sympathy with his view…
The match was about to start. Strike set the manuscript down, feeling as though he had been trapped for a long time inside a dark, grubby basement, away from natural light and air. Now he felt only pleasurable anticipation. He was confident Arsenal were about to win – Spurs had not managed to beat them at home in seventeen years.
And for forty-five minutes Strike lost himself in pleasure and frequent bellows of encouragement while his team went two-nil up.
At half time, and with a feeling of reluctance, he muted the sound and returned to the bizarre world of Owen Quine’s imagination.
He recognised nobody until Bombyx drew close to the city that was his destination. Here, on a bridge over the moat that surrounded the city walls, stood a large, shambling and myopic figure: the Cutter.
The Cutter sported a low cap instead of horn-rimmed glasses, and carried a wriggling, bloodstained sack over his shoulder. Bombyx accepted the Cutter’s offer to lead him, Succuba and the Tick to a secret door into the city. Inured by now to sexual violence, Strike was unsurprised that the Cutter turned out to be intent on Bombyx’s castration. In the ensuing fight, the bag rolled off the Cutter’s back and a dwarfish female creature burst out of it. The Cutter let Bombyx, Succuba and the Tick escape while he pursued the dwarf; Bombyx and his companions managed to find a chink in the city’s walls and looked back to see the Cutter drowning the little creature in the moat.
Strike had been so engrossed in his reading that he had not realised the match had restarted. He glanced up at the muted TV.
‘Fuck!’
Two-all: unbelievably Spurs had drawn level. Strike threw the manuscript aside, appalled. Arsenal’s defence was crumbling before his eyes. This should have been a win. They had been set to go top of the league.
‘FUCK!’ Strike bellowed ten minutes later as a header soared past Fabiański.
Spurs had won.
He turned off the TV with several more expletives and checked his watch. There was only half an hour in which to shower and change before picking up Nina Lascelles in St John’s Wood; the round trip to Bromley was going to cost him a fortune. He contemplated the prospect of the final quarter of Quine’s manuscript with distaste, feeling much sympathy for Elizabeth Tassel, who had skimmed the final passages.
He was not even sure why he was reading it, other than curiosity.
Downcast and irritable, he moved off towards the shower, wishing that he could have spent the night at home and feeling, irrationally, that if he had not allowed his attention to be distracted by the obscene, nightmarish world of Bombyx Mori, Arsenal might have won.
15
I tell you ’tis not modish to know relations in town.
William Congreve, The Way of the World
‘So? What did you think of Bombyx Mori?’ Nina asked him as they pulled away from her flat in a taxi he could ill afford. If he had not invited her, Strike would have made the journey to Bromley and back by public transport, time-consuming and inconvenient though that would have been.
‘Product of a diseased mind,’ said Strike.
Nina laughed.
‘But you haven’t read any of Owen’s other books; they’re nearly as bad. I admit this one’s got a serious gag factor. What about Daniel’s suppurating knob?’
‘I haven’t got there yet. Something to look forward to.’
Beneath yesterday evening’s warm woollen coat she was wearing a clinging, strappy black dress, of which Strike had had an excellent view when she had invited him into her St John’s Wood flat while she collected bag and keys. She was also clutching a bottle of wine that she had seized from her kitchen when she saw that he was empty-handed. A clever, pretty girl with nice manners, but her willingness to meet him the very night following their first introduction, and that night a Saturday to boot, hinted at recklessness, or perhaps neediness.
Strike asked himself again what he thought he was playing at as they rolled away from the heart of London towards a realm of owner-occupiers, towards spacious houses crammed with coffee makers and HD televisions, towards everything that he had never owned and which his sister assumed, anxiously, must be his ultimate ambition.
It was like Lucy to throw him a birthday dinner at her own house. She was fundamentally unimaginative and, even though she often seemed more harried there than anywhere else, she rated her home’s attractions highly. It was like her to insist on giving him a dinner he didn’t want, but which she could not understand him not wanting. Birthdays in Lucy’s world were always celebrated, never forgotten: there must be cake and candles and cards and presents; time must be marked, order preserved, traditions upheld.
As the taxi passed through the Blackwall Tunnel, speeding them below the Thames into south London, Strike recognised that the act of bringing Nina with him to the family party was a declaration of non-conformity. In spite of the conventional bottle of wine held on her lap, she was highly strung, happy to take risks and chances. She lived alone and talked books not babies; she was not, in short, Lucy’s kind of woman.
Nearly an hour after he had left Denmark Street, with his wallet fifty pounds lighter, Strike helped Nina out into the dark chill of Lucy’s street and led her down a path beneath the large magnolia tree that dominated the front garden. Before ringing the doorbell Strike said, with some reluctance:
‘I should probably tell you: this is a birthday dinner. For me.’
‘Oh, you should have said! Happy—’
‘It isn’t today,’ said Strike. ‘No big deal.’
And he rang the doorbell.
Strike’s brother-in-law, Greg, let them inside. A lot of arm slapping followed, as well as an exaggerated show of pleasure at the sight of Nina. This emotion was conspicuous by its absence in Lucy, who bustled down the hall holding a spatula like a sword and wearing an apron over her party dress.
‘You didn’t say you were bringing someone!’ she hissed in Strike’s ear as he bent to kiss her cheek. Lucy was short, blonde and round-faced; nobody ever guessed that they were related. She was the result of another o
f their mother’s liaisons with a well-known musician. Rick was a rhythm guitarist who, unlike Strike’s father, maintained an amicable relationship with his offspring.
‘I thought you asked me to bring a guest,’ Strike muttered to his sister as Greg ushered Nina into the sitting room.
‘I asked whether you were going to,’ said Lucy angrily. ‘Oh God – I’ll have to go and set an extra – and poor Marguerite—’
‘Who’s Marguerite?’ asked Strike, but Lucy was already hurrying off towards the dining room, spatula aloft, leaving her guest of honour alone in the hall. With a sigh, Strike followed Greg and Nina into the sitting room.
‘Surprise!’ said a fair-haired man with a receding hairline, getting up from the sofa at which his bespectacled wife was beaming at Strike.
‘Christ almighty,’ said Strike, advancing to shake the outstretched hand with genuine pleasure. Nick and Ilsa were two of his oldest friends and they were the only place where the two halves of his early life intersected: London and Cornwall, happily married.
‘No one told me you were going to be here!’
‘Yeah, well, that’s the surprise, Oggy,’ said Nick as Strike kissed Ilsa. ‘D’you know Marguerite?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘I don’t.’
So this was why Lucy had wanted to check whether he was bringing anyone with him; this was the sort of woman she imagined him falling for, and living with for ever in a house with a magnolia tree in the front garden. Marguerite was dark, greasy skinned and morose-looking, wearing a shiny purple dress that appeared to have been bought when she was a little thinner. Strike was sure she was a divorcée. He was developing second sight on that subject.
‘Hi,’ she said, while thin Nina in her strappy black dress chatted with Greg; the short greeting contained a world of bitterness.
So seven of them sat down to dinner. Strike had not seen much of his civilian friends since he had been invalided out of the army. His voluntarily heavy workload had blurred the boundaries between weekday and weekend, but now he realised anew how much he liked Nick and Ilsa, and how infinitely preferable it would have been if the three of them had been alone somewhere, enjoying a curry.
‘How do you know Cormoran?’ Nina asked them avidly.
‘I was at school with him in Cornwall,’ said Ilsa, smiling at Strike across the table. ‘On and off. Came and went, didn’t you, Corm?’
And the story of Strike and Lucy’s fragmented childhood was trotted out over the smoked salmon, their travels with their itinerant mother and their regular returns to St Mawes and the aunt and uncle who had acted as surrogate parents throughout their childhood and teens.
‘And then Corm got taken to London by his mother again when he was, what, seventeen?’ said Ilsa.
Strike could tell that Lucy was not enjoying the conversation: she hated talk about their unusual upbringing, their notorious mother.
‘And he ended up at a good rough old comprehensive with me,’ said Nick. ‘Good times.’
‘Nick was a useful bloke to know,’ said Strike. ‘Knows London like the back of his hand; his dad’s a cabbie.’
‘Are you a cabbie too?’ Nina asked Nick, apparently exhilarated by the exoticism of Strike’s friends.
‘No,’ said Nick cheerfully, ‘I’m a gastroenterologist. Oggy and I had a joint eighteenth birthday party—’
‘—and Corm invited his friend Dave and me up from St Mawes for it. First time I’d ever been to London, I was so excited—’ said Ilsa.
‘—and that’s where we met,’ finished Nick, grinning at his wife.
‘And still no kids, all these years later?’ asked Greg, smug father of three sons.
There was the tiniest pause. Strike knew that Nick and Ilsa had been trying for a child, without success, for several years.
‘Not yet,’ said Nick. ‘What d’you do, Nina?’
The mention of Roper Chard brought some animation to Marguerite, who had been regarding Strike sullenly from the other end of the table, as though he were a tasty morsel placed remorselessly out of reach.
‘Michael Fancourt’s just moved to Roper Chard,’ she stated. ‘I saw it on his website this morning.’
‘Blimey, that was only made public yesterday,’ said Nina. The ‘blimey’ reminded Strike of the way Dominic Culpepper called waiters ‘mate’; it was, he thought, for Nick’s benefit, and perhaps to demonstrate to Strike that she too could mingle happily with the proletariat. (Charlotte, Strike’s ex-fiancée, had never altered her vocabulary or accent, no matter where she found herself. Nor had she liked any of his friends.)
‘Oh, I’m a big fan of Michael Fancourt’s,’ said Marguerite. ‘House of Hollow’s one of my favourite novels. I adore the Russians, and there’s something about Fancourt that makes me think of Dostoevsky…’
Lucy had told her, Strike guessed, that he had been to Oxford, that he was clever. He wished Marguerite a thousand miles away and that Lucy understood him better.
‘Fancourt can’t write women,’ said Nina dismissively. ‘He tries but he can’t do it. His women are all temper, tits and tampons.’
Nick had snorted into his wine at the sound of the unexpected word ‘tits’; Strike laughed at Nick laughing; Ilsa said, giggling:
‘You’re thirty-six, both of you. For God’s sake.’
‘Well, I think he’s marvellous,’ repeated Marguerite, without the flicker of a smile. She had been deprived of a potential partner, one-legged and overweight though he might be; she was not going to give up Michael Fancourt. ‘And incredibly attractive. Complicated and clever, I always fall for them,’ she sighed in an aside to Lucy, clearly referring to past calamities.
‘His head’s too big for his body,’ said Nina, cheerfully disowning her excitement of the previous evening at the sight of Fancourt, ‘and he’s phenomenally arrogant.’
‘I’ve always thought it was so touching, what he did for that young American writer,’ said Marguerite as Lucy cleared the starters away and motioned to Greg to help her in the kitchen. ‘Finishing his novel for him – that young novelist who died of Aids, what was his—?’
‘Joe North,’ said Nina.
‘Surprised you felt up to coming out tonight,’ Nick said quietly to Strike. ‘After what happened this afternoon.’
Nick was, regrettably, a Spurs fan.
Greg, who had returned carrying a joint of lamb and had overheard Nick’s words, immediately seized on them.
‘Must’ve stung, eh, Corm? When everyone thought they had it in the bag?’
‘What’s this?’ asked Lucy like a schoolmistress calling the class to order as she set down dishes of potatoes and vegetables. ‘Oh, not football, Greg, please.’
So Marguerite was left in possession of the conversational ball again.
‘Yes, House of Hollow was inspired by the house his dead friend left to Fancourt, a place where they’d been happy when young. It’s terribly touching. It’s really a story of regret, loss, thwarted ambition—’
‘Joe North left the house jointly to Michael Fancourt and Owen Quine, actually,’ Nina corrected Marguerite firmly. ‘And they both wrote novels inspired by it; Michael’s won the Booker – and Owen’s was panned by everyone,’ Nina added in an aside to Strike.
‘What happened to the house?’ Strike asked Nina as Lucy passed him a plate of lamb.
‘Oh, this was ages ago, it’ll have been sold,’ said Nina. ‘They wouldn’t want to co-own anything; they’ve hated each other for years. Ever since Elspeth Fancourt killed herself over that parody.’
‘You don’t know where the house is?’
‘He’s not there,’ Nina half-whispered.
‘Who’s not where?’ Lucy said, barely concealing her irritation. Her plans for Strike had been disrupted. She was never going to like Nina now.
‘One of our writers has gone missing,’ Nina told her. ‘His wife asked Cormoran to find him.’
‘Successful bloke?’ asked Greg.
No doubt Greg was tired of hi
s wife worrying volubly about her brilliant but impecunious brother, with his business barely breaking even in spite of his heavy workload, but the word ‘successful’, with everything it connoted when spoken by Greg, affected Strike like nettle rash.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’d call Quine successful.’
‘Who’s hired you, Corm? The publisher?’ asked Lucy anxiously.
‘His wife,’ said Strike.
‘She’s going to be able to pay the bill, though, right?’ asked Greg. ‘No lame ducks, Corm, that’s gotta be your number one rule of business.’
‘Surprised you don’t jot those pearls of wisdom down,’ Nick told Strike under his breath as Lucy offered Marguerite more of anything on the table (compensation for not taking Strike home and getting to marry him and live two streets away with a shiny new coffee maker from Lucy-and-Greg).
After dinner they retired to the beige three-piece suite in the sitting room, where presents and cards were presented. Lucy and Greg had bought him a new watch, ‘Because I know your last one got broken,’ Lucy said. Touched that she had remembered, a swell of affection temporarily blotted out Strike’s irritation that she had dragged him here tonight, and nagged him about his life choices, and married Greg… He removed the cheap but serviceable replacement he had bought himself and put Lucy’s watch on instead: it was large and shiny with a metallic bracelet and looked like a duplicate of Greg’s.
Nick and Ilsa had bought him ‘that whisky you like’: Arran Single Malt, it reminded him powerfully of Charlotte, with whom he had first tasted it, but any possibility of melancholy remembrance was chased away by the abrupt appearance in the doorway of three pyjama-ed figures, the tallest of whom asked:
‘Is there cake yet?’
Strike had never wanted children (an attitude Lucy deplored) and barely knew his nephews, whom he saw infrequently. The eldest and youngest trailed their mother out of the room to fetch his birthday cake; the middle boy, however, made a beeline for Strike and held out a homemade card.