Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

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To Jenkins,

without whom

he knows the rest

QUESTION

What dost thou feed on?

ANSWER

Broken sleep.

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

Someone bloody famous, said the hoarse voice on the end of the line, betterve died, Strike.

The large unshaven man tramping through the darkness of pre-dawn, with his telephone clamped to his ear, grinned.

Its in that ballpark.

Its six oclock in the fucking morning!

Its half past, but if you want what Ive got, youll need to come and get it, said Cormoran Strike. Im not far away from your place. Theres a

How dyou know where I live? demanded the voice.

You told me, said Strike, stifling a yawn. Youre selling your flat.

Oh, said the other, mollified. Good memory.

Theres a twenty-four-hour caff

Fuck that. Come into the office later

Culpepper, Ive got another client this morning, he pays better than you do and Ive been up all night. You need this now if youre going to use it.

A groan. Strike could hear the rustling of sheets.

It had better be shit-hot.

Smithfield Caf on Long Lane, said Strike and rang off.

The slight unevenness in his gait became more pronounced as he walked down the slope towards Smithfield Market, monolithic in the winter darkness, a vast rectangular Victorian temple to meat, where from four every weekday morning animal flesh was unloaded, as it had been for centuries past, cut, parceled and sold to butchers and restaurants across London. Strike could hear voices through the gloom, shouted instructions and the growl and beep of reversing lorries unloading the carcasses. As he entered Long Lane, he became merely one among many heavily muffled men moving purposefully about their Monday-morning business.

A huddle of couriers in fluorescent jackets cupped mugs of tea in their gloved hands beneath a stone griffin standing sentinel on the corner of the market building. Across the road, glowing like an open fireplace against the surrounding darkness, was the Smithfield Caf, open twenty-four hours a day, a cupboard-sized cache of warmth and greasy food.

The caf had no bathroom, but an arrangement with the bookies a few doors along. Ladbrokes would not open for another three hours, so Strike made a detour down a side alley and in a dark doorway relieved himself of a bladder bulging with weak coffee drunk in the course of a nights work. Exhausted and hungry, he turned at last, with the pleasure that only a man who has pushed himself past his physical limits can ever experience, into the fat-laden atmosphere of frying eggs and bacon.

Two men in fleeces and waterproofs had just vacated a table. Strike maneuvered his bulk into the small space and sank, with a grunt of satisfaction, onto the hard wood and steel chair. Almost before he asked, the Italian owner placed tea in front of him in a tall white mug, which came with triangles of white buttered bread. Within five minutes a full English breakfast lay before him on a large oval plate.

Strike blended well with the strong men banging their way in and out of the caf. He was large and dark, with dense, short, curly hair that had receded a little from the high, domed forehead that topped a boxers broad nose and thick, surly brows. His jaw was grimy with stubble and bruise-colored shadows enlarged his dark eyes. He ate gazing dreamily at the market building opposite. The nearest arched entrance, numbered two, was taking substance as the darkness thinned: a stern stone face, ancient and bearded, stared back at him from over the doorway. Had there ever been a god of carcasses?

He had just started on his sausages when Dominic Culpepper arrived. The journalist was almost as tall as Strike but thin, with a choirboys complexion. A strange asymmetry, as though somebody had given his face a counterclockwise twist, stopped him being girlishly handsome.

This better be good, Culpepper said as he sat down, pulled off his gloves and glanced almost suspiciously around the caf.

Want some food? asked Strike through a mouthful of sausage.

No, said Culpepper.

Rather wait till you can get a croissant? asked Strike, grinning.

Fuck off, Strike.

It was almost pathetically easy to wind up the ex-public schoolboy, who ordered tea with an air of defiance, calling the indifferent waiter (as Strike noted with amusement) mate.

Well? demanded Culpepper, with the hot mug in his long pale hands.

Strike fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out an envelope and slid it across the table. Culpepper pulled out the contents and began to read.

Fucking hell, he said quietly, after a while. He shuffled feverishly through the bits of paper, some of which were covered in Strikes own writing. Where the hell did you get this?

Strike, whose mouth was full of sausage, jabbed a finger at one of the bits of paper, on which an office address was scribbled.

His very fucked-off PA, he said, when he had finally swallowed. Hes been shagging her, as well as the two you know about. Shes only just realized shes not going to be the next Lady Parker.

How the hell did you find that out? asked Culpepper, staring up at Strike over the papers trembling in his excited hands.

Detective work, said Strike thickly, through another bit of sausage. Didnt your lot used to do this, before you started outsourcing to the likes of me? But shes got to think about her future employment prospects, Culpepper, so she doesnt want to appear in the story, all right?

Culpepper snorted.

She shouldve thought about that before she nicked

With a deft movement, Strike tweaked the papers out of the journalists fingers.

She didnt nick them. He got her to print this lot off for him this afternoon. The only thing shes done wrong is show it to me. But if youre going to splash her private life all over the papers, Culpepper, Ill take em back.

Piss off, said Culpepper, making a grab for the evidence of wholesale tax evasion clutched in Strikes hairy hand. All right, well leave her out of it. But hell know where we got it. Hes not a complete tit.

Whats he going to do, drag her into court where she can spill the beans about every other dodgy thing shes witnessed over the last five years?

Yeah, all right, sighed Culpepper after a moments reflection. Give em back. Ill leave her out of the story, but Ill need to speak to her, wont I? Check shes kosher.

Those are kosher. You dont need to speak to her, said Strike firmly.

The shaking, besotted, bitterly betrayed woman whom he had just left would not be safe left alone with Culpepper. In her savage desire for retribution against a man who had promised her marriage and children she would damage herself and her prospects beyond repair. It had not taken Strike long to gain her trust. She was nearly forty-two; she had thought that she was going to have Lord Parkers children; now a kind of bloodlust had her in its grip. Strike had sat with her for several hours, listening to the story of her infatuation, watching her pace her sitting room in tears, rock backwards and forwards on her sofa, knuckles to her forehead. Finally she had agreed to this: a betrayal that represented the funeral of all her hopes.