The door opened, revealing the Minister for Sport in her impenetrable black glasses. She was wearing what Strike’s elderly aunt back in Cornwall would have called a housecoat, a knee-length purple fleece robe that buttoned to the high neck, giving her a vaguely ecclesiastic air. The guide dog stood behind her, looking up at Strike with dark, mournful eyes.
“Hi, it’s Cormoran Strike,” said the detective, without moving. Given that she could neither recognize him by sight nor examine any of the identification he carried, the only way she could know whom she was admitting to her house was by the sound of his voice. “We spoke on the phone earlier and you asked me to come and see you.”
“Yes,” she said, unsmiling. “Come in, then.”
She stepped back to let him pass, one hand on the Labrador’s collar. Strike entered, wiping his feet on the doormat. A swell of music, loud strings and woodwind instruments, cut through by the pounding of a kettle drum, issued from what Strike assumed was the sitting room. Strike, who had been raised by a mother who listened mainly to metal bands, knew very little about classical music, but there was a looming, ominous quality about this music that he didn’t particularly care for. The hall was dark, because the lights hadn’t been turned on, and otherwise nondescript, with a dark brown patterned carpet that, while practical, was rather ugly.
“I’ve made coffee,” said Della. “I’ll need you to carry the tray into the sitting room for me, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“No problem,” said Strike.
He followed the Labrador, which padded along at Della’s heels, its tail wagging vaguely. The symphony grew louder as they passed the sitting room, the doorframe of which Della touched lightly as she passed, feeling for familiar markers to orient herself.
“Is that Beethoven?” asked Strike, for something to say.
“Brahms. Symphony Number One, C Minor.”
The edges of every surface in the kitchen were rounded. The knobs on the oven, Strike noticed, had raised numbers stuck to them. On a cork noticeboard was a list of phone numbers headed IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, that he imagined were for the use of a cleaner or home help. While Della crossed to the worktop opposite, Strike extracted his mobile from his coat pocket and took a picture of Geraint Winn’s number. Della’s outstretched hand reached the rim of the deep ceramic sink, and she moved sideways, where a tray sat already laden with a mug and a cafetière of freshly brewed coffee. Two bottles of wine stood beside it. Della felt for both of these, turned and held them out to Strike, still unsmiling.
“Which is which?” she asked.
“Chateauneuf-du-Pape, 2010, in your left hand,” said Strike, “and Chateau Musar, 2006, in your right.”
“I’ll have a glass of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape if you wouldn’t mind opening the bottle and pouring it for me. I assumed that you wouldn’t want a drink, but if you do, help yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Strike, picking up the corkscrew she had laid beside the tray, “coffee will be fine.”
She set off silently for the sitting room, leaving him to follow with the tray. As he entered the room he caught the heavy scent of roses and was fleetingly reminded of Robin. While Della grazed furniture with her fingertips, feeling her way towards an armchair with wide wooden arms, Strike saw four large bunches of flowers positioned in vases around the room and punctuating the overall drabness with their vivid colors, red, yellow and pink.
Aligning herself by pressing the backs of her legs against the chair, Della sat down neatly, then turned her face towards Strike as he set the tray on the table.
“Would you put my glass here, on my right chair arm?” she said, patting it, and he did so, while the pale Labrador, which had flopped down beside Della’s chair, watched him out of kind, sleepy eyes.
The strings of the violins in the symphony swooped and fell as Strike sat down. From the fawn carpet to the furniture, all of which might have been designed in the seventies, everything seemed to be in different shades of brown. Half of one wall was covered in built-in shelves holding what he thought must be at least a thousand CDs. On a table to the rear of the room was a stack of Braille manuscripts. A large, framed photograph of a teenage girl sat on the mantelpiece. It occurred to Strike that her mother could not even enjoy the bittersweet solace of looking at Rhiannon Winn every day, and he found himself filled with inconvenient compassion.
“Nice flowers,” he commented.
“Yes. It was my birthday a few days ago,” said Della.
“Ah. Many happy returns.”
“Are you from the West Country?”
“Partly. Cornwall.”
“I can hear it in your vowels,” said Della.
She waited while he dealt with the cafetière and poured himself coffee. When the sounds of clinking and pouring had ceased, she said:
“As I said on the phone, I’m very worried about Aamir. He’ll still be in London, I’m sure, because it’s all he’s ever known. Not with his family,” she added, and Strike thought he heard a trace of contempt. “I’m extremely concerned about him.”
She felt carefully for the wine glass next to her and took a sip.
“When you’ve reassured him that he isn’t in any kind of trouble, and that anything Chiswell told you about him will go no further, you must tell him to contact me—urgently.”
The violins continued to screech and whine in what, to the untutored Strike, was a dissonant expression of foreboding. The guide dog scratched herself, her paw thudding off the carpet. Strike took out his notebook.
“Have you got the names or contact details of any friends Mallik might have gone to?”
“No,” said Della. “I don’t think he has many friends. Latterly he mentioned someone from university but I don’t remember a name. I doubt it was anyone particularly close.”
The thought of this distant friend seemed to make her uneasy.
“He studied at the LSE, so that’s an area of London he knows well.”
“He’s on good terms with one of his sisters, isn’t he?”
“Oh, no,” said Della, at once. “No, no, they all disowned him. No, he’s got nobody, really, other than me, which is what makes this situation so dangerous.”
“The sister posted a picture on Facebook of the two of them fairly recently. It was in that pizza joint opposite your house.”
Della’s expression betrayed not merely surprise, but displeasure.
“Aamir told me you’d been snooping online. Which sister was it?”
“I’d have to ch—”
“But I doubt he’d be staying with her,” said Della, talking over him. “Not with the way the family as a whole has treated him. He might have contacted her, I suppose. You might see what she knows.”
“I will,” said Strike. “Any other ideas about where he might go?”
“He really doesn’t have anyone else,” she said. “That’s what worries me. He’s vulnerable. It’s essential I find him.”
“Well, I’ll certainly do my best,” Strike promised her. “Now, you said on the phone that you’d answer a few questions.”
Her expression became slightly more forbidding.
“I doubt I can tell you anything of interest, but go on.”
“Can we start with Jasper Chiswell, and your and your husband’s relationship with him?”
By her expression, she managed to convey that she found the question both impertinent and slightly ludicrous. With a cold smile and raised eyebrows, she responded:
“Well, Jasper and I had a professional relationship, obviously.”
“And how was that?” asked Strike, adding sugar to his coffee, stirring it and taking a sip.
“Given,” said Della, “that Jasper hired you to try and discover disreputable information about us, I think you already know the answer to that question.”
“You maintain that your husband wasn’t blackmailing Chiswell, then, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
Strike knew that pushing on this particular point, when Della’s super-injunction had already shown what lengths she would go to in her own defense, would only alienate her. A temporary retreat seemed indicated.
“What about the rest of the Chiswells? Did you ever run across any of them?”
“Some,” she said, a little warily.
“And how did you find them?”
“I barely know them. Geraint says Izzy was hardworking.”