Strike put the tray down on the desk, ignoring the scattered papers all over the carpet, and resumed his seat. The agent was a bully in a familiar mould: one of those older women who capitalised, whether consciously or not, on the fact that they awoke in those who were susceptible, childhood memories of demanding and all-powerful mothers. Strike was immune to such intimidation. For one thing, his own mother, whatever her faults, had been young and openly adoring; for another, he sensed vulnerability in this apparent dragon. The chain-smoking, the fading photographs and the old dog basket suggested a more sentimental, less self-assured woman than her young hirelings might think.
When at last she had finished coughing, he handed her a cup of coffee he had poured.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered gruffly.
‘So you’ve sacked Quine?’ he asked. ‘Did you tell him so, the night you had dinner?’
‘I can’t remember,’ she croaked. ‘Things got heated very quickly. Owen stood up in the middle of the restaurant, the better to shout at me, then flounced out leaving me to pay the bill. You’ll find plenty of witnesses to what was said, if you’re interested. Owen made sure it was a nice, public scene.’
She reached for another cigarette and, as an afterthought, offered Strike one. After she had lit both, she said:
‘What’s Christian Fisher told you?’
‘Not much,’ said Strike.
‘I hope for both your sakes that’s true,’ she snapped.
Strike said nothing, but smoked and drank his coffee while Elizabeth waited, clearly hoping for more information.
‘Did he mention Bombyx Mori?’ she asked.
Strike nodded.
‘What did he say about it?’
‘That Quine’s put a lot of recognisable people in the book, thinly disguised.’
There was a charged pause.
‘I hope Chard does sue him. That’s his idea of keeping his mouth shut, is it?’
‘Have you tried to contact Quine since he walked out of – where was it you were having dinner?’ Strike asked.
‘The River Café,’ she croaked. ‘No, I haven’t tried to contact him. There’s nothing left to say.’
‘And he hasn’t contacted you?’
‘No.’
‘Leonora says you told Quine his book was the best thing he’d ever produced, then changed your mind and refused to represent it.’
‘She says what? That’s not what – not – what I s—’
It was her worst paroxysm of coughing yet. Strike felt a strong urge to forcibly remove the cigarette from her hand as she hacked and spluttered. Finally the fit passed. She drank half a cup of hot coffee straight off, which seemed to bring her some relief. In a stronger voice, she repeated:
‘That’s not what I said. “The best thing he’d ever written” – is that what he told Leonora?’
‘Yes. What did you really say?’
‘I was ill,’ she said hoarsely, ignoring the question. ‘Flu. Off work for a week. Owen rang the office to tell me the novel was finished; Ralph told him I was at home in bed, so Owen couriered the manuscript straight to my house. I had to get up to sign for it. Absolutely typical of him. I had a temperature of a hundred and four and could barely stand. His book was finished so I was expected to read it immediately.’
She slugged down more coffee and said:
‘I chucked the manuscript on the hall table and went straight back to bed. Owen started ringing me, virtually on the hour, to see what I thought. All through Wednesday and Thursday he badgered me…
‘I’ve never done it before in thirty years in the business,’ she croaked. ‘I was supposed to be going away that weekend. I’d been looking forward to it. I didn’t want to cancel and I didn’t want Owen calling me every three minutes while I was away. So… just to get him off my back… I was still feeling awful… I skim-read it.’
She took a deep drag on her cigarette, coughed routinely, composed herself and said:
‘It didn’t look any worse than his last couple. If anything, it was an improvement. Quite an interesting premise. Some of the imagery was arresting. A Gothic fairy tale, a grisly Pilgrim’s Progress.’
‘Did you recognise anyone in the bits you read?’
‘The characters seemed mostly symbolic,’ she said, a touch defensively, ‘including the hagiographic self-portrait. Lots of p-perverse sex.’ She paused to cough again. ‘The mixture as usual, I thought… but I – I wasn’t reading carefully, I’d be the first to admit that.’
He could tell that she was not used to admitting fault.
‘I – well, I skimmed the last quarter, the bits where he writes about Michael and Daniel. I glanced at the ending, which was grotesque and a bit silly…
‘If I hadn’t been so ill, if I’d read it properly, naturally I’d have told him straight away that he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Daniel’s a st-strange man, very t-touchy’ – her voice was breaking up again; determined to finish her sentence she wheezed, ‘and M-Michael’s the nastiest – the nastiest—’ before exploding again into coughs.
‘Why would Mr Quine try and publish something that was bound to get him sued?’ Strike asked when she had stopped coughing.