8
I took the book and so the old man vanished.
John Lyly, Endymion: or, the Man in the Moon
It occurred to Strike as he travelled, standing, the one Tube stop to Elizabeth Tassel’s office (he was never fully relaxed on these short journeys, but braced to take the strain on his false leg, wary of falls) that Robin had not reproached him for taking on the Quine case. Not, of course, that it was her place to reproach her employer, but she had turned down a much higher salary to throw her lot in with his and it would not have been unreasonable for her to expect that once the debts were paid, a raise might be the least he could do for her. She was unusual in her lack of criticism, or critical silence; the only female in Strike’s life who seemed to have no desire to improve or correct him. Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you.
So she was marrying in seven weeks’ time. Seven weeks left until she became Mrs Matthew… but if he had ever known her fiancé’s surname, he could not recall it.
As he waited for the lift at Goodge Street, Strike experienced a sudden, crazy urge to call his divorcing brunette client – who had made it quite clear that she would welcome such a development – with a view to screwing her tonight in what he imagined would be her deep, soft, heavily perfumed bed in Knightsbridge. But the idea occurred only to be instantly dismissed. Such a move would be insanity; worse than taking on a missing-person case for which he was unlikely ever to see payment…
And why was he wasting time on Owen Quine? he asked himself, head bowed against the biting rain. Curiosity, he answered inwardly after a few moments’ thought, and perhaps something more elusive. As he headed down Store Street, squinting through the downpour and concentrating on maintaining his footing on the slippery pavements, he reflected that his palate was in danger of becoming jaded by the endless variations on cupidity and vengefulness that his wealthy clients kept bringing him. It had been a long time since he had investigated a missing-person case. There would be satisfaction in restoring the runaway Quine to his family.
Elizabeth Tassel’s literary agency lay in a mostly residential mews of dark brick, a surprisingly quiet cul-de-sac off busy Gower Street. Strike pressed a doorbell beside a discreet brass plaque. A light thumping sound ensued and a pale young man in an open-necked shirt opened the door at the foot of red-carpeted stairs.
‘Are you the private detective?’ he asked with what seemed to be a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Strike followed him, dripping all over the threadbare carpet, up the stairs to a mahogany door and into a large office space that had once, perhaps, been a separate hall and sitting room.
Aged elegance was slowly disintegrating into shabbiness. The windows were misty with condensation and the air heavy with old cigarette smoke. A plethora of overstocked wooden bookcases lined the walls and the dingy wallpaper was almost obscured by framed literary caricatures and cartoons. Two heavy desks sat facing each other across a scuffed rug, but neither was occupied.
‘Can I take your coat?’ the young man asked, and a thin and frightened-looking girl jumped up from behind one of the desks. She was holding a stained sponge in one hand.
‘I can’t get it out, Ralph!’ she whispered frantically to the young man with Strike.
‘Bloody thing,’ Ralph muttered irritably. ‘Elizabeth’s decrepit old dog’s puked under Sally’s desk,’ he confided, sotto voce, as he took Strike’s sodden Crombie and hung it on a Victorian coat-stand just inside the door. ‘I’ll let her know you’re here. Just keep scrubbing,’ he advised his colleague as he crossed to a second mahogany door and opened it a crack.
‘That’s Mr Strike, Liz.’
There was a loud bark, followed immediately by a deep, rattling human cough that could have plausibly issued from the lungs of an old coal miner.
‘Grab him,’ said a hoarse voice.
The door to the agent’s office opened, revealing Ralph, who was holding tight to the collar of an aged but evidently still feisty Dobermann pinscher, and a tall, thick-set woman of around sixty, with large, uncompromisingly plain features. The geometrically perfect steel-grey bob, a black suit of severe cut and a slash of crimson lipstick gave her a certain dash. She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.
‘You’d better take him out, Ralph,’ said the agent, her olive-dark eyes on Strike. The rain was still pelting against the windows. ‘And don’t forget the poo bags, he’s a bit soft today.
‘Come in, Mr Strike.’
Looking disgusted, her assistant dragged the big dog, with its head like a living Anubis, out of her office; as Strike and the Dobermann passed each other, it growled energetically.
‘Coffee, Sally,’ the agent shot at the frightened-looking girl who had concealed her sponge. As she jumped up and vanished through a door behind her desk, Strike hoped she would wash her hands thoroughly before making drinks.
Elizabeth Tassel’s stuffy office was a kind of concentration of the outer room: it stank of cigarettes and old dog. A tweed bed for the animal sat under her desk; the walls were plastered with old photographs and prints. Strike recognised one of the largest: a reasonably well-known and elderly writer of illustrated children’s books called Pinkelman, whom he was not sure was still alive. After indicating wordlessly that Strike should take the seat opposite her, from which he had first to remove a stack of papers and old copies of the Bookseller, the agent took a cigarette from a box on the desk, lit it with an onyx lighter, inhaled deeply then broke into a protracted fit of rattling, wheezing coughs.
‘So,’ she croaked when these had subsided and she had returned to the leather chair behind the desk, ‘Christian Fisher tells me that Owen’s put in another of his famous vanishing acts.’
‘That’s right,’ said Strike. ‘He disappeared the night that you and he argued about his book.’
She began to speak, but the words disintegrated immediately into further coughs. Horrible, tearing noises issued from deep in her torso. Strike waited in silence for the fit to pass.
‘Sounds nasty,’ he said at last, when she had coughed herself into silence again and, incredibly, taken another deep drag of her cigarette.
‘Flu,’ she rasped. ‘Can’t shake it. When did Leonora come to you?’
‘The day before yesterday.’
‘Can she afford you?’ she croaked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you come cheap, the man who solved the Landry case.’
‘Mrs Quine suggested that you might pay me,’ said Strike.
The coarse cheeks purpled and her dark eyes, watery from so much coughing, narrowed.
‘Well, you can go straight back to Leonora’ – her chest began to heave beneath the smart black jacket as she fought off the desire to cough again – ‘and tell her that I won’t pay a p-penny to get that bastard back. He’s no – no longer my client. Tell her – tell her—’
She was overtaken by another giant explosion of coughing.
The door opened and the thin female assistant entered, struggling under the weight of a heavy wooden tray laden with cups and a cafetière. Strike got up to take it from her; there was barely room on the desk to set it down. The girl attempted to make a space. In her nerves, she knocked over a stack of papers.
A furious admonitory gesture from the coughing agent sent the girl scuttling from the room in fright.
‘Use-useless – little—’ wheezed Elizabeth Tassel.